2023 "Engines and Dragons"
Kyle isn't your everyday dragon. He can't fly due to poor vision. He can't breathe fire. In fact, he hates even being called a dragon due to the stereotype that they frequently start fires (even though it may be accurate). To correct this misconception, he joined CAP Kinetic’s Fire Brigade and now rides Engine 20 based out of Overlea (Baltimore, MD).
Opening Ceremonies
At the opening ceremonies, as the returning 2022 champions, we were given the honor of lighting the "Almost Eternal Flame." We then learned that this honor was merely standing there awkwardly watching AVAM personnel light it.
But then AVAMs lighter didn't work. Things were awkward for a minute. Eventually Eric took one out of his backpack and handed it to the torch official, thus saving the ceremony. The whole thing looked staged but it wasn't. He had packed it just in case we needed emergency heat shrink tubing. Lesson learned- Firefighters should always carry fire.
LeMan's Start
Our costumes earned us the honor of jumping over a photographer during the LeMans start (a repeat of 2022's opening). We hoped that meant that the award for Best Costumes was locked in if we didn't get something better.
Then the race started and everything went downhill from there. Correction… everything felt UPHILL from there.
BRAKES
our last major remodel was "the year of the shark" -2019. in all previous years our brakes were absolute crap and we had to be careful not to go too fast. In 2019 I installed an aftermarket brake pedal/master cylinder/booster that was designed to add power braking to antique cars. It worked pretty well, but the brake booster was designed to work off engine vacuum. I finally bought a vacuum pump for it this year and we finally had the ability to stop like a real car. That is important when people plus vehicle equals at least 1500 pounds.
We also wanted some redundancy, AND a parking brake, so we installed a rear caliper attached to a hand brake. But the $40 amazon hand brake had -4AN fittings that modern vehicles don't agree with, thus they are not stocked ANYWHERE. The day before the race we finally found the proper arrangement of fittings to make the new parking/ auxiliary brake work. It definitely helped slow us down but wasn't strong enough to work as a stand alone parking brake. Unknown to us at the time, that "slowing us down" feature turned out to be a real bitch.
After the LeMans start, we struggled up fed hill, but that seemed normal. Then coming down the backside we didn't seem to be hitting the same speeds as we did with Chronosaurus (22mph). As we hit flat ground coming around AVAM it became apparent that something was terribly wrong and we were slowing down the race. I blamed Kyle and those extra sheep he ate before the race. He blamed the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival for being the same weekend of the race.
Somewhere on Boston street, it finally clicked that the only thing we had changed in the last 24 hours was the parking brake. I whacked it, pumped it, cursed at it a bit, and even though it didn't look any different, suddenly we no longer felt like Sysyphus.
To summarize- we drove the whole 1st third of the race with the brake on.
Drivetrain issues
During that whole time, we also had intermittent drivetrain issues. Position 2 had an intermittent chain jam that couldn't be cleared easily so he was only pedaling half the time. Position 3 had made it through 2022 with no issues. Plus it made it through the test drives with no issues. Naturally, come race day, the left pedal crank fell off. Learning from our maiden voyage in 2017, I packed spare crank bolts. But a new bolt didn't fix it and the crank continued to fall off every 20 revolutions. We sent a pit crew on a side quest to get a new crank/pedal and on the second try he came back with what we needed.
We pulled into Canton Harbor with high hopes for the rest of the day.
Everyone knows how that ended.
Water-logged
The non-Kinetinaut laymen love to point out "it was obvious it wouldn't float." But that's what we have been shooting for. An amphibious vehicle that doesn't look like one. Chronosaurus didn't look like it would float, but it did awesome and Chip lost 5 bucks betting against it. A 1968 American Lafrance pumper doesn't have pontoons, why should we?! Plus, we hate waiting. Strolling right to the front of the "ready for water" line while everyone else is inflating pontoons makes you feel like an expert… regardless of actual qualifications.
But, this was a new year. New decorations with new complications. Here's the list of 7 things that contributed to the capsize.
1. Higher Center of Gravity. The frame was designed to smash 4 recumbent positions into the smallest space possible. Then we got a steering box. The particular Nissan box that was given to us made it necessary to put the steering wheel in the back. For the person in the back to see where they were steering, they needed to be higher than the people in the front. Add in 36" wheels and suddenly it's a bitch to find a place for floatation without elevating the center of gravity even further. Kyle insisted on seeing, too, so him and his big head increased the center of gravity even higher.
2. Balanced floatation. Stuffing the wheels with foam helps with some pontoon floatation, but giving those wheels room to steer left and right takes away most of the other room for outward buoyancy. What we were left with was a small area that we stuffed with spray foam in order to meet the more important goal of having a pretty piece of artwork.
The "middle float" has a displacement of roughly 3000 pounds, which is more than enough to make the sculpture float. On previous versions of the sculpture, that float had a significant pontoon built into it and we relied on that for stability for the whole sculpture. We cut some of that pontoon out this year because the wheels were rubbing. The person in charge of that got rather aggressive. We stuffed the back bumper with foam, but the worry about adding floatation onto the rear of the sculpture was that it would force the front of the sculpture into the water, where there was far less pontoon, thus reducing stability.
3. Reduced Ballast. This year we cut 50 pounds off the front axle, which previously provided ballast.
4. MORE FOAM. We cut 30 pounds of steel from each of the front tires and replaced it with foam. The result was a front end that did EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what we were trying to avoid by not over-foaming the back: the now SUPER BUOYANT front end pushed the rear end into the water, thus negating the perfectly balanced middle pontoon.
Without changes 1-4 we would have done awesome. But here are the straws that broke the camel's back.
5. “Don’t go out too far!” I think most of our mom's yelled that to us throughout childhoold and we should have listened this time. The wheels take on water. We screwed bike treads onto the wheels, so water comes in via that route. Plus we try to reduce our carbon footprint by sticking up-cycled bits of foam in between the spokes, so water gets in via those spaces as well. One of my crucial flaws in leadership this year was that I forgot that aces had to go all the way around a further-out buoy. I thought the only real additional challenge of acing was paddling, steering, and getting off the boat ramp unassisted. We made it 3/4 through the ACE version and if it weren't for my insistence on attempting to ace this year, we probably would have completed the regular challenge.
6. LEAN!
The first pucker moment is pretty obvious from the videos and occurred within 15 seconds of hitting the water. I thought we were going down right then and there. In previous years I insisted that a pre-qualification to doing the water challenge was to come whitewater rafting with me on the Upper Gauley River. That training paid off. Despite not having a training talk beforehand, I yelled, "lean in!" and everyone went into instinctual survival mode. It bought us another 4 minutes.
I was amazed that leaning in saved us, but was confused that when we reached the balance point there was always an over-correction in the opposite direction. It took a couple of near-flips for me to realize that Kyle was attached via loose ratchet straps and was just going with the flow, throwing himself just slightly in one direction or the either. Finally he got on board when I told him, "len deg inn i midten av båten ellers vil vi alle få hepatitt"
7. I'm calling it 7, but it's really part of 6, and would have never mattered if everything else wouldn't have screwed us first, but the final straw was a missed "lean" command. When we came around that buoy the crowd cheered and I really thought we had a chance. The main problem was that we were heavy on the right side, but the whole obstacle is a left hand turn. So really, the right side has to do most of the paddling, but leaning over the side to paddle further threw us off balance on the right. In the chaos of paddle, lean, paddle, a lean command was missed and our fate was sealed.
Water casualties
T handle hex wrench for pedals($2), but it was part of a set and I'm really annoyed about one of them missing.
Amazon amplifier $45
Vacuum pump for brakes $35
On board air compressor $50
Milwaukee 12v battery $20
Black and Decker trash drill (front spinner) $0
Google pixel 4a $200
Vintage red FD lights (from my dad's FD days) $200
2 way radios $30
Genes wedding ring ____?
A near miss
Our flip was definitely a "near miss" as we call it in the fire department. And by that, I mean, "The real fire department." While I happily took on the character of a pretend firefighter, I hesitantly acknowledge that's what I do IRL. I'm also a trained swift water rescue technician and rescue diver. When that thing went over, I knew exactly what to do. The two guys that rafted with me before knew too.
The fourth was never given the "Yo, for real, this thing can kill you" safety talk.
That was another Captain Fail on race day. Prior to even approaching the water I thought I was the only one that would be in a precarious spot due to the entanglement risk of the steering wheel. The 4th was on the high side of the roll. I failed to inform him that when we rolled he would first find himself thrown 3 feet upwards, then the weight of the sculpture would come crashing down upon him. If he would have failed to have gotten out of the sculpture, he would have had to fight the buoyancy of his life jacket to dive underneath the side of the engine before coming to the surface.
If his life jacket would have gotten snagged on a pedal, he would have been outright screwed Reviewing the footage, his helmet never actually went under water, but we all definitely drank harbor water that day.
I find near death experiences exhilarating because there is something wrong with me. Most people do not enjoy those experiences. The 4th person fit into that latter category. Also, although he survived the flip, he lost his wedding ring in the ordeal, so we won't mark him as safe until he tells his wife.
Rescue crews
Mad props to the rescue crews. In the videos you can see that they knew what was coming and were hovering around us like sharks (especially the guy in the shark costume). It ended up taking the 4 of us on the sculpture, 1 extra teammate that jumped in, 1 kayaker, and 2 FD rescue swimmers to flip the thing back over.
We were probably one of the most dramatic (and well documented) flips in the history of the Baltimore race. Admittedly, I am comparing a personal experience to still photos of previous disasters, so I don't have any real comparison. But yeah, it sucked for us and I felt like we should have earned an award for it. Luckily, there is one and it is “The Golden Flipper.” (Spoiler alert: we didn't get it.)
I was ready to end the race right then and there. But the most aggravating thing about the race is the amount of hours that go into the sculptures for such a short period of glory. F-35s have a better ratio of maintenance to operational hours than we do. 45 minutes of riding wasn't enough glory for the amount of work we put in. So we ringed our clothes, smacked some water out of Kyle and continued the struggle. Being the second to last sculpture in the water didn't leave us with any down time to fix things. But again, we struggled on. Pit crew managed to replace position 3's crank and it held until that position developed a different fatal flaw (foreshadowing).
Uphill FOR REAL
This time without the brakes on! But going up Kenwood, position 2 broke a chain.We were too far behind the pack to stop to fix it. The rider on position 4 said he could use a break, so position 2 took over position 4. Position 4 thought he could just take the free ride in position 2, but was promptly dismissed from the sculpture and told to push. He eventually got left behind when the sculpture went down a hill. We assumed that we had lost him to Sharky’s (our neighborhood bar), but he was picked up by an AVAM golf cart.
Being definitively in last place, we took a shortcut through the park to get to the sand pit before it closed. As we approached the end of the line, we heard an ominous thunk. One of the front axles had fallen out of its u joint. It was another known flaw of the rebuild that was discovered during test drives and was "maybe fixed but probably not." Team A scrambled to replace position 2s chain. Team B scrambled to get the axle back in. Team C lifted the front of the sculpture so team B could do all that. Team D supervised from the shade of a nearby tree.
Miracles happened.
SAND PIT
Right as the sand pit was about to shut down we stormed it with all 4 positions working, hoping for the glory of an unassisted challenge conquered.
To add some pageantry to our D&D inspired theme, prior to every challenge we had planned on rolling a giant D20 that would predict the outcome of the plan of attack. There was no time for such spectacles, but apparently someone rolled a 7.
The sand pit conquered us. Position 1 (my position) had made it through the whole race without any problems. The stresses of such a commitment came at a cost. The freewheel on the main axle blew up and the pedals began to spin without doing anything.
Again, we had predicted this problem during test drive failures and had packed spare parts for it. But there was little time to fix it and the golf cart (with all the tools) was nowhere to be found. We decided to take the mud pit on with 3 people. Right as we were about to descend the hill to the mud pit, the axle popped out of its u joint again. The main danger with that issue was that the wheel was about to fall off the sculpture completely. Not a good thing on a curvy hill with innocent bystanders. Also not helping was that the motor for our brake booster drowned in Canton Harbor. As did the compressor for our air horn, so we no longer had the option of expressing, “Asking you to move out of the way was not a request.”
Remaining firmly in last place and at risk of losing our police escort down Lombard street, our battlefield fix was to remove the u joint and throw on shaft collars to try to keep the axles/wheel hub from falling out.
The Mud Pit
In 2022 we crippled one of the drivetrains and carried that team mate for ⅔ of the race. We even made it through most of the obstacles not needing help. Except in the mud pit. The mud pit gets us every year. Every kinetic sculpture team HATES the mud pit.
My formal complaint against the challenge is that the mud pit is on a hill. The uphill part of it. Mud, when found in its natural habitat, usually occurs at the base of a hill, where rainwater flows into a depression in the ground and mixes with loose dirt and creates a sticky, suction cup of a mess.
Creating an artificial one on a hill is just mean. Only 10% of kinetic sculptures get through it without being pushed by their pit crews. But the promise of a harder challenge brings hope of a higher glory.
We did recon on the mud pit and took measurements. The mud “HILL” is in the middle of a 4-5% incline that is about 175 feet long. Big sculptures tend to lose all their momentum right when they go over the first berm.
JUST FOR THE MUD PIT we designed a completely new bicycle gearing arrangement that we call a “parallel challenge gear.” Without getting too nerdy about it… It allows us to go from regular bike top speed all the way down to a 1:10 gear ratio. In other words, you have to spin the crank ten times just to get one revolution of the 36” wheel. But we pretty much broke all that stuff before even getting to the mud pit.
We made a feeble attempt to take on the mud pit with two positions, but the pit crew knew it was on them.
We tried to make a good show of it. The fire engine's mechanical siren was the only electronic that survived the capsize (except the headlights, which previously survived time traveling with chronosaurus). We approached it at a mind blowing power-walk speed. We got out solely due to the pit crew’s perseverance. Somehow mud got thrown into the switch for the siren and it continued to blast well after the challenge. Several people pulled wires frantically to get it to shut up. Once power was cut, it was silent for the rest of the race.
The last leg
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After the mud pit mere survival was the only objective. We crawled and pushed our way up to Patterson Pagoda having to stop several times to whack the wheel back on. We started to think that the golf cart would have to pull us back to AVAM or that we would have to call for the trailer. We put locktite on the shaft collar and just hoped that the wheel wouldn't fall off going down Lombard St.
Somehow that final fix lasted for the rest of the race. But we were still left with only 2 of 4 spots operational. Since the race happens to go by one of the pit crew members' houses, he was given the rest of the day off so we could travel a little lighter.
We had to take some pushing on hills, but we managed to stay with the tail end of the race, even passing a few sculptures that stopped for repairs or just gave up. Our plan was to cheat and just take Cross Street, thus getting to the Troegs quicker. But we got there somewhat easily. A team meeting was called at that intersection. The vote was left to the pit crew, since they would have to push the sculpture at every hill. The votes were somewhat tied with most people voting "indifferent." Just then the AVAM cart pulled up and advised us that one of the sculptures we had passed was still competing. As such, we were neatly situated at "Next to Last" which is an AWARD!
That sealed the deal. One last push. Well.... Several last pushes.
But we did it. Having a bear ("Working Hard, or Bearly Working") chasing us helped keep the motivation up.
Awards
I started the day with hopes of repeating Grand mediocre champion. Or simply completing the ACE. Art would have been cool too since hundreds of hours went into both Kyle AND the fire engine. And our costumes (especially the FIRE) were AWESOME.
We knew that we were also a contender for "sock creature of the universe, " but I shunned this award since it highlighted the efforts of just one person, instead of the collaborative efforts of the whole team. Truth be told, it really was the best damn sock puppet in the universe. It even had LEDs and exhaled smoke.
With that said, I drove a fire engine into the harbor. On purpose. And it flipped. We could have killed a teammate. We killed $500 of electronics. We screwed up all of our artwork. It took 8 people to flip it back over. Most teams quit the race after such a tragedy, but we suffered through. I thought Golden Flipper was a sure bet. But we must share the kinetic glory and we outshined in a different category. Sock puppet.
I was a little bitter about not getting one of the higher awards. One of the most disappointing things of my day was that I didn't get a chance to see any of the other sculptures up close. I was too busy doing last minute sculpture prep, opening ceremony shenanigans or just trying to get the sculpture working so we could finish the race. Because of that, I didn't see how much all the other teams had stepped up their game, and how great they really were.
When they gave us the award for Next to Last, I first shrugged it off as a simple award for not being last. Eventually I came to embrace it. It's not just about "not last place." It's a perseverance award. And that's exactly what we did all fricking day. Brakes on! Frack it, let's go anyways. Drown a dragon and carry an extra 50 pounds of water, whatever it let's keep going! Lift up the sculpture so we can put a wheel back on? No problem, I was already planning on calling out of work tomorrow! Push the sculpture uphill only to be left behind when it rolls down hill? Sure I'll walk!
What I am saying is that I am so damn proud of my pit crew. Every single person on the team was ready to quit at one point or another. Up by the pagoda when we realized we had to cut a person so the wheel wouldn't fall off, no one volunteered to leave. When cold beer and hot food was literally around the corner we took the long way just because we still could.
Sure, I do a lot of the welding on my own, but I need a team to get to the starting line. And a mediocre team to get to the finish! And a city full of friends to take pictures and videos of it all!
Thank you, Cap Kinetic Kinetinauts, Pit Crew and Art team. Thank you AVAM for letting us all get ridiculous for a day. Thank you to the Kinetic Baltimore Team for getting 98% of the photos appearing on this recap. Thank you to the City of Baltimore: the cheering residents, city leadership, and ESPECIALLY to my brothers across the line at Local #734 (Thanks for getting into the harbor with us!)
I can't wait for 2024!
Actually. I totally can. I need a break.
