2007 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

Balloons headed to east coast
5:16am Tue, 10/9
Subject: America's Challenge Balloons Head Into Colorado
Headline: Gas Balloonists Slowly Make Tracks North
Web: BalloonFiesta.com

As dawn breaks over the American Southwest, the early leaders in the Balloon Fiesta America's Challenge race for gas balloons are headed northward across the New Mexico - Colorado border.

Live tracking on the Balloon Fiesta Web site, www.balloonfiesta.com (yes, it's fixed!) shows three distinct groups of balloons and apparently, strategies. The first group includes early race leaders Mike Wallace and Kevin Brielmann (Team 5) and Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davis (Team 4), along with two other teams: Phil MacNutt and Phil Bryant (Team 9) and Mark Sullivan and Cheri White (Team 10). These balloons tracked to the north-northwest overnight.

The second group includes Team 2 (Barbara Fricke/ Peter Cuneo), Team 1 (Andy Cayton/ Stuart Enloe) and Team 7 (Louis Vitanza/ Bert Padelt). These balloons tracked more directly north a little more slowly than the first group and are now appear to be swinging a bit to the east.

Finally, there are two teams - the Austrian team of Gerald Sturrzlinger and Helmut Meierhofer (Team 8) and the American team of Bruce Hale and James Herschend (Team 6) - who have barely left Albuquerque and seem to be playing out a totally different strategy.

The real tactics begin in an hour or so when the sun comes up and the balloons catch solar heating that will help them reach their altitude of choice. Stay tuned and follow the race live at www.balloonfiesta.com.

That sucks - I was going to post here how cool this event looked and then that.

I don't like flying in aircraft without fixed wings and loads of power.

Sorry about the sad end to the festival.

Do they use some sort of passenger tether?

It's not the best year for the balloon fiesta ...

(From the Journal, print version):

One day after a woman fell to her death from a balloon, at least nine people were taken to hospitals when brisk ground winds made for hard landings and crashes during Tuesday morning's Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. ... ...

Larger print for easier reading of Walter's post:

Balloons Flying Again Wednesday After Record Number Of Crashes
UPDATED: 8:32 am MDT October 10, 2007

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Dozens of balloons took to the sky from Balloon Fiesta Park Wednesday morning after a record day for crashes Tuesday.

The Flight of Nations mass ascension went off without any problems just after 7 Wednesday morning. Balloons launched hoisting flags from all around the world.

Pilots tooks extra precautions early Wednesday morning to make sure weather conditions were safe for flying.

High winds contributed to four crashes Tuesday in Rio Rancho. That's the most crashes ever in a single day during Balloon Fiesta.

Nine people were injured in the crashes, incuding a pregnant woman who was thrown from a gondola. She and her unborn baby were treated and released from the hospital. No one suffered any injuries more serious than broken bones.

Tuesday's crashes come after Balloon Fiesta's first fatal accident in years. A California woman fell to her death Monday after the balloon carrying her got tangled in fiber optic lines in Northeast Albuquerque. The balloon crashed shortly after that and three more people were hurt.

Thanks for the updates BBB. In spite of the risks envolved I really would like to go up in a hot air balloon(Still).

sglass


Better get yourself a harness so you don't go flying out of the gondola.
Wouldn't hurt to also get a parachute and a helmet.

BBB

Will you go up with me BBB? I'll bring the peanut butter and jelly sandwichs if you'll bring the koolaide.

sglass


Hah! Don't hold your breath.

When I was younger, I was fascinated with glider planes and used to drive to the Napa Valley in California to watch the tow planes and glider planes for hours. I wanted so much to fly but the glider pilots wouldn't take me up because I suffered terribly from motion sickness.

In a balloon, at least I could lean over the side of the gondola to vomit on the roofs of the houses below or with a really good aim, on the heads of pedestrians.

BLEAHA!
BBB
BBB

You devil you.

I've been quiet, since I like both BBB and Sglass, and am not engaged against balloons.

But, the more I read, and sometimes see, along my road, I wonder.





This reminds me of when I threw a hissy fit in a thread about, I don't remember, a skywriting thing, in New York.



I guess I have a conservative basis - I don't want to see balloons all over the sky and these lands here. I'm just learning that I feel this way...
but I'd like the sky to be just the sky, and exultingly the sky. October is a key sky time of year...


I do like BBB a bunch and expect to welcome SGlass when you get here.

As an aside: we've two bigger starting places for balloons a couple of miles away, to the north and south.
So balloons quite often pass us.
(Once a year, one hosts the quite famous Montgolfiade, Europe's biggest balloon event.)

But quite often, balloons start from our place as well .... like just now, a couple of minutes ago:

Cool Walter. How many do you think are in the event?

The event has been ... two, three weeks ago - about 350 ballons have been there.
Here, at our village, just three diffrent start now and then.

more photos and videos
Today, Sunday, is the last day of the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. More photos and videos.

http://www.koat.com/balloonfiesta/index.html

Sigh as I wave bye bye to the pretty little balloons in the air until next year.

ohh.
I want to go back home so bad.

I absolutely miss the balloon fiesta.

I remember, our german shepard hated those things.
When my mother and I moved into the first house in ALbq, about 89-90, we had a huge back yard that was right next to a small slope so that we did not see the roof tops of the other homes below.

We had a wonderful view of the mountains every day. All day.

Princess ( what my mom named the german shepard ) arrived in late 1990 and was just this tiny, rolly polly dog with a HUGE belly and floppy ears.
She would play outside most of the cool mornings and spend the hot afternoons inside.

her first balloon fiesta had her on her little stubby legs barking at the sky.
One started to head our way and she began to piddle everytime she barked. This would bother her, so she would turn around quickly and try to bury the piddle before she would bark some more.
After about an hour of this barking , piddle, bury, bark some more stunt, the balloon starts to come down in the field behind our home.

She did not tolerate that at all.

She began to bark so hard she lost her voice . ( I remember it stayed gone for.. what seems like two days afterwords.)
So, since she could not bark, she would "bow" her head against the ground, and throw her front legs out to the side, causing her upper body to crash into the dirt.

That poor dog.
It was the funniest dang thing I ever saw a baby dog do.

She was 14 when she died. Still trying to bury her piddle over those balloons .

Shewolf
That poor dog! Dyslexia, Diane and I wish you were back in Albuquerque, too. We all miss you and the Bean's daddy and look forward to spending Thanksgiving with all of you.

My Dolly and Madison are used to the whoosh whoosh sound of the balloons overhead and have learned to look up in the sky to watch them float above our home. They don't bark, piddle, or whine. They just watch and then go back to watching the birdies in our trees.

BBB

Re: 2007 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

I like hot air balloons.
I have chartered some for a few years for flights over New Jersey,
for the O M SIG of NY Mensa.

Its a very tranquil experience; and fun.
We also went out over the Arizona desert,
skimming the desert floor, about 6 inches up.
U see the many boros that the little animals have dug.

Thay give champagne and croissants, when u land.
David

I hesitate to bring this up, as, in my serious posts, I like to know what I think first. (what serious posts?)

I failed to be enchanted in the land of enchantment, by balloons. No particular reason, just amorphous reaction.


Maybe it was the blind date who wanted me to go parachuting... (the guy with, yes, the red porsche who skimmed the cliff bottoms in his speed, thus skittering... this on the way to the dinner place.)
No, not Dys. This was years ago.


I see the balloons as fragile, but that's not my qualm.

Might be when I spouted off on a2k about some stuff going on in the NY skyline, sorry, no link.

I think I don't like the sky as a palette - at the same time I understand it, I don't really like it, and I don't like it cute.

Or, maybe it's a childhood of playing with my dad's parachute seat and the silk, a certain respect/qualm.



I'm not knocking likeing balloon stuff - just trying to acclimatize re what I think.

I think I understand what you mean.

It makes the sky seem unnatural and touched.. almost ruined

we are not meant to be in the sky anyway, or we would have wings and push eggs out our hindend.