There’s a delightful little piece in NY Press about a formerly 500-pound man who rides the Segway from Brighton Beach to midtown Manhattan and back each day, a 30-mile round trip.

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You remember the Segway–preceded by insanely ubiquitous marketing, the stand-up scooter was supposed to have us all traversing the planet on two wheels. Inventor Dean Kamen spoke of “empowered pedestrians,” but then George Bush took a tumble on his, and no one dared go on the things after.

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According to NYSegwaytours.com, there were 50 regular “Seggers” (uh, isn’t that the dude who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?) in the city; now there are 10.

Including one Jonathan Gleich, writes Becca Tucker.

By tilting the handlebars to the right or left, Gleich, 49, weaves through backed-up traffic, and by leaning forward, he glides at 12.5 miles an hour past cyclists huffing uphill, while a random shuffle of Billy Joel, David Bowie, Louis Armstrong and Eminem comes to him through his iPhone ear piece. But in his wake he leaves quite a brouhaha: fuming cyclists, beaming children and cops who aren’t sure what to do.

[image: segway.de, usatoday.com]