If you have no plans for the first weekend in October, then a quick autumn trip up to Port Townsend is never a bad way to fill the time. The winds are brisk, the marinas are on off-season rates, open slips abound, and best of all, you will be in town for the annual Kinetic Skulpture Race.
Since 1983, an ever-rotating group of oddballs, misfits, and folks who are all here because they are not all there have been cobbling together (with varying degrees of success) human-powered kontraptions designed to be propelled over land, sea, sand, and mud, and racing them around Port Townsend the first Sunday in October for the glory. If you have never taken the opportunity to watch or participate in–and that line can blur rapidly–this annual event, you are missing one of the quintessentially Northwestern experiences available to the all-weather cruiser.
Over the years, the event has expanded to fill the weekend. Hard-won experience lead to mandatory pre-race brake and float tests, preceded by a general parade, on Saturday afternoon, followed by the all-important Koronation Kostume Ball Saturday night, during which the Rose Hips Kween is selected and crowned. The Kween then presides over the race itself, traditionally started in front of the American Legion Hall by a cheap shot at low noon on Sunday. By rule, in case of sun, the race is held anyway. That was fortunate this year, when the cool, low clouds and showers were broken up by bothersome periods of blue sky and bright sun.
We like to get to town early and attend the Saturday events. By Sunday, everyone has been on the hill and in the water already and have proven they can stop and float. On Saturday, these capabilities have not yet been established, and the process of doing so frequently proves more exciting than the race itself.
With friends and family, we drove to town and parked near the marshalling area for the parade in the US Bank parking lot adjacent to the ferry terminal. Racers, spectators, and hangers-on milled about the parked skulptures. An impromptu drum circle serenaded the crowd and the event’s enforcement branch, the fearsomely mustachioed Kinetic Kops, circulated, maintaining disorder and soliciting bribes.
Given the nature of the event and the participants, it can be difficult to determine exactly who is racing ahead of time, but this year as usual there appeared to be about twenty skulptures entered. These range from massive, specialized vehicles powered by sophisticated drive trains with up to four people pedaling at a time, down to folks with some styrofoam strapped to a bicycle. Each year, there is at least one novel approach to addressing the problem of building a human-powered vehicle capable of negotiating roads, sand, water, and mud. This year, it was the Mousetrap, a big hamster-wheel with a single racer walking inside.
Having looked over the field and privately ranked the entrants, we decided to get to the site of the upcoming “break” tests to get good seats. Walking up to the Wooden Boat Foundation, adjacent to both the hill where the mandatory brake checks are conducted and the ramp where the mandatory float tests occur, we passed a lone skulpture pedaling frantically back along Water Street. In the finest traditions of the race, they were running a little late and going in the wrong direction.
We wandered up to the upper deck of the new Foundation building and got good spots along the rail. Eventually, the parade made its way down to us and the racers took turns going up the hill and coming back down, generally managing not to crash along the way. The float testing was not as successful; one of the first skulptures in the water had a propulsion failure, and a later one capsized.
We were back on Sunday at exactly noon, but other than the usual shenanigans and rambling speeches from the announcer’s stand, nothing much was happening. Nothing moves quickly during anything Kinetic, and part of the fun is chatting with others in the audience and gawking at Kops and offishuls as they attempt to manage the unmanageable. This year, the audience included a real offishul, as Governor Christine Gregoire quietly came up and found a spot on the rail near us to watch the racers brave the frigid waters. Since her term is up in January, there was some speculation that she might be contemplating a run for higher office as the Rose Hips Kween. Keep an eye on CNN for updates.
The K-Kops were, as usual, liberally distributing tickets, probably in the hope of soliciting more bribes. Anyone, or anything, can be ticketed, and being a member of the audience is no defense. If you are in a position to offer a gratuity, mini-donuts usually go over well. On the other hand, it is sometimes more fun to be ticketed than not. Governor Gregoire got a ticket for being “Best Gov in US” but that seemed like a bit of a kop-out on the part of an admiring K-cop. More typical were tickets issued for being too sleepy (to a skulpture made up to look like a bed), excessive laughter, insufficiently gaudy costume, egregious combovers, and, to one unsuspecting pooch, “Dog Gone Mad.”
It didn’t matter that no one appeared to be in any hurry, however. The top prize one can aspire to in the race is not that for first place, but rather the coveted Mediocrity Award, bestowed upon the skulpture that comes in dead middle in the field.
Eventually, the Kops and offishuls got a majority of skulpture pilots lined up at the start, and sent them off with a siren blast (an actual gunshot would be a little too violent for Port Townsend). The pilots mounted their machines and took off pell mell across the starting line. Half of them promptly turned in the wrong direction and went off-course, careening about in the crowd and forcing some extraordinarily belabored three-point turns.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQayS2qh4-8[/youtube]
The first leg was a short around-the-block warm-up to get some speed up before heading into the water for cold and wet stretch out around a buoy and back again. No short float test this; skulptures without well-considered marine propulsion systems are in for a long afternoon fighting wind and waves. Predictably, more than a few exercise the pilot’s privilege of cheating to either get a tow from someone more favorably equipped, or to simply splash in and back out again and claim they went the distance.
Although the skulptures all reached the ramp at about the same time, there were still a few either steeling themselves for the passage or laboriously re-configuring their craft into aqua-mode by the time the hard-charging leaders were coming out of the water. We took this as a sign that it was time to head to the next obstacle, the Kwik-sand next to the Marine Science Center at Fort Warden. Since there is a big hill in between, and it was after one o’clock, it was also a sign that there was time for lunch, which we snagged at the ever-popular Waterfront Pizza on the way back to the car. A lot of spectators walk the route; it’s not hard to keep up with the actual contestants.
The Kwik-sand is a recent addition to the course and I have not been a big fan. Even having stopped for lunch, we got there early and waited quite a while in a cold breeze off the Strait for the first skulptures to show up. Once they arrived and entered the beach, it just seemed cruel to watch. Apart from the tension of wondering whether or not the tide will sweep them away before they get through the course, it’s all just watching the poor pilots grunting and heaving until they get tired and start cheating. I’m not saying that isn’t why I watch in the first place, only that the Dismal Bog is a much better place to see it, because then they are all muddy and miserable at the same time.
The Dismal Bog was up next, at the county fairgrounds. It consists of two trenches filled with water and left to marinate overnight. The skulptures must each pass through one or the other of these within fifteen minutes of entering them. This year was less dismal than some, thanks to relatively dry weather. Still, few skulptures managed to escape the bog unscathed. In fact, the first three to plow in promptly got badly stuck and bottled the course up for a half hour or more. Some years this results in an impromptu chain of spectators wading in and hauling on tow ropes to get the pilots across the line, but no one was so inspired this year.
The Mousetrap was the sole exception to the general misery. The pilot calmly shucked down to a bathing suit and promptly rolled her extra-wide hamster wheel right through the mud as if she were strolling down the sidewalk. Then she did it again, showing off by coming back through the other trench, earning herself a ticket for “Double-dipping” in the process.
In the past, the Bog event was followed by a celebratory catapulting of teddy bears across the fairgrounds, but the trebuchet broke a couple years ago (the rule requiring each skulpture to have a teddy bear on board at all times, however, has not yet been exculpated, and several unwary pilots were ticketed for failure to have a teddy bear) so now everyone just heads for the finish line and the Survivor’s Party. This was our cue to pile back in the car and head back to Seattle.
We have rarely stayed for the actual end of the race. I can only think of one year I even found out who won, but winning isn’t really the point. The point is good old-fashioned zany fun, and we always get our fill of that.
For more information about the race, see the Port Townsend Kinetic Race website, or stop by Kinetic Koffee the next time you are in Port Townsend… it’s an easy walk from Boat Haven.
“For the glory!”