Albuquerque Balloon Trip

Saturday, 14 October

Up Early Again

Saturday morning was our last chance to actually see a balloon in the air. The morning's scheduled activity was a mass ascension, in which as many as five or six hundred balloons would take off from the Fiesta grounds. We once again met in the hotel lobby at 5AM, but this time I set the alarm clock for only a half-hour or so before that and skipped my morning shower (after all, I'd taken one right before dinner the night before anyway).

The winds weren't quite as high as they'd been the previous day, and the balloons began to inflate for the mass ascension. There was a bit of a complication, though, in that I had arranged to meet Brian and Sue Borchers at my company's tent at eight o'clock, which turned out to be right in the middle of the ascension. Kristin stayed behind to wait for them, while I went out to the company's balloon with my camera.

The field at the Balloon Fiesta is a madhouse during a mass ascension. The balloons are lined up in rows, as close together as they can manage without getting in each others' way. Before a balloon can be inflated, it is laid out along the ground in a straight line. Since you can't walk on the balloon silk, the whole area becomes a complete maze to get through. What makes moving about completely nuts is that the general public is welcome on the field, too.

One result of these peculiar crowd dynamics was that I got my foot trodden on by an elderly and confused (but rather massive) gentleman. Combined with sore knees from the previous day's hiking, I was limping pretty seriously. But I'd never seen anything like the carnival going around me, and I ignored the pain on the basis that it was relatively uninteresting.

Balloon Ride

I managed to get to the balloon by going around the edge of the field to the perimeter point nearest the balloon, and then walking through. I had only taken a few pictures when a waiver form was flashed under my nose. Feeling bad that I'd left Kristin behind to wait for Brian and Sue, but knowing this was my only chance, I signed the waiver and got into the balloon basket. After all the hours of waiting for the balloon, all of a sudden things happened really quickly, and before I knew it we were aloft.

Intellectually, I had had a pretty good idea of what flying in a balloon would be like. Somehow, though, I was still surprised at how motionless it feels. You move literally with the wind, so you can't hear or feel that wind at all. Once you gain enough altitude, you don't even have strong visual cues to movement. But once you start approaching the ground again, it can get exciting. Especially if there's no one waiting down there to catch the basket and hold it in one place.

So anyway, this particular ride ended in a field where many of the other balloons were also landing. Our chase crew hadn't caught up to us yet, so another crew helped hold us down while we waited for our own crew. When our folks arrived, I (and the other two passengers) swapped out of the balloon basket and were replaced by others; then the balloon took off for another hop.

I got into the balloon crew's pickup truck, which spent the next half-hour or so dashing along roads large and small trying to get to the balloon's landing site before the balloon did itself. Of course, no one knew where that would be, but we were able to take better and better guesses until eventually we got to the right field before the balloon even did. Then we packed up the balloon,loaded it into the back of the truck, and headed back for the Fiesta grounds. I got to ride in the balloon basket on the back of the pickup truck, a cold and windy ride, although the day was clearly getting warmer quickly, as days are wont to do in the desert.

Day with Brian and Sue

When we got back to the tent at the Fiesta grounds, I found Brian and Sue talking to Kristin. I still had some more things to deal with, the most important being an initiation ceremony. It wasn't a particularly interesting initiation ceremony; in fact, I had a certain sense of deja vu, although I can't remember of what, exactly, it reminded me. I got my "first flight" pin at its conclusion.

Finally free (until late afternoon), Kristin and I piled into Brian and Sue's new car, and headed off to do Albuquerque. The 50's-nostalgia diner that Brian and Sue suggested for lunch hadn't opened yet, so we hit the bookstores instead, ending up buying books and killing more than double the 45 minutes until the restaurant's opening time. I also purchased yet more film, this time getting 1000-speed film in a (vain, as it turned out) attempt to get good pictures of the balloons' "night glow" after dark.

Following a lunch that saved me from starvation (or at least from complete blood sugar collapse), we headed into the old part of Albuquerque to do the important tourist stuff. Parking being unusually scarce, we put the car in the lot at the Albuquerque Museum, and stopped inside just to use the rest rooms. Close to an hour later, we'd seen most of the museum, which in retrospect was the high point of the tourism for the day.

The next stop was took us a block or two over, to Albuquerque's "Old Town." This is an attractive area of historic adobe buildings, completely dedicated these days to the tourist trade. It was also, on this particular day (and probably all of that particular week), populated by a voting majority of the nation's retired population. This was so exciting that when we headed over to the University area for coffee and cake, we agreed that we probably would've had at least as good an afternoon just sitting around a cafe and talking.

Glow

As the afternoon ended, we headed back to the Fiesta grounds in time for the night glow. The balloons start going up before dark, so I got a good opportunity to get some good pictures of the Epilogue balloon, but by the time dusk itself fell, I found myself hanging on to the side of the balloon basket helping hold it down. Brian and Sue got to help, too, before they took off for home.

Party Afterwards

After taking the balloon down and packing it away, it was time to party. Epilogue had ordered two half-kegs of beer from the brewpub at which we eaten the night we arrived. That was already considerably more than we really needed, especially since those of us from out of town were pretty conservative about drinking anyway; allegedly the lack of oxygen makes it hit us lowlanders harder.

The crowning glory, though, was that in preparing to deliver the beer, apparently the order got mixed up. To make up for not delivering the right style of beer, they gave us a full keg instead of one of our half-kegs. Phenomenal amounts of beer failed to be consumed. And it was good stuff, too; a kolsch and a porter that were both fairly accurate to style, although maybe a touch sweet. After sampling a glass of each, I was ready to join the general exodus to the parking lot to take the van back to our hotel. Kristin, not surprisingly, shared the sentiment.

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last modified: Wed Jul 2 11:50:17 1997 by Lowell Gilbert

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