The crew of the Chilly Willy Wagon, which Unreal interviewed last month, returned last week from the Red Bull Soapbox Race in Providence, Rhode Island, not exactly covered in victory, but not in ignominy, either.
The
penguin-shaped Chilly Willy Wagon finished a very respectable seventh in a field of 57. It clocked a speed somewhere in the lower 30 mph range, says driver Curt Hoeft, and, even more exciting, had a wreck!
Halfway through the quarter-mile course down
College Hill, Chilly Willy's front left tire fell off. The penguin slid through the rest of the course -- it had gravity on its side -- but at the finish line, Hoeft writes in an e-mail, "I plowed the hay bales and just missed the camera man. The wreck broke both steering rods, bent the frame, and popped the other tire off of the other front wheel."
Unreal sighs. If only we'd been there!
Bu there's always next time. "It was a blast,"
Hoeft concludes, "and I can't wait to do it again next year."
-Unreal
