The Taos Mountain Balloon Rally was this weekend. They had a few last minute openings and the wonderful people ( you know who you are ) called my son up to see if he could fill a spot and he did... and he did.
I couldn't go up on Saturday and they had a fantastic flight but... I decided that I had nothing going on on Sunday so a nice drive of two and a half hours brought me into Taos through some scents of ... juniper or lilac in the dark. Pretty cool way of cruising in....
A quick visit to the Pilot briefing and watch the balloons go up.. or so I thought. Mo had people to fly but Ted said I could go up with him if I liked. I jumped at that!!! Fly in a Firefly.... get to shoot the area as my son launched just after us and get massive amounts of photographs and also some 360 video from Teds balloon.
The Ted.... inflating with a sparker in his teeth! Pretty awesome right there.
Fireflys have triangle baskets and low sides.. completely opposite of my high topped rectangle basket. Freakin amazing. So stand up the balloon...not let it go over and hit the trailer... close... prep.. jump in with another passenger.. squeeze about with two cameras on me and a large coat.. tight... up and off we go heading West and a little north. West was okay but North was not.
Then Mo came up and played around with another balloon before heading over us and coming down on the other side. He was not able to find the trickle of South and East we got and he headed off to the North.. bad... but he did get to where he could land and be safe about it. He can fly anything anywhere pretty much.
We sat in some funny air and were able to fly back to near the launch field and land in a nice little field beside it.. I got out and Ted flew a crew member off to the launch field .. That allowed me to shoot from the ground after shooting from the air. Ted landed with a nice South right on the East end of the field.. We caught up with him.. and he was looking for another passenger who was small... there was a kid standing around with his family... ( friends of another balloonists ) and asked him if he wanted to fly.. which as his eyes bugged out ran up to the balloon and jumped in. His family had a great time watching this happen.
Off they went and goofed around.....and being Ted.. he landed right on the 50 yard line of the local high school's football field. As we couldn't retrieve him from there he popped back up with more of the family in the basket to re-land a couple hundred yards away next to Kurt and Enchanted Diamonds.
Since Diamonds had a tarp out we asked if we could lay down beside her on the tarp and pack up.. Kurt as Mr Awesome himself said sure.... Now why Ted decided to cover Kurt and crew under his envelope I don't know.. but it was terribly funny... Just kidding.. More pull on the crown line would have fixed that... but that's the way it goes.
Here are some shots... I took 1300 ish pictures.... I have many many to go through... So a very few here now. More on the website when I get time....
Wonderful space to capture....
Puff accelerating into the sky.
Got his eyes on you Mo....
Fly ...fly balloons!!
If I hug you so much it must mean I LUV youuuuuu!!!!
I dont know what they are talking about but hiding in the trees is bad form.
Olaugh in the skys way above the mountains.
Janet swirls around about. Riding the waves along with all the others. Janet. I have many many shots of you.
And here we are... envelope over crew... I am not sure this is the best way to put a balloon away.. Ted.
That was fun.. I am exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be a day of coffee and sugar... or I will have to raise my desk so I stand most of the day.
The video from Teds balloon looks great.. fun if not a little weird. The camera Mo had was never turned down from looking at the inflation so I dont know how thats going to turn out.
Sooo.... I am going to close this out and let you read it.. and maybe edit some more shots before bed.
