The air is soft, the sun is warm, time for a Sunday “Adventure”. Bill and I pile into the car and take off, for a Segway Tour of Austin. I wear a pink Quacker Factory “flying heart” top, in anticipation of today’s fun. We have bottles of iced flavored water in the Prius cup holders and soft rock on the CD player. It is just nice being in the car together, driving to a new experience.
The car air conditioning is on but I roll down my window at stoplights to talk to happy dogs with their heads out their car windows or heads popped through the moon roof. The dogs have smiley faces and their drippy tongues hang out of their mouths to sample the cool spring air. Funny guys! I always wish I had some dog treats to throw in their window, I bet they could catch the biscuits in their mouths. Bill (the voice of reality, in our house) says pet owners would be disturbed, not knowing what was coming in their car.
I’ll never toss any treats to the dogs. I don’t even have any treats, but I think about it sometimes.
We see wildflowers beginning to blossom on the sides of the roads. Spring is glorious in Texas. It was Lady Bird Johnson who advocated beautifying our highways and her efforts to plant wildflowers are a yearly gift to drivers. In the next few weeks, as we are out and about, we will see camera tripods, set on the roadsides, with family photographers taking pictures of relatives sitting is an explosion of bluebonnets. Treasured memories throughout the years.
We arrive downtown at Segway Headquarters. A dozen or so Segways are parked outside, slanting forward, impatient for riders to step aboard. Inside the office we are fitted with bicycle helmets and take a short course in Segway management. Bill is fearless. He zooms back and forth and slaloms through small traffic cones and whizzes around the parking lot. Forward, backward, zooming, turning, stopping has no worries for him. For me, I start out at about one mph! A little cautious about falling off or stopping this unfamiliar contraption. After five minutes or so, I am more comfortable on this rolling scooter. There is a group of six of us that get on our Segways and begin our tour of Austin. Bill shouts, “today is the most fun I’ve had in awhile!” Single file, we are off to explore downtown sites. We roll down the city sidewalks and into the bicycle lanes of the downtown streets. Our guide points out; vintage architecture, movie locations, historic scenes and more, as we snake dance along our route. Ninety minutes have flown by. Back at the Segway office we turn in our scooters and helmets. So many laughs! Bill and I are going to explore taking Segway tours in San Antonio, Houston, Boca Raton and wherever we roam. Exploring history and sightseeing on the Segway may turn us into Road Scholars!
Rolling forward!,
Eve
(Please let me hear from you: email me at eve@quackerfactory.com.) I love hearing from others Quackers!
