If you’re standing on a street corner, and a neon green brain, a psychedelic hippopotamus, and a fire breathing rainbow zebra striped unicorn pass by, it can only mean one thing; You’re in Arcata for the start of the 50th Annual Kinetic Sculpture Race. This being a big anniversary of the crazy event, there were a lot of entries this year.

It was hard to pick a favorite this year, but the Cheshire Cat was both cute, and interesting from an engineering perspective. With 6 wheels I was wondering how well it turned, but the middle pair was engineered to turn at a different angle from the front. I should have taken a close look at it when it was parked to see how they managed that.

As usual there were many of the previous year’s chassis reincarnated with new art, such as Melvin, Puppet Show, and the Bounce Bike.

Squid Vicious was my favorite name, Mater was cute and fast, and Queen of Pop not only left the plaza covered in popcorn, but the limited driver visibility also resulted in the race’s first crash. Fortunately, no injuries to the bicyclist they ran into.