ClayNation: How-to guide for building a 'Making it Rain' blimp

The initial ClayNation Makin' it Rain Blimp Construction Day arrived in mid-May. Which was unfortunate because when it comes to constructing anything, I am completely worthless. Really, my inability to build is without parallel in the annals of architectural history. I'm the anti-Frank Lloyd Wright. Only any time I confess to being bad at building things, people say, "Well, if you just tried harder you'd be better." In my case this is completely untrue. Picture Pacman Jones giving the State of the Union address and you get an idea how horrible I am at building.

I don't know why an extreme lack of building talent is so surprising to people. On the spectrum of builders/designers/architects, supremely talented people like Frank Lloyd Wright couldn't exist without supremely untalented people such as myself. Really, if anything, my own lack of talent is doing the world a service. Basically, what I'm saying is, entering Home Depot or Lowe's is, for me, roughly akin to Shawn Kemp getting his blood drawn for a paternity test. Nothing good is going to happen.

Worse, my brother-in-law Jim and I arrived at Home Depot in the midst of a flood of Biblical proportions (I think this was the last time it rained in Nashville) and upon entering the store I found myself dripping wet beside some 4-foot, 8-year-old in a Home Depot apron.

"May I help you?" he inquires.

At first I thought the 4-foot employee was a midget and I wanted to treat him kindly, lest I be construed as anti-midget.

"No, little midget man," I said to put him at ease.

Turns out this was an actual 8-year-old. Evidently Home Depot now allows kids to wander around in their stores and help out lost customers like me. Somehow this makes me feel even more inadequate. The kid stares up at me while he idly slaps his hand with a ruler.

"What are you looking for?"

"Glue."

"What kind of glue?"

"Glue, glue."

The kid nods at me. Mercifully my brother-in-law rescues me, "Hey Clay, come help me with the PVC pipe," he says.

Ultimately we spend $182 at the Home Depot on PVC pipe and other assorted supplies that have names like this: "granulated suspension inhabitor for particle refraction and disinhabiting retroactive devices." Occasionally Jim will turn to me and say, "No, Clay, I said we needed 24 monochrome swish-swashed fluctose capacitors, not 23 monochrome swish-swashed fluctose incapacitors." My bad.

Eventually Jim sends me off to get a ruler and a measuring stick. But this is only after he incredulously asks, "You don't have a ruler or a measuring stick?" The answer is no. I have no tools. Zero. People find this very hard to believe. Inevitably when I tell them this, they respond by saying, "You say that, but you have a (insert tool here that every freedom loving American man owns)." No, I don't have it and I'm not lying about not having it.

This is the 13-foot long banner that will wrap around the blimp as its "skin."

What's more, until this very moment I haven't even considered the fact that I might ever need it and should have it. The same thing was true of pots and pans (I had neither) when my wife moved in with me. So, I don't have tools.

My lack of tools really disappoints my father-in-law and brother-in-law. My father-in-law is an architect and my brother-in-law is a car designer. Sometimes they sit around for hours talking about how to build things while I bake fresh blueberry muffins in my Fisher-Price EasyBake oven and collate my Strawberry Shortcake dolls by smell and color. There is literally nothing of any value I can add to their conversation. But my dolls look so nice and orderly in their Strawberry carrying case.

So the Redbull Flugtag is sort of a chance for me to redeem myself by acting as an adequate assistant to Jim. At least as adequate of an assistant as someone can be when their "craft" is going to be stored in their parent's garage.

Upon arriving at my parent's garage, we begin cutting the PVC pipe into the requisite lengths. Occasionally Jim pauses as he works and speaks aloud to me, "I'm thinking we might have only needed 22 monochrome swish-swashed fluctose capacitors," he tells me with wide eyes and a contemplative gaze. Then he'll point to a blueprint and look in my direction.

Don't ask Clay to build you a living room cabinet.

At first I tried to speak actual words in response to his construction epiphanies, but then I got smart and started nodding slowly with a rueful smile on my face. (You know, like the plumber on Desperate Housewives.) Amazingly, this worked and Jim started to respect me. Evidently this nod and rueful smile is the universal signal of masculine understanding when it comes to building things. Who knew?

On this day our goal was to build the shell of the blimp. Which, as you can see from the attached photos, we accomplished with such a degree of precision that we even had time for my wife to pose inside the craft and pretend we built Wonder Woman's invisible plane. Upon completion of this framework, Jim and I pushed the blimp into the rear of my parent's garage, where it has been sitting since May.

Since May several things have happened: 1) Red Bull's safety engineers e-mailed and said they would not allow Jim and I to jump inside of the craft because it was too dangerous. Seriously. 2) Consequently, we decided that our craft would have wheels and we would run along the outside of it prior to jumping into the Cumberland River. 3) We've been told that we can't make it rain with unattached dollars because they will land in the river. And God knows a river as clean as the Cumberland can't be marred by a few stray pieces of paper. 4) Ergo my initial skit that was going to recreate the Music City Miracle was shot down, so I've decided to replace that idea with a complicated script mysteriously entitled, "Three dancing Pacmans get rained on." I'm sorry, that's all I can tell you -- Red Bull confidentiality rules and all. You'll just have to wait and see what we're doing like everyone else.

Yesterday, after a six-week hiatus, construction continued. I moved the blimp for the first time to make sure the recently arrived CBS blimp banner fit. After a long conversation with Jim, during which I discovered that my nod and rueful smile didn't work as well via phone, we had a new construction plan. Before I hung up I promised Jim I would affix the banner, construct wheels and make sure the framework all stayed intact so we wouldn't have to stay up late on Thursday taking care of all these details.

The blimp's PVC pipe frame with Clay Travis inside.

Instead, and this is the complete truth, my friend Greg and I spent all day making it rain at the Cracker Barrel Country Store and Home Depot with $100 in dollar bills. We did this because we decided what the world needed more than anything was another Make it Rain video. This time starring me, my dad, a few bedraggled umbrellas, an Under Armour skull cap and the unattached CBS SportsLine.com blimp banner.

Unfortunately, making it rain all over Nashville did nothing for the blimp construction. But I promise (nod and rueful smile) it will be ready, as will we, for the Saturday jump. Until then check back for All That and a Bag of Mail on Friday, where I will attempt to answer your Flugtag-related questions and hopefully, fingers crossed, be able to link the Make it Rain video we made.

Editor's Note: For more photos of the CBS SportsLine.com Redbull Flugtag blimp, check out the SPiN on Sports Facebook group page. Also check out Clay's "Makin' It Rain" music video on YouTube.

Dixieland Delight

Check it out on July 31.

In a completely unrelated aside designed to encourage you to spend your hard-earned money on me so I can make it rain more frequently, the cover for the Dixieland Delight book is up and the book is for sale on prerelease in advance of the July 31 official release date.

With the discretion and taste for which this column has attained global renown (my sister reads in France), I replaced the fat Alabama fan on the cover cheering with a pompon with a skinny Alabama fan cheering with a pompon. Because as I'm sure you're all aware, fat Alabama fans are few and far between.

Also, if you happen to live in SEC country, we're also close to finalizing a book signing tour which will likely bring me, a full table of books, lots of blank stares and no readers to a bookstore near you this fall. And if not a bookstore, a Wal-Mart. Yep, Wal-Marts. I'm currently booked to sign in the Gainesville, Fla., Wal-Mart at 11 in the morning on the same day as the UT-Florida game. No joke. I'll be as popular on that day in that town as Fidel Castro would be in Miami's Little Havana. The Florida girls are going to eat me. Literally. At least, that is, if I'm still alive post-Flugtag on Sept. 15.