Sat­ur­day morn­ing came and it was a rare week­end day when I have noth­ing planned. I imme­di­ately remem­ber see­ing a Red­dit post about the Red Bull soap­box races hap­pen­ing today, Octo­ber 24^th 2015, and I decide to make it a plan for a day of enter­tain­ment and photo opportunities.

After grab­bing a quick shower, I check the loca­tion of the races a again on Google Maps. I decide it would be wise to take the Marta train south and just walk North Street to avoid traf­fic and park­ing prob­lems. This proves to be a wise choice later.

Next I grab my bag of cam­era gear that was sit­ting on my kitchen table. It was already packed with every­thing I would need and so I rushed out the door to drive to the North Point train sta­tion in Dun­woody. It was about fif­teen min­utes after 10am at this point and fig­ured I would make it to the races just as the pits opened at 11am, so I could get a close view of the cars and teams.

I spent about hour walk­ing around the pits observ­ing and shoot­ing pho­tos of the var­i­ous teams and their cre­ations on four wheels. Some were very cre­ative in their design with well thought engi­neer­ing. Some were a lit­tle less cre­ative and obvi­ous not much time spent on engi­neer­ing either.

After hear­ing that the races would start soon, I exited the pits and headed down the hill that held the track form with hay bales, mobile fenc­ing and a wooden jump. Crowds had already lined the track and was near impos­si­ble to get any­where near the most excit­ing point, the jump. So I found a spot that offered a pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting a decent view of the cars from the start and that is where I stayed for the length of the event.

I was at least able to see the teams per­form their skits on a giant big screen mon­i­tor across from me and then watch as the cars launched down a ramp onto the course. As each car staged on the ramp, a fel­low crowd mem­ber but stranger to myself would com­ment about the car and pre­dict if it would make it down to the bot­tom of the hill in one piece. Often we were right in our pre­dic­tions but a few times we both were surprised.

The sun came out in short bursts, break­ing through the cloud cover but tem­per­a­ture remained mild which was good for all those in atten­dance. We have to think this was espe­cially good for those teams dressed up in elab­o­rate costumes.

About mid­way through the race, Red Bull sent out young ladies with cool­ers full of the their pop­u­lar bev­er­age. They handed them out to all those along the hay bails of the track and I was lucky to get one myself. Not a huge fan of the bev­er­age but it was ice cold and refresh­ing at the time.

By the end of the day, over 30 cars and teams had per­formed hilar­i­ous skits and piloted some inter­ested cre­ations down the course. Some did it with style, some did it with speed and some did with both while oth­ers failed to even make it down the full course. Not mat­ter how well the teams per­formed or were scored it was enter­tain­ing for the crowd who all seemed to be in good spir­its enjoy­ing the antics and the teams all seemed to be hav­ing fun as well mak­ing for a great free event in the mid­dle of the Atlanta, Geor­gia. If you missed it, I highly sug­gest attended next year’s race.

Most of the images from the event seen here can be pur­chased through my stock photo agency here.