Hectic Times

Why does everything have to just explode all at the same time? It seems that May and June and July are just big snarls of things to do and deal with. Just no time to sit back and watch before and after. Always with the running about with hair on fire...

The explosions. Trip to Colorado for a wedding, Top Gun Rio Grande Classic, Trip to Ft Worth for work... etc etc etc. Gotta fit a trip back to Colorado in there somewhere and other places too!!

So I did get the first day of the Top Gun RGC done. Videos are NOT done! So much time they take I keep pushing them off.

Here are a few shots but you can see them all here...  https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p714650324/ecd6b5bbc

Sneaky balloons. This feels fake as heck. Looks fake but that's the contrast between the hills and the balloon. Try looking at the hill cuts.

Another fun one for me. Most of the Pilots decided their best course was to stay as low as possible and ride the ridges.

Just a relaxing route out of the target. This is the pilot of the Baby Bee in his regular shaped balloon but with his sit down bottom end.

There is a large arroyo just beyond that hill. The winds were moving swiftly down it so most got into it then got right back out.

This shot was nice because there is almost a pull of the edge of the moon where it hits the balloon envelope... just like water tension.

I really will get to the other shots. Maybe I'll just push the videos aside to the edge of the table and just go with the pictures. Sounds like a nice thing to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Ft. Worth was a nice ( hah ) change from Albuquerque. Change as in sopping wet and thick air. Ft. Worth itself is an awesome city. The city center is great for grunging around. I didn't do that much because it was so humid I needed a swimsuit and lifeguard any time I left the hotel.

The last day was much nicer but then it was time to go. The sad part of going to Ft. Worth for anything is that every damn time there is a hold up at the airport on the way out. This last one was four hours of agony in an overly warm overcrowded terminal. Nothing worse than being uncomfortable and hot and stuck.

Below are some of the shots from my trip. More can be found here...  https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p226241928/ecdfb2e8f

Here are a select few...

The buildings in Ft Worth are impressive in their design. I could spend a good cool October month shooting them all. The eagle in this was neat.

The water gardens are worth a good long stay. Each unique setting asks for a good hour or two... to consider ... everything.

The sun dappling on the Kress building was amazing. I should have captured some video of it but I was walking with a group so this was all I got.

There were three things I saw in this shot. The blade type glass edges, The corner extrusions, and the green-blue panels. I took some close-ups of the corner moldings.

Here is a link to the water gardens themselves... https://www.fortworth.com/listings/fort-worth-water-gardens/2989/

There are a lot of shots of the planes take off from Albuquerque, dive into the Ft Worth area and then return and landing. There are reasons for almost every shot. You could guess I suppose.

Things to do...



Many...


Now have to think about getting the Kiss A Hoy pin out and dusted off.

Kiss A Hoy has returned from the East coast.

Fiesta is all of 117 days away.

Scary.


Nothing is getting done sitting here pondering it so I will go see if it's possible to get more pictures done and uploaded.

Go do something!

Leaving Earth! Again even!!!

My schedule forces me to return a while after though. OK... and I would run out of fuel and I would probably get bored... and the crew would abandon me to my own devices and go have breakfast...

It's not often that I lift off and take a picture of where I, at the end of my flight, land. Quite novel.



It's been two busy weeks so no blog was created. It was next to impossible to be coherent enough to put things down here. So now is the time to catch up a bit.

Let's go from last week and the Top Gun Rio Grande Classic. Three days of competition ballooning.
36 odd balloon Pilots showed up with their balloons and went for the top spots.

Long story short... what looked to be only one day of good enough flying weather turned into three days of great flying weather.

I have loaded up all 120 shots and a few more I thought were worthy on my website. That's day one only. That's from over a thousand shots... that day.

Yes, I had to go through all of them. Firstly, for the Top Gun Group, I selected about 70 from all three days. These were mostly baggie throws at targets as they are the most active shots in the bunch. After that, I did some of the outtakes. Over the last bunch of days, I started on day one, looking for the special ones or the interesting ones.

I did seem to get hooked on solitary balloons in blue skies centered perfectly for some reason I cannot fathom.. but they are cool.

You can go to my website and look at them all but below are some of my favorites.

https://InvisibleBlack.zenfolio.com/p714650324/ecd6b5bbc

One of the targets for the day. Measuring tape and clipboard.

Big Moon. Had a lot of shots of it all over.

The skies were crowded and the baggies were thwapping into the ground constantly.

Solitary Hopper. Just venting a bit as you can see the verticle wrinkles in the lower pat of the envelope.

Civil Air Patrol hard fling.

Cruising in ground track mode.

Zing Racers are tall!! Looked awesome up in the front of that cloud bank.

I am hoping to get the second day and maybe the third day done this week for next weeks blog. Overall a good competition and lots of winners and very happy people all around.

It took days to get back on a normal schedule... as we were waking up at 3am to get there, get briefed and get out to the targets.

This Saturday I got to fly Patturns In Czech. It was almost a bag as the winds kept creeping up. When I check in the morning they were reported at 7mph. At the field... nada. After a bit of time untangling everything after her annual inspection, we got up.

A couple of friends were out with their gear and surprisingly I was the first in the air. I normally wait for someone else to make that silly move... it was just really nice.

I had planned on launching then heading to the Northwest a bit then coming down and heading Southeastish.. but that went out the windows as the winds just above the ground were fast and way above real fast. So we cruised West a bit then went up and went North fast then dropped through a sheer that caused the basket to wobble a lot and the envelope to crackle a lot. We stopped a few hundred feet up and headed directly for a set of power lines. We got hooked by the electrical field and were drawn down them to the Southwest instead of Southeast like it should have been.

Going up a bit didn't get us unhooked so I gently dropped down and closer and the wind at about 50 feet above the wires was the Southeast and it pulled us off the lines effect. We dropped down after them and landed only to be bounced back into a choya. Said choya decided it liked my Ipad and left a branch stuck into the ottorbox rubber edging. We, at last, were able to stabilize and remove the prickly bits.

Up and off we went but then again the field caught us and we headed Southwest again. We did leave them as they jogged East and that allowed us to drop to just above the ground and ground track over and down a hill, over a cliff and land in soft soft sand of the big arroyo that is in the picture at the top.

Pack up was easy with the Kennedys lightweight soarcoat fabric and off we went in four-wheel drive back to the field. It was a great time.

Here are a few shots I had time to get. It was very hazy out with lots of dust in the air.

My friends that let me go first... so sweet!

We kinda looped around Burning Desire as we lifted. We have been in this position before and we know each other well enough to be able to be this close without worry.

A beautiful Lindstrand racer but 4000 sqft smaller than mine. I believe she is a 65,000 envelope.

More teams laying out behind us as it looks safe enough for anyone to get up in.

 My instruments as we ascend to altitude were just chuckling along. .. until it decided to throw an extreme overtemp alarm out of nowhere. our max temp was 156 degrees. Super cool. I think my radio was too close.

Ipad tracking my flight. Not because I needed it but I track all my flights on it and its nice to see if I am going to be near any yellow or red zones. Love that ram mount. Do not love the bits of sand that drop out from the envelope above.

Rainbow Ryders head towards us at that fast North level. It looks deceiving as we were all higher than it looks there. Looking South and the escarpment.

Burning Desire looking hot against that fuzzy hazy background.

The lower winds were shifting to the South which is nice and all but I wanted a bit more time away from the Earth to erase my footprints.

Down and in the sandy arroyo. The envelope is being strapped tight because if you don't she will not fit in the bag. It was very sandy and I had it everywhere, shoes, socks, jacket. Reminds me I need to have a bit of heavy fabric stitched onto the bottom of the envelope bag as its getting worn.

My Lindstrand basket, age 8 years and 10 months looking super nice still. Resting in the sand itself. Probably enjoying the break from standing up all the time. My personally designed EXPERIMENTAL wrap on my upright. Need to modify the design here. I had another idea.

It was a perfect place to start making footprints on the Earth again.

There are only 124 days until the first day of Fiesta.

I have to do things!

Get new running boards for the truck.
Completely break down the basket and wash and clean and hydrate the wicker.
Download all the tracks from the 6040s and the iPad and log everything on paper just in case.
Prepare the garage for lots of ice, lots of soda, and lots of other drinks.
Other things I have to remember but can't now.

I did get a call to confer on doing a 360-degree video from the AIBF. I did a quick test via Youtube and here is the link to that just in case you want to see what video looks like that you can change your view at any time through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VU-nQuIU6A

It's completely doable... I think it would be better in 4k and also with the software to edit it correctly... but it does work. Another thing I won't see a dime from! Time to start charging...

Overall the past week or so has been very quiet with little distraction... Not that that makes for restful un-insane moments and other strange and frustrating things but hay... quiet.

Hoping this next week and very quiet, very sublime, very restful.

I'll throw some restfulness at you too.

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.