Segways and Chicken Dances

Here is the awesome thing, although I am posting about it belatedly: I WENT ON A SEGWAY TOUR OF CHICAGO!

Here is the not awesome thing: I have videos of it, and pictures that my aunt texted to me, but I can’t email myself the videos nor can I do anything with pictures that other people text me except look at them, so unfortunately they won’t be posted here, which makes me very sad, because they’re so much fun.  If I were a fourteen-year-old, this is the part where I would go MY PHONE SUUUXXXXX.

Anyway.

To put it plainly, segwaying is seriously fun.  My aunt came to Chicago for business for a few days, so we went to see what all the segway fuss was about (in the beginning of November, which actually wasn’t too cold, hooray!). 

We got to the segway place—basically it was a big empty warehouse at Lake Point Tower—and practiced for a while before heading out.  Here’s the thing I didn’t know: you don’t have to shift a gear or push a button or twist a knob to go, stop, or turn.  You just rock forward and back on your heels and kind of move the handles to the left or right.  It’s a very fluid and intuitive motion that, after a while, feels completely normal.

Once our guide was convinced we weren’t going to kill ourselves, he led us out on the street, past Navy Pier out to Millennium Park and Grant Park, to Buckingham Fountain and the Art Institute, the Field Museum and Soldier Field (I just realized both those names have the word “field” in them and wonder if that means anything, like how the Field museum is close to the football field?  I don’t know), and basically it was a super sweet time.

Also we got to wear bright lime green helmets.  And nobody fell in Lake Michigan and nobody died.  And hopefully, none of the drivers on Michigan Avenue got too annoyed when 11 amateur segwayers took up the crosswalk.

I highly recommend segwaying.  To get an idea of how excellent it can be, please enjoy this clip from my favorite show:

Okay, screw it.  I wanted to put up a good clip of Gob Bluth on his segway but Youtube has failed me.  They’re all too short and not the one I wanted.

So in place of that, here is a compilation of chicken dances from Arrested Development, which is just as worthy of your time.