In the beginning there was no mud
No one fully understands what makes an apparently normal person get into kinetic sculpture racing.
This strange behavior began in 1969 in Ferndale, California, south of Eureka on the Humboldt Coast. Local sculptor Hobart Brown (a.k.a. Our Glorious Founder) noticed his son's broken tricycle sitting around the yard of his home in Ferndale. So he welded a bunch of stuff on to it. Soon it had two seats and a roof. It kept falling over because it was over 6 feet tall, so Hobart added two extra wheels to stabilize it."
It began with a sporting bet
Several days later, in a tavern, Hobart entered into a sporting bet with a fellow artist who claimed that he too could build an artistic tricycle and that it would beat Hobart's in a race. The contest was to be a two-block sprint down the main street of town.
On the day of the race, Hobart's machine attracted group of by-standers, one of which was the local congressman who asked to take a spin before the "official" race. A newspaper photographer happened to be there and shot the congressman on the sculpture. It made the local front page and was picked up nationally by the Associated Press. Kinetic racing was born!
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