Idiots take flight

Eric and I flew to Portland, OR this weekend for my friend Elizabeth's wedding. We went up Saturday morning and wanted to take advantage of the time before the 3:30pm wedding to see a little bit of Portland, so we got dressed for the wedding and went out to have a wander around.

On the bridge driving across the river to get to downtown we noticed what appeared to be 80,000 people in the waterfront park. We soon learned that there was a Red Bull-sponsored event underway called Flugtag, in which teams of people with just the right mix of creativity, lack of engineering knowledge and alcohol construct "flying" machines that they - with great fanfare - run off a platform into the river.

It was all good, clean, taurine-induced fun except when Team "Pink Viking" did a gutteral ritualistic-sounding chant that made me wonder if I had just inadvertently worshipped the devil.

My main takeaway: street festivals really should be attended in formal attire.