BY BARBARA ANDERSON AND ERICA HOWE '99 Pulling good weight Remember that go-cart you built as a kid? Well, some people keep building them even after they get big and go to college. Eight UC Davis biological and agricultural engineering students have constructed their version of a grown-up go-cart: a quarter-scale tractor that they've entered in a national competition held each May in Illinois. Each team gets a 16-horsepower engine, two rear tires and one thick rule book. Objective: design and build a quarter-sized tractor, within the constraints specified, that will pull the most weight the farthest distance. Each team also prepares a design report and a marketing presentation and then tests its tractor at the tractor pull event. Since the combined weight of the tractor and driver can't exceed a specified limit, teams must get creative with design and driver. During last year's competition, the Aggie team loaned a pair of sneakers and a lighter-weight helmet to the team from the University of Manitoba, which, despite sawing off half of the steering wheel and removing several floor boards, still had an overweight tractor and needed something to replace the driver's steel-toed boots. In addition to being the only team west of the Rocky Mountains, the UC Davis team is noteworthy for the ratio of women to men: five to one. And though the results of the competition were not available at press time, last year the team came in fourth in the tractor pull event, and this year, according to team member Victoria Smith, "with a slicked-out tractor we intend to turn some heads with our unique California designs and teach the Midwest all about the California ag community." And, naturally, it will be driven by their smallest team member. Happiness is a low bid Bright lights, big city . . . Bob Barker? The UC Davis women's water polo team made a stop during a spring break trip to Los Angeles at the perennial game show "The Price is Right," where, after being successful in the elimination games, first-year team member Emily Peck heard the words she'd always wanted to hear: "Emily Peck, come on down!" "I was delirious," said Peck, "but I remembered to kiss Bob!" That competitive edge must have come on strong, though, because Peck won big. Real big. She made it to the showcase showdown, winning a total of $37,000 in prizes, including luggage, a bedroom set, a jukebox with 36 swing CDs and a silver Pontiac Grand Prix coupe. But she plans to sell it all (except for the luggage) and use the money for graduate school. Summer reading You know those little cages on the fourth floor of Shields Library? The ones holding only a desk, a chair and sometimes a postcard taped to the wall? Is that where you imagine professors spend the summer, squinting through fluorescent light to make out the newest information on their specialty? Guess again. We asked several faculty members what they planned to read over the summer and now share their answers with you. Martha Macri, chair of the Native American studies department, will be reading The Cherokee Physician: an Indian Guide to Health by Richard Bark Foreman, her grandmother's grandfather, then will travel to Oklahoma to view the original manuscript. Judy Jernstedt, associate professor of agronomy and range science, plans to peruse Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years by Elizabeth and Sarah Louise Delany, Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm by David Mas Masumoto and In the Presence of the Enemy by Elizabeth George. Law professor Martha West's bookshelf contains Paradise by Toni Morrison and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. West says "much of women's literature is a bit depressing, because women's lives are hard, so I usually read things that might be disturbing when I am not under so much stress myself! Summer is a good time." Summer is so good and relaxing that geology professor Louise Kellogg's reading list evolves (her word) as it goes. Two "for sures" are The Age of the Earth by Brent Dalrymple and The Silent Traveler in San Francisco by Yee Chiang. English professor, author, bioregionalist, photographer and Biblical scholar David Robertson plans to read E.P. Sanders' The Historical Figure of Jesus and Jack Miles' God: A Biography. Larry Coleman, physics professor and vice-chair of the universitywide Academic Senate, says that his pile of summer reading contains a book for each of his many sides. "For the Academic Senate leader in me, Academic Duty by Donald Kennedy; for the humanist/scientist, Philosophy and Science Fiction edited by Michael Philips; for the nature lover, The Life of Birds by David Attenborough; and just for fun, Moo by Jane Smiley, to keep my Aggie roots alive." But the summer reading award goes to microbiology professor Daniel Klionsky who says this list is just a partial one: Murder, She Meowed by Rita Mae Brown; The Best of 'Outside' from the editors of Outside magazine; Tales in Time, a collection of science fiction stories edited by Peter Crowther; All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren; The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate by Carol Billman. And finally, Klionsky is saving the last book, Peter Leschak's collection of stories Seeing the Raven, for his family's vacation in New Hampshire. Is Professor Klionsky's summer the same length as ours? The Band-Uh loads the bases Your own Cal Aggie Band-Uh played second at the last first game at Candlestick Park. Got it? They and the marching band from Laguna Creek High School played during the first baseball game of the season in San Francisco, which also happens to be the last season before the Giants make the big move to Pacific Bell park. The Band-Uh offered its renditions of "In Your Eyes" and "Don't Tell Me You Love Me," but the big moment came during the National Anthem: As Tower of Power belted out "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Ags and their fellow musicians from Laguna Creek unfurled a 90-by-40-foot Stars and Stripes as two jets flew over, all witnessed by a sell-out crowd of more than 65,000 fans. Almost as good as "Break the Record" night at Rec Hall. PASSING TIME 50 years ago "Picnic Day Crew Celebrates: It was just an extension of a lively weekend. Picnic Day committeemen and guests, though staggered by Saturday night dances, waded into the Sunday night affair with non-alcoholic spirits high. They munched ham, chicken and cheese sandwiches--downed keg beer and soft drinks--and gulped in the atmosphere ladened [sic] with geniality. "Before the party gained momentum, the celebrants were treated to a preview technicolor Picnic Day movie that covered almost every attraction that could be sandwiched between the raising and lowering of the flag. The time preceding the film is not too well remembered--some slipped sensibly home; others, well, you know." -- The California Aggie May 26, 1949 Illustrations by Paiching Wai.