This week is spring break for the kids. I was only able to take (1) day off from work this week and we wanted to do something special with the kids. I was looking online for stuff to do and ran across the Segway tours in Austin and thought, man that would be fun. I then looked at the site and it said that the kids had to be 12 years old. So, I tossed the idea aside.

Well, I told Jeanee about the idea and she performed her magic on the phone and talked to the company and found out that the 12 yr old statement on the web site was purely a guidance statement not a policy. So, we booked a tour for later on that day.

We went to the tour company in downtown Austin and went through the training class. Jeanee did the best on initial balancing and of course I did the worse. Ryan and Krystal both passed the initial driving test with ease. The Segways are amazing machines and can do so much. Once you get used to the balance aspect of the machine turning and shifting your weight to go backwards and forwards comes almost naturally.

So, off we go on our tour, we suddenly realized that we picked probably one of the worst days for 6th street to put a family of Segway newbies on the street. HELLO, it is St. Patty’s Day at 6pm during the SXSW festival. We made it off of 6th street just fine and the kids did fantastic controlling the Segway through lots of pedestrian traffic..

We stopped at the Capital building for some pictures and the guide let us go on the Segways a little bit, 12 MPH on a Segway is really fun! On the way back, 6th street was very crowded and we ended up having to stop a bunch on the sidewalk for pedestrians. We heard a few comments from the mis-informed about how they thought we should not be allowed on the sidewalk. The owner of the store educated us that Segways are sidewalk legal. At one point on the way back the group was split and Jeanee and the kids were around 100 feet and a stop light in front of me because of the volume of foot traffic.

But in the end we all made it back safely and had a AWESOME time.

…Pictures…