Pumpkin Racing

Like it or not, to get you in the mood for Halloween, or at the very least for pumpkins, here is a weird event report right here from Oregon.   It's Tualatin's 12th annual West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta, in which some odd but fun loving people get together one day in mid October for four races around Lake Tualatin. No, not boat races. Instead, the racers kneel inside giant pumpkins that have been gutted out and made.....almost sea worthy.

To think I just found out about this event, and misses seeing it. Tualatin is only 20 minutes or so from my home in happy Valley, Oregon. Next year I will have to see it with my own eyes. Besides, even if it is silliness and pumpkins really drift more on their own than can be guided, the Pumpkin Regatta also has side events going on too. There's pumpkin bowling, pumpkin chucking, a biggest pumpkin weigh in contest and plenty of pumpkin foods to try. The biggest one this year was 1,794.5 pounds. (about 800 kilos)

Twenty-one giant pumpkins made it into the water this year, their tops carved out and guts scooped out. All of the participants reported that paddling around a lake inside a giant pumpkin is not easy, and that it is exhausting to try and control a huge pumpkin. Pumpkins aren't very aerodynamic in the water, so luck usually is the winner. And of course, just like people who enjoy seeing car racing only in anticipating a crash, the Pumpkin Regatta had it's crashes...err...sinkings too. Reports are that a man in the second race had to bail out of his pumpkin two minutes after starting because the vegetable started taking water. Oh well, bad luck but that's better than having to eat Aunt Bertha's dry pumpkin desserts at Thanksgiving.

In order to win the races participants had to gather balls from five baskets in the lake. Some simply exited the pumpkin and swam to each one and got the balls, pumpkin in tow. This sounds like a watching, rather than participation event. The Great Pumpkin must be smiling in pumpkin land at this human pumpkin foolishness.