Most UF students who visit Miami over summer break spend their time on the beach or at the club.
But not Erin Rush.
Instead, 21-year-old Rush, who majors in telecommunications, dressed as a yellow baby chick and flew 32 feet on a giant frying pan with bacon wings into the Atlantic Ocean, in front of more than 100,000 spectators.
“Ask my friends,” Rush said. “I’m always doing crazy s---.”
Rush, and her four-member, rooster-costume-wearing flight crew, represented one of 33 teams who competed in the Red Bull Flugtag event at the Bayfront Park in Miami on Saturday.
The five-member team from Gainesville called themselves “The Frying Egg,” and, although they didn’t win the competition, they came mighty close to winning the fan favorite award.
“There was a point when we were 32 votes away,” she said, speaking of the fan-based text voting system. “We sent out mass texts to everyone.”
The Frying Egg’s contraption was a 5-foot-tall frying pan with wings of bacon spanning 28 feet and built from PVC pipe wrapped in plastic pallet wrap and fabric. Rush rode in the middle of the pan, on top of a sunny-side-up egg.
Rush said the whole egg idea came from a joke her dad made about seven years ago, making the connection that she shared initials with everyone’s favorite Chinese side-dish.
“He called me egg roll,” she said, which was shortened over the years to simply egg.
Rush got the idea to apply after seeing commercials for the event on TV. She got an application from her friend and teammate Mark Snyder, who works as a representative for Red Bull and helped coordinate the Red Bull Chariot Race in Gainesville in April.
“We just did it for fun,” Rush said. “I didn’t think we’d get chosen at all.”
But fate had more surprises in store for Rush and her teammates. After months of preparation, their dreams of flugtag fame were nearly crushed once the team got to Miami.
Rush said it took about three months and $700 to build their craft, which originally included the bottom-half of a cracked egg. To their horror, they found the entire thing in pieces when they arrived in South Florida.
“We were pretty disappointed,” she said. “We had to rebuild the whole thing. [The crew was] a good team, and we stuck it through. I was really proud of them.”
After all the time, work and money, it only took about 90 seconds from the time the team stepped on the platform until the flying machine was on the bottom of the Atlantic. But the Flying Egg crew didn’t weep to see it go.
“It was awesome,” Rush said. “It was definitely worth it.”
