Before I forget, here are some photos Georg took that fill in some of the gaps in mine:
Here's the view of AVAM from the hill. The colorful object on the right is a Vollis Simpson whirlygig.
Here's his photo of the eyeball people. His is much clearer than mine because he was better at keeping his lens dry. Too bad that guy was in the way, otherwise this is a great photo.
This is Hunter posing with the dragon. She and Georg walked around for a bit looking at the entries, while Pru and I were out on the pier taking photos. Due to the "bribe" thing, Hunter made out like a bandit. Everyone gave her stuff: candy, cookies, stickers, beads. I think the best thing she got was a cookie from the Alice in Wonderland tea party that said "Eat Me." Georg asked them if it would make her larger or smaller, and they said she'd have to try it and find out!
And here's a surreptitious shot of Pru and Hunter. Hunter is in the pink Hello Kitty jacket and Pru is in brown slacks and a black jacket. You can see me in the background, just to the right of them, standing on the edge of the rocks with my arm up. I don't typically like having my photo taken, so this is about as good as it gets.
Now back to my photos. I think when I left off, Bumpo had just hit the water. As I mentioned before, Bumpo floated amazingly well. However, steering seemed to be a bit of a problem. On the way out into the harbor, they plowed right into the pylon. With some direction from a pit crew member standing on the pier, they were able to back up and go around it.
But then the same thing happened on the way back! I think maybe the person steering was in the back, and couldn't see where they were going? Whatever the problem, they backed up again and made it around the second pylon.
Right before the duck hit the water, we noticed some real ducks swimming around the pier. I tried to get a photo of the real ducks and the kinetic duck, but they swam away.
The duck was very impressive. They were another group to use paddles on the bicycle wheels for propulsion, and just use the oars to steer. Which allowed them to move a lot faster than the ones doing all the work by paddling with oars.
I heard it was a school project. Which would explain the throng of youthful supporters shouting "Fear the Duck!" and making duck noises on kazoos.
Next up was the wedding party. Pru said that they represented the wedding of the Utz potato chip girl and the National Bohemian beer man, two local brands. I'm familiar with Utz, they sell that in Delaware, but I never heard of National Bohemiam before.
The wedding cart had a lot of trouble completing the water obstacle. They took on a lot of water and, I heard, were actually in some danger of sinking. That would have been exciting, but I'm glad they made it.
For sheer attitude, my favorites were the Shrimptastics. It appeared to be a shrimp sandwich, complete with lettuce, tomatoes and shrimp, with "Shrimptastics" emblazoned on the side. The pilots and pit crew all wore the cutest shrimp costumes, and the lead pilot kept screaming "We're SHRIMPTASTIC!" They were so cool.
After they came out of the water, we walked over and got stickers from them. I asked them, "So are you guys, like, shrimptastic? Cause I'm not really clear on that." Which set off a chorus of "SHRIMPTASTIC!" shouts. I think they were art students, there was a sign on the side for an art college.
These guys had an odd entry. When I first saw it, I thought it was a mobile confessional or something. But Alix pointed out that they were wearing surgical masks so it must have been a M*A*S*H unit. We talked to them too, and found out that they had spent, and I quote, "90% of [their] time on working out the engineering, and 1/2 hour at the end building the structure." They said it was supposed to be an ambulance, their name was SARS Patrol and they had planned some clever stuff which didn't work out because of the weather. And the fact that they had spent only a half hour building it. They said they would definitely allow more time for construction next year. Also, they ran the entire course sitting backwards.
Here come the volcano people. You can see the nice big paddles coming off the sides of their wheels in the photo. They (along with the frog) were probably the fastest through the water obstacle. If they had still been smoking, it would have been the coolest thing ever. But it was still pretty darn cool.
This is a shot of the crowd as a whole. Not everyone is in there, some of the entries were up at the top getting ready to move on to Patterson Park. But that's most of them.
We thought everyone was done and we were actually getting ready to go, when we realized that Alice's Tea Party was in the water. I ran back down to the pier and got a couple of decent shots. It was so impressive. They got around the oar problem by having the oars come out holes in the sides, like a Viking ship. And the oars were shaped like teaspoons! I think Georg told me they spent 2 months building it, and I can believe it.
This is the last one we saw in the water. After him it looked like there might have been a straggler or two, but the front of the line was heading out to the next stop, so we jumped back in the car and started following the cones again. At some point the road narrowed so we had to drive in the race lane. I think we were following the frog. It was funny because we were in Undersea Mah Jongg, so people assumed we were part of the show. People waved at us and we waved back, it was just like being in a parade.
Next up: Patterson Park! Sand! Mud! Lots and lots of mud!
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