Lobster Car Races

Fine, I get it: your first question is what in the hell are lobster car races?  More to the point, what in the hell are lobster cars?

Good questions. It turns out this stuff is near and dear to the hearts of coastal Mainers, and they actually hold a competition for lobster car races every year at the Rockland, Maine lobster festival (where they proclaim a lobster queen, have a parade, eat many, many lobsters, have top musical performers (David Cassidy this year, no less) and perform human sacrifices.

OK. Not all that, but running across the pictured floating carts ("cars" in Lobsterfishingspeak) is a really big deal. In real life, these lobster cars float just above the water as pens for captured lobsters on their way to market. And in no way support the weight of a human. In this "sport" one tries to run across a string of them without falling in the drink. In Maine water. 60 degrees on a hot day.

You can appreciate the incentive. 

Each car is about three feet long, a couple feet high and wide, and float low in the water that are intended to support nothing, let alone a human being. They are strung end-to-end in a group of some 50 or so that the competitors can traverse them. This is no mean trick - first it helps to weigh about 50 pounds, and once running, never, ever stop or lose your cadence. What could be simpler?

Well, last year's winner (seen showing his form) ran across 6,000 of them.