Balloons Over Angel Fire & New Mexico

Last weekend was the Balloons Over Angel Fire rally. Of the three days of possible flying only the first, Friday was flyable....and that for a limited time only. Saturday and Sunday were either too wet, too windy or just too dang chancy to get into it. As far as I know everyone still had a wonderful time.
Some shots below...

Collecting or when collecting goes bad and becomes hoarding or when you just keep things far too long thinking you are going to use them ... sometime... and how to deal with that.

First... throw everything out!

Second. Don't buy anything your not going to use right away.

Third. No one eats leftovers after three days and the same goes for the bottle of nails your saving.

Invariably you will have that bottle or jar of nails but they wont be the exact ones you need for the new project so you still have to go to the hardware store for the right ones.

Really. I just forced a purging of my shed area. Making it so awesome was the set of rules below.

First.. wait until the hottest time of the day to get in the shed so that the metal roof makes it triple hot in the shed.

Second.. start sorting things into .. throw away now.. throw away tomorrow.. and never let go.

Third... decided on day two to just throw it all away except for actively functioning tools and paperwork that has to be sorted and shredded.

It never works well but it had to be done.

I brought back so much from moving my Dad that I had to do something to open up space in the garage... I accomplished that much.

No really I did achieve quite a lot. I also found some things out.

I took two loads to the dump. I organized what I could not throw away for various "real" reasons.

I cant throw my second balloon envelope away so it stayed in its bag but its now in the corner with pillows and pads for fiesta on top..

Perfect. Beside that there is one large bin and two small bins full of paperbacks that I have to sort through. I am going to take pictures of each of the covers of the books I want to re read and look them up on line but in the end this is 16 square feet of stuff that can go. I also have a bunch of boxed of docs I have to sort into shred and copy piles.

I do have a pile of paint cans too.. who doesn't! Those are going to the hazardous waste point during the week.. that's another 8 sq ft area clear. The table top is clear, tools in their place, I can even get to my shop vac!

Oh.. and a long time back when I was crewing I so wanted a flag for my truck I could fly while chasing balloons..

Serious overkill here.. must be 20 in there now ... including a 1984 fiesta flag and I think a Kiss A Hoy flag. Also.. if you could try to get these to fall on you any time you looked away it would never happen but they decided on a minute to minute basis to fall on my head every time I looked away... bastards!

After those trips to the dump I could add two of my favorite gardening utensils to my tool corner.. both from my dads place. Both I used constantly after I got in trouble as punishment...

Weird that I wanted them.. Said I was going to screw them into a wall to show how I won over them.. and as a warning to other hoes out there.. but really.. they do work nicely on weeds... so they will be used for that function when needed.

Along with those two is a British machete that my Dad had for ages and we would use to hack back the stinging nettles and hog weed in our back yard... well our back yard in England was very big and the back quarter was a mini forest with all the things you would find in a forest in England.. Nettles and hemlock. Both very uncomfortable if you brushed up against them.

It needs a good sharpening....

So many things kept... but I did purge a lot too. Along with the shed I did some work on clothes in the house. It feels good. Its cooler in the house so of course it felt good! LOL. Second look next weekend.

The garage is going to be a hateful thing. If it was just me I think I could dump all the things and just enjoy the space but there are things you cant do away with .. as I am not buying Christmas decorations every year.

That was the mornings .. this evening we went to Joe's Pasta House in Rio Rancho for dinner with my second cousin. Great food and since he is in the Air Force and usually in parts unknown its great to chat with him about family goings on's. Our family has grown so much from where it started when my Grandfather came from the old country and settled in New Jersey. Now we are in almost every section of the US. So very strange. I used to be able to tell you where each of my cousins were and how they were related.. now there are children and children's children.. its all so ... everywhere now.  We are planning to sit down and take a head count using my Dads family tree docs to get it right in mind.

Should be a fun day.

Also during this week I had thoughts on life in New Mexico as it was brought to me by multiple people that it was strange to live here. Why pick HERE! It was very strange that it was three people talking about the same thing. Very strange.

I live in Albuquerque and in New Mexico for reasons... One is the job. Since I work with some awesome people that makes it fantastic to work HERE. If these people and this office were in Florida I would live in Florida... Or in Pennsylvania... but then there is the after part.. After I retire.. if I can retire.. will I move from here... Heh... Probably not. Albuquerque and New Mexico grows on you.. its an insidious thing too.. I am sure going to travel but I will always come back...because...

It starts so simple... Dry hot air.. no sweat... no humidity.. nice... then you get that first taste of REAL green chili... and the hook gets set.. then the smell of sage on the cooler breezes off the mesa.. Hot sandstone and Sage.. you just turn your whole body in the directing the wind is coming from and stand there breathing it in.. there is nothing anywhere like it... then the tang of roasting chili's hits your nose.. and at first your freaking out as its acidic and cloying and goodness what the hell!! Then and now its ahhhhh..... lets get closer... and that tang has you walking closer to get more of it...

Then there are the people.. the people who have lived here forever... and are the nicest people anywhere. They are true salt of the earth people. Their people have lived here forever too. They just grew right up and out of the ground. I met two today.. one old lady who was working and living life and one completely tattooed guy also.. just there...living.. both I would not mind sitting down and over coffee or something cold hearing about their lives. Which reminds me I really have to chat with someone at work about this...

But I go off track..again... Albuquerque is a special place. Bad things good things its still got its feet so far in the past but reaching for the future... New Mexico is a very old part of the country.. Thousands of years of known history here and so much wild still. That is one of the draws for me.. I can go out into New Mexico and stand and see forever and smell the grass and stare off and see not another human being.. know for sure that I am at least 50 miles away from another human... You just have to do it for yourself.. Go out on one of the small roads... get out there.. pull over.. turn off the car and stand on a rock and look out... its worth it.

And then you run across some seriously funny memes out there to do with this place.. and they are so apt.


This was perfect... even knowing that the rain will make every weed in your yard go nuts you are still loving the rain... and yes.. somewhat just like that.

And this makes my mouth water even now... Chili's!!!!!!! mmmmmm.... Pain is a flavor!

And yes.. pretty much.... even!

I've been to every corner of this state.. I need to go back.



Back to the beginning-ish.. Angel fire is wonderful.. its interesting to fly as its at 8000 feet and there are ridges and you are flying a valley.. and that's novel in a hot air balloon.... This year I had a bit of a problem with catching my breath..

A great shot of us slowpokes getting off the ground.... Good shot too.

Lift off as light as a feather and about as quick .. until it was very quick.... and flingy.

Mo in The Reverse Gravity Machine heading across the valley.. why.. because it was different...

And how most of us are when balloons are flying.....

I did post up one short video of flying in Angel Fire.. not great but it is what it is sadly.. A better one is coming.


http://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/eaf063d15

Its fun enough.

So very scattered my brain is right now. I want to fly but I want to keep clearing the house and I want to go take pictures and I want to travel and then take pictures and talk to people forever and sleep in and try different things and and and..... tomorrow is Monday....

Mmm... one last thing..

If you are in a totally cool place and you are taking amazing pictures with your cell phone camera.... just flippen well stop.. stop and go buy a Nikon or Sony or Canon DSLR with at least 12 meg pixels.

You will appreciate it later when you need to blow one of them up or lighten it so you can see the details because even though your cell phone can take a kick ass shot .. it cant be enlarged or edited for color or light very much.. and that is sad.

You will pay almost a thousand for a cell phone but not 500 on a very good DSLR...


Very sad.

And that is my screed or Soap Box statement for the week!  Need to find a soap box to stand on and get a picture of... that would be cool.

Have a fun fun week!

Histories, Memories, Flights of Fancy

Back from four days of packing and sorting and moving and removing and repacking and moving.

No really.

My Father needed to live closer to my Moms full care residence so he up and sold his house and got an apartment. Boom! Like that. Super fast. So off me and my brother went Northward to assist. My sister came out from Utah and my little sister is already there processing everything that needed to be processed... this included switching the internet, which happened with alacrity right at 0600 the first day. Not a lot of fun. Understand that my Dad lived in a beautiful house in a wonderful neighborhood with fantastic people all around but absolutely the worse internet or wifi connections on the planet. I believe that the moon has better access to the internet.

Not that we had time to hang our surfing the web but it would have helped when we were all cramped up and sore laying on  the floor in the basement in the cool to relax us after all the above packing moving packing etc. It was in the 90s with bad humidity and I'm from the desert with no humidity!

We moved a 5 bedroom house into a two bedroom apartment. This meant that Dad had to get rid of a scary amount of stuff.  It happened and us kids ended up being given so very much... and since our Dad and Mom have already given us so much throughout our lives this was just the cream of the ice cream.

What finished up today was Dad is moved in to his new place and will be back cleaning the old house because he is a super cleaning master and refuses to hand over the keys unless its super clean.... My sister will remove all the items we could not take home ourselves or give to friends... Mostly bed frames/ headboards and insanely heavy tabletops. Misc stuff that will go to goodwill or charities or the trash if no one wants it.

We were gifted brass rubbings that my parents did in the 1970s and which you cant do any more.  We got to choose... and this is funny because here we all are in our 50s and were sitting or standing around the finished basement and looking at all the framed brasses and going.. okay... that one.. okay.. that one... LOLOL... it was quite funny and a serious bit of lightness for us all.

Along with the brasses were other items that my Mom will never use again or things that just had to go... Ill show a few below..... pretty much everything is sentimental... no value except to me because its family connection....

After we finished moving my Dad we had to come back to the house and pack trailers. I didn't bring mine up because I thought I would only have a few brasses for myself and my brother.... boy was I terribly terribly wrong...LOLOL We had to rent them.... Ours was packed so tight we didn't need straps for anything.

Because it helped my Dad out I took everything I could to remove it from his worry. No stuff no worry. My little sis will clear out the remaining stuff using my nephew and friends or I will go back up and finish the job myself.

Home now. All unpacked and looking for location for brasses... and one special item.....

My Great-Great Grandfather painted this watercolor of guinea pigs a very long time ago. its been passed down for a long while.. and my mother, quite a while back said I could have it when she passed as it meant to much to me.  Its in my home. It will be on my wall as soon as I fix the hanging chain. Massive personal value to me it chokes me up.

So how far back do we have items that needed to be tossed... a very long time ago... how bout a mouse cleaning kit!!! They sold these!! People bought these!! hahahahahaha.... oops... we did.

This was wonderful.. I love steam engines and here was a DVD of steam engines... wonderful!!!

Not so wonderful......

Ah well... its worth the chuckle.. and yes.. I did pack and bring it with me...

There ware many types of brasses.... There are very intricate and very basic brasses.... you do know what a brass rubbing is right???  Ah.. well... Just like you rub a penny under a sheet of paper with a pencil to copy the image you do the same here but with brasses that are inlaid in the floors of churches in England ( and elsewhere ) and you use special paper and special crayons to lift the image off the brass. It takes hours and hours to do these correctly. My parents would take us four kids hither and yon and while they labored at this art we would run through the forests and fields and or play cards in the back of our gold Chevy station wagon.

Some of them are scary large.... this brass is 91 inches high. We think we figured out where to put it..

There is another I got because I asked and my parents were super nice to me about it and its a table brass. I love it too. We believe we have figured out where they all are going to hang in the house. We may have some trading to do between me and my brother because I think we have a haunted one.

There was a tub.. Big sweater type tub full of unframed brasses we have to sort through. I will probably have to take pictures of each section...because none are labeled.. and then my Bro will try to identify where they are from. Way fun loads of work.

Two more items to show you out off a trailer full...  My mothers watercolor easel. Infinite load of feelings for this.

And what we believe to be a knitted lamb my Grandmother made... Which now sits on my dresser.. yes at 50 some odd years old... it will sit there...

So many other little things that bring back memories...

So even though I feel like I've been run over and punched with huge boxing gloves we got what we needed doing done.  Nothing else matters. Dad and Mom are close and that is that.

Hope you and yours are as happy and family oriented this day.

Oh and I got bit by four mosquito's! Damn them!!!

Hot air ballooning with Patturns Highperactive and storms!

Its a thundering and lightning outside.... no so very very frightening but nifty all the same.

It all started with bubbles...

Now we have storms coming into the area and rain starting to fall.. we had a little storm earlier and it was swiftly gone so we figured.. yep... New Mexico rainstorm.. five minutes... but the other side to New Mexico rainstorms is the torrential rains and hail and thunder and lightning and serious flooded arroyos and that's just another danger.

Looking t the radar feed its a big long storm. Hang on to your horses. Who ever washed their cars yesterday... thanks!

Its coming off my roof like a waterfall. Hope my tiles are fine and I have no leaks.

Well while that is going on outside... lets go back to yesterdays balloon flight.

The system came out of its annual inspection nicely. Thank you AERCO..out local repair and design station.

Hooked everything up and set the temp sensor in the top. The plastic around the sensor has split and that's not a fun thing. I will have to get in there again and tape it up. I plan on having AERCO put a nice bit of velcro up there to lock the sensor head right against the fabric like it should. Plus fix the little tear I caused after flying.

My bad. I have to stop landing near the construction... every time I do I get some damage. This time it was from a huge chunk of volcanic rock. Sigh. First tear.

The flight was fun and challenging. As the winds were faster than normal and the only Westerly was about 500 feet up and thin.. about 40 feet.. I had to launch and get into it quick and stay there. I bobbled it a bit at first but was able to stick the envelope in it and ride it south. It was a fast run and we reached 11.1 mph at the top. The landing was at 10.3 mph and smooth as glass. I was able to drop down and ground track at 10 feet ( due to the trees in the way ) and then drop out at the end. With such fast winds we were dragged towards some large rock piles and when deflating it got a snag.

Great flight.

Clips from the video cams. I didn't have time to take pics...

I hooked up two kodak 360 4k cams. They failed after 20 minutes of flight. Seriously bad camera build by kodak.

That surreal spiral is always so cool to look at.

Up and out. Rotating counter clock wise or widdershins as we go. Stepped off the Earth again and hid my trail... woo hoo... Yeah.. crazy talk. Also avoided banging into the balloon next to me. 

 Over the arroyo I would normally drop down into and play about but the wind was the controller that day and I had to keep it where she was to get all the West I wanted. I could have done something different but this is what I did. It was 80 degrees also, which make is very hot for the top of the balloon. 204 was the max temp.

Tail numbers on an aircraft with no tail.

My flight. All that red is staying in that 40 foot of Southwest air. I calculated for that blue hook at the end and it came out SA-WEET!

It was a good flight.... very good flight...

My nice clean front yard. I have a fantastic gardener. Yes.. for two reasons.. I hate yard work and my back wont let me bend down constantly. If I even tried to do this I would be laid up for three days after.  This is what happens when you abuse your back when you are a kid.

UTE fire.. its getting rained on right now so hopefully that will knock it down and or put it right out.
I hate to see the forests on fire and they loss of houses or animals really sucks. We also have a balloon rally to the West of that area in two weeks and I would rather not have it cancelled due to the fire or possibly creating a fire. Fingers crossed.

So we are sitting here waiting to see what happens. Right now its on and we will be up for three days of ballooning at 8000 feet in the beautiful Angle Fire valley. 15, 16, 17 of June. You should come out.. It will be awesome!!

Its a photographers dream as well.

More info to follow on it... but you can look it up on the nets...

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