I picked up the link for this story from amacker‘s mailing list. What a cool idea!

Mad Max Meets Cannonball Run in Alt-Fuel Race to Vegas

Wayne Keith is headed to Las Vegas in an old Dodge pickup that runs on, of all things, wood. He gets about 1.6 mpp (that’s miles per pound) and reckons he needs about 1,000 pounds to get there. No problem. He’s carrying a chainsaw and a list of lumberyards along the way.

Such are the provisions you need for Escape from Berkeley, a madcap alt-fuel race that mashes up Mad Max and Cannonball Run with a touch of the Darpa Challenge and Burning Man. If the rules are simple — no petroleum allowed, and fuel must be scavenged along the way — the challenge 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.”

That isn’t keeping the 10 teams lining up for this weekend’s race from giving it a try in everything from a veggie-oil Lotus 7 to a steam-powered three-wheeler that looks like it rolled right out of the 19th century.

Read the whole story. It’s pretty fabulous.