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The Main Street Drag was fantastic! We had a great group, the web cams worked nearly flawlessly, the kids were almost all non-destructive.

We broadcast for about 3 1/2 hours, and the only glitch I noticed was the first time we switched from one cam to another, it got stuck and uploaded the same image (the last image from the previous cam) for about 20 minutes. I think maybe because the new cam was plugged into a different port on the firewire hub? Whatever the reason, I carefully tried switching cams again later and it seemed to work fine.

The pleasant surprise was the battery life. The Main Street Drag is perfectly designed for this -- a half hour at a time at each school, with 15-20 minutes of driving between each school. So we had time to recharge the computer battery off the DC adaptor between schools. We quit webcasting after 3 1/2 hours because I was concerned about the cell phone minutes, but the computer said it had 2 hours of battery life to go, and the cell phone was showing 3/4 battery full. I never even needed to spare phone battery!

The big charger lasted longer than I had expected too. We ran the bubble machine off it, using an AC/DC inverter. Those things use a lot of power so I wasn't expecting it to last that long. Maybe 45 minutes to an hour? Well it lasted the whole morning with no signs of running out! We only used it at the schools because we were concerned about driving with the new mounting frame. We just don't know how much wind pressure it can handle. But still, we think it was running for about 1.5 hours.

The kids were terrific! I can't even describe how much fun it is to pull into a school and see a wave of elementary school kids come running towards us, laughing and cheering. At one school the kids were chanting "Art Car! Art Car!" as we pulled up. And at another, the smallest kids had made signs that said "Go Art Cars!" or "I Heart Art Cars!" and they held up the signs for us as we drove in.

There were only a couple of kids who had to be stopped from yanking on the toys, and only one of the two was rude about it. The other kids were all great. And they went crazy for the bubble machine. They'd jump up and down, playing in the bubbles and trying to catch them. As Georg said, for kid appeal nothing gives you the bang for the buck of a bubble machine. We owe R U Game bigtime for telling us what brand of machine to get.

At the first school, a group of middle school aged girls stopped me and asked, "Excuse me, are your clothes from the 70s?" (I was wearing my green dress with the standing collar and a matching headband.) I didn't understand her at first -- it was sometimes hard to hear anything over the din -- but after she repeated herself I told her no, it's from 1967, but she was close! If it hadn't been so noisy I might have explained that the dress is new but made from a 1967 sewing pattern. But I didn't want to get into that in the middle of all the bedlam.

A lot of the kids noticed the webcams, and asked me about them. Unfortunately I was walking up and down the line and missed the only group of kids who were technologically savvy enough to have a conversation about them. Georg told me they were asking him if the cams were USB, how was the cell modem hooked up, etc.

We had a really nice group of drivers on our route. I chatted the most with Sarah, the leader of our group, her husband Stuart, the guy who drives the "Child Advocacy" Ferrarri, and the driver of Vincent's Dreams. At lunch afterwards we sat with the photographer who had accompanied us and his wife. A couple of out-of-towners who are staying with them joined us at the table, and it turned out to be Andy the spork guy! I met Andy in Houston two years ago, when he was riding in "Unexplained Bacon," and saw him again at Artscape 2002 driving a Space Invaders car. He didn't go to Artscape last year but I'm hoping he'll come again this year. He's now driving a car with big fins that the kids all called Batman car.

The only yucky part of the morning was that one school made us park in this huge dirt lot, like a torn up parking lot or something. It was dusty and rough, with no shade, just the sun beating down on us. I think if anyone didn't yet have a headache from the noise of the kids and the police escort sirens, they had one by the time we left that school.

Well I could write endlessly about the morning but I want to get my photos uploaded & also get a shower before we meet Peggy and Chris at 5. Tonight we're going to see a rough cut of Harrod Blank's new movie. Should be fun!