The only way to see the City

Sleepycat is having its sales kickoff meeting this week. We have people in town from the UK, Spain, Germany, and from Seattle and Boston, in addition to those of us who live in the Bay Area. It's Fleet Week, so the Blue Angels were flying (as was Oracle, by the way -- I didn't know about this until I was putting together the content for this blog entry, but I'm amused that the US Navy and a database company were patrolling the skies). The Bay was packed with boat traffic and the ferry services were all running late, but the weather was gorgeous.

We took a really great tour, offered by the San Francisco Electric Tour Company. These guys take groups out on Segway Human Tansporters -- the Dean Kamen two-wheeled scooters. They were a lot of fun to ride.

Top speed on these scooters is eighteen miles an hour, according to our guides. The scooters have lots of sophisticated software controls, including speed governors that are tied to specific keys you use to start your scooter. As novices, we were issued four-mile-per-hour and eight-mile-per-hour keys. By the end of the two-hour tour, we were all feeling bulletproof, gunning our scooters at top speed and cornering sharply. Probably a good thing we didn't have the full-speed keys.

I had planned to take lots of pictures, but it turns out you can't shoot and drive simultaneously, so I got only a few. They're here.

If you want to know what to get me for Christmas, look no further.