The Sunnyvale Sun
News
Sunnyvale couple finds two wheels are better than four
By ANNE WARD ERNST
Sunnyvale husband and wife Pam and Paul Costa segued from traditional to quirky when they made the decision to change their daily mode of transportation.
Peel away cost savings, environmental stewardship and avoiding rush hour traffic--motivating factors to not drive a car--and the Sunnyvale couple's core reason for riding a Segway Human Transporter to and from work are as simple as apple pie. They just plain like it.
The two work at Apple, Paul at the main campus on De Anza Boulevard and Pam at a satellite office on Stevens Creek Boulevard. They leave behind their 2002 Jaguar X-type in their one-car garage and ride 2 miles to work on their Segways.
The Costas are part of a growing trend: people who look for alternative transportation to combat soaring gasoline prices, vehicle and maintenance costs, global warming, and congested roads.
Paul and Pam live in Sunnyvale and work in Cupertino, where CalTrain, Light Rail and BART are miles away, and the VTA bus schedules aren't always convenient.
They lived in Wisconsin before moving to California. There, they took the bus. It wasn't for them. As in Cupertino, bus schedules were confining and restrictive, and the extended waits between connections a deterrent to frequent use.
They tried bicycles, but, for them, Segways proved to be an economical, comfortable and innovative solution to their transportation needs.
Paul bought his Segway about 2-1/2 years ago when gasoline prices hovered around $2.44 per gallon. The price, which may seem, to some, cheap compared to today's $3.40 per gallon was steep to them. But that wasn't Paul's only motivation to purchase the two-wheeled, electronic, self-balancing machine that looks like a cross between a scooter and a dolly.
After Paul read about the Segway, he talked about buying one as soon as they were on the market, Pam says. Since they start at about $4,000, she worried it would become just an expensive toy.
But after her husband rode his Segway for a while, Pam saw the benefits and bought one, too.
The Segways cost pennies to operate and have allowed the Costas to become a one-car family--reducing the cost of insurance, upkeep and inflated gas prices.
The original plan was to live close enough to work to ride a bicycle back and forth.
Paul started working at Apple before Pam did, but when Pam got her job at the company, they chose their first South Bay home, a townhouse in Cupertino, because of its proximity to their jobs, roughly a mile and a half away.
"When we lived in Redwood City, I had a 40-minute commute. It took quite a bit of time, it was expensive and it was not environmentally friendly," Paul remembers. "It just seemed unnecessary. It seemed like I spent quite a bit of time commuting. Why not live near where I work?"
The move to Cupertino allowed the Costas to pursue a less stressful, more economical mode of travel.
"We had intended to ride our bikes to work," Pam says.
They liked riding their bikes but only did it for a few months.
Commuting on a bicycle felt more like a workout, and Paul didn't enjoy combining the two, he says.
Pam found that she had to lug around extra clothing and shoes on the bike ride, and that proved to be inconvenient. She likes to wear high-heeled shoes. On the Segway she can comfortably do so. There's a small dent and crack on Pam's Segway footrest as proof of her frequent footwear.
When the Costas decided to upgrade and buy a house, they looked only within a 2-mile radius of their workplace so they could continue their Segway commute. The two moved into their Sunnyvale home about a year ago.
Now the pair commutes standing up for a 20-minute ride at about 10 miles per hour. From the door of their garage to their desks at Apple, they never have to step off their Segways.
Systems of gyroscopes and dynamic stabilization make the Segway easy to ride. A slight forward lean by the rider propels the machine forward, and conversely, a tip to the back shifts the rider in reverse. Twisting a handle maneuvers left and right turns. A twist away from the rider turns the machine to the left, and a twist toward the rider turns to the right.
Pam glides up to the outside door of her office building, reaches down to the handle and shifts back enough to open the door and roll across the lobby. She rides into the elevator and up to the second floor, never stepping off her Segway. Another door, a couple of turns and she's riding past her co-workers to her cubicle, where she parks and plugs in for the day.
The Costas are known at work as the Segway couple and say there are a couple of other Segway riders there, too.
They run errands on the Segways, ride them to nearby restaurants, and take them to the grocery store. Pam says she can hang on the handles eight or so bags of groceries when needed. On occasion, Paul rides his Segway right up to the pharmacy counter in the local drug store.
Segways are not designed for travel among cars, so they ride on the sidewalk with pedestrians. The Segway is so quiet people are sometimes caught by surprise as the Costas glide past.
"When I come across a pedestrian, I make sure I approach them in a speed that they would be comfortable with, usually around 3 to 5 miles per hour. I really believe that I am not putting them in danger, but people can get startled," Paul says.
There are two separate keys--each encoded with a unique 64-bit security identification--that regulate the speed. One limits the speed to about 5 miles per hour, and the other allows the transporter to travel at about 10 miles per hour.
Typically, Paul says they travel at about the same speed at which a jogger runs.
There are a variety of Segway models, and the one the couple rides is the P-series. It weighs about 70 pounds, and its two nickel-metal hydride batteries hold a charge for a 6- to 10-mile trip. A higher-priced XT, at about 100 pounds with lithium-ion batteries, is designed for more rugged terrain including sand, gravel, grass, dirt or pavement.
"Honestly, riding it is like a dream," Pam says of the XT.
Paul has now started playing Seg Polo with the Bay Area Seg Polo team, along with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and owner of seven Segways. They play at Sunnyvale's Ponderosa Park every first and third Sunday of the month.
An April 2005 New York Times story about the sport and team ran a front-page photo of Paul on his Segway.
A Seg Polo group in New Zealand hosted the Bay Area SEG's Silicon Valley Aftershocks to a match in February, and the local team plans to reciprocate, hosting a match in summer 2007.
For more information about Segways, go to www.bayareaseg.com or www.segway.com. For more information about Seg Polo, go to www.bayareaseg.com/polo.
