Ride on a Segway

This post could have been called “the latest item that Ian has fallen off”. I do tend to be a little clumsy at times and over the years I have managed to cause myself a few minor injuries (see the post on the Manchester to Liverpool bike ride for another fine example of this) so it was inevitable that at some point I would end up in the dirt but we will get to that later. This all came about after My wife’s best friend bought me a voucher for the Segway experience for my birthday, I chose to do this on a Saturday morning at the Go Ape site in Cannock. I had seen people riding the Segway before and it looked like great fun, as the voucher was for a Forest Segway experience I knew we were in for a few laughs. My wife decided that she would join me for the experience as well, this was a huge bonus as I’d imagined myself going around the course while she watched from the side lines. After a brief safety talk we were lead to our segways and guided through the basics before being sent to the practice track where we spent the next few minutes driving in a figure of 8, then we progressed to the Uphill and Downhill section. This is where I became the first group member to fall victim to the Segway. All was going well until I had to negotiate a tight corner, I got around the corner well but over corrected when I on got on the straight part of the path and one wheel touched a tree stump. I am not if you are familiar with the workings of a segway, I wasn’t and I found out quickly that if anything touches the wheel it instantly stops…..Unfortunately this information isn’t shared with the other wheel so it carries on as if nothing has happened. This action generally throws anything that is on the Segway onto the ground, in his case it was me that ended up as a crumpled mess in the middle of the training track. As injuries go this was not even worth mentioning, a little chat and a plaster on my finger and I was back on the machine and off we went into the forest. I kept to the back of the pack initially as I was quite cautious after my little spill. The first section had us weaving between the trees and we had to practice a figure of 8 manoeuvre then they suggested we take it up a notch and increase the speed of the machines, the increase seemed to make the Segway easier to handle and we were soon whizzing down the forest tracks. The guide did notice that my wife and I were sticking to the back so he decided we needed to move up so made sure we were at the front. I think this gave Keely much more confidence as she was off like a shot and was speeding ahead of the group, I was just about keeping up. By the time we reached the final section we’d had to make a couple of unscheduled stops as the 2 wheeled menace managed to claim another couple of victims, I was happy that the day hadn’t ended with me being the only idiot to fall off the Segway. The last leg was the most challenging section as it saw us negotiating some fairly steep parts of the course, both up and downhill meaning we had to lean backwards or forwards much more to control the speed. It was tricky to get the right measure of this at times. Too much meant you’d go too fast, too little and you could make the thing stop completely and lose the much needed momentum. By now my wife had really got the knack and left me standing, the instructor even commented at how well she had taken to the experience. At the end of the course we were all given a certificate to show that we had survived the day and could now claim ourselves to be proficient Segway drivers.