The highlight of this year's Turfgrass Field Day was the chance I got to ride a Segway, a mysterious, magical cart for one that's powered by merely the weight of your torso and the speed of your thoughts. Tanya, a very nice lady who organizes events at the Citra Plant Science Center, rides one of these babies at lightnin' speed (a full 12 mph) all over the grounds, and she says it gives your butt and thighs one heck of a good workout. Tanya was nice enough to let me and my boss's grad student take turns giving the Segway spins around the compound, and I have to say, riding that thing sure is harder than it looks--even in a cap that says UF Turfgrass Science. This is kind of what we looked like:
Our Segway was black, Batman-style, and really really hard to balance on. Basically you lean forward and it moves forward, you stand up straight and it slows or stops, and you turn it by the handlebars. Don't lock your knees or you're f*cked! Actually there was a moment where we didn't think Shweta was coming back--she just kept going and going, maybe back to Nepal.
Later, we golfed with rednecks on the Citra greens. I did pretty good from the 5th to the 9th hole--not bad for my first time ever holding a putter. We also participated in a chipping contest, trying to hit balls out to an island in the middle of a retention pond, to which a gentleman from Westco Turf will later row in a rowboat and see whose ball got closest to the flag. It wasn't mine, so I didn't win the three-day Disney vacation, but I did get a triple skip on the pond with my second ball and a rating of 10 out of 10 for my pre-swing "wiggles."
For those of you who like diagrams, see below. I'm hoping to persuade IFAS to ignore its current budget crisis and buy me one of these.
