Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Paris via Segway...

The Three of Us In Paris

This was us, freezing, but happy in front of the Eiffel Tower, triumphant that we had just completed our Segway tour of Paris. Despite the bone gnawing cold, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and got to see some of this great cities sights in such a FUN way.

I'd never ridden (driven?) a Segway before, and was a bit taken aback when after just a couple of minutes of hearing/learning about the rudimentaries of
Segway control our American guide to Paris "Bubba" asked us to step onto our gyroscoping wonders and drive them into some of the most "challenging" traffic (pedestrian and vehicular) on the planet! But ya know,,, I found myself loving it right from the get go, and realized how intuitive these two wheeling little oddities really are. After about five minutes I felt completely sure of my ride and was able to maneuver my way around all kinds of obstacles (children, scooters, flower stands, dogs, street sweepers, and tourists, lots of tourists, mostly just standing, gawking and pointing at the sight our strange posse seemed to make.)

Riding a Segway is rather like riding a motorcycle, you "lean into" and look towards the direction you wish to go..and at the same time chariot like, as you have to lean forwards to increase the speed..., and then trust that you wont fall forwards onto your face!!

Actually, I'd recommend sight seeing by Segway to most folks, it was one of the high points of our trip, and we got to cover more miles than we would if we'd gone by foot, and still had that out in the fresh air, stop when we want to, take photos of all the awesome sights kind of experience. In a word - Fabulous!

3 comments:

isabel said...

i reccomend the bike if you arre a more cautious person segways can be scary and you can easily fall

CC Lord said...

How about start a new Segway class on the race track?

Apron Thrift Girl said...

What a lovely photo of all of you. Very cool.