The most telling sign of one's veteranship at the Balloon Fiesta is how often one pulls out a camera to take a photo. It ranges from the seasoned balloonists and organizers who have seen it all and couldn't even bother to bring a camera to folks who snap here and there when they see a new special shape, to those whose camera has become a virtual extension of their hand and eye. I am not ashamed to admit that I fall into the third category.
Still a newbie to ballooning in general, I felt that I walked into an enchanted garden of giant colorful blooming flowers.
Unless you're there on the field, wandering among the hundreds of balloons at different stages of inflation, you can't fully grasp the buzzing excitement, the imposing size, the pilots' and crews' effort. At the same time, you want to snap as many pictures as possible, because every balloon seems different, every configuration in your current field of vision is unique. This year, I understand there are around 550 balloons, down from some 700 to 750 balloons from the previous years. Well, the fiesta grounds were filled with them quite impresively anyway.
Saturday morning started with the "Dawn patrol", about 20 balloons taking off before day break (6 AM), and I have one ok,
not-so-smudged photo here:
We used our VIP passes to get into the sponsor tents surrounding the fiesta field and had breakfast - in my case frequently interrupted by taking photos. Then Tomas suggested we find a balloon that would take me for a ride and we walked around the field a little bit, Tomas greeting his friends and I trailing behind shooting pictures. As it often is on the first day, every one already had guest passengers lined up. Nevertheless, I was excited just to run around the balloons.
Tomas had a TV interview scheduled for KOB TV, channel 4 at 7 AM, and so we rushed over to their stage. I couldn't hear much, but from the
TV hosts' facial expressions I figured Tomas was at his charming best, making TV viewers'
morning coffee more enjoyable:
Afterwards, we went back to the field and found Olli Luoma, Tomas' Finnish gas-balloon student and friend, and it turned out that he had room in his basket for me. I flew with him and his wife Maja, and it was a wonderful flight. My camera ran out of memory space only shortly before it ran out of battery power. I'm putting a few pics here as well. Tomas had described what followed after my return in his previous blog :-)
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