Kinetic Sculpture Racing serves as a great escape from the monotony of many humans' strictly regimented, day-to-day lives. Those who have ever been bashful about loosening up and acting like a goofball in public need not have worried Saturday morning at the third annual Prescott Valley Kinetic Sculpture Race across from the Civic Center off Lakeshore Drive.
All was well for the 2008 race's 10-team field as each group successfully assembled a non-motorized cart, dressed up in crazy costumes, hopped in their contraptions and completed a short course complete with dirt and paved surfaces.
Just ask the five-member "Seussian Pedal Tractor" team, which operated a flamboyant vehicle complete with two large steel-tube spoke wheels.
Royce Carlson of Prescott, whose group members all wore striped tights and tutus in the spirit of children's author Dr. Seuss, designed and built the device.
He attached 32 old shoes around the circumference of both wheels for added effect.
This past year, Carlson was a judge for the competition, but he elected to join in on the excitement for this race.
"I spent one day a week for a couple months working on it," Carlson said of the tractor.
Another fine example that the spirit of the race is alive and kicking was the eight-person "Purple People Eaters," who wore white and black makeup and costumes that had a Halloween feel.
They decorated a ghoulish looking four-wheel cart that had a miniature skeleton holding a bag full of eyeballs on the front dash.
People Eater leader Doug Lindenstein referred to the pedal-powered unit as "a monster disguising itself as a graveyard in hopes that people will come to visit and not leave." Wow.
"This event provides us with an opportunity to meet a lot of people who are willing to let their hair down," said Lindenstein, who referred to himself as the "Hanging Judge."
For the third straight year, Internet-based college North Central University also participated in the race - this time with the "Smart and Green" car, which encourages people to "compute and not commute" to reduce carbon emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles.
"You stay home and go to your university rather than drive long distances and go to a brick-and-mortar school," said Gary Waltman, NCU's systems administrator.
Cythia Jones, chairperson of Prescott Valley's Arts and Culture Commission, organized this year's race, which is modeled in the spirit of the sport that recently deceased Californian Hobart Brown founded in 1969.
The 2008 course, designed by kinetic racing fanatic Rick Hartner, was modified because of construction on the new PV public library next to the Civic Center.
In the first two years, the race's start and finish line was positioned in the vacant lawn west of the center, where the library will eventually stand.
Hartner, who has been involved with Kinetic Sculpture Racing since 1980, also made all of the elegant melded steel awards for the competition, which were handed out at the end.
"In most areas where they do this, they have nice features that you can steer the course through," Hartner said. "Well, here we don't have that available. So we have to create our own thing."
The route began in a field next to Liberty Traditional School at 3300 N. Lake Valley Road before winding parallel to Lakeshore Drive and onto Main Street.
From there, competitors did a few different loops before returning to Lake Valley field and ending with a plunge into a mud pit near the finish line. The route did not take much longer than 45 minutes to complete.
"This is quite an abbreviated course compared to most sculpture racing courses," said Hartner, referring to existing races in California, Maryland, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon and Washington state. "But it's still great fun."
