f you saw Deadpool riding a Segway on the Discovery Pier Friday, your eyes weren’t deceiving you.
It actually was Danny Halmo in a Deadpool costume and he was halfway through his journey to set a Guinness world record for the longest trip on a Segway. He’s also doing it to encourage the province to legalize the electric vehicles for B.C. roads.
“It’s the greatest advancement in personal mobility since the wheel,” Halmo said. “It’s the new walking.”
Halmo is an electric vehicle aficionado and wants to see more widspread use of the single-person electric vehicle as well as electric automobiles. Being an electric vehicle, Segways are cheap to run. It costs just 56 cents to charge them up and they’ll give 40 kilometres on a full charge.
Friday was the halfway point of his 500 kilometre trip and it was where he turned around and headed back to Victoria to finish the journey which started on Saltspring Island.
“We’re just about halfway; we’re just about 262 kilometres into it where we are right now,” Halmo said.
Halmo intends to take a petition to Premier Christy Clark to urge her government to join Ontario and make Segways legal on B.C.’s public streets.
Halmo is the founder of the Formula Electric Vehicle Entertainment and Racing Association (FEVER) and is dedicated to electric powered transportation.
Canada already has the world’s longest free electric highway, courtesy of electric vehicle (EV) chargers installed by Sun Country Highways from St. John, N.L., to Port Hardy.
Halmo was accompanied by an all-electric Chevy Volt support vehicle, driven by Sun Country’s Bruce Rathwell. That support vehicle is what allows him to legally drive the Segway on the road, Halmo said.
After this 500-km ride and petition drive, he said, he will appear on CBC’s The Early Edition in Vancouver in a commuter challenge pitting the Segway against an automobile, a bicycle, and a bus/Sky Train commuter.
And as for the Deadpool costume, Halmo just likes to wear them because they attract more attention and make people want to talk to him, giving him a chance to explain his reason for the trip.
– with files from J.R. Rardon/Black Press