Read yesterday’s post here.

Day Nine: Is That A Truck?

After yesterday’s long sleep, I was, of course, wide awake at night. I did end up falling asleep around 3am, after enjoying a little TV. Happily, my feet were completely better by the end of my (practically) two days of doing nothing. The fun part of the evening was when I went to get a drink. Sick of drinking out of a day-old water bottle (which had been filled with fairly non-tasty water), I grabbed my wallet and key and went to the drinks machine not a metre from my room door. I hadn’t bothered to change out of my pjs, figuring I wasn’t going far, and it’s quiet on my hotel floor. 

Big mistake: I go to my door, put in my key (keycard), and it beeps a red light at me. I try the spare keycard; same thing. I tried each one about ten times before I gave up, and went downstairs to the foyer so they could reset my cards. Apparently they had accidentally set it in the computer system that I wasn’t booked in for another couple of days. Fun!

So this morning I let myself sleep in a little, seeing as how I didn’t fall asleep until late. If I got up early enough, I would go and do one of those activities/sightseeing things I missed last week. But as usual, sleep overpowered me, and I didn’t get up for ages - not til about noon. (I did read for a couple of hours, which was nice and relaxing) 

From there, I headed out to my planned activity for the day. This is where we look back to last week; on Sunday, I had booked in a Segway tour. My feet couldn’t handle it, so I called ahead to change my booking, and they told me they had actually scheduled me in for today. So even though I was reluctant to go out and be active this morning, I went, seeing as how I’d already paid them money.

Boy, am I glad I did go. It was 3 hours of non-stop fun… and a little bit of near misses.

For those who are curious, a Segway is one of those motorised scooters that you stand up on and operate by the handle. They were a big fad in the late 90s, but never really took off. But someone thought of the idea of using these things to do tours of cities (see link above, they do tours in certain capitals/cities around the world, including DC), making them a) faster than walking tours, b) allow for larger routes and more sights to see, and c) lots of fun. 

To get to the Segway tour HQ, I had to go to Atlanta Underground, an underground () mall of sorts. To get there I took the train, not willing to attempt the bus system just yet. Although the bus line goes right outside my hotel, and the train station is about 5 (huge) blocks away, I’m more comfortable with trains than with buses. Luckily, the train took three stops and was very quick (the train arrived just as I got to the platform), with platforms easily marked out. I am, however, extremely glad I printed out the MARTA (the public transport system name) map and google maps, so I knew where everything would be and where to get off.

Although on google maps, Atlanta Underground was a short walk from the closest train station, it turns out that all I had to do was to take two escalators up and go through some glass doors. The underground is very strange; it’s like colonial facade shops within a train station. (See pic to right)

From there, it was just a short walk to the HQ, which funnily enough is above ground but still in Atlanta Underground (weird, huh?). The tour guides first get you to pay a damage waiver deposit (refunded at the end of the trip so long as you don’t damage anything), sign an injury waiver form, and watch a safety video. Then they take you outside and do a short demo on the segway, and then individually showed everyone how to use it. (There was about 10-15 of us in the tour group)

They look terrifying to use at first, but by the end of it, I was really comfortable on it. Each segway had a name, and mine was Farley. Me and Farley got along well 

The following is just an explanation of how a Segway works; it’s not intended as a guide, and trust me, you wouldn’t want to use it as one. Seriously, I watched three people fall over today, and had a few near misses myself. 

To help people understand, I’m going to write a short explanation of how the segway works. Basically, you stand on the segway, where there are two platform areas for your feet. The whole thing of operating one relies on balance. To go forward, you lean on your toes slightly; leaning more accelerates the segway more; however, there’s a speed limiter, and you can’t go faster than that. If you do, the segway automatically starts pushing you backwards (sounds weird, but that’s the best way I can describe it). If you lean on your heels, you slow and finally come to a stop - although it’s not really a stop, but a slow roll. To keep still on a segway, you actually have to slightly rock it backwards as it tries to keep going. To turn, you simply move the handle to the right or left; like windscreen wipers, or going left or right with a joystick (you can’t move the handle forwards or backwards though, unlike a joystick). The whole thing is more sensitive to your movements than you think, and responds to very little force. And the good thing is that the segway gets used to your weight: so the longer you’re on it, the more balanced your ride becomes (at first, it’s quite wobbly, as you get used to the balancing act). 

For the first time in the trip, proof that I’m actually in Atlanta and the blog isn’t posted by some automated robot

I wish I could tell you what I saw: most of the time I was busy paying attention to where I was going. We crossed a lot of streets too, which meant figuring out where the curve of the sidewalk meets the road so you could cross. I do know some areas we went past: we went to the Capitol building, then across to Georgia State Uni (not to be confused with Georgia Tech, although we did go past that later too), past the original Coca Cola building, over to the Georgia Aquarium and the current Coca Cola building (also past CNN), and past the Olympic Centennial Park. (I’m going to the Aquarium and the park tomorrow as it happens) We also stopped off at Varsity, where we had a 15 minute break.

I couldn’t take a lot of photos for two reasons: one, we weren’t supposed to whilst on the segway, and two, it was just too hard to do so while on it (hence the first reason) because we spent most of our time on the move. But there are more pics on my Flickr set.

Unfortunately, it was a little less enjoyable for a couple of reasons. One major one was that my feet started swelling again. The other was the pain in the ass people in the trip. Oh, for the most part everyone was great. But one family, two parents and their teen son, were annoying. The kid was really gung ho and didn’t listen to the guide’s instructions about not going too fast, being respectful of the other segway users and pedestrians in general; and spent a lot of his time weaving in and out, along with going too close to others (wheels touching things tend to make the segways fall over, which is what happened to the kid’s mum at one point, because the three of them were too close together and when they went to move away from each other, she knocked wheels with the dad). At one point, instead of going single-file, the son rolled his segway between me and a pedestrain going the other way, and almost clipped the both of us by about 5cm either side. 

Then, halfway up a hill - and it’s really easy to forget about stopping distances and get complacent in general after using the segways for a while - the dad stopped suddenly. The guy behind him also stopped suddenly, and in order to miss hitting them I swerved to the right of them and almost into a potplant on the edge of a sidewalk. Had I not grabbed onto it, I would have continued to the right, and hit a truck - no more than 30cm away from my head! Amazingly enough, I didn’t fall off once on the segway, even if others did, and even when people kept almost hitting me.

Anyway, by the time I got back to the segway HQ, I still managed to have a lot of fun. The segways are like riding bikes in a way, minus the peddling, and though we got a lot of stares, you’re not hanging around in place long enough to care much. The guides were really nice, helpful, and very safety conscious. (People falling off a lot sounds bad, but really, these things are easy to tip over if you’re not way careful. Plus, if people choose to ignore the instructions, you can’t blame the guides much, can you?) The guides were really informed, and all in all a good way to see the city before I leave.

By this point it was dinner time, and I hadn’t eaten all day (missed breakfast, didn’t have time for lunch), so I decided to head back to Varsity seeing as it was on my way back to my hotel. This really wasn’t a top choice of mine for meals, but the guides talked up the chocolate shake enough for me to want one; plus it was one of those ‘American’ experiences. I’ve not had McDonald’s in about 6 or 8 years, along with most of the other fast food joints in Australia. But I caved in; and wish I hadn’t. (Yeah, the photo pretty much says it all)

I got a chocolate shake (two hours later and I’m still finishing it, and am on a sugar high), which is basically like drinking chocolate icecream - it’s so thick, it’s like that scene in The Simpsons where Bart and Milhouse buy only squishee syrup, and it’s so thick that Milhouse’s straw pops out and knocks his head backwards. I also got a cheeseburger, which was even smaller than one at Macca’s (and less tasty) and chilli cheese fries. The only part I enjoyed was the shake. (The good news is that it was an extremely cheap dinner)

So now I get to have a nice relaxing night, rest my feet some more and prepare for tomorrow. You see, it’s my last night in Atlanta; tomorrow I go to DC, spend three days there, and head home. Although I’m enjoying my trip - and happy that my usual anxiety about travelling is improving and becoming much more manageable - I’m looking forward to getting home. The festival has made me reinvigorated in a number of ways about puppetry, but has, in other ways, done nothing but confirming my previous/current plans for my business. I really need to get home to continue doing puppetry!

Read next day’s post here.