Sweet 16

And a lovely celebration it was, too.  For the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race, that is.

First rule of the race:  "Sculptures must be human-powered! No pulling, pushing, paddling, or other propulsive method is allowed except by Official Pit Crew and Pilots (sometimes called Kinetinauts). Stored energy is allowed for non-propulsive purposes only. It is legal to get assistance from the natural power of water, wind, sun, and gravity and friendly extraterrestrials."

And lest anyone think that because Baltimore is on the east coast and on the water it's flat - that would be a no.  I've biked the Tour du Port through the city a couple times and I can attest to some killer hills.   As in 90 year old pedestrians were moving faster than I was by the time I finally pedaled to the top. (I ran over a dead rat during the first Tour.  Thought I was going to fall off the bike laughing - it was SO Baltimore!)

The sculpture race route is about 14 miles long, and includes sand, mud, and water hazards.  Nonsense is not only encouraged but pretty much a requirement.  Spectators do have a few rules:

1. Hands, equipped with white gloves should be waved vigorously over head whenever viewing Kinetic Sculptures or when on camera.
2. Tall Spectators must take care to stand in back row when witnessing Glorious Events. On no account should Spectators throw their bodies in the path of oncoming Sculptures.
3. Cardboard Grin must be worn at all times when personal misery or state of mind interferes with maintaining a normal happy smile.

This was one of the fun things my daughter and I would do together when she lived in Charm City, and we always headed for the water hazard over at Canton because you can climb down on the rocks and get a good, if hard, seat.  Also, leg powered land machines plus water is interesting.  When I arrived Saturday morning, the kayak Posse was already putting in.  They pick up garbage, tow wayward entries back, and have a softer seat than I do.

It is, after all, a race, with awards for things like Worst Honorable Mention and Best Bribes, so there are judges who watch for flagrant rule violations (as opposed to the "my foot is bracing the tire but my hands aren't touching anything" type of violations) and announce competitor's names so we can cheer and chant them on.

There's also always an ugly nun with the judges - I haven't figured that out yet.

The first one in was Swan.

Many of these entries have never been tested on the water before this moment, which is part of the fun.  Swan turned out to be as water-worthy as its avian counterpart.  Which was almost boring.  Note the "foot padels".

The next arrival quickly learned a lesson - you are on the water and there's a breeze. Anything in the construction of the craft that can catch that breeze will. And the cover on the covered wagon acted just like a sail.  They struggled for a bit on the way out, but made it back in pretty good time.  Note that some kid's rocking horse has been stolen to pull the wagon.

While many of the entries are amazingly complex, some are simpler - a bike in one form or another with styrofoam or plastic bottle floaters.

It IS, however, the Baltimore Inner Harbor - the water is, in a word, foul.  So people try to keep as much of themselves out of it as they can.  In fact, one of the rules involves not allowing more than a certain percentage of the body to get wet.  Yeah, dream on.  Winner of the Golden Flipper Award this year:

Ewwwwww!!!!!  Right over the handlebars when he hit the water.  Next year, Doodle, lean back, not forward.  I've seen entries simply disintegrate when they hit the water.  Which is kinda appropriate, given the water quality.

Fifi (the first pic) is an old friend who has raced for years.  This year, however, another old friend was missing:

Seems they were in Tahiti at a tiki bar and PLATYPUS (Personal All-Terran Yacht Proven Un-Safe) went missing.  The tiki bar and its occupants are searching the world (well, maybe just Baltimore) for him.

The construction of some of these things is amazing.  While the leg power for Pokey the PLATYPUS was transmitted through individual bicycle chassis, the energy the crew generated was combined in a Suzuki SUV transmission, with an automotive drivetrain, wheels, and tires to carry him and crew through the course. There's some serious work goes into these entries.

I mentioned tows and wind - Good Dog need remedial obedience training when its lovely fur-covered sides acted as a sail and it wandered up along the shoreline until a couple kayaks got lines on it and brought it back.  Here it heads for the water before it makes like ML's Belle and heads off.

That's not unusual - when I last saw the Norse longship a couple years ago the sheriff's boat was towing it out of the cove it had sailed off to.  Fixed sail, no control, wind.

It's really hard to come back out of the water, too.  The slope is steep, the water and muck tries to suck you back, and as often as they rake it out there's sticks and debris that the tires slide on.  Standard bicycle tires in particular tend to not grip well and it can be a battle to come out without a penalty-inducing tow.

There were a lot of other entries - 33 in all, although not all of them tried the water hazard.  My very favorite was Tick Tock the Croc, and it won in the category of Art as the People's Choice, Grand Mediocre, Marine Posse Favorite:

And, well, it's Baltimore, where good food and good beer abound. Rat Patrol had the right idea (even if Natty Boh, while iconic, is an awful beer):

I could have stayed in Canton,but I was feeling a bit more old fashioned, so I headed off to Fells Point just around the harbor, and after walking and poking around the shops for a while and enjoying a gorgeous day, Brewer's Art Ozzy occured. Several times.  And yes, yes, crab cakes with Old Bay did too.  It's Bawlmer, after all.

For bunches more pics, as well as entertaining info and race rules, check out http://www.kineticbaltimore.com/.

The pics are a mix of mine (the worst ones and ones not involving water) and people who are much better photographers than I and who have loaded their stuff to the website.  Also David Jennings over at http://www.examiner.com/article/art-gone-wild-baltimore-s-16th-annual-kinetic-sculpture-race.  Because I was using a cell phone.  And the battery was dieing.

Interlude - Vacation 2012

Well, first it took a while for my sister to get the pictures to me, and then it took forever for me to get them downloaded so I could blog it. It's only a month and a half late, but here goes.

First, I lied.  I said it was a stay-cation, but it wasn't.  I just didn't think it was a good idea to broadcast all over the web that my house was going to be empty for a week.  And it was ALMOST a stay-cation:  my sister and I spent the week in Baltimore doggy sitting while my daughter went to Myrtle Beach.  So we were sort of local.

Vacationing in Baltimore probably seems like a strange idea to many, but the city does have much to offer other than crime.  Granted, you have to have a certain trash tolerance, but it has its own special charm (yes, charm) mixed in with grit and ghetto.  Not to mention museums, top notch restaurants, and easy access to Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Peggy arrived on the Amtrak on Friday afternoon, we headed to Baltimore on Saturday.  We've started making vacation "to do" lists, and first on the list is always the Whetsell-Felton Reunion, which I blogged about last year.  There was an added joy this year:  on the Thursday before some cousins in Wheeling happened to stumble on my blog from the year before and thought "Why don't we go?"  JFelton is over on my followers list, and he probably has gotten tired of waiting for me to blog about it.  Sorry, cuz, no excuse but laziness about a long blog.  Hope you are still there.  I don't remember JFelton's dad, although as a small child I'm sure I knew him because I knew his brothers Jim and Wayne, both first cousins of my Dad.

There was some sorrow this year - Aunt Jean had died shortly before, and that leaves a big hole.  She wasn't an aunt by blood, but she and Uncle Walter were so close when we were kids that we never stopped calling them that.  Uncle Walter is bent from back problems, nearing 90, and more frail, but he still is so much the same in many ways.  Doesn't drive but still gets out on the tractor on the farm.

That would be my "kissin' cousin" Cindy, his daughter, laughing in the background.

Bud brought his friend Franklin with him this year:

And Franklin, on a leash and pulling his cart, led the Chicken Dance, much to everyone's merriment:

There were some folks looking disturbingly frail this year.  They are pushing or beyond 90, and while I know they will one day not be there just as so many others no longer are, I dread the day their faces are missing from the gathering.  Like Aunt Jean, their loss will be a loss of a piece of my childhood.

But the nice thing is that many young people are coming back, and there are a couple generations carrying it on.

A trip over to the old Felton farm, piling into a pickup truck and laughing uproariously as we bounced up the trail to the family graveyard, introducing a whole new generation to their ancestors laying under the headstones.

And then a quieter, exhausted trip back to Baltimore. Dogs to let out and feed, collapse into bed.

Monday was closer to home - Fort McHenry.  The War of 1812 has always been a bit of a puzzle to me.  In my mind it goes:  We declare war on Britain because they won't abide by the treaty boundaries in the north and they keep impressing our sailors into service on their ships.  Britain kicks us all over the place except at Baltimore because we are in no way prepared for a war with anybody.  Britain gets tired and goes home and eventually says "bag it" and signs another treaty with us and the war ends.  Except in New Orleans where Jackson wipes the floor with the Brits because they didn't know the war was over.  And even there if the British general had been given time to exploit a weakness in Jackson's flank it could have gone another way.  But he received orders to quit, so he withdrew after having his butt handed to him by the Yanks. I know that a famous battle cry came out of it, but "Remember the Raisin!" just doesn't do much for me.

I suppose everyone knows that Fort McHenry withstood massive bombardment during the war, and the flag flying over it as the sun came up and the mist cleared was the Star Spangled Banner we sing of.  There is also a museum at Flag House, the home of the woman who made the flag.  The big flagpole is now standing where it was during the battle - the underground supporting timbers of the original were found just a few years ago.

 They had bigger guns than I do.

And a bit more gunpowder in the house than I do.

They also didn't store their ammunition under the bed like I do.

Then it was off to explore the old sea port of Fells Point.

I don't like driving in the city and the GPS didn't know about blocked streets.  But I knew that if I kept the harbor immediately on my right and just followed roads around it to the east I'd get to where I wanted to be.  And then I discovered the trick I used for the rest of the week - US 83 becomes President Street, follow south until the Katyn Monument fountain circle, duck into a parking garage and walk everywhere from there.

The garages are expensive, but saved me a nervous breakdown.  And, really, downtown Baltimore doesn't cover that much area, so it's very walkable as long as you pay attention to staying out of the ghetto. 

Harbor sights are both iconic and gritty:

And sometimes you stand and wonder how anything could be so industrial and beautiful at the same time.

Fells Point was founded in 1730, and in addition to the old buildings, it hosts 120 pubs.  We've only just started working on that.

And restaurants, oh does Fells Point have restaurants!  We ate in the area twice, at Kali's Mezza and at Roy's , both of which I can highly recommend.

With the weather so good, a bike ride was in order, so one day we loaded up and went over to Blackwater Wildlife Refuge to bike and eagle spot.  There was a hitch at the beginning - we stopped to replace my broken bike chain and when we went to leave the store my battery made sad sounds.  I had been told that I'd need a new one by winter.  Well, thank goodness for AutoZone a block away, because the battery decided that that was the day it would give up the ghost completely.  Only a hitch, replaced it, and went on.  Nice day, nice ride, several eagles, plenty of other wildlife.

Then dinner on a porch in old Annapolis, a tradition after a Blackwater ride.

Closer by, a day in Ellicott City. Having been "born" in 1772 it's a little younger than Fells Point and Annapolis, but full of history and antique shops, both fascinating. 

Back on the road and over to St. Michael's for a day, where we barely scratched the "to do" list with a little walking, a river tour, and a lot of steamed crabs, shrimp, and beer on the deck at the Crab Claw.

We happened to be there the evening of the blue moon, and watched it rise as we ate.

Another day was spent back in the harbor area exploring the Civil War side of Baltimore, and then it was over.  Peggy back to NC, and me back to WV.  It took me 3 days to get over the physical exhaustion because we never stopped moving, but it was a great vacation.  And there is still a lot on the "to do" list that we have to do.