Hoverboards

Back to the Future turns 25 this year. Hard to believe it’s been that long. I was 10 years old in 1985 and gave a presentation to my fifth grade class where I declared BTTF as my favorite movie and Michael J. Fox as my favorite actor. The one-two-punch of Alex P. Keaton and Marty McFly was too much coolness to be denied. Although my affection for the film and the actor have waned over time, one aspect of the Back to the Future trilogy still holds interest for me: Hoverboards. I remember a friend telling me that they were real and Mattel would be selling them soon. I was stoked (back off, it was the ’80s). I couldn’t wait. Maybe Nike would make the automatic fitting shoes also! But everything changed when I watched a “behind the scenes” special on BTTF2 on TV and saw the unspeakable: THERE WERE WIRES ATTACHED TO THE HOVERBOARD. It still hurts to this day.

Because the internet is a fountain of awesome, I’m happy to say that, technically speaking, Hoverboards do exist. Kind of. There’s a company called Future Horizons inc. that sells Hoverboards, but they’re not like the ones in BTTF. This Hoverboard is built with a lawnmower engine and can lift a 200 lb. person approximately 1 inch off the ground. I know what you’re thinking: How am I supposed to out-hoverboard Biff Tannen and his gang outside the clocktower in future Hill Valley? You can’t. And like the real Hoverboard, this one doesn’t work on water either. And it will set you back $9,000.

The second option, built by French artist Nils Guadagnin, looks like the traditional Hoverboard and uses electromagnetism and a stabilization system to float above the ground. However, you can’t stand on it. I know, it’s like a building a Flux Capacitor that DOESN’T make time travel possible. But it’s a step in the right direction.

According to the BTTF mythology, we’re only five years away from a working Hoverboard. Unfortunately, it looks like the human ingenuity present in Hill Valley far exceeds the ingenuity of the real world. But don’t lose hope. Write your senator, write your locate representative, and make your voice heard. Let them know that we don’t want to put another man on the moon, we want to put a man on a Hoverboard. Honestly, which is more cost effective and useful in the real world, colonizing the moon or building a working Hoverboard? Not only will it lower our reliance on foreign oil, lower our toxic emissions, and make us more green, it will also make us look AWESOME.

Face it, if we don’t create a working Hoverboard in the next five years, then the terrorists win.

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