Segway!

Groupon has been really great to get our family doing some new things—things that we wouldn’t otherwise have tried. Without a doubt our very best groupon was for a segway tour in downtown Raleigh. To celebrate our 23rd anniversary last spring we went and spent the night near Raleigh. The next morning we went to the segway place.

First we had to learn to operate the segways. Russ had been on a one when he and Jason went to Puerto Rico, but I was a total novice. It was a pretty freaky feeling at first, but soon I was more comfortable starting, stopping, and turning by leaning to the front, back, or side.

When everyone in the group was comfortable on the segways we left the store and rode through downtown Raleigh. Our destination was an historic neighborhood by downtown Raleigh. As we rode up and down the streets the tour director told us about the different houses we were passing. I love old houses and that was fascinating to me.

The second part of the tour was some cemetery. That was exactly how I thought of it when I made the reservations, “some cemetery.” I couldn’t figure out why on earth anyone thought a cemetery would be an interesting place for a segway tour, but I soon learned.

Some cemeteries are just a small plot of ground with a few graves. Some cemeteries are new-fangled and have only small flat markers so that they are easy to care for. The cemetery that we went to was neither of these—it was like a neighborhood, with streets and rolling hills and beautiful old trees and incredible monuments and markers. We were told that it had been built like this to be a place where people would want to come and visit. I could see that if we lived near we would do all of our walking there!

Some of the highlights of this cemetery were looking at the amazing monuments, seeing a huge oak tree that had come down in the recent tornadoes, and seeing the graves of a couple of famous North Carolinians.

I was the 2nd to last person in the tour line, and Russ was the last. What I only found out later was that the whole tour, when no guide was near him, he had been totally misbehaving on his segway. He would drop behind and then catch up really fast, turn in circles, and make all sorts of turns. I was so bummed…I would have misbehaved too!

I’m waiting for groupon to do another segway tour. Bu if they don’t we may just have to give in and pay full price to do another tour someday…it was that awesome!