Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta!

[des]

Hey you'll should come to this sometime. Course you have to have your tickets about 2 years in advance. There is no room at the inn. :-)

 

This is one of my favorite things, I think better than Christmas and Halloween combined. I was on a chase crew last year. This is where you help the balloon up and "chase" it around and help them land and pack up. If you do this enough, you get free rides. It is pretty much fun and interesting, but I can't do this this year as I have sciatica.

 

I like Balloon Fiesta so much though I get up at 4 AM and I am not a day person.

 

Anyway, it is supposedly the most photographed event in the world, which is prob. true, just check my hard drive. :-) (Well don't).

 

Anyway, the link is here:

http://www.balloonfiesta.com

 

--des

[flowperson]

Des

 

I used to live in pool table country, you know, very flat and very green. They had balloon festivals there once in a while, but seldom had more that a dozen or so balloons at a time. I was always intrigued with the various shapes they could assume. I saw a flying fish and a giant flying tomato. But mostly they were round and very colorful.

 

It was a wonderful thing to wake up on a still summer morning, just as the sun was rising over the soybeans and corn and see them gracefully rising in the distance.

 

If memory serves the first balloon ascension was in Paris in the 18th century.

 

I would have thought that I would see more of them in the desert since we have no end of beautiful still sunrises. But with the valley filled up with hotels and housing as it is, there probably just isn't enough room for it.

 

I know Albuquerque has a festival each year. Maybe I'll go over there and see it sometime in the future.

 

For the back pain take lots of ibuprofen and stand as long as you can with your back flattened against a tree or wall, rising up and down on your toes. It helped when I had the miseries.

Edited September 30, 2005 by flowperson

[des]

Thanks for the back pain tips. I am actually ok, but if I were to help lift balloons I might get unok very fast. :-} So just looking this year.

 

You should come, and if you did you have a place to stay (that would just leave transportation 2 years in advance :-)). If you have a hubby and kids that would get trickier.

 

Today I saw a rista (bunch of chili peppers) against a hotel. Yes they have all sorts of special shapes: houses, beer cans, liquor bottles, the Ark (though I haven't seen this aloft), various bears, an alien, assorted other animals, the Purple people eater, etc etc. The best loved is a very large cow put up by Creamland dairy, and is easily the largest. They also don't go up so high.

 

I usually see a balloon or two on the way to work. However, imagine a sky filled with a thousand of them.

 

ALB has not only the desert but a perfect climate condition for a balloon with the winds kind of circling around so that the balloons come down very close to where they go up. (It's called a box).

 

 

Link to Airebellla the cow:

http://www.creamland.com/consumermain.htm

 

--des