Extreme Pogo

[sarongsong]

January 27, 2007
...a world record for highest pogo-stick hop---6 feet...Souped-up pogo sticks have expanded the frontiers of human kangarooing... Redding (http://www.redding.com/news/2007/jan/26/pogos-big-leap/)/Los Angeles TimesKFMB-TV video (http://www.kfmb.com/story.php?id=78483#)

[Trebuchet]

Hmmph.
this super stick can literally leap tall buildings in a single boundWhich of course it didn't. Mostly seemed to be getting no more than around three feet of altitude, although a couple of the leaps near the end (over a car, for instance) were more impressive.

Back in the 60's there was a gasoline powered pogo stick called the "hop rod". Actually had a piston on the foot working in a cylinder on the main stick. When the jumper descended on it, fuel/air was compressed, eventually a contact closed firing the spark plug, and the jumper rapidly ascended. Resulted in a flurry of lawsuits, of course.

[BigDon]

Wow, Treb, I vaguely remember those. But looking back that idea makes about as much sense as a motorized unicycle.

[Swift]

And here I thought this thread was about this Pogo (http://malarky.udel.edu/~dmills/pic/pogo/pogo1b.gif)

[Trebuchet]

I read about the HopRod in Road & Track magazine. Every April issue would have an April Fool road test in which they would test something that was not quite, or not at all, a car. I recall a Sopwith Camel (with Snoopy), Goodyear Blimp (negative curb weight), electric elephant, Greyhound bus, and once, headlined on the cover, an "Eleven liter Mercedes GT". "GT" stood for garbage truck. They also once tested a Maserati for only $3000. It was bicycle. That was even more money for a bike then than it is now.

[BigDon]

Ohh, and Swift shows his age!

(An octopots has done got Albert! Or my Fav; "Pick a pock of peach pits, pockets full of pie, four and twenty blackboards baked until they cry"...or the classic when that grizzly bear gets his head stuck in the stew pot and all the minor characters get together and decide to shave his butt. IIRC the bear comes up with the line, "And somebody, besides me, is gonna rue this day!"

[Donnie B.]

All-time best line ever in a comic strip: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

...


That was my first thought about this thread, too. My second was that it had to do with the S-II stage. Then I remembered hearing something about a souped-up pogo stick.

[farmerjumperdon]

I've got this idea for a souped up couch.

[SockMonkey]

Wow, Treb, I vaguely remember those. But looking back that idea makes about as much sense as a motorized unicycle.

Done!
http://tlb.org/eunicycle.html

[BigDon]

Wow, anybody have a clue as to what a solid-state gyroscope is?

[Swift]

All-time best line ever in a comic strip: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

...


That was my first thought about this thread, too. My second was that it had to do with the S-II stage. Then I remembered hearing something about a souped-up pogo stick.
The way I always remember it is "We have met the enemy, and they is us", but you are apparently right (see link). It is one of my favorites too. The strip is at the link below.
LINK (http://www.isengrim.com/pogo2.gif)

[sarongsong]

The way I always remember it is "We have met the enemy, and they is us"...Me, too; but, as you also found:...I searched everything I could find and found the ultimate authority. Walt Kelly hizself!...
"...Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us." [Pogo Papers, 1952, Simon & Schuster]
As years passed, the final paragraph was reduced to “We have met the enemy and he is us,” in a few strips having to do with pollution... igopogo (http://www.igopogo.com/final_authority.htm)