I Believe I Can Fly...

Yesterday we went to the Red Bull Flugtag here in Austin.
Flugtag is pronounce floogtog. They said it means something like "flying thing" in German. In English it means 85,000 people gathered to watch groups do a dance/drama and push someone off a 30 foot drop as they try to fly in a themed contraption.
To make sense of the whole concept, you have to remember the Red Bull commercials - Red Bull gives you wings.

It's actually fun to see the creativity of these groups.
This brief video is a compilation of another year here in Austin, but it's the best one out there right now that shows what this event is.



The next one below is about 12 seconds long and shows a "flying machine" (or lack thereof) that we actually saw. Though I have to admit, until I saw this on youtube and read it's a vacuum, I really had no clue what it was. From where we were sitting it looked like one of those little ghost guys in Pacman with a feather.



The last video below is only six seconds long, but I wanted to show you why it's unwise to drink and design things that are supposed to fly.

Please note that this is a theme of "Rock, Paper, Scissors". Clever in thought, but tell me why would you ever volunteer to be the "paper pilot"? What you see in the video is the back of the costume/flyer. On the front, there is a hole cut out for a face. Keep in mind that they all run to the edge of the platform and jump... face first... into the water. The odd thing was that everyone seemed shocked when the paper smacked face down in the water and had trouble getting up.



The drinking stuff isn't our game, but we went with Kat and her family along with a friend from Germany and that's what really made it such a good time.

Brandon is hoping they will come back to Austin so that he can design his own and pilot it off the top... your prayers are appreciated. ;)