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KD Country: Pogopalooza 6

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Aug 21, 2009 11:32 am US/Eastern

KD Country: Pogopalooza 6

Reporting
Dave Crawley
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― The G20 Summit isn't the only event headed to town, Pittsburgh is hosting the sixth annual Pogopalooza championships on Saturday afternoon in Schenley Plaza.

"I've never seen so many amazing pogo stickers in one place before."

Dan Mahoney, 16, of Nova Scotia, marvels at the scene of dozens of people, mostly teenage boys, bouncing and doing tricks on pogo sticks down by the fountain at Point State Park.

As the reigning champion in a couple of high flying categories he admits that high level bouncing can be a bit scary.

"When you're going like seven feet in the air, you do get pretty freaked out sometimes," he says. "But you get used to it."

Pittsburgh is the site of Pogopalooza, the World Championships of "extreme pogo."

But they are not your father's pogo sticks.

Brian Spencer came from California to demonstrate the virtues of the air-pumped "Vurtego" stick that he developed with a bit of help from his father.

"I recruited my dad as an engineer to do it," he admits. "And I figure if anyone could do it he could. And sure enough the first one we made from plumbing supply stuff, you know, pipes from the plumbing supply store."

The quest for a better pogo stick extends all the way to the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where project scientist Ben Brown designed a high flying stick called the Bow-Go.

"It may be the highest now," he says, "but I'm not sure we want to go any higher than this."

He says seven or eight feet may just be high enough.

The sixth annual Pogopalooza World Championships will take place Saturday, August 22, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Schenley Plaza in Oakland.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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