11/22/12 Hsinchu

 I went to a seashore area outside of a small town on the North coast, in an area called 'The Knuckle' based on a rock formation near the beach, and there was sort of a county fair going on in a woodsy coastal strip of land next to the beach. People had dug this long muddy trough in the ground and were racing these big masses of what looked sort of like mussel shells as big as a man with a long serpentine body sticking out where the foot should be. They were dark green/gray and were called 'racing kelp' - actually giant seedpods from a type of deep sea kelp! When they washed up on shore, the people would collect them and put them in the trough, then stimulate the tails to flagellate somehow, and 'race' them down the trough.