A giant skillet weighing about 350 pounds teetered down a 30-foot-high ramp.
Four UF students had built it as a tribute to the morning meal. However, as the skillet crashed into the waters below, they had no choice but to jump in after it.
The Breakfast Club used the skillet as its flying machine Saturday when they competed at the 2007 Red Bull Flugtag in Austin, Texas.
The Flugtag, which means "flying day" in German, allowed 28 teams from around the country to launch homemade, human-powered contraptions off a flight deck into Lady Bird Lake, according to the Flugtag Web site.
Law student Evan James Ferl played Stanley Scramble, the pilot of the contraption.
Business senior Cale Flage starred as Buddy Bacon, plant pathology senior Jonathan Jasinski as Master Chef and economics senior Nathan Reid as Tasty Toast.
While the team did not win the competition, they hoped to place in the top 10 crashes, Reid said.
The team performed a skit for more than 85,000 spectators before take-off, which included waving around an 8-foot spatula.
Chef Jasinski carried a giant salt shaker that dispensed glitter.
"My mom was the one who came up with the salt shaker idea," he said.
With only about one minute to perform the skit, Jasinski felt rushed.
"I felt like I was on 'Legends of the Hidden Temple,'" he said. "I had to get so many things done."
The crowd went wild for their performance.
"It was like you were in the middle of the O-Dome. It was so loud," Reid said.
He described their crash as a "beautiful train wreck."
"We were the largest craft out there," Reid said.
The skillet was made of tarp, wood, nails and wheels. PVC pipes formed its circumference and took up the entire flight deck. Right before sailing over the edge, a wind gust threatened to snap the contraption in two.
Jasinski described the gust as "a crosswind from hell."
Red Bull workers had the hardest time fishing skillet debris out of the lake, Flage said.
Rapper Paul Wall, Austin Mayor Will Wynn and Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard were Flugtag judges.
"Paul Wall told us to repaint one of our costumes because it looked like a fish instead of an egg," Flage said.
