ILYPANTS.NET
Notes To My Kids: Little Stories About Grown Up Kids
One of the favorite things we ever did was ride the Segways in Austin the Thanksgiving I was working in Austin on the Carlton-Bates project. I do not completely remember how I came up with the idea to do that but I wanted to do something other than just walk inside of the capitol’s dome downtown or go have nachos at the Oasis on Lake Travis. But we did ride the Segways and it was a very fun time indeed.
Over the years I had seen the Segway “vehicle” on TV an such but I had never seen or rode one. I remember talking to the place in Austin that gave the Segway tours of downtown and asking them questions about them. I asked if they were easy to ride, how hard it was to balance them, and if teenagers like you would enjoy the ride. Since the answers I got were good I made our reservations for the tour.
That Thanksgiving was a bit hectic if you remember. I came home to Fort Worth and it was my turn to have everyone over so I was busy when I got home getting the smoker ready for the turkey and the ham. We had everyone over and you two spent the night. We got up the day after Thanksgiving and drove to Austin and left our stuff at the extended stay place I stayed at. The next stop was of course downtown and the Segway place.
I remember parking down the street and us walking into the shop and gazing at the odd looking devices, which looked sort of like an old fashioned pogo stick with two large wheels on its bottom. We checked in and we got some training on how to run the things. Then we departed for our little tour of downtown Austin on that cool and cloudy day.
We started down the street in a line, there around eight of us in total and a guide. We quickly got used to driving the things and how the steered. It really became a very easy and natural thing to do like riding a bike or driving a car. None of us wrecked or hit something.
Over the next couple of hours we road down by the river and down the streets of the southern part of downtown, going by the capitol too. We winded up and down the little hills there and wound our way back to the starting point where we reluctantly parked our two-wheeled steeds.
We then ate lunch at the Texas Chili Parlor, which unfortunately was not so good, and toured the inside of the capitol too. Of course we went to some store by UT to look at T-shirts and saw the stadium too. It was a fun day in more than one way, one grey and cold but filled with the warmth generated by the fire of being together and having a good time with each other.
And so it was that day and weekend. And in the end the weekend was over. I drove you two to Austin’s airport and you flew back to Love Field so you could get home and your waiting school work.
That was one of the most fun weekends I think I had with you two after you were grown up, or nearly so. That weekend riding Segways was in a way a segue in life as I started to realize more and more that you both were grown up now and not little kids any longer. In that way driving the Segways that day was like driving down a new road in the way I saw you two. A new highway of life that we are driving down even today.