Interesting how things coincide. I just got my teeth whitened, and I have to stay away from staining foods for several days, including coffee. Sweet, sweet coffee. So to get some caffeine, I decided to pick up a few Red Bulls, which I only rarely drink. The strange almost-citrus-almost battery acid artificial flavor brought back memories of the Red Bull Flugtag.
So sitting in my inbox is an email from Mike Dias, a former editor of mine at The California Aggie three years ago. He’s down in Las Vegas, (he’s from there) and he’s been working with the Red Bull folks on footage of their Flugtag events, and he’s doing some stuff for MacWorld. And he too, is thinking about the Flugtag. That’s because we were both in it.
He intended to have the entire science desk build a flying machine for the Flugtag, but he and I ended up being the only ones on it. Still, he had a few friends that joined in, one was even a pilot, and Red Bull signed us up. A local RB rep handed us two 24-packs of Red Bull and said ‘get started’ and the next thing we knew we were running around Home Depot with three red bulls in each of us going “we need something like tarp material!” - Not until we spent 20 minutes doing that did it occur to us to buy a tarp.
Our flying machine was going to be a Persian flying carpet, the “Persian Immersion/Emmersion” and Mike got to be the bearded Guru who glided effortlessly onto the water. Or was it plunged? Maybe you should watch the 2003 San Francisco video montage. We’re in there twice I think - once dancing at the beginning, and the second, sinking.
After our stunning loss, we attended the afterparty at the hotel and had a blast. The Aggie didn’t cover the participation because we were on the staff, but the Davis Enterprise did.Someday we’ll have another chance to fly the Flugtag - it was a blast - and next time I want to take home a trophy. Or some more good memories.
