Think Tank 2016

In 2016 I heard about a new event called the Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race. It was a challenge to build an all-terrain, human powered, amphibious vehicle which was also a piece of art. I roped in my friend Carl and said that we already know how to build weird bicycles having built many for SCUL, Boston’s friendly neighborhood bicycle chopper gang. I said that we should challenge ourselves by building something that either doesn’t have pedals or doesn’t have wheels. After some design brainstorming we chose to build a tank using the tracks of 2 old snow mobiles. This was the first time the event had ever been run so we didn’t know what to expect, nor did the organizers. So when we asked how long we had to complete the 5 mile corse they said “take as long as you need!”. We said “ok, just so you know our TOP speed is 2MPH”. We were so slow that the police that were blocking traffic told us to get off the road so they could open it back up. The next year they added a new rule just for us that your sculpture must be faster than the bubbles coming out of its cannon. We did not finish, earned the Golden Dinosaur Award for best breakdown, and had a blast doing it.

See more of our journey up to and during the race in this fantastic documentary by Chelmsford TV.

The Hamster Ball 2017-present

We built “the ball” or “the hamster ball” in 2017 and it has been in every race since then under a new name and art theme.

2017 Ice Cream Floats!

In 2017 we had taken a trip out to Northern California to see the Kinetic Grand Championship. The originator of this style of kinetic sculpture racing. That race is 50 miles over 3 days with 2 different water crossings, massive sand dunes, and other obstacles. The machines there have to be on another level compared to our little race in Lowell, MA. We backtracked on my original no pedals or no wheels challenge realizing that this was harder than it looked at first glance. We looked into making complex gear trains with many chains and cogs and had some plans that may have worked but the parts cost was adding up quickly. We decided to go a simpler route and instead of creating one drivetrain that could power the machine on land, in mud, and over water we just had 3 separate systems that were hyper focused on dong that one job. Normal bikes are great for the road, so we used two normal bikes with stock 3x7 drive trains and normal bike wheels. Calling back to Carl’s childhood obsession with monster trucks we knew that one way to get through the mud was to just have really big wheels. So we used the two bikes and the back and one really big 8 foot diameter wheel at the front. This wheel didn’t really need a drive train with complex gears. It was big enough that we could just climb on it and push and pull it with our body weight. We also reused a small hand cranked propeller we had left over from the tank the previous year for water propulsion. In 2017 we titled the sculpture Ice Cream Floats because the ball was sort of like a giant ball of ice cream and we didn’t think through the art part until the very end. This earned us our first ACE award for completing all of the obstacles without outside help. We also earned both the People’s Choice and Pilot’s Choice awards and the Engineering award.

2017 Race film by Chelmsford TV

2018 The Lottery!

In 2018 I didn’t ride the sculpture see Lobster Roll below but Carl who missed riding the previous year took it out. The sculpture was largely unchanged for 2018 with the only major addition being we tried to use a sailboat winch and rope wrapped around the ball to drive it through the mud. The art theme for this year was The Lottery!. We filled the ball with balloons with numbers on them like power ball and asked people to take bets on what the last number unpopped would be. I don’t remember the winning number but it was irrational. Either e or pi. The winch worked but not well so we abandoned that plan in future years. The highlight of the race was Carl dropping the winch handle in the river on the way out of the water and having to jump in after it. The machine got its 2nd ACE award.

Photo by Tim Carter

2018 Race video from Chelmsford TV:

2019 The Big Red Nose

I was back on in 2019 with guest pilot Matt where we themed the sculpture “The Big Red Nose” and dressed as clowns and gave out over a hundred clown noses to the crowd. The big modification this year was moving the front floats lower and outboard. The original design had a single float in the middle of the ball which worked fine and was very stable but it caused a lot of drag in the water as 2/3 of the ball was under water. We moved to 2 smaller floats on removable outriggers since we were already at the maximum allowed width of the sculpture for the road. The new floats both raise the ball out of the water to reduce drag and as shown in the photo above the machine would start to tip when the ball ran aground coming out of the water. This made it much more stable in and out of the water. In 2019 we were one of only two teams to make it through the mud pit and that lead us to be crowned Ace Champions. This was our third time in a row ACEing the race.

Photo by Jennifer Myers

2019 Race video by Lowell Telemedia Center

2022 Life’s a Beach… Ball

After a long hiatus for a global pandemic the race returned in 2022 and so did we. I told everyone who asked how we through we would do that we were the returning champions and we had no intention of defending that title. We made no modifications to the machine, just some basic maintenance and our theme Life’s a Beach…Ball reflected that we were just there to have a good time, put on a good show for the crowd, and support all the other racers. This was actually the first time that Carl and I have raced on the same machine since we built the tank back in 2016 so it was a special one for us. We ACE’d again and took home the twisted sprocket award for best mud pit performance when the sculpture nearly ran over Carl as he hung off the front of the ball as shown below.

Photo by Marte Media

Lobster Roll: The 50th Annual Grand Kinetic Championship

In 2018 after 2 successful races in Lowell we got word that it was the 50th anniversary of the Grand Kinetic Championship race that started it all. We got the dream team together of builders and races to build a new machine capable of tackling the 50 mile, 3 day monstrosity that is the original kinetic sculpture race. Myself and Carl joined Jay Diengott, aka Pastry Queen my partner and fellow builder and racer, Michal Roundy, one of the directors of the Lowell Race, and Jay Hungate, another Lowell racer, skilled builder and sculptor. We decided that if we were going to make something to represent New England in the California race we should make a giant lobster. I designed the drivetrain out of off the shelf bicycle parts to minimize cost and custom fabrication. Each of the 3 pilots had an independent drive to the wheel they sat above with a 72 speed gear train to work with. Three shifters per person in a 3x3x8 configuration. Pastry Queen did most of the frame welding and was the team powerhouse taking the front seat for the whole race and took care of feeding the team through the race weekend. Jay Hungate and Carl designed and fabricated the adjustable flotation systems which could raise the sculpture up out of the water for better paddle wheel efficiency and less drag. Michael was or organizer and inside man with Local contacts who got us a place to stay and drove our fundraising efforts to pay for materials, gas and lodging to build and haul this thing across the country and back. We didn’t manage to ACE because the sculpture was too heavy, and our gears and sand tracks couldn’t quite go up the steep sand dunes. We made it onto the beach but climbing back off the beach we stripped a freewheel and were down to 2 wheel drive. We had a spare but decided from that point we would give up our ACE and just make sure we finished which we did. We were awarded the Goldiest of the Gold 50th Anniversary award for our go get’em attitude and our work spreading sculpture racing across the country.

Since returning from the west coast the Lobster has become a mascot of the Lowell race and is used for promotion and events. We get a team of volunteers to ride it in the race every year after I give it a quick tune up. It probably has more miles on in than most of the Lowell race machines will ever get from its one 50 mile outing in California.