Posted by Karen on 25-May-2009
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FOR THE GLORY!! Today is the finale of the Kinetic Grand Championship race and I’ve made my way to Ferndale to enjoy the festivities at the finish line. Ferndale is a charming little city with many Victorian-style buildings in excellent shape. I make my way to the main street and set up my chair on the sidewalk along with a couple hundred other folks, there’s not near as many people here today as there was for the kickoff, but it’s a beautiful sunshiny day. The racers straggle in throughout the afternoon and we’re all just having fun sitting and talking. During a stretch of no in-coming sculptures, I wandered over to the Kinetic Sculpture Museum and check out some retired sculptures from past races. 4:32pm marks the end of the race and most racers have crossed the finish line by then. After mingling and checking out the sculptures one last time, I take a ride over to the coast and find a section of the Lost Coast Trail and I do a bit of off-road exploring. Ahh, the end of a Glorious Memorial Day Weekend.
Posted by Karen on 23-May-2009
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The Kinetic Grand Championship is a 3-day, 42-mile bicycle race over land, sand, mud and water. Many refer to the Kinetic Grand Championship as the “Triathlon of the Art World.”
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FOR THE GLORY!! Today is the start of the 40th anniversary of the Kinetic Grand Championship race and I’m actually here on time for it this year! I was here two years ago and didn’t know much about the race and so I only caught a few bits of it (and then lost my photo memory card!). But this year I know more of how it works and plan on seeing more of it. I’ve scanned in the Spectators Guide and you can view it here in PDF format so that you can have a peek at the rules of wackiness for this race. I arrived at the Arcata Plaza (the town square) around 10am and found a spot on the curb to watch the vehicle inspections and brake tests. Each entrant must pass inspection before the noon whistle signals the race start. The judges blow a whistle and the racers must prove that they can exit the vehicle in a speedy manner (in case it sinks in the bay!). The Teddy Bear Judge makes sure there is the required teddy bear on board. The police make sure the required reflectors and such are attached so that they can be on the public roadway. The racers then peddle as fast as they can towards the Brake Judge and when he blows his whistle, they must stop within a required distance. And if they can’t pass all of these inspections, it is fully expected and encouraged that they will bribe the judges appropriately… LOL! Next is the pageantry portion, each team performs for the judges in a wacky way. Poems were spoken, songs where sung, dancing was erratic and for those teams with limited pageantry ability, bribes were given. The noon whistle blows and the racers, led by this year’s Rutabaga Queen Jermajesty, begin a mad dash around the plaza and after several go arounds, they begin heading 10 miles down the road to the Manila Sand Dunes. I enjoyed the street circus and party atmosphere for awhile and then drive down to the sand dunes. At the sand dunes, there is a band playing while the racers modify their wheels to be sand-worthy. When ready, they power their way over the sand dunes to the ocean; that’s as far as I followed them. The next attraction on the race course is Dead Man’s Drop when they come off the beach, but I didn’t really know where that was located, so I missed that portion. I then went onto Eureka and waiting at the old town plaza square for the racers to arrive. Lots of smiles, lots of fun and lots of “For the Glory” shouts!
KHUM Radio provides total live action coverage of the race, so it’s a must to have your radio tuned to them. And to really capture the flavor of this event, listen live to this eclectic radio station’s live stream while looking at the pictures. 
Posted by Karen on 26-May-2007
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My intent Saturday morning was to try and find the 2007 Kinetic Grand Championship Race and watch it. The Kinetic Sculpture Race is a wacky race that combines art sculptures with engineering ingenuity. The vehicles can only be powered by human power–no motors. The vehicles must be able to go over land, water, sand and mud… and should look good doing it. The Kinetic Kingdom provides an overview of what the race is about.
I dilly-dallied around Saturday morning, had a late breakfast, explored the quaint seaside town of Trinidad and ended up missing the race start in the town square of Arcata. By the time I got there, there didn’t appear to be any sign that a race had happened, so I figured it didn’t go off this year. Up until two weeks ago, the web page I’d found still said “hopefully the race will occur”, so I wasn’t totally surprised, but oh well, I can have fun around the area. I then toddled down the coast to explore Eureka and as I’m walking around old town, I keep hearing something over a loud speaker, so I head in that direction… and guess what–I find the finish line of the first day of the Kinetic Sculpture Race happening in Eureka Old Town Square. KHUM Radio was out there doing the MC’ing duties. So I hung out and watched the racers come in after the first leg of the race. There was a circus act entertaining the crowd and just a general sense of fun in the square. I saw the Rutabaga Queens; this year, Enchantress Emma took the reigns from Queen Foxy Biloxi and they were all costumed out. I got a copy of the race map and now knew where and when to be to watch the start of day 2, the water launching. Sunday morning, I’m up and don’t dilly-dally and make my way over to the launching area and secure my spot on the rocks to watch the race machines enter the bay to begin the several mile long water portion of the race. Now somewhere out here, I changed photo memory cards and lost the card that had all my day one pictures on it. *dismay* Bummer… I have looked high and low, but it’s gone. *sad* Ahhh well, it was a fun morning. It was appropriate that “Tall-E-Rodger”, a pirate vessel, was the first and only entry to go head-over-heels into the water at the beginning of the water entry on day 2, so he was the winner of the Golden Flipper Award for being the first sculpture to flip over in the Bay. And lots of other people took pictures and videos of the Kinetic Sculpture Race: (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kineticrace). Do you see me sitting on the rocks in this video? I’m one of those blurs sitting on the rocks! LOL
When the launch was over, I checked out a few of Eureka’s landmark buildings and then I headed north and took a little hike in the redwood forest. A geocache led me to a section of the redwoods that are less visited and what a difference it makes taking a walk in the non-tourist section.. very lovely, very awe-inspiring. Afterwards, I drove over to Crescent City and took some sunset shots of the Battery Point Lighthouse and the city from across the harbor.
It was a fun weekend and here are the winners of the race: http://khumksr.blogspot.com/2007/05/kinetic-award-results.html
Posted by Karen on 09-Sep-2006
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Theresa and I attended the September event held by the River City Geocaching & Dining Society (RCGDS). This month’s gathering of geocachers was held at Cameron Park Lake in Cameron Park, up the hill a bit in the next county over from Sacramento. The first geocache we had to find was called “Get Your Ticket Here” and it contained park entrance tickets to get into the RCGDS End of Summer Spectacular! We got ours and decided to check out a few more caches before joining the picnic. One hidden very cleverly in a dog park and another in the corner of a historical cemetary, which a fake church that was used for some modern purpose that we couldn’t figure out. We then made it to the park and when we first arrived, Theresa and I decided to reconnoiter the area of a new geocache that was underwater out in the lake. Along the way Cody the Bear joined us and besides meeting an extremely friendly orange cat, we met a wet SNSpencer who told us he had to go into the water all the way up to here (hand at the neck level). So we went back to the picnic area, to change cloths and I convince Theresa that we should take a paddle boat out, as I’ve never been in one. We paddle over and find TRAKD in the water with Wee “K” and Salmon Falls Widow cheering from the shore. We helped stir up the mucky water until the cache wrapped itself around TRAKD’s leg. This was a really fun cache find, especially since I didn’t have to go into the muck of the pond! Back at the picnic area, Theresa and I both won a raffle prize–geocache containers for Theresa to hide somewhere! We joined the whole crowd in cheering for the pinata to be broken open and reveal coordinates for a newly hidden cache in the park. We then walked around the lake with everyone else to score the new caches. We left the picnic and decided to hunt a few more caches before heading home. The last cache was one called a “Summer Spectacular View”, and what a view of Cameron Park it was. Time to head home after a nice day of treasure hunting with friends.
