Click on a thumbnail sketch to see the full size picture.

Abe wasn't available for Ventura. But Kevin was. He and I piloted. Unfortunately that means I got no pictures except for the pictures of the trophys below. Fortunately, I was able to use pictures shamelessly stolen from Robert Bernstein's web page http://sswl.di.com/~rdb/events/kinetic.htm

The Race

	Creepy Crawler, by Jim and Lauren. The Ventura KSR race has been running with insufficient sponsorship for a couple of years now. They cannot afford a road race, so we race in a field. That's not as bad as it sounds. It means the racers are always in site of the audience. The course was a figure eight, so that race vehicles crossed each other's tracks at the 'X'.
	Gorillas In The Rex in the 'Road' race. During this part of the race, the officials were presumably counting laps. They told us we could pass any way we could make it work. Generally this meant cutting inside the regular track. But we took that to an extreme. We did tiny figure eights at the 'X' in the track, effectively doing 'laps' at our minimum turning radius.
	Simple craft built by a high school team. They invested all their effort into those laminated wood struts and then realized they had mere weeks until the race. Their only hope to race was to throw something together quickly. So they attached bikes to the struts.
	Gorillas In The Rex. In the last 50 feet of the road race we had a blowout. Sounds bad. But that had to be the best timed blowout in KSR history. We were done with any road racing, so we didn't need the bike tire any more. In fact we were just about to change to off-rad tires anyway because the next leg of the race was mud. We were right next to the audience, so they could watch us as we sprang into action, and... We changed our tire in less than a minute, wowing the audience.
The two teams ahead of us into the mud had trouble. Here the high school team makes lateral transfer.
	The two ton trike [not shown] came to a complete standstill. Later I learned the trouble was that their brake jammed when it collected mud. But we had to decide how to approach the mud based on what we saw. And it looked bad. We played it safe and kept to the edge of the mud. Gorillas In The Rex did the mud without serious problem. At the exit point, we did a 'victory lap' in the mud.
	Many people have talked about doing KSRs with sails. In fact, several racers have done that. It is rarely effective. Here the High school team has deployed their sail, but they find it necessary to paddle.
	Rex is like a duck. Out of water Rex kind of waddles everywhere. He is pretty sure footed (or wheeled), but not so fast. But as soon as Rex hits the water, he undergoes a transformation. Literally and figuratively. Rex is fast and graceful on the water. Its where we like to be. I am grimacing from the effort to pull on that lever. In fact, in this picture I have almost fallen into the water and pushed Lauren in with me.
	Knowing that we were fast in the water, the Ventura officials wanted to put us late in the lineup for the water. It took some agile arguing, but I got us about 4th. Nominally, I wanted to be ahead of Retro Rocket so that we could hang around to arrange a one-on-one race with another very fast machine. But before we entered we noticed that Yellow Submarine was spraying *everyone* with their water guns. They have a powerful gun. And everybody else was unarmed. Here the high school team is under attack.
Yellow Submarine attacking Creepy Crawlers
	I recruited Lauren [of Clam-I-Am fame] to ride in a passenger seat as our tail gunner. We then ran strafing runs against Yellow Submarine. It was a glorious fight. Their advantages: higher volume water gun and shielding. Our advantages: speed and manoverability. But neither of us could fight continuously. We had to spend significant time reloading, giving them time to hit us. You can see that in this picture.
	Its hard to say who won the fight. I'm inclined to say that we won. We were in control of the fight at all times and they weren't. We decided when it started and ended. We were on the offensive. They could only defend. They were the 'sitting ducks'. Here I am delivering fire directly into their portal. Meanwhile Lauren is backing me up with water from her helmet.
	This KSR is a very unusual configuration. I don't remember its name, so I will call it Bizzare.
	This KSR [I will call it Patriotic] needs better floatation planning. This is the sort of thing we teach in the Corvallis KSR Construction class. On the other hand, this sort of mishap is very entertaining for the audience.
	Gorillas In The Rex at the finish line. Lauren has joined us in the picture. I'm kind of wet. That was from the water fight. For some reason Yellow Submarine seemed to be focusing fire on me. ;-]

After we had exited the water I heard that Yellow Submarine was [finally] exiting. I decided to attack them on the beach when they were immobile and most vulnerable. I attacked alone and without shielding. They were distracted by trying to deal with the surf. I got them good. Granted they got me pretty wet too. But I again think I beat them.

Later as I stood dripping on the sand I noticed a teanage girl who seemed to be manovering herself to get into a picture with me. Her blonde friend had the camera. So I slid over and put my arm around her. I couldn't see her face, but I can imagine. The blonde was definitely amused. I suspect the brunette had an expression mixing discomfort at getting very wet and cold, plus horror of being touched by this guy she didn't know. I chortled. Somebody predicted that that girl would never come to a KSR again. I hope that isn't true. But I'll bet all the people watching will.

	We got First Place Engineering for our interesting water conversion.
	We got Ace Ventura for completing the race without pushing.

Copyright (C) C Allen Brown 2003.