You race home from work and throw everything you think you need into your truck and load your balloon and hit the road for anywhere from 2 to 12 hours to get to that rally. You slam into town, find your hotel, race to registration, grab your gear, the race back to your hotel to get a good bunch of sleep before waking super early in the morning to scream out to the morning brief then fling everything of your system out onto the dirt and blast into the sky! Woosh! Then do it again the next day. After that it's pack up, pick up and make a beeline back to wherever you live.. throw all the wash next to the machine and fall on the floor exhausted!
What really happens is a bunch of fantastic people work insane amounts of time to set up a amazing venue... from getting all the pilots rooms to stay in, bags of goodies, all the assistance that is possible, set up launch sites and propane and volunteers and rescue services and and and.... then we pop in... get to fly some of the most fantastic places..... make it look simply thrilling as we really take complete glee in bobbling around and about.... then after all that work we get to refuel with free propane... sit around and tell stories, eat and drink then do it all again the next day.... While the behind the scenes team keep it going strong.
We thank you so much for all of your hard work.
Red Rock Rally in Gallup New Mexico.... Three days of flying... In the Red Rock Park.
Here are some shots....
Since I was driving the main chase I didnt get to take many pictures but I did get some of them. Here are a few of them that were good enough to share.
There are more but I am very very tired.
There is a whole story behind the weekend.
Both my son and I were in the rally. Its invitational so you can't just come, you must be invited and were were.. which is fantastic. Two vehicles. One trailer. Two crew vehicles to caravan out. The drive out was quite nice and it only took us a little over two hours. Our hotel was excellent. We have to have outside outlets to run power cords to our propane tanks to keep them warm for flying. The hotels provide them. Unfortunately our outlet died in the night sometime so when we woke up on the first morning everything was cold. Fortunately we were able to plug in for a good twenty minutes and get enough heat to be able to fly. Sadly one of our trucks failed to start but we had another crew vehicle to transport to the field.
We made the field and briefing with minutes to spare but soon found out that the low cloud layer above us as well as the wind direction would not let us fly. So what do we do when we can't fly... We go to breakfast.. or.. in the case of a cold and blustery day in a park.. we sit by the campfire and eat and drink and tell stories. ... which we did.
That night we were to glow but my sons balloon had a tear appear in the top and it all went downhill from there. So.. no glow and tomorrow's flight was up in the air for him.
Sunday we got up and drove out to the field... listened to the brief and it was good news... though the winds were possibly going the wrong way. I decided Mo needed to fly and so he took my balloon up with two people who has won a raffle at Western Refinery and they flew off.
They were able to go play in the rocks for an hour and a half before setting down nicely a couple miles away West. Packed up and all returned to the field... Refueled again and it was over for another year. There is a breakfast and raffle and other events after but we had to get some people back to Albuquerque so we checked out and cruised home.
It was a great weekend.
Thanks Bill Lee and team!
