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Segway Riders Get High on Mount Washington
TacticalJack writes "Rob Owen, a retired clown, and two other riders surged up Mount Washington at 12.5 mph, the AP reports. It took the Segway riders two and half hours to complete the 7.6 mile endurance test. The team used six batteries, fought off 50 mph winds and battled bitter cold to reach the 6,288-foot mountain summit. All of which begs the question, why not buy a motorbike?"
huh? Somebody school me please.
Nope, sorry, it's a road. Never been to Mt. Washington, have you?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
There is a time when one may be pedantic and in some cases it can be quite interesting:
What 'begs the question' really means [worksafe].
You can mod me 'flamebait' or 'troll' if you like but consider this - I'm just trying to enhance and improve your grammar-life, with no money down!
Segway / DEKA Research is a New Hampshire company.
Mount Washington is the highest point in New Hampshire (or New England for that matter, but not -- as is commonly believed around here -- the highest point on the US east coast: that title goes to North Carolina's Mount Mitchell).
As a popular landmark & attraction, Mount Washington has great appeal in New England. The "This car climbed Mt. Washington!" bumper stickers are ubiquitous, and driving up the mountain's wind-swept road in the family minivan or station wagon has been a rite of passage for generations of New Englanders.
That is why they had to drive Segways up the mountain. This is a New England transportation invention, but that just wouldn't be complete without the obligatory drive up Mount Washington.
The real question is whether or not the Segways they took up the mountain have any space for the bumper sticker :-)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
The only person I've ever seen use the term correctly was Darl McBride, and he used it to say the kind of silly crap he always says.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Considering Tom Danielson, one of the best climbers in the world took 49 minutes last time around... "About an hour" makes you a very fit cyclist. The average chainsmoking cheeto eating nerd would probably have a coronary after a few hundred meters. At any rate... 2.5 hours is very generous for the average person.
Mount Evans (in Colorado) has a paved road to it's peak, and tops out at over 14K. Sorry, Mt. Washington is not real impressive.
The expedition wasn't to show that they could; everybody knew it was possible. It was to test how fast it could be done, in case rapid deployment were necessary to either side of the country(ala Blitzkrieg). That's why we now have an interstate system: defense. It allows us to very rapidly deploy in case Mother Russia strikes, wiping out our rail and everything else.
In fact, stretches of interstate have to meet certian specifications for landing of (large) aircraft, in the event that airbases are destroyed.
I think that the Segway has some interesting technology, but I also think that it is still "a solution looking for a problem". For the same weight in batteries, a simple foldable inline scooter could go much further at lower cost. The extra energy expenditure for balance gyros /motors is simply not needed to move ordinary people around on level surfaces...
The Segway could not have been going 12 mph when it took over 2 1/2 hours to get to the top all told!!!! See this article.
The current human bicycle record up Mt. Washington is 49 minutes and change. Yes this is a professional cyclist, but the majority of people who get into the one day ride to the top make it in under 2 hours.
So your questions should not be, "Why not buy a motorbike?", but why not just buy a bike?!?!?!?!?!? It's cheaper, less maintenance cost, and with a set of panniers can make your weekly run to the store/work/play.