Water Slide Nation

Water slides should be put all over the world. We can start here in Utah. I think it'd be GREAT if we could just get up in the morning, and instead of getting in the car to go to work, just go to a local slide station, inevitably you would have to go up a huge set of stairs or an elevator.

You'd get up top and there would be a ticket office, so they could know where you're going. On the huge platform there would be various possible slides. Your ticket leads you to one of these slides. You hand them your ticket, they scan it on the computer. After they scan it, they hand it back to you. They're watch the monitors around to make sure the previous slider got to a certain point in the slide.

They advise you that while you're on the slide you should cross your arms across your chest while holding the opposite shoulders. They tell you to hold onto the bar and slide.

As you proceed down the slide, you approach various points along the path that have forks. The slide guides automatically adjusts itself by reading the RFID that is embedded in your ticket. It knows when you get to a certain point along the way and makes the adjustments in time.

Eventually you get to the bottom. This point is either a transfer station, or final destination. You turn in your ticket (since it has that RFID) so it can be reprogrammed and reused for another trip by somebody else. Since no personal information is stored on the tickets, they're prime for reuse.

Naturally there would be a limited number of stations at first. They would have to build up from a central point, expanding into other regions. Eventually they would build up enough to also lead the way for smaller stations. I may get to my final destination slide station. Instead of taking local transportation to my truly final destination, I could step over to a sub-station, and ride right over to my final destination. Every major building, or ever block or so there could be a station built for shorter trips (mainly just to a major slide station and back).

Points to Ponder

• The water used for the slides could be re-used. They do it all the time at water parks, so why not on these slides?
• Costs are high, no matter which way I look at it. I'd want to invest in fiberglass before it all got started, since that'd be one area that would have to make some money.
• The technology is already available. RFIDs are quickly multiplying and replenishing everything.
• This idea was originally pondered while in El Salvador, sitting on a street curb, in the company of Chiqui Taylor. Props to him.