A description of the sculpture courtesy its designer:

ART: In glorious honor of Herrmann Spetzler, the recently passed founder of Open Door Community Health Centers, Herrmann’s Merry Mollusk will slime along the 50th Kinetic Grand Championship course. Herrmann had a terrific sense of humor and was an active member of the community. He appreciated the outdoors, supported many Open Door Kinetic race teams over the years, and would often be seen wearing his safari hat with his trusty camera around his neck. The sculpture was built by our 2017 Kinetic team and graced most of the course as Gloria the Glorious Galloping Gastropod. The sculpture was redecorated to honor Herrmann with hat, beard, camera and merry adornments. The sculpture is about 11 feet tall and 15 feet long sporting a safari hat and camera. Also along for the ride is “HO-bear-T”, honoring the glorious founder Hobart Brown.

ENGINEERING: The vehicle is a 4 wheeled two seater with too many gears to really figure out… at least for some of us gearing challenged individuals. The vehicle was constructed by Dave Tschoepte. The structure is characterized by the use of recycled medical items, chicken wire and chicken feed bags. Floatation will be provided by two pontoons with reinforced support with paddlewheel water propulsion. Last year’s bay crossing was more of a short bay mud dredging adventure but maybe we should have anticipated this knowing how slugs respond to salt. 

OTHER: Team members Lynette and Earl Eddy, Sara Simon, Gail Hovorka, Clayton Warren, Heather Marquette, Rob Guthrie, Alden Zwerling, Dave Tschoepte, Travis Burnham, Isabel Truque and Janis, Joe, Stacy and Stephanie Polos bring this extravaganza to fruition; we are adults having fun so children will want to grow up! Of course we could not have done this without the help of our sponsors- Open Door Community Health Centers, McBain Associates who is keeping us afloat and Los Bagels with the slug slime for us to leave our trail down the road.

A description of the sculpture courtesy its designer:

ART: Swing Kids is our name. We will be doing a choreographed swing dance for pageantry with perhaps a dozen or more dancers. We will do spontaneous Charleston Lines with spectators at various points throughout the race, top of Dead Man’s Drop, etc… If you haven’t done a Charleston line, huge fun and good even for non dancers & kids. We have bribe pins, but we will also be doing dance moves as bribes. We are promoting Shoshanna’s Redwood Raks (pronounced Rocks) dance studio and Monday Night Swing Club. We will decorate our sculp

ENGINEERING: We are non-ACE (so far). We have ‘wreck & pinion’ steering. ‘Asymmetrical threat’ mechanical layout. Triple drive to dual wheels. Three position pilots 1) recumbent 2) upright 3) superman (lay facing forward). Adjustable height pontoons. Sponsors: Shoshanna’s Redwood Raks, Thomas Home Center, CASA. 

OTHER: 20’ long. 7’ wide, 12’ high (flags), 3 wheels, 335lbs without art or pilots, Built 2015, but re-engineered twice since. Top speed on land level ground no wing =12mph, 8 mph cruising speed. Water speed 1.87256 knots. Air speed, 50mph. Builders: Mr Sunshine, Rocky, Wonder Woman, Lerika, Ffej Resnic, Nick & Chris @ Ironside fabrication… and the huge help from the Kinetics lab and Team Trilobike. 

A description of the sculpture courtesy its designer:

ART: After seeing some remarkable things while being upside down in the bay last year, we have decided to turn our machine in to a submarine. Glory Diver will continue our tradition of mining all of the world’s Hobartonium, the true source of all Glory on this planet. We’ve drilled for Glory, now we will dive for Glory. Come sail away with the Tempus Fugitives!

ENGINEERING: We have completely rebuilt our machine from the ground up. A good long soak in the bay did not do it any favors. We have lowered our center of gravity, along with our standards, to prepare this submarine for underwater mining operations (and to hopefully not flip over again!)

OTHER: 6 1/2 feet wide, 15 feet long, and 7’ tall, we have significantly lightened our load to not only go faster, but to increase our payload for all of that Hobartonium! With 4 Grand Champion awards under our belt, we are calling this race the “Dive For Five!”

 

A description of the sculpture courtesy its designer:

ART: Our sculpture, Black Tie Affair, alludes to the sophistication and class that kinetic racing promotes. The artistic component of Black Tie Affair is founded in the American born Minimalism movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. It incorporates geometric forms, often in repetitive patterns, using only a single shape or a small number of like shapes, as components for design unity. Color is featured as solid planes, clean and finished. Black Tie Affair strives to create a sculpture that can be appreciated at its basic physical appearance and enjoyed at face value.

ENGINEERING: Black Tie Affair is a front wheel drive, tail dragger tricycle 8x7x20 (HxWxL). Its 82” wheels have 120 spokes each. The three piece aluminum wheel hubs are held together by spoke tension alone. We use modified Honda Civic disc brakes. A much needed rear view mirror has been mounted. There are 42 forward gears for each pilot. The drive train runs through a combination of 66 drive sprockets.

 

(VIDEO) Dune Depictions

A description of Yabba-DooYa courtesy its designer:

ART: It’s time to Bedrock you back to the Stone Age. You can keep your fancy engineering and your new fangled tools. We aregoing to rock this caveman style. PVC pipe, a Bicycle, Styrofoam and whatever creature I can find on the way that isgoing to help us drive to the finish line. So you can bet Jurassic we are going to bring all the heat that our tiny brains andbig feet can muster.

A description of CrABBA courtesy its designer:

ART: It’s a well-known fact that after 35 years, ABBA have reunited. Less well-known is the fact that they have united intosomething grander, greater, and more glorious - that’s right, over the past three decades, ABBA metamorphosed into asinging, dancing CRAB. CrABBA is a dazzling decapod, an entertaining invertebrate. It’s a popstar with both pizazz andfully articulated pincers. MAMMA MIA - our band of merry CrABBAsolutely crustaceous friends are gifted with exponentialgrooves as they hit the CrABBA Park dance floors with their CrABBUlous claws. You’ll pause in awe at CrABBA’sspectacularly shining claws, bibbly bobbly eye stalks, and this dancing crabs anatomically accurate sideways shuffle!!!!!

ENGINEERING: Our glorious dancing crab features front suspension, a rear 1” differential, cable-pulled steering, home made 71 spokedtriple cross wheels, disc brakes— which we are confident have a 50% chance of performing efficaciously, and 588 gearcombinations per pilot for a total of 345,744 gear combinations. We will propel our way through the bay with paddlewheels as we float on yard-made foam pontoons and roll over the dunes on foam sand tires. Our machine’s ability toACE despite our underfunding is a true testament to the ingenuity of our engineering. For the Glory!

2017 Kinetic Awards Winners

Was fossil fuel the secret?

In front of a kapacity krowd inside Ferndale’s Belotti Hall, Trilobike Test Kitchen was named the 2017 Kinetic Grand Champion, the most coveted of a slew of awards handed out to the kourageous racers who’d spent the last three days traversing 42 miles of pavement, sand and water during the Kinetic Grand Championship.

Steve McHaney, the kreative force behind Trilobike Test Kitchen, has been kompeting in the race for four years now, winning the first place engineering award in the last two years. He was joined on his kraft this year by his twin sons Carson and Weston.

Kongrats, McHaney klan, and to the rest of this year’s racers. Scroll around below for list of the rest of this year’s award winner. Glory achieved.

2017 Kinetic Grand Champions

• Trilobike Test Kitchen

Best Engineering

• 1st: A Cockwork Orange
• 2nd: Project X
• 3rd: Melvin

Best Art

• 1st: Planet X
• 2nd: Kinetic Kootie
• 3rd: A Cockwork Orange

Best Speed 

• 1st: Evel Kinetics
• 2nd: Flying Spaghetti Monster
• 3rd: Fired Up!

Best Pageantry 

• 1st: A Cockwork Orange
• 2nd: Tempus Fugitorium 
• 3rd: Summer of Love: 50th Anniversary

2017 ACE Award Professors 

• Melvin (28th ACE Award!)
• Flying Sauna
• A Cockwork Orange
• Evel Kinetics
• Sparky the Foster Dog
• Trilobike Test Kitchen
• Flying Spaghetti Monster
• Project X
• Bikin’ Fool
• Fired Up!

Mediocre Award-winner, June Moxon, sits on her mobile trophy

Mediocre Award (For Team That Finishes in the Middle of the Pack)

• Kinetic Kootie

Best Junior Award

• Vet-Trans

Best Pit Crew

• Team Jeep

Best Campsite

• A Cockwork Orange

Best Bribe

• A Cockwork Orange

6:32 Award

• Team Turtle: DOMNT

Lifetime Achievement Award

• Bill Beers

Ground Pounder’s Ground Pounder

• Frank! 

Best Volunteer

• John Mantle

Goddess Jen-O Award

• Flying Spaghetti Monster

Port Townsend Award

• Fair Winds and the Following Sea Scout Creatures

Biggest Splash Award

• Fired Up!

The Golden Dinosaur Award

• The Innuendo

The Golden Flipper Award (Water)

• Tempus Fugitorium 

The Golden Flipper Award (Sand)

• Sparky the Foster Dog

Most Improved Award

• Painappuru

The Spirit of the Glorious Founder Award

• Unex-Spectacles and the KPS Magical Wardrobe

The Never Give Up, Poor, Poor Pitiful Me Award

• Bikin’ Fool

One for the Little Guy

• Chain Mail

Racers’ Choice Award

• Summer of Love: 50th Anniversary

Second to Last Award

• lotecnotec

Spectators’ Favorite

• Summer of Love: 50th Anniversary 

Teddy Bear Award

• Vet-Trans

They Came From Out of Town

• Kinetic Kirby

You Clever Rascal (Best Engineering for a Non-ACE Machine)

• Sissyphus Walks ‘is Moon

The Race Winds to a Close, Awards to be Announced Soon

Most of the sculptures have cross the finish line on Main Street in Ferndale, and as of 4:37 p.m., the course is officially closed for machines that are hoping to ace.

Now we await the 6 p.m. awards banquet at the Portuguese hall where the racers will find out just how much glory they’ve secured in the kinetic history books. We will post the awards as they are announced later tonight.

Ferndale Foto Finishes

Ferndale Foto Finishes

Ferndale Foto Finishes

Ferndale Foto Finishes

Ferndale Foto Finishes

Ferndale Foto Finishes