THESE ONE WHEELED DEATH TRAPS WILL RUN OVER YOUR BABY!! > Articles > Gunt Hurt III
I’m pretty sure MJ brought it up and Doper soon joined in but somehow I was once again convinced to do something any normal, sane adult would have waved off with a laugh. The IIIrd annual Ben Hurt Chariot Race was due to be held this past weekend and as you can see from all the splendid art already posted, five bastards entered the ring.
Left to right at the Primary Interface for Propulsion Energy (PIPE).
1.
2.
3.
4.Max: One Bad MoFoAnd in the basket the newly christened Nipples providing 6 o’clock cover, BFH (Big Flying Hammer) and unparalleled counterweight.
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Backing up two weeks…
when the subject first came up, it sounded like fun and I agreed to join the effort largely because I had just been gifted the ability to get power to my welder and I wanted an excuse to make some lightning. Also, it sounded like a fun, seat-of-the-pants fabrication project that would also serve as the first real Bastard project to emerge from the Laboratory.
Then Doper sent me this video from the previous year’s event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuf_aUc-wwg
I believe my reaction was something along the lines of, ‘no fucking way.’ This just did not look like fun to me. I’ve long thought of myself as smart enough to stay away from situations that could become brawls. (ironically, my therapist is convinced that my vomitous reaction to country music is somehow intertwined with this tendency.) Be that what it may, I’ve always preferred to watch the likes of Steven Segal or Tanya Harding give the bad guys what-for than to actually participate in such activities myself. Somehow I don’t think my best intentions to be as cool Segal would be enough to stave off an annoying vocal vibrato that’s always keen to sneak in at times of a potentially immediate ass kicking anyway so I just avoid it.
Doper’s response was some heart-felt drippy plea about doing stupid for stupidity sake. Somehow that tickled a nerve. Fucker.
I really can’t say if the thought of doing something stupid erased the horror I’d witnessed only moments before when watching the video but somehow the whole thing suddenly seemed possible. I was back in and already thinking about how we’d should build the thing.
We started with a dream and a diagram:
http://flickr.com/photos/98919180@N00/3288673375/
We had some of the materials and means at the Lab but needed to do a trip to the Rebuilding Center to scavenge as much metal tubing that wasn’t water pipe as we could get our hands on. We ended up with a couple pieces of large diameter fence post and a handful of sections of ¾ inch electrical conduit. $10 later and with pieces stuck on top of and through the soccer mom mobile, we headed back to the Lab to cut, grind, weld, argue and drink.
Doper had a gas welding rig complete with the dolly used to transport welding bottles around a shop. The idea was to take the axle off, cut it in half to widen the stance (sorry Senator,) and weld it back onto a tubular steel frame as per the drawing. While we were standing around looking at axles and gee-whizzing about the bearings in the wheels, somebody laid the cart down on its back. Again, the credit goes to Doper as he saw it first; the welding cart was a chariot in its own right. Pull the handle off, reposition it to be upright to the now prone cart, add bracing, custom-cut wood flooring, a 10’ t-bar to allow four unicyclers to pull it and To Arms! We had us a unicycle chariot.
I would love to hear from the world that is the Internet: Is this the first unicycle driven chariot in the world? Please provide pictures, stories or gasping approval if you know of any similar craft prior to this one.
Our initial trip quickly highlighted a significant design flaw – the boom that coupled the t-bar to the unicycle was built to pivot in the event that we ultimately found that it should. None of us had ever built a unicycle chariot before so didn’t know how it would want to react when being pulled by four idiots in gay barbarian battle dress. Anyway, the boom tilted freely and the chariot, having only one axle immediately dumped the rider on their ass. Hard.
Ok, we knew we were close but needed to stare and scratch for a few minutes. We kicked around an absolutely asinine idea (mine) of adding a caster to the boom. The result would have been four very broken jaws. (last credit I promise) Doper had an idea that totally worked. We used a section of fence post and coupled the handrail to the boom. He hides it well but Doper really is a pretty smart fellow.
That was the end of fabrication – round one. It was getting pretty late and we had been making quite a bit of noise so decided to give our neighbors some respite. We still had beer to drink, wood to burn and a by-god working unicycle chariot to pull around our otherwise non-unicycle-chariot-riding neighborhood. Poor them.
Postings of the progress were posted. Max and Monty chimed in with design and strengthening tips. Monty dropped off the hood and front fenders of an I’m sure otherwise wrinkled Toyota Camry and the next chance we had, set about making the thing bullet proof. After cutting and bending and welding at Monty’s shop, our ride was ready to go.
February 14th, 2009. Freaking Valentines Day. The event has arrived.
The first event was brunch. We ate. We bullshitted. We mounted and we rode to Laurelhurst Park for the track race. We came in last after attempting to cheat and were greeted by a sympathetic Came in Last cheer of an otherwise uninterested crowd. Fat pissed off PoPo arrived so we left for the real event.
I’ll let the photo’s speak for the venue. The term, ‘post-apocalyptic’ came to mind but it was quickly displaced by the disbelief that I was still in Portland. The place looked like a bomb had gone off and the owners forgot they owned the place. In actuality, I think that’s a nice way of saying SuperFund Site. Later, I learned that the property owners weren’t exactly aware that we were there either. Amped after a fast uni ride from the last venue and beginning to experience pre-flight adrenaline, I entered the most unbelievably colorful noisy mosh pit of an arena imaginable. And I was there to fight.
It started with us stuck on the wrong side of the crowd of a couple hundred (?) people. Somebody started yelling to part and the crowd did a Red Sea for us. Into the maelstrom we rode. Watch Becket’s video, it so succinctly captures the essence of the moment when we so proudly rode into the clutches of the adoring crowd. “Hey everyone! Look at us! We’re on unicycles in your event! Cute aren’t we?”
Shit. Be it ‘the’ as in ‘The Shit’ or be it ‘bad’ as in ‘Bad Shit’, and certainly not to forget ‘holy’ or whatever your choice, Shit quickly went downhill from there.
The brutality was immediate and unforgiving. Hacked left and right, at some point I fell off my uni and had to quickly mount and get back to the chariot. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think I ever made it there. I was knocked to the ground by something or someone and when I got back up on my feet, caught a blow across my helmet that apparently was strong enough to also kill the single vulnerability of a unicycle; my tire was immediately and completely flat.
Although useless as a unicycle, I quickly found that my KH29, logos and all, worked as a great lever that, if when inserted under a moving chariot, can be used to tip said chariot on it’s side if the correct timing is employed by said chariot spiller. BOOM! Another solid wack to the back of my helmet made me look around in time to see our beloved chariot sitting more or less on the fender on one side. It was dead. Lapis made me pull it off the track which I started to do, speared the chariot that had cross-faced me, and finally pulled it out of the ring for good.
We all ran back into the ring at one point or another and had a good go at attempting to flip both the hamster ball or Dutch’s war wagon on their sides. The picture of me proudly humping the top of the hamster ball after pulling it over will live on the Internet for an eternity. Both chariot tossings resulted in more abuse so I finally retreated for good to let Darwin prove his point with the rest of the crowd. A couple of videos show a dreadfully angry redneck pummeling the crowd with a stage ax. At one point, it was me he was paying special attention to.
That night, MJ, Bearclaw, VA and I paid a visit to the soaking pool at Kennedy School. God Bless you Kennedy Brothers.
The next day was an interesting mix of exhaustion, elation and a certain measure of disbelief that it was actually me who had participated in that level of irresponsible behavior. The thing is, I loved every minute of it and will be back next year for the same abuse.
Gunt out
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