Bitching about Flugtag

Today was the corporate-sponsored Flugtag (Flying Day) and I trudged down to watch people fling their homemade flying machines into the lake. The basic premise is not much more complicated than that. People form a team with their friends, build a vehicle of some kind, throw it off a landing and watch it break nearly instantly and plunge into the chilly depths of Lake Michigan. Their device can have no engine, it must be human-powered, so one or more members of the team generally ride or follow their creation into the water. The debris is collected, some sort of arbitrary judging is scored, and then the next team takes their turn. I'm not certain what the judges purpose could have been, as all the attempts were measured in distance as well.

I had thought it might be a cool place to wander a bit and get some pictures of the flying machines, but I was mistaken. When I arrived, the main area for viewing the crafts had been closed, and the throng of us were herded to the beach just north of the activity. I walked south as far as I could go, but never once even caught a glimpse of the actual staging area, or any of the crafts that the assembled teams had spent so much time on. Instead, we had a jumbo screen and a network of inescapable speakers to bring us the inane and apparently limitless chatter from whoever was functioning as the emcee, and several of the "judges," most of whom seemed content to use the name of the team for a weak pun or sexual innuendo.

So it was all the fun of watching something on television, except in a crowd. And I was hungry. They had closed down the little food vendors along the beach, and I stood forlornly next to what would, on another day, be an ice cream stand. I surmised that the refreshments were likely available only inside the now closed-off main area, so the several thousand of us outside of that area were on our own.

Within about three team's worth of activity, I realized it was like watching something I didn't particularly want to watch, except in public, and with no other channels. Two of the teams, for instance—pretty close to one another in the lineup—had been inspired by the aerodynamic charms of the locomotive. In each instance the team had chosen "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne as their theme song.

I cannot imagine what had made it so crowded, save for this being one of the last nice weekends that can accurately be called summer, and our first day without rain for a few, with rain resuming tomorrow with the remains of yet another hurricane arriving in our area with its spent fury and thick blankets of rain.

Still, once I fled the crowded beach, it was a nice afternoon to be out and about in Chicago. I'm still kinda sad I wasn't able to get any good pictures of the weird "aircraft" from my vantage. I had thought I might post a few, and bank a few for some Phoctober fun.