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!!
