Have you ever wondered what it would be like to roll down a hill at speeds of up to 30 mph inside a huge ball? Perhaps not, but that was what Andrew Akers wondered while he was looking through some drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, or so he says. Wherever the idea came from, Andrew and ex-research scientist Dwane van der Sluis began designing such a ball, which they called a Zorb.
The job was far from easy. "We took the prototype to our bank manager, hoping to get a loan, but he wasn't very enthusiastic," says Andrew. "His actual words were: 'That's a nice beach ball,' which didn't really, give us much confidence." Luckily, they were not discouraged and each one decided to design a sphere separately. " Dwane's sphere was too small and mine was too large. Each one useless on its own, but we put one inside the other and the Zorb was born."
The Zorbonaut, the person enjoying the thrill of Zorbing, climbs into the inside ball through a hole or kind of tunnel that passes through the outside ball. There is more that 2 ft. of air between the Zorbonaut and the ground to protect the person from the effects of the ball bouncing along. Now the Zorb has been fully tested to make sure it is completely safe, which wasn't what happened originally. " I broke my arm in the prototype, but we have done our best to prevent injury since then." says Andrew