FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: The Sideways Scooter Support Group (800) ODD-RIDE

I must be getting old or something, but there have been a lot of things lately that have caught me by surprise. Like Speedvision's impending change to the Speed Channel. I mean, wow. Is that brilliant or what? It's a subtle change, but significant. Like taking a two-mufflered bike and changing it to a one mufflered bike. Makes all the difference. And here we thought they'd change it to the Jethro Channel and have nothing on but them big 'ol pushrod motors going in a beeeeyag circle.

But instead, we're promised Speedvision, only better.

Yikes. Kind of makes the four-strokes in GPs look like no big deal in comparison.

But hey, these catastrophic, Herculean changes are nothing compared with the bold bombshell of a device one strange, eccentric genius dropped on the world of transportation last week.

Perhaps you saw it. Or It, I should say. The Its called the Segway, and you go to town on it, even though it looks like you should load the weird two-wheeled contrivance with Scott's Turf-Builder Plus and fertilize your lawn. But hey, it scoots along pretty well, and it may just catch on in this weird-ass world we live in. I still think pet rocks will make a comeback, too, and now you have an easy way to take your new companions home.

But the rollout of the Segway was, as usual, only the tip of the iceburg. As it turns out, this Celebration of Scooting rained on the parade of one of roadracing's most seminal figures; a man who has been preparing to introduce his own brand of personal transport to the world.

"Fogarty is pissed, that's what he is," claims Dervish Beltbucket, a freelance chassis lubrication specialist and part-time leader of a Fogarty fan club splinter group. "He has been working so hard in secret on his new personal transporter, which even has a top secret project name. You wanna know what it is? Huh? Do ya?"

"Oh, yes please," I said, watching this odd urchin suck on the straw of a weapons-grade Nyquil cocktail in a plastic martini glass.

"The top-secret project name, which is emblazoned on a variety of shirts, hats and coveralls in Fogarty's top-secret Blackburn research farm, is Motorized Original Transport Object Radically Bringing Innovative Kinetic Elation. They call it M.O.T.OR.B.I.K.E. for short," he explained.

I think I should point out at this point that Beltbucket has some really unusual dental superstructure that gives his voice a certain slurpy, effeminate timbre that crosses the throaty sexuality of Kathleen Turner with the unique diction of Porky Pig with a mouthful of cole slaw.

"But now this weird Yank who dresses the same all the time comes out with HIS version," he continued, scaring me with his outrageous vocalizations, "and now everybody's going to think Foggy copied it. It ain't fair, and I know the Fog is more than angry. He's mad with rage, really."

Naturally, I demanded to see some sort of drawing of what the heck we were talking about, and he spontaneously created a schematic with purple lipstick on the side of a white minivan I think may belong to Alan Cathcart. What I saw would have been truly startling, had I not seen the same damn thing on Good Morning America about a week before.

In a nutshell, Fogarty's invention (which is call "Myway" to distinguish it from Dean Kamen's "Segway") is a weird, two-wheeled contrivance that looks like you should load with Scott's Turf-Builder Plus and fertilize your lawn. But Myway is different from Segway in that you ride it backwards, and this, I'm told, is so you can tell pedestrians and people in cars and on motorcycles to kiss your ass.

"It has attitude, you see. You will not meet the nicest people on it. Instead, you will be run over if you don't have one because you're a loser," offers Beltbucket, who seems to understand the whole Fogarty aggression thing really well.

Other differences include the drive system, which instead of using an electric motor on each wheel like Segway uses a four-stroke Single on one wheel and a two-stroke V-Twin on the other. Beltbucket says this is so that Myway has, "The low-end grunt of a four-stroke with the screaming top end of a two-stroke."

Innovative? Well, yes, you could say that. But I'm told early prototypes just went in circles at really high speeds, flinging their riders into the sod and breaking their collarbones. Apparently the drive system, along with a gyroscopic balance system (which uses components from a game called "Battling Tops") is not quite perfected yet.

But we're told Fogarty is not discouraged by these minor setbacks. The delayed rollout of Myway, the M.O.T.O.R.B.I.K.E. , only serves to harden the Fog's steely determination.

"This new invention will revolutionize transportation, and racing too I'll wager," states Beltbucket defiantly. "If Foggy had been on TV with his new ride when that other thing came out, he would have kicked Dean Kamen's arse."

Sounds like old times, eh?