Teaser Post:  The Engineer’s wet dream.

This beauty was the belle of the Playa, weighing in at 16,000 lbs, triggering latent Star Wars and Robotech memories, and thrilling all who managed to see it move, spider-like, across the playa.  Rumor had that it was far more heavy than the usual allowances for art-cars, but this one was grandfathered in because the people who made it were non-profit.  But then again, those were just the rumors.

When it moved, the whole ground would shake, the massive legs striking down and reverberating.  My friend’s camp was across the street and down the block, and they had the privilege to see the maiden voyage.  It walked, slowly but intently, down the street toward the Esplanade.  The two builders rode it and cheered at their own ingenuity in the flesh.

This lumbering beast of an art car had an achilles heal though, it could only move in a straight line.  When it needed to turn, a large turret came down from the center and made contact with the ground.  The drivers would then have to get out and turn the whole apparatus in the direction it needed to go.  On the maiden voyage, the turret descended, but the ground was uneven and the whole creature began to list and nearly fall over.  The legs returned quickly to their former weight bearing places and the mobile returned to its home for a last minute tune up.

Whatever problems it had were quickly solved.  I saw the spider-like mechanism all over the playa, so it obviously was able to move.  My only regret was not seeing it in action, in all its over-sized and overweighted glory.