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This weekend, my newish hometown was the site of the Flugtag (sponsored by an energy drink company I won't name because the stuff is just so bad for you).
The Flugtag began with Perry Farrell singing the national anthem (!) and a bunch of sky divers who almost all managed to nail a landing on the platform.
The platform from which around 30 teams launched homemade "aircraft" in hopes of, well, landing in Town Lake without getting hurt too badly. Supposedly there was a competition to see how far they could make it, but mostly it was to see a bunch of people jump into the river.
Everybody in Austin came. Punks, hipsters, families of four with strollers, rednecks, everybody. That was nice, but as a result, this is all I could see, from where we stood on the South 1st Street Bridge:
Mind you, I'm 5'10". My fellah is 6'6", so he took some pictures for me.
(Side note: when we arrived, we were looking for a place to stand, and when we found a suitable spot, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a shorter woman with two small kids. "Excuse me," she said, "but this is where we're standing, and we can't see." "I'm sorry," I said, but I really didn't move. There wasn't room to move. "It's just, you're both quite tall," she said. "We noticed," I said.
Some might call this rude, and perhaps they're right. But it's like those occasions when someone has tapped me on the shoulder at a rock concert and asked me not to stand so close. Dude: it's a rock concert. What were you expecting, three feet of personal space? And besides, the fellah and I are simply tall people. We can't get shorter to accomodate others.)
Some people with canoes and kayaks had the right idea:
We went because it was a goofy thing to do, and also because my fellah has a friend who was on Team Roshambo.
Each team performed a brief skit before launching. Team Roshambo dressed as rock, paper, and scissors. After a brief match of Roshambo, they all ran off the end of the pier.
My fellah's buddy was the one dressed as paper. He actually flew, or floated, pretty decently, until his costume couldn't hold and he fell out of it into the water, which was still about 20 feet away.
So much better than cable.
3 comments:
It *was* so much better than cable! Now if only I had cable, I could make an actual comparison, but that's not important. I hardly watch tv these days, but who needs to when you have things like this to go see?
p.s. I thought kayaking would be the perfect place to watch from, and will definitely be viewing it from the water next time, if they ever bring it back.
p.p.s. I loved the rock, paper, scissors group, and got so excited to see them play the game themselves. :) So clever!
I'm glad you got some pics. So much fun - and at least a third of the city came out. Ya gotta love Austin!
That. is so. cool. I wish i could've seen it! Though at 5'5" maybe I wouldn't have.
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