Or maybe the race is a dash of genius mixed with a whole bunch of crazy. Escape from Berkeley is a madcap alternative fuel race from Berkeley, Ca to Las Vegas. The rules are simple, no petroleum allowed, and fuel must be scavenged along the way. So while the rules are simple the task is anything but. "The basic premise is build a vehicle out of junk, we'll give you the equivalent of one gallon of gas and you have to drive 600 miles to Las Vegas. Oh, and you can't buy any fuel along the way," says Jim Mason, the artist and inventor behind the race. "That's a pretty heavy stone to carry."

The old Dodge pickup, pictured above, was made by Wayne Keith and runs on wood. He gets about 1.6 mpp (miles per pound) so he needs about 1,000 pounds to get there. He's carrying a chainsaw and a list of lumberyards (He has a whole new way of dealing with fallen trees blocking a road). There are ten teams total running everything from a veggie-oil Lotus 7 to a steam-powered three-wheeler that looks like it rolled right out of the 19th century. While many aren't terribly practical, including the the solar trike and fully faired tandem bicycle with an ethanol motor, they do prove that the alternatives are there.

The racers are not waiting for any of the automakers to lead us beyond oil. They've created an impressive fleet of street-legal and roadworthy cars, proving automakers aren't the only ones who can make autos. "I think energy will be our next hacking culture," Mason says. "If there's any goal here, it's to see how we can move energy from a commodity culture to a hacker culture."

For more information check out Escape from Berkeley

.