Flugtag

Travis, Shelby and I made our way downtown this afternoon to watch the Red Bull Flugtag 2008. Never heard of flugtag? Well, I just heard of it a few weeks ago when I saw advertisements for the event on TV. The Red Bull Flugtag challenges teams of everyday people to build homemade, human-powered flying machines and pilot them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight. Teams and their air crafts are judged not only on their flight's distance, but creativity and showmanship as well. Flugtag means "flying-day" in German. I only know this because I checked it out on the Red Bull Flugtag website.

I had high hope for this event. I was really excited to see these things crash into the water. Unfortunately, I couldn't see much because we didn't have a good viewing spot and I am too short to look over all the gigantic people who just have to stand in front of me. This was my view.

The only think I did get a good look at were the 3 parachuters who came in during the opening ceremonies. I didn't see them land in the water, but I could tell from the gasps of the onlookers that it was a pretty cool landing.

After a few teams flung themselves into the water, I had yet to see any of the action so we decided to walk around to find a better spot. We never found one, so we headed to the bridge to make our way back to the car. We stopped on the bridge a few times and managed to see 2 or 3 teams take flight. We were far enough away that it was hard to tell what was going on.

All in all, it was an OK afternoon. I wish I could have seen more, but in was fun to be downtown and it wasn't raining. What more could we ask for?