If you have a hovercraft, what better place to show it off than San Francisco Bay? And if you are going to take the time build one from scratch, why not make it stand out?
Matt Riese has been working on his DeLorean hovercraft for years. Now he's hoping it will land him a job.
"In seventh grade, I tried to build a hovercraft that was advertised in a Boy Scouts magazine, but I got lazy and quit a third of the way into it," he said.
Riese has been toying with the idea ever since. In 2007, he drew up plans, and in 2008 he started building a new hovercraft from scratch.
"I taught myself how to do it," he said. "I didn't know what I was doing when I started, I just learned as I went."
The design is inspired by Hollywood. In the movie "Back to the Future," a DeLorean was converted into a time machine. Riese's doesn't travel back in time. In fact, it isn't even a real DeLorean. Riese built it with Styrofoam insulation glued together, sanded down and then covered in fiberglass.
Riese raised more than $5,600 from the crowd funding website Kickstarter to get the project off the ground, but he says it ultimately cost much more to finish the project. He took odd jobs while going to graduate school to pay for it.
"[I] also got a master's in political science in that time and became a crab fisherman and some other things," he said.
Now Riese is hoping his hovercraft will grab someone's attention and turn into a real job.
"I figured it sort of proves that I can get things done and be creative and inventive and work hard and see a project through," he said. "So it's, it's my resume."
Written and produced by Ken Miguel
