Moon Buggy 1.0 - out and about the neighborhood
In the last few days before the 2006 Race, I finally had the sculpture together enough to try it out. These are some photos from those efforts – tooling around the neighborhood, driving into the swimming pool, etc. (“It really did work! See?!”)
The very first voyage of Moon Buggy 1.0 (up the driveway and about 50 feet down the street) was late on May 3rd, 2006.
The Race also goes through water so I wanted to make sure the sculpture floated and could move on water. Since Jeff and Andrea had a swimming pool, the way to test this seemed obvious. It is relatively easy to take the wheels off the frame for transport, so the next day we took Moon Buggy apart and carted the pieces around to the back yard.
Before the race I glued some paddles onto the wheels but didn't get a chance to try them out. On race day most of them fell off of one wheel, so I could only move in a circle, and then the chain fell off, so I couldn't move at all. So the water portion of the race was pretty much a disaster.
But! Note above that none of the foam tire pieces fell off here! When I went into the bay for the race, they all fell right off. Something about the Inner Harbor water...
After fixing up the steering chain, the next day we took another ride around the neighborhood. The chain only fell off a couple of times and I got much further, both on road and off.
All photos in this article are Copyright © 2006 by Andrea Lynn Scott. Used with permission.