Albuquerque international Balloon Fiesta part 3.. The After...

Way still far too tired to be able to even consider waffles.

I mean, people are already flying again and even sooner than this ready to go out there and do the fly thing and I am thinking on where I put my gloves!!

We are at Fiesta past, day 7. That's a week! I have my covers off my tanks. Tanks removed from the basket and straps also out. Burners and pole bag are resting on an envelope in the trailer. That is it!

I've edited a few videos, which turned out very nicely and I NOW have edited the shots that were worthy of editing from the whole week. I completely forgot the last day, thinking I had already done them.. nope....

Perhaps its because I get only a few hours of sleep at night that kills all my stamina right away...
That really sucks the life out of anything... Well away.. I have a bunch of shots here below I want to show off..  some taken by me.. some by my friends of me that I could never get... mainly because I cant fly in the balloon and take pictures of the balloon at the same time... kinda hard.. but I do have friends that can take a mean picture.. so I will post those here ...


All shots in this group by Kurt Van Sant...my good friend. ( hint..I'm the light bulb..white and yellow check balloon )

Except this one where I am in the yellow red and blue racer Patturns Highperactive. Hanging out with my friends.

Love these shots... If only the FAA and AIBF would allow me to run a drone from the basket with a dslr hung on it.

These shots are from my good friend Paul Olguin... He was off to the East nicely set up.

Nothing like sharing the sky with your Son ( Yellow balloon with the black thunderbolt )... Yes I have the heebie geebies but he is a great Pilot and I shouldn't worry... but I do...

Below are from my phone of dubious quality but worth showing here as no where else will they be seen.....

So the big question is when does Fiesta relinquish this bind? We had great conversations on the way to propane about the wording. Flight release required.

My scratching on a better way to run the roads into the field and propane.. cause there has to be a better way not to have pedestrians crossing the roads... just me and my CDOTV.

Last weather report with pibal...INSIDE.. raining all morning put a damper on things...

Last year for Sam.. sad to see that happen but he was fantastic. Where will the tiny horses go now?!?!

Top of Patturns In Czech... So many people everywhere.. loads of fun chatting with them all..or most.. some... okay a few.

Andrew watches and monitors...

Nick keeps things tight and right.

The one thing I wont miss... I like indoor plumbing no matter how clean these were....

Second of four pins... for sale for 3 bucks each. ..or you can come crew for a bit.

Day, I cant remember.. Ready to head to the field at 5am.

Birthday Cherry Pie.. made by my sister Carolyn! Thanks.. It was gooooood.

Rory lends ( without his knowledge ) his truck to retrieve a stuck British crew. They had cool Union Jack jackets n stuff. It was very interesting getting out of this arroyo. 4 wheel drive, speed and maneuverability.

Morning laser light show was fun...

When there is little in the atmosphere the people would walk around with foggers...still was cool.

Brought out my globe to play with a few times... not enough time to play that much sadly or happily.

The morning brief at the tower... using one of my offices on line weather charts...nice!

Sheltering in place when the winds came up.. guess where....

When you cant see in the dark you use your phone to take a picture... Boosted the heaters the next day though this was an okay pressure.

Morghan's crew. There are pics of my crew around somewhere.....

More fun with lasers!!! Yaaaaaaaa......

So someone got real wet feet..... Me, only a little squishy.... a stop at the local starbucks for the toilet, coffee and wring out the socks. Splash and dashes in the Rio Grande does this at times.

Super awful cool blue tooth speaker as a gift from AIBF! It sounds very good.

Emerson Elementary where we stand up for the kids the day before Fiesta starts... so many good people work here and the kids are great.

After the Albuquerque Aloft school stand up ( we dont fly because we are too close to the airport and the kids get more time with us ) its VIC's breakfast for the crew!! Then propane refueling.

Whew!!!...

Videos processed so far can be found here.....

https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/eb920c49e

and here...

https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/eba9529de

and here...

https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p715442282/eba307dc3

and more to come...and you can get to them all from any one of those links.

No shots from day 8 or any days more now as this is long enough as it is... I am off for more rest before the next full five days of work!!

Coffee ..

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Part 2

Its over for another year. It comes so quickly and it leaves faster. Even with ten days of flying and visiting and chatting and running everywhere its over so very fast. Just when you get used to going to bed as soon as possible if you get no nap and waking around 3am you now have to fight to stay up till 9pm so you will sleep to your alarm at 5am for work...... Fiesta lag....

How many people do you know that go stand in a cold wet grass park and wait for the sun to rise?

I know a lot.

I could go into minute detail about every day of fiesta but it would overload you on everything of the five senses.. readers digest versions below...

How about right now I just give you what hit me the most and I can comment on things in detail later ( weeks later ).

1. The group who create Fiesta for us all are pretty damn amazing. Sam Parks our balloonmeister for the past 6 years is awesome. He was like a touchstone of cheer even when the weather acted so very strange. It will be sad to not have him up on the tower making us laugh in the future.

2. Our Zebras who launch us into the air were fun and helpful. Even when we were waiting and hoping to get in the air fast they were there to get us moving when they could. If only some of us Pilots could understand and follow the three row rule it would make things easier on everyone.

3. The quirky travel lanes into the field and to get propane and back to the field was a good try to sort out the knots of traffic that happen in the park area.

PS .. I do not even know what hoops had or have to be jumped through to adjust the process but I would help if it was needed... no complaints here.. just observation.

4. The massive volunteer support... it was MASSIVE and so very good. I am thankful for every one person out there that helped in every way big or small.

5. Weather support.. what a year! So much strangeness in the weather.... who could deal with the subtle changes that were happening on a minute to minute basis.. I believe some of the tequila stock needed to be shunted to our weather team nightly. Props again to Sam and the team that made the decisions to hold or stop flights.

We have a saying in the ballooning community that they all know by heart....

Its better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than be in the air wishing you were on the ground.

I could go on more about things but I will in the coming weeks....

It was a GREAT FIESTA.

Our long week.

Friday the 5th. Stand up at Emerson Elementary for the kids who would probably not see a balloon at all.

Saturday the 6th. Flew from the park to a local park. Causing my crew undue hassles of carrying everything out of said park.

Sunday the 7th. Static / Stand up on the field for the visitors. Weather too fussy to fly.

Monday the 8th. Flew from the park to the Rio Grande river for a fantastic reverse flow splash and dash into the river and off to Rio Rancho. Props to Rod Baca's crew for help out to the flat spot.  Our team helped a British crew get their equipment out of the arroyo and to their chase vehicle who couldn't handle the sand.

Tuesday the 9th. Super variable flight from the park to a little water catch area off San Metao. Forced crew to haul basket up rock scree to parking lot.

Wednesday the 10th. No flight due to the winds. Breakfast at Vic's

Thursday the 11th. Fun, very slow flight from the park to the ball fields Southwest of  Alameda.

Friday the 12th. Racer flight from the park to a road behind a building. Caught by the awesome ladies of the Boobalina crew! Thanks again ladies. It was sweet.

Saturday the 13th. Crazy shifting winds changed the launch order from South to North to a West to East and we had to go quickly. Great launch from Zebra Shawn, smooth ride in the air alongside my son in Mojo to the river for another dual splash and dash and reverse sail up the Rio Grande then onto a fun landing in a field in Corrales. ( Mo came in 11th in the competition and I am very proud of him for it ).

Sunday the 14th it was raining..... so for the first time Pilot brief was moved to the Sid Cutter Pavilion and we all stuffed in there out of the rain and had a great time. Then off to breakfast.

I want to thank my crew who come into town from the coasts and mountains as well as the crew who live here locally and deal with me all year round...

Rory, Hannah, Reed, Brita, Donna, Andrew, Carolyn, Nick, Mary..as well as our volunteer Parker who showed up out of the blue... and those who helped here and there. It all was so much and made it so fantastic. Charity..thank you so much for the assist on Saturday.. missed saying thanks.

So here are a "very" few of the shots I took.... PS.. I took thousands of pictures and had three video cameras running every flight day... so much processing to do in the near future... but wow.. some of the videos are amazing and the shots are ... sweet!!

Edits of a few favorites from the 7th.

Its always fly first...shoot second and most times my camera is pointing in a direction I saw something from the corner of my eye. I am pretty good at getting what I want for a general direction and an awesome camera in the Sony RX10V4.

I've loaded only 24 shots from one day to FB. I have a few to post to IG that I have not shown anywhere yet.

So much and so many to be thankful for and to...

Fair skies and soft winds and smooth travels my friends....

2018 Albuquerque international Balloon Fiesta .... part 1

Well its started. We are in day two of the Fiesta wildness and really day three for us as we did a stand up at Emerson Elementary school on Friday morning. We have had one good day of flying ... which was Saturday. Today the winds just above the ground were too fast to fly safely so we were grounded.

But before I show you some of the shots from the ground portion of the fun I am going to show some of the shots from a drone shoot of a Lindstrand USA Commercial balloon being put up for almost the first time and its beauty shots for the company.  I am not going to post the 78 that I passed along but the shots with the drone in them as I did those for myself really.

Other than the soaking wet grass and the just cut grass making a morass on your shoes it was a fun shoot. Great light and easy to get around to get as many shots as I could want. Selecting 78 that I thought fit the shoot were tough. Ill be passing some of these onto the drone company to use.

It was good they had a tarp to lay it out on as it would have been soaked if the hadn't. The balloon did its big debut in Arizona on Monday last.

Getting back to the AIBF... Here are some shots I took up until I took off.... just a few.

Corner marker for my launch grid... you get sentimental about these things.

A view to a view to a view

Putting heat to it.

Up and over

Hoping to see some of the fun with these three during competition.

Inflating in a row.

Crown control and spotter.

Up against the colors. Its an amazing view.

Jackets and balloons.

Cats in the air.

Its got something bothering it.

After this I was in the air trying to fly and take pictures when i had a chance. Next weekend i will have a lot more shots to show you and probably just a link so that I dont have to load the fun ones to two different places.

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is so huge and so amazing. We were stunned by the size of the crowds on Saturday... So many people!!..

Now I have to get ready for another morning of waking up at 415 and getting things ready for flying.. Hopefully the weather will cooperate as we were shut down today.

I have flying to do!