garage engineering with a splash of creative license

We took another trip up to Port Townsend on Saturday to behold their annual Kinetic Sculpture Parade and Race. I honestly still don't know how to convey what it is, but it was an incredibly entertaining experience.

kin-et-ic (ka-net 'ik): Greek kinetikos, from kinetos 'moving', from kinein 'to move.' Of, relating to, or produced by motion. Possessing, exerting, or displaying energy.

With 15 "float" participants, these contraptions must be able to run on land and on water. Saturday was the qualifying trials to make sure they could use breaks on land, and float and manuever in the water.

I'm so amazed at the skill and artistry that it takes to create one of these contraptions. I remember taking Physics in high school and one of my assignments was to build a bridge with toothpicks that could structurally hold a significant amount of weight. I was such a numbskull about it, that I crafted my toothpick masterpiece with rubber cement. You can imagine the humilation when the teacher placed the mere bucket (sans weight) on my toothpick bridge and it splintered instantly. Needless to say that the folks building their "sculptures" for this race have incredible talent.

One of my favorites was the Magic School Bus rumored to be run by some still-going-strong hippies.
















What made the trip to and from Port Townsend even more entertaining was the fact that I was dog-sitting for my sister's puppy, and that we had my dog and R's puppy in tow, along with R's good friend Chris. All crammed into my rather small, and dog-scented Jeep Liberty.

Poor Chris got stuck with dog duty as we took the dogs down to Fort Warden for some late afternoon exercise. We checked out the old bunkers that rest right above the beach, and then we headed back down to the beach for a stroll. High tide was coming in, and so I wasn't too keen on walking the dogs to a jutting point at the end of the beach.

R and Chris were itching to go and check it out, and I stood my ground since I could see the water was getting very close to the edge of the shore and would leave little room to walk around it. And so there I was, harnessed to three dogs while R and Chris happily walked down the beach.

I made my way back to the top of the sand dune to observe their trek from afar, and silently prayed that the dogs wouldn't start wrestling, which would inevitably throw all of us off the ledge and into the water below.

With a long day of parade watching, float cheering and dog walking, we were all exhausted and ready to head back home. We caught the 11 pm ferry back and heads were on the pillows by 1 am. Whew! What a long day.