Red Bull Air Race

For some reason none of us could fathom, The Red Bull Air Race chose Detroit as one of two places in North America to compete. I'd been looking forward to this for a while and waited until the last minute to pick up tickets ($15/each most were going for $150 on stubhub). Dan ended up getting passes to watch the flight from the 33rd floor of the Renaissance Center and Bob got passes to the Saab hospitality suite right on the river. We started at the Saab event and then met Dan and Will and headed over to check out the Ren Cen view. The view was nice, but it was indoors, in an office, and kind of dull compared to the hospitality tent. Bob in his amazing Bob way was able to finagle the Saab girl into providing an extra ticket for Dan and Will so that all four of us could watch it. We at drank, drank and were merry, figuring a plane could hit us at any moment and we could all die. Not really, except for the eating and drinking part.

The race was setup on the Detroit River with these 65' high inflated pylons. The planes would fly the course at 200+mph making ridiculous turns and cuts like they were remote control airplanes. The planes had cameras mounted on the tail and in the cockpit, and were combined with a chase helicopter that would follow them through the course providing this unbelievable view of race. The first few were amazing to watch, but then it got old and we were hoping for some action - like a crash that didn't involve death.

As the adage goes, "Everything is more fun when you gamble on it" (ok, maybe I'm the only one that really says this) we figured out a way to put money on the race by betting the over under on the previous guy. I won $20 from Bob and $10 from Dan by winning three races in the row. We were the only ones actually cheering for or against a given pilot, which made the people around us think we actually knew what was going on and who was racing. We all read the program so that we could throw around fun-facts (all preceded by the word, "Actually") as if we had a clue about fuselages and propellers.

For some stupid reason I didn't bring my camera so I have no decent pictures. I'll link to Dan and Bob's as they post them. Meanwhile, here's a video Dan took: