Camping and the Kinetic Sculpture Race 2008

This past weekend was the Kinetic Sculpture Race in Baltimore. Robena, Phil, and Twyla came up for the weekend. Rather than try to cram everyone into our tiny house we decided that we would reserve campsites at nearby Patapsco Valley St. Park.

Yeti sighting:


Hanging out at the playground:


Jamie was about the happiest we have ever seen him. He loved playing in the leaves (and unfortunately the road). We brought a playpen with us so he could be near the fire but not too close. He loved it. He went to bed with no fuss each night and when he woke up and looked out of the tent and realized he was still camping he had the biggest smile you could imagine. We will be camping as much as possible this summer, I believe!

Saturday morning we hopped in the truck and took a quick drive over to Baltimore for the Race. Christine and I decided the best way to see the race was to actually ride the race course with all the sculptures so we loaded Jamie in the trailer and took off. The course is about 15 miles long winding from Federal Hill, past the inner Harbor, and Fells Point, over to the Camden waterfront, then up to Patterson Park and back with several stops along the way. It's probably not a ride you would do on a normal day, but with roads closed and traffic somewhat controlled, it's a pretty nice way to explore downtown Baltimore.

Traffic Jam KSR 2008.


Robena and Family drove and met us at various rendezvous points along the way.

Twyla was vying for the Miss Congeniality award:


Jamie posing as a Kinetinaut:


You see strange things at Kinetic Sculpture Races:


Overall the Race wasn't as smoothly run as past races we've attended. We ended up waiting over an hour for our police escort for the final leg of the race. Then we quickly out ran the escort and ended up having to wait through all the lights which was really unfortunate. The last leg is almost entirely downhill and you can really get rolling and is normally a lot of fun. What normally would have taken 15 - 20 minutes to ride took almost an hour.

We finally made it back to the campsite around 6 pm. We left around 9:30 am so it was a long day. We cooked a big ol' pot of chili and put Jamie and Twyla to bed. The rest of us hung out eating our fill of S'mores by the campfire.

More pictures of the race from pedalpushersonline.com (Look for Jamie sightings in the last link, he was hamming it up for the photographer)
http://pedalpushersonline.com/galleries/ksr_opener_web/
http://pedalpushersonline.com/galleries/ksr_water_web/
http://pedalpushersonline.com/galleries/ksr_finale_web/