Caps on Segways?!?

I was at a meeting on H Street today (marathon session about a scattered sites project that we are doing in Southeast DC) and on my way back to the office, as I drove up north on 14th Street past McPherson Square I saw a bunch of guys with Capitals jerseys riding around on Segways. As it turned out, they were actually Washington Capitals on Segways.

As I drove past them I rolled down my window and yelled out "Vetch!" and gave a thumbs up. Ovechkin gave me a gapped tooth grin and kept on rolling. i circled around the park and snapped this pic of Backstrom, Green, and I forget who #10 is...


What I realized was that we typically see people on Segways riding in a very stiff, staid fashion (kinda dorky looking, especially with the bike helmets) in which minor shifts in weight and leaning forward tentatively control the gyroscope and by extension the forward motion of these machines. Not these guys. They were pushing these machines to their limit in order to generate as much speed as possible. In order to do so they were leaning forward quite aggressively, an awkward coaxing of speed and motion that just looked ungainly.

We're so used to seeing these guys skate effortlessly and generate significant speed with a natural stride that to see them in their jeans, home reds, and bike helmets standing and leaning on these wheeled platformed looked completely unnatural, kind of like pro hockey players in a public park on Segways.