textfiles/fun/CAA/gecaa-29

From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan  7 17:30:07 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-29

KINETIC MADNESS, 1987

by Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)

Eureka, CA; 12,257 miles.

May 25, 1987

     Eureka?  Again?  Is this a time-warp?  If you've been following these

tales for any time at all, you know we spent five weeks here over the winter...

and you also know that we couldn't have possibly pedaled back up the coast as

fast as the date on this column would suggest.



     Well, we still have the van.  Though vaguely embarrassing for a die-hard

long-distance cyclist, it offers considerable flexibility... especially when it

comes to high-speed spatial relocation for events like the 14th Annual World

Championship Great Arcata-to-Ferndale Cross-Country Kinetic Sculpture Race.



     We threw everything in the van, turned a key, sat for a few hours, then

abruptly found ourselves in Chico -- out in the flat farmlands of a whole

different California.  Not even unpacking the bikes, we dropped off the boxed

trappings of our Palo Alto layover, visited with the publisher of the Journal

of High Treknowledgy (RAY- ROLLS on GEnie), and hit the road again, winding

along route 299 until -- surprise -- we were in Eureka.  This is a maddening

way to travel: too fast.  The world drifts by, much too easily, the hills so

smooth that hardly a drop of sweat rises between sea level and 3,000 feet. No

sense of transition zones, no subtle cultural shifts... not even any of those

invigorating moments of panic as logging trucks crowd you to the cliff-edge...



     So here we are in Eureka again, complete with bona fide press passes

emblazoned with the sacred kinetic chicken icon.  The rest of this chapter will

be written at odd moments, in the tent and on beaches, in restaurants and on

the bike, whenever the swirl of events threatens to overflow the looniness

buffer...



                                * * *



     It's midnight, twelve hours until the 1987 field of kinetic sculptures

explodes from the Arcata plaza in their annual quest for glory.  The frenzy is

tangible, the air thick with the fumes of last- minute epoxies and paints.  All

over Humboldt County, exhausted builders are oiling chains, attaching flotation

gear, touching up paint jobs, and tweaking their baroque mechanisms of brass

and fiberglass.



     In Duane Flatmo's garage shop, the team works in a haze of sleep

deprivation and hastily-gulped snacks.  Paint-speckled torn sweatshirts.

Grizzled chins.  Litter of Budweiser cans, Calistoga bottles, and sculpture

materials -- a confusing detritus indeed. Gleaming unnaturally amidst the

clutter and filth is the Science Mobile:  a grinning bulbous three-wheeled fish

with two seats, two gear trains, a working mouth, tractor-like wheels with

detachable paddles, headlights... and an oddly coherent overall motif of

surrealistic folk art, carnival baroque, and a crazy, dreamlike extrapolation

of 50's art nouveau with a touch of alien-tech.



     Elsewhere, in a mad, sordid tangle of machinery on the waterfront, a dozen

or more people struggle with two other machines. June Moxon's all-woman team

fashions a gaint pink high-heeled shoe around a well-designed mega-tricycle

with hydraulic disc brakes; Ken Beidleman's crew debugs the rudder control

linkage and works on final aesthetics of the synthesizer-equipped Bionic Blue

Coach.  The scene is repeated, with madness the common theme, in some 40 other

garages.



     Yes, it's Kinetic Eve, and for once my compu-bike is in the background.

This weekend I plan to be audience instead of show, and the feeling is deeply

refreshing.



                                * * *



     Day 1.  I hear rumors there's another race going on today -- something

having to do with Indianapolis and fast cars.  Sounds rather boring.  I'm

trudging instead over dunes of ankle-deep sand, my bike in the care of the

Army, my binoculars trained on distant colorful specks being pushed, dragged,

or pedaled slowly along the beach.



     Two thousand miles east, hard-core muscle cars roar in a hydrocarbon haze

around a monotonous oval track while thousands of race fans secretly wish for

accidents.  Here in Humboldt, the costumed victims of kinetic fever pedal their

homebrew machines over a 38-mile course of land, sand, sea, and mud.  After a

noon LeMans start in Arcata, 43 contraptions have come here to Dead-man's Drop

-- where loose sand and gravity conspire to bring all but the most determined

racers to a frustrating halt.



     The sight is at once inspiring and ludicrous.  Inching painfully up slopes

that are exhausting on FOOT, the biomechanical absurdities struggle to the top.

 A giant conestoga wagon, complete with copper pots.  A tin lizzie.  A

people-powered bus weighing one ton.  A mini starship enterprise.  A taco.  The

Rhino, last year's winner.  A host of fanciful yet functional machines, and

many that are one or the other but not both.  And, of course, the Science

Mobile, the Heel-a- copter, and the Blue Coach, creations of our Eureka

friends.



     To "ace" this race, riders have to complete the course under their own

power with no pushing... so the wheels sink in; the riders sweat and grunt;

rhythmic pedal thrusts yield tiny, incremental gains. All around them is

confusion:  the whoops and cheers of the crowd, the relentless buzz of

motorized dune machines (that's cheating...), the urging of pit crews, and a

whole bevy of race officials timing, judging, and carefully scrutinizing

would-be aces.



     Top of the Drop:  they stop, plop, pop a Calistoga top, mop off the sweat

and relax, staring nervously down a hundred or so feet of 50% grade ending in a

sharp turn between two hard trees.  The crowd's tension is tangible; the Army

waves them back to clear the course. Some teams plunge downward with only a

deep breath to reveal their fear; first-timers pause on the precipice and

mutter something about being suicide, then release the brakes with an shout and

give themselves over to gravity.  The crowd closes in behind and watches,

anxious and wide-eyed... doubtless with a touch of the same morbid excitement

that energizes the Indy crowd.  Nobody gets hurt, but everybody experiences the

mad rush of adrenalin, that oh-God-I-must- be-crazy moment of pure terror when

you let go of the strut and watch the plane fly away without you.



                                * * *



     Sunday night, Table Bluff.  Another beery event.  I sit in my tent as the

fabric around me billows in chill evening breeze, the rain mercifully past.

Outside, in all directions, a party rages on -- fueled by an open bar,

driftwood fires, and the relentless enthusiasm of this playful microculture.



     Yes, it has been quite a night.  On a windswept dune the banquet was laid,

a gift from Blue Coach sponsor Fred Deo:  candelabras, linen tablecloths, fine

china, champagne, a crew of eight, and a spread of robust delicacies far

removed from the usual camp fare. Deviled eggs with caviar.  Crab Louie.  Peel

'n eat shrimp.  Pickled okra.  Exotic salads, artichoke hearts, and the

requisite assortment of cakes.  All this naturally spawned no end of toasts and

banter, as over 50 of us sat in the cold drizzle, folding chairs sunk to their

cross-members in soft sand, the violent appetites of hard miles the

irresistable force that easily conquered plates piled high with exquisitely

movable objects.



     Ah, camp cooking.



     All this followed day 2 of the race.  At 8 AM, the sculptures began

hitting Humboldt Bay...



     Pausing long enough to check their flotation and propulsion systems, the

riders ran the twin gauntlets of amplified razzing by The Great Razooly and the

relentless press of the crowd.  Then... down the ramp and <splash!> into the

Bay.  At this point, subtle differences in machine design philosophy became as

obvious as they had been on the loose, sucking sand of Dead-man's Drop.  Some

smoothly took to the water, kicked up a mini rooster-tail from their

paddlewheels, and easily made the 2-mile crossing to Table Bluff.  Others

floundered as their drive systems tangled with seaweed; still others discovered

fundamental flaws with untested last-minute flotation apparatus and began the

slow, depressing process of sinking.  The unlucky were towed ignominiously

across the bay, while others made the trek in an hour or so and emerged amid

cheers on the other side.



     I went around the long way, over the hills, pedaling with Maggie and the

trailer-borne trappings of our life.  Occasionally, groups of spectators would

shout:  "Hey!  You're going the wrong way!"  To further confuse these

less-perceptive onlookers, I masking-taped a thin strip of styrofoam on my

fairing and told them it was flotation gear...



     The evening beach party grew boisterous, with a whole population of

crazies gathered around the driftwood fire in this tent city, swapping kinetic

tales and generally whooping it up.  But strange machines lurked in the dunes

to surprise the unwary -- I crawled wobbly from my tent in the middle of the

night and came face-to-face with a giant blue dragon, luminous in the

smoke-diffused glow of a dozen campfires.



                                * * *



     Day 3.  This IS a normal Monday morning, isn't it?  I awoke to the patter

of rain on the megatent, started coffee, and listened to the hungover grumbling

stirs of the kinetic yankees as they blinked away the grit of a too-short night

on a too-lumpy dune.  Cold, windy rain.  Greasy hands numbly tweaking black,

water-beaded drive components.  Forced grins, the camaraderie a dim shadow of

their earlier exuberance.



     One by one, leaving tractor tracks in the wet sand, they rolled off into

the murk, bound for Drizzle Point, two crossings of the Eel River, and the

infamous Slimy Slope that greets the first arrivals with mere mud and torments

latecomers with the deep mucus of well- churned, organically rich swampland.



     But I managed to miss that part.  We dozed in the rain until the dunes

were vacant and only the smoldering campfires and logistically detailed 2-meter

net traffic remained as evidence of our friends' 3- day ordeal.  For the

glory...



                                * * *



     So.  Here we are, again in Eureka, in the home of Duane and Micki as if

the past 5 months never happened.  Only now, the last set of bike problems has

been replaced by a new set, and out there on the street is the brown van with

WORDY license plate -- part nemesis, part convenience.  We have complete

freedom of choice now:  there's no compelling reason to drive south and leave

from the Bay Area... nor do I feel like pedaling away from here (with 150 miles

of narrow, winding, logger-infested road between Eureka and the next major

town).



     So maybe we'll drive to Seattle and head east into the Canadian Rockies.

Or maybe we'll drive around and do show-n-tells for our equipment sponsors

until Learned Infuriation gets my long-overdue book printed and renders all

this media coverage useful.  Hell, maybe we'll rent a house and build a kinetic

sculpture, surviving on odd jobs and long-distance freelancing in this land of

faltering economy in our own quest for glory.  Or maybe we'll... well, who

knows.  I'll tell you after we do it.



     I suppose too many options are better than too few, though sometimes I

envy those who don't spend part of every day grappling with trade-offs.



     Off to bed.  We're all suffering from PKSD (Post-Kinetic Stress Disorder),

and all this talk of pedaling wipes me out.