Red Bull paper airplane contest searches for Maverick

If the freaks come out on Friday night, the geeks and would-be Breakfast Club-ers definitely come out on Saturday afternoon, especially for a paper airplane flying contest. Red Bull is known for sponsoring bar drink-offs and real full-action stunt air-shows, but at this event having the skills to propel an aeronautically sound 80 gram paper flyer the farthest, will book you a trip to the world Paper Wings championship to be held in Hangar 7, Salzburg Airport, in Melbourne, Australia. At the Milwaukee qualifying site, I bore witness that many come, but only one makes it off of the top flight proving grounds.

Hypnotized by all the commotion, I walked carelessly onto the indoor launching field and immediately caught a gliding airplane in the leg. I scanned the area in front of me to find the owner of the stray plane. In the bottom of my periphery I see a whipper-snapper, at best 7 years old, barreling towards me. I congratulated the young engineer with a thumbs up for "good one!" which he eagerly flashed back. Young Izak would later go on to win second place, at 5.8 seconds, for the airplane with the longest hang time. I'm not surprised judging by how far he ran from across the room to collect his paper machine.

Deja Boom Box

Milwaukee is now in its fourth year as a stop on the national tour. A Red Bull hostess, dressed appropriately in a navy hued flight attendant-esque shirt-dress and white pro-ked-like sneakers, filled me in on the fact that the event started in a high school gym, but now has grown to reside in the Eagle's Ballroom.

Milwaukee locals know Eagle's for its mid-sized concerts. It was eerie being there in the middle of the day. Blinded by sun rays beaming through the south windows that I never knew the Eagle's had, my memory projected back to the shows I spectated there in 1998-99. I saw the Roots perform one of the most dynamic sets I've ever witnessed, lip-induced sound effects and live instruments abound. I'm pretty sure the uncanny Rahzel even attended this one. Can't forget to mention Common made an unexpected cameo. He spontaneously b-boyed a helicopter increasing his legendary 20-fold in my pages. The Run D.M.C. show irrevocably comes to mind also. I feel fortunate to have waved my right Adidas shoe here in the presence of Jam Master Jay before his day ended. Need I say more. The house DJ aided my flashback pumping some unidentified Pharcyde track to encourage the participants to prolong their flights as long as possible, and that they did on and off the runway.

At a gaudy inflatable Red Bull arch, the competition tarmac began, lined on both sides with white Christmas lights. Most of the entertainment was taking place off of the battle strip though. Eager contestants set up shop everywhere busily folding, measuring, testing their goose-feather-weight jets. The bar set by previous paper aviators added pressure. The world record paper plane flight is 207 feet and 4 inches, that's 69 yards! NFL quarterbacks can barely throw a football that far! The most hang time is 26.7 seconds. However, I would estimate the model flight vector of the average wiz-kid participating in this competition at about 14 inches.

Hot Shots

Envision a vigilant effort by a novice plane technician to build the ultimate airborne weapon. Leaving his detailed 12-step blueprints of how to construct the "stealth bomber" of paper planes, he straightens up from the workbench to find a suitable test site o the ballroom floor. He winds up after a couple of practice shoulder cocks, lets his wrist travel forward at the perfect release point and whoosh... the plane pathetically topples end over end, corkscrews agonizingly one too many times, subsequently dashing to the ground a half-a-pace away from the pilot. The plane enjoyed a welcome back to land led by a chorus of mocking laughter from bystanders including me.

As karma would have it, the next moment I would be parrying to the left avoiding an AWOL flight path of a junior Howard Hughes, only to nearly have an eye gouged by another plane originating from an aspiring Chuck Yeager 30 feet away at my 3 o'clock. The paper plane had just zoomed over my head to a cruising altitude of 20 feet, before about-facing into a sunlight glare-soaked descent, hurling back towards its rightful owner like a boomerang. I think to myself "I should have brought my Sabotage aviator glasses to protect my walleye vision."

One particularly nonchalant plane-launcher heaves loose one that flies a respectable distance before ascending to the balcony above, shrugs and walks away. I'm thinking this guy will never meet the girl of his dreams. A couple hours into the festivities the floor looked like the Terminator just got done blowing up some innocent file cabinets.

I end up taking refuge at one of the workstations close to the official competition area. After about a minute, one of the Red Bull staff offers to help me get more hooped-up off of their complementary neon potions (I had one earlier and should have left it at that) and I accept. Then an unassuming lad in a knit hat rushes up with a fresh sheet of paper in his hand, followed by his conspicuously natty trusty assistant (white dude with dreads, sonic the hedgehog-like minus the sonic).

I confide to the knit hat guy I'm happy to see the lost art of paper-airplane-making stay alive and that from my experience know-a-days kids would rather just throw text books in class. He laughs and mentions that he actually is the leader in the indoor space race. I asked him what was his secret, of course it was nothing special just fold and pray. Although far short of the international benchmarks, turns out the knit hat guy, Tyler, wins the two main events, furthest in flight at 82 feet plus an inch, and longest in hang-time just edging out lil' Izak at 6.66 seconds. The DJ in a fitting gesture raises the hook 'em horns salute.

Hot Shots: Part Duex

Before the main event winners were announced, planned outrage necessarily had to take place. The 'freestyle' flying competition allowed the severely esteem-challenged and the most dedicated attention-seekers to get one more chance at the center stage. Accompanied by a certain Top Gun soundtrack hit, courageous women and men alternated entering the competition ring, cordoned off with a polygonal shaped perimeter of masking tape, adeptly declared the "danger zone." This really was code for "if you sucked at actually constructing a flying device, please step into this area and be rewarded for being a jack-ass."

By this time the event host "stewardesses" are shot-gunning Red Bull, which gives one collegiate an idea to throw his plane then bust a back flip, then shot-gun a Red Bull. Of course deviant behavior though often shunned in controlled environments, in this setting is contagious and concomitantly causes a fairly large, markedly dorky dude in pajama pants (who actually crashed two of his planes inches from me earlier) to toss his plane into a whirly-jig flight path spanning one decimeter, and vault himself into a Chris Farley somersault to back-splash, with tremendous impact, then stunning the crowd further by revealing each hand clutching a Red Bull, both of which he simultaneously cookie monster chomped, drenching himself from bib to thighs with energy juice. Why, my friend, why!?!? I found out why about 3 hours later when I felt my heart palpitating from the two Red Bulls I downed earlier. If I learned anything, it's that I am easily amused and more importantly that the most ridiculous talents, especially ones reprimanded by teachers, can win you free trips to cool places. All you hand-in-armpit squishers your day is coming...



America... F*%K Yeah!

Red Bull will be spreading McWorld with a qualifying round in Tehran, Iran tomorrow morning at 10:00am. I thought that country was unstable, hostile to American culture, and on the brink of nuking us. Ahmedijad must not be that bad of a guy after all, at least they can freely fly paper planes. Closer to home the next stops are in Iowa City, IA and Corvallis, OR, then back to the mid-west in Champaign, Il, Duluth, MN, Bowling Green, OH and Madison, WI. Make sure you have your college i.d. to prove you're among the best and the brightest and worthy of a flight pass.