The days are going faster

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is 138 days away...

You should be getting worried about now...

Not in any priority.

Insurance renewal.
Steps for the truck.
Food and Drink.
Full clean of the balloon system.
Full clean of the trailer.

Before that though we have the Angle Fire balloon rally in June!

Things can get away from you very fast. Summer is here and next, it will be September and just too late.

This weekend was minus flying. Saturday the winds were too high and Sunday I needed to get some sleep as my neighbor had decided to hammer on things in his back yard until midnight and that killed any rest I got. Had to raise my voice, at last, to have him cut it out. I did and he did say sorry but ... sigh.

So a weekend shattered.

What I ended up doing is editing the remainder of my Nieces wedding photographs.. my outtake shots.

That and dusting, which is a fool's errand as it will just be as dusty in a few days. Can't get away from it here in the desert. Not unless you have a positive air pressure house with airlocks. I didn't select those options when I bought my house. My mistake... I also reorganized my stuff.

Stuff means, all the DSLR pieces and parts, GoPro and Kodak 360 pieces and parts, all the chargers, all the radios, all the plugs, all the music players, all the memory, and all the cables... I'm sure I missed something. I removed one huge bin and two smaller bins and added four medium sized bins that equal the huge bin. Halved the stuff in the closet. I feel better.. the closet can breathe a bit and all the items are with like items.

Amazing how you can build up so much ... well... stuff...

So much stuff. Laid it out on the floor and grouped all of it. Out of the big bin and separate.

Surprising how many velcro straps piled up. What was I strapping with all of these!

An abundance of Nikon camera straps. Since I took them off all the cameras I had they are sitting around. Now they are strapped with velcro straps until I can find someone who needs one. That and lens caps. I lose them all the time so I have spares.

My CDOTV ( OCD Tourettes Version ) is satisfied with the below picture. I have many many chip adapters which are worth nothing but I can't seem to throw them away. Lots of stereo plugs I never use anymore but might someday find a use for...

My last two Archos media center players. Both had 500 gig drives in them so you could watch movies or listen to music and such....but now you can do that on your phone so why carry around one of these clunky things. Amazing how fast the process changed and Archos saw it coming and changed too.. so now these are defunct. just bits of old tech now.

Almost everything I reboxed or separated and stored has no intrinsic value but to save me buying a new one in the years to come if I ever need that three-headed whoosits.

It still feels good to have completed a task that was pretty daunting. Now to make sure nothing gets put back in there nor have whats in there get messed up again.

I also wanted to relocate my second very old computer. I only use it when I have something time consuming to do or I need desk space. Sadly the table it's on is small but too big for this space.

So do I pull an old roll around table to put it on so it can be moved where ever I need it or should I dispense with it altogether or should I just leave well enough alone because in a few weeks ill change my mind on how I want it? I hate this... If I swap it out will it work or will I want to return it to whatever way it was before? Too limited space but is it too limited or just not functional.

Still mulling it.

Having fun yet?

Some of my favorite clips from the interwebs.... Because I can.

On my front door.

 Its a new Mexican thing.

Best of what's in my brain right now.


Lastly... before I go soak my head... The Rio Grande Classic Top Gun Competition is this next Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Come out and see the antics of this wild bunch. I will be taking photographs and trying not to fall down.

Its the flight not the destination...HAB!

So you have airplanes, trains, buses, cars, helicopters, etc... every one of them you use to get to where you are going and then you are happy... except for Hot Air Balloons... where the destination doesn't matter at all but the flight is what it's all about.

Its the flight, not the destination........

We had a great flight today. We have a wonderful new friend from Poland, a fixed-wing pilot who was out for her first balloon flight. Forecast winds were for 3 miles per hour to the South. What we had was 4 mph to the East but above you could see it was shifting South.

Since we had just got Patturns Highperactive back from her annual inspection, and normally there is a lot of unraveling to deal with and checks to deal with it takes time... but this time everything was nicely set and it was easy to set up. In fact, we had the balloon standing in a matter of minutes. Normally I let others go first to see how it's going but I would have had to wait a bit ( long time )  so decided to just go for it.

We launched.. spun using the turning vents, which in this Lindstrand racer is very fast, then at altitude we caught a very fast 11 mph wind going Southwest. What the heck! We stayed in it till we got close to the big arroyo and then dropped down into it, and slowed down to 5 mph. Nice!!

Watching a few rabbits bounding about and us slipping by at brush levels for a bit as it was taking us East we then popped back up into the fast Southwest and took that over the South side of Paradise Blvd. Dropping back to ground level we ground tracked all the way to Paseo where we stopped to see if that was a nice place to lay down but the crew were on the opposite side of the road and so we hopped over there. There we laid down the balloon and the pack up was smooth and quick.

An awesome awesome day.  No camera as we were going quickly and no one was nearby.

Here are some clips from the Kodak 360 cameras thought. Converted to 360 pano's

Lift off and spin.. in either order.

In the arroyo and cruising East with the rabbits.

Shadows chasing us!

Crossing Unser at ten feet up.. no traffic.

Crossing Paseo at ten feet and the traffic stopped to watch... nice!

Rory got some shots and I can't wait to see them.

Yesterday I went out to watch my son Mo fly Mojo off from Coors and La Orilla near the river. He did get in it and out of it but the run to find a landing place took forever and they went far to the South. Trent was out also and World balloon another private balloon and Rainbow Ryders were out as well. Busy busy place.

Here are a few shots from then...


Glass ball time. Adjusting the length from the ball to the lens was hard but the only way to get a crisp shot.

Go thatta way.

World cruises through the trees to the river.

The Crown line... a fun place to be dragged from.

Standing all pretty like.

They are off.. with some interesting facial expressions on the way out. No.. not this shot.. the one I didn't post.

Love love love the deep red in this shot. WOW!

Thunderbolt in glass.. just a lot of fun.

Standing up Ytivarg.. Mojos Reverse Gravity Machine gets ready to defy gravity once again... They landed just short of Los Lunas!!!

Check your watching... oops, phones... synchronize!!

Off through the trees and trying to grab some leaves.

Just move em aside.. and or go through them.

Another great weekend of Hot Air Ballooning. What more can you ask for... Granted Fiesta is now 152 days away... so many many things yet to do.

This upcoming week a lot is going on in the office so I expect I will be buried in things.. which is better than tapping your fingers and waiting for things to happen... Go things!!!

Hope you enjoy YOUR week!!