Up, Up & Away!

A couple of weeks ago I went to go see the Red Bull Air Race duel between two Central European Pilots that was staged on the Danube River in between Lafranconi and Novy Most bridges. I had seen the event on TV a couple of times, but actually BEING there made the whole thing much more interesting.

This is the view from where we sat! We took blankets and a picnic lunch and parked it around 2 hours early, and thank goodness! The place really filled up after we got there, which was kind of annoying because then we couldn't see properly. I swear, people around here have no concept of common courtesy. There was a whole group of us SITTING on the bank, and then when people started filing in, they would actually STAND in front of us so that we couldn't see! RIDICULOUS!



Erin!!!!! Nice hat ;).



This is the course they had to go through. There were 2 sets of inflatable pylons that they had to navigate, and then they were scored on speed, accuracy and all of that other cool pilot stuff that I don't know about, but have plenty of Navy/Air Force friends who could fill me in.




Daredevil helicopter!! He felt left out that the planes got to do all the tricks, so he did some acrobatics, including going upside down! I thought that was scientifically improbable, but then again, I did stop my Physics studies after high school.



One of the planes on the course! We were so close to the action!



Obviously we weren't the only people who wanted to get a closer look. This picture shows the LOADS of people lined up on Novy Most. Policemen had to herd people off the top of the bridge because they were disrupting traffic (there isn't a footpath up there)



Vicki...rocking it out :)



In between the heats we got to see a 4 plane display of aerial craziness. My favorite part was when two planes flew in tandem, while another one did barrel rolls around them! GENIUS.




All in all it was a great experience that I'm glad I got to witness live. I guess we had over 100,000 people there, which is more than have shown up for some of the proper shows where more than 2 pilots compete! Hey-O Bratislava!