Did you see the amazing El Pulpo Mechanico fire-belching octomechanical wonder on the playa this year? Made by Kinetic Sculpture Racer Duane Flatmo and team, who also did the Kinetic Cab Company the year before where you could go and ride one of many pedal-powered creations. Good stuff! I found out about KSR for the first time when a certain Elliot of eplaya fame rolled by me on the playa on his monster Hoosier-wheeled Pear County Chopper bike, back in 2004 or 5 or so? All I remember was I wanted to build a trike with wheels like that, which I did and brought it to the playa a couple times before remembering 'oh yeah, there is a race for these things...'
Anyways, tweeked the trike so it would float and attempted the Ventura KSR race for the first time in 2007 http://www.kineticrace.com/2007.html, had a blast, and am hoping to get a few more of you crazy creative folks invloved to race with.
Here's a good video of the Ventura race this year: http://youtu.be/86h_ter7rSc
Basically a Kinetic Sculpture Racer is a people-powered all-terrain creation able to move on land, water, sand, and mud while showing off brilliant flashes of engineering and artistic prowess...and having a whole lot of fun
As a bonus they are great playa transport too. So if you want to add some more fun to your year look into building a craft for the KSR events. Hope to see you at the races 
Message me for any questions and look at this fabulous article by the one and only Elliot himself on building a KSR machine, hosted on the Baltimore KSR site http://kineticbaltimore.com/KSR/howto.asp. Best wishes
Tiahaar
