Current mood:

excited

Steamy steam steamboat
Tonight I finally got to see the steamboat, in its not so glorious state.
It looks like this project is *full steam ahead*, and while it's simultaneously horrible, delightful, punk rock, and KSW sexy, chances are good I'll be one of the crew for the Hudson River project.

What am I babbling on about? Kinetic Steam Works is the group with the 1920 traction steam engine art car (using *real* steam power) at Burning Man the last two years. They've gotten a lot of attention for their collaborations with other local artists, such as the insect Carousel in 2006, and the Steam Punk Victorian Treehouse in 2007.
KSW has been invited to join a group of artists and performers who will take a flotilla of several rafts down the Hudson River from Troy to NYC for three weeks this August. KSW has been given a steam boat that we are working on restoring (built in the 1960's, so it's not as glorious as you think). It will will be shipped cross-country mid-June, and once in NY will be part of an installation art piece, and the rafts will travel down the river by day with crew and performers, docking every night for performances in towns along the way. They will arrive in NYC on Labor Day weekend, and be part of an exhibit for a few weeks after that.
This event has already happened two previous years on the Mississippi River, which brings to mind all sorts of Huck Finn adventures, but this will not be as romantic as that. Mosquito netting better be part of the budget! Apparently they've done major clean-up of the Hudson in the past 10 years, but swimming in it might still be a bad idea.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying being a grease monkey again. It's been a while since I've gotten my hands dirty. I mean *really* dirty.