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Show - t t I One Newest thing in transportation sails along two feet above the ground or water at 100 mph BY RALPH STEIN Britisk-bia- U of these days some of ns may be riding to work on a bubble of instead of sitting over a flat wheel on a bumpy railroad track. The other morning while rattling along toward the office I gave up trying to focus on the jiggling print in my newspaper and thought about how nice it would be to whoosh off to work, in a lovely new device I was aboard ' recently an ACV, Air Cushion Vehicle. I saw myself and the other inmates of the car pod thumbing our collective nose at the railroad depot and heading for a new cement ramp which slanted down into the marshy wasteland which separates our town freon navigable water. Way out beyond the marsh, but still in water barely deep enough for an outboard, a biggish boat-lik- e craft, an ACV, the 820 Hovercraft to the city, was thrumming along, kicking up a cloud of spray. Incredibly, it turned its bows straight at the swamp and came charging across toward us through saplings and brush and over drain- - It even zipped right across a rock outcropping. The Hovercraft didnt stop at the foot of the ramp, but sailed right up the Blant. We could see a foot of daylight under its full length. At the top, in a fenced-of- f section of the parking lot where we left the car, the Hovercraft sat on its bubble of air for a moment, cut its engines and, with a little sigh, settled its bulk on the asphalt. We climbed aboard, to mge ) age ditches. four-foot-hi- gh Pklonol foe ode Hoeeramfi Kdn smootUg tmer dangerous rapids and (right) settles onto beach I ft V- - o It H v, |
