I read an article today about an extreme sports competition called Pogopalooza. I learned that Pogopalooza is the annual gathering of the best stunt pogo athletes in the world and the largest exposition of the newest extreme sport. A number of disciplines of the sport are tested, including the highest jump, most jumps per minute and the fewest jumps per minute. The key to achieving the fewest jumps per minute is to jump high. Competitors also perform high-flying acrobatic stunts with nicknames such as the one-foot soul grab and the ice-pick stall, as well as back flips.
The event's website said that "Pogopalooza is a visually arresting display of talent and guts, featuring athletes riding pogo sticks that have been reinvented for a new generation of jumpers." The first event was held in 2004 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Pogopalooza 7 ended yesterday in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Legend has it that the pogo stick was created when George Hansburg, while traveling in Burma, came across a poor farmer and his daughter, Pogo. The farmer couldn’t afford to buy shoes for his daughter, and therefore the daughter couldn’t walk to the temple to pray every day. So the poor farmer made a jumping stick for her. Hansburg was so impressed he went home and created one his own with a spring attached to the wooden stick contraption that the farmer had introduced him to. Hansburg patented the design in 1919.
Palooza was the subject of Post No. 72. Perhaps my daughter would have enjoyed selling paper fortune tellers at Pogopalooza 7.
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