Opposite of People Powered?

[ajohnmeyer]

Gasoline powered people!

So another thread mentioned the "Hop Rod" a gas-powered pogo-stick from the seventies. This lead me to search out the above article from the fuzzy recesses of my memory.

Apparently a Soviet inventor came up with the same idea, but integrated two of them into boots. These were immediately classified, of course, as a military secret. Now that that's all over with he's looking for investors to try to market them to all us lazy people!

I think that's pretty much my nightmare scenario.
People already idle around parking lots in their Tahoes/Excursions, waiting for that perfect "close" parking space to open up. What we really need is a gasoline-powered way to ease these people from their cars into the stores and back again.

Thank god it'll never work with our litigious society. Can you imagine the pollution? Hundreds of people with little 2 stroke motors tied to their feet!

[Ryland]

I have a friend who has a hop rod, never used it that I've been told about, but they are pretty awsome regardless, apparently you can bore them out and install a 70cc honda pisten in them... anyway with a Hop Rod, each bounce is simaler equivalent to a single rotation of the engine on a two stroke single cylender gasoline engine, so if a single bounce takes you 1 foot (I think it's really closer to 2-3 feet), with 5280 feet in a mile, a 2 stroke 70cc engine would have to take you a mile per minute at 5280rpm, and that seems like alot.
The hop rod basicly had a carburator float bowl as the fuel tank, and the spring was the compresion of the pistion, working on the same idea as a 2 stroke engine it fires every compresion stroke, creating lift, alowing you to bounce a decent distance.