A Bunch of Hot Air (Warning...lots of Pics)

Vaughn McMillan

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You may or may not know this, but Albuquerque has been the home of the largest hot air balloon festival on the planet for the past 42 years. Always held the first full week of October, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta attracts balloonists from all over the world. In its heyday, there were over 1,000 balloons participating in the event. Due to space and safety considerations, there are now only about 550 to 600 balloons involved each year. (Still several times bigger than any other balloon event in the world.) From about 1985 until 2000, I worked on one of several crews responsible for setting up, chasing, and putting away the balloons. I've worked on everything from small traditional balloons (called sport balloons) to huge special shape balloons. (Like a 200' long tennis shoe, or an 11 story tall bald eagle.) Had I not left New Mexico in 1991, I was next in line with the outfit I was with to be trained as a pilot. Even after I moved to California, I would take a week off work every year to go crew on balloons. That all ended when I broke my back in 2001. Crew work is physical, and can be potentially jarring -- not a good combination with the hardware I have in my back nowadays.


Until this past weekend, I'd not been back to the Balloon Fiesta since 2000. Now that I'm back in Albuquerque, I wasn't gonna miss it this year. I went to the event Saturday morning, but the traditional Mass Ascension was canceled due to high winds. They did end up having the Mass Ascension on Sunday morning, but I slept in and missed it. (Didn't feel like getting up at 4:00 AM for the second day in a row.) I had the day off Monday for Columbus Day, so I went out to the field -- for the first time as a spectator since the early 1980s. There were only about 150 - 200 balloons flying Monday, but it was still cool, and I got a chance to snap a few photos along the way.


Here you go, in no particular order...


A pre-dawn shot of the music stage from backstage:


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First light as the sun peeks over the mountain. This is about 10% of the crowd that'd be there on a weekend:


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(Click here for a higher-res version.)


This is a shot of the nylon tarp one crew uses to lay their balloon out on. It's about 250' x 200'. The balloon is a huge cartoon cow that is the biggest balloon at the event this year. I've worked on a similarly-sized balloon (with a tarp about the same size) quite a bit.


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(Click here for a higher-res version.)


This is a poor shot, but underneath the sitting people you can see a large nylon bag holding the cow balloon. The envelope (the nylon part of the balloon) probably weighs between 800 and 1,000 pounds:


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By comparison, here's a typical sport balloon, which probably weighs about 150 to 200 pounds:


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And one shot of the cow balloon being spread out on the tarp before inflation. The people in the pic give a bit of sense of scale:


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OK, enough crew stuff, here are a few balloons...


The first balloon off the ground:


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"Sushi", the fish balloon:


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The cow balloon never made it off the ground (it can't fly unless the conditions are perfect), but I did get a shot of it mostly inflated:


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The Jester, partly inflated:


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The Firefighter:


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The fire below the Firefighter:


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Just a pretty sport balloon:


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An Ice Cream Cone:


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I helped write the original proposal to the US Forest Service to get them to sponsor the Smoky Bear balloon. I don't know if they're still sponsoring it or not, and this is not the original envelope. (They deteriorate after a certain number of hours of flight.)


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A bunch o' balloons, including Smoky Bear.


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This is probably about 1/3 of the balloons that were in the air Monday. The Mass Ascensions on the weekends are a lot busier...about 3 times as many:


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And probably my favorite of the day, Darth Vader:


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Weather permitting, I'll be back to the event one or both days next weekend, so I might end up with a few more pics. When I was crewing, I seldom got a chance to take photos and digital cameras were just becoming affordable back then. You could burn through a lot of film back in those days. In fact, Kodak called it the most photographed event in the world every year, back in the days when they sold film.
 
Very cool Vaughn :thumb: Darth Vader is amazing. I wonder how much something like that would cost :eek:
We used to have a balloon festival here in NH every year but only have a dozen or so balloons. Its really exciting to watch them.
 
They used to have a balloon fest here several years ago. But it was run from a downtown park, so it was only about a dozen or so crews (space constraints) but as a spectator it was very cool since you could get right up close to the balloons (ie: almost touch the envelope as it is being inflated on the ground, look inside it as they shoot in the flame, etc.)
But those tarps are a new thing to me... up here at the festival they just spread the balloon out on the grass. Maybe being a groomed park there was less worry about anything catching or tearing?

Great shots, big beautiful sky, Vauhgn!
...art
 
I live just north of Temecula, CA so we surely do get our share. Wonderful to watch.
 

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Nice pics Vaughn! :thumb: We have a smaller event around here, in fact it takes place less than a mile from Rex B. place.
 
Pretty cool, other than for the fact it resembles my 'blood' family reunions. A bunch of oddly shaped old bags spewing hot air and who are mostly, let's say, 'very colorful'. We also seem to have a few who by day's end, can't get off the ground due to 'conditions'.

On another related note...I lost a load of 'ballast' once while early morning fishing. It was just breaking sunrise, so quiet & peaceful that ones thoughts seemed excessively loud. I had just stood up to stretch my legs when a balloonist hit the gas{or whatever terminology is correct} as they floated above my{totally unaware of them} location...I don't recall who was more shocked, the lord as I was face to face with him for a split second, or the sleeping lakeside folks who thought hell just announced it's arrival... man those contraptions are quite a sight....Thanks for the photo's & flashbacks :thumb:
 
Nice pics Vaughn, thanks for posting them.

You must know the old joke - a guy is lost in his hot air balloon. Sees a guy on the ground and asks where he is.

"You're about 50 feet above the ground in the basket of a balloon" the man on the ground says.

Replies the balloonist "Oh you must be a lawyer"

"How'd you know that?" asks the lawyer.

"Well" says the balloonist "you provided me with an answer that was entirely accurate and completely useless."

disclaimer: no offense intended to any attorneys out there
 
Vaughn,

You amaze me. I think back to when you told me I lived a varied and interesting life. Yet you keep coming up with all sorts of different things you have done in the past.

Anyway, I sure think that you have lived a varied and interesting life!

Enjoy,

JimB
 
Thanks for the kind words, and glad you guys liked the photos. As I mentioned earlier, I don't really have much in the way of digital photos of the balloons I've worked on. I do have a few that my sister (also a longtime balloon person) has taken in the years after I stopped ballooning. The polar bear balloon was the biggest I worked on. It took a lot of hard work to lay it out and pack it up. The envelope alone was over 800 pounds. Heck, the tarp weighed more than most balloons. But it was a lot of fun to crew on because of the crowd appeal. At a big event like Albuquerque, we would usually have a core crew of about six experienced people, and maybe a dozen or so "screaming extras" -- sometimes recruited on the spot -- to help with the heavy lifting and crowd control. But at smaller events, the crew was typically made up of only a few experienced hands, and however many screaming extras you could round up on the field.

These are some pics my sister took a few years ago in the Swiss Alps at a small balloon event where she and my BIL, along with the pilot and his wife, were the only crew on the bear. They didn't have any screaming extras, since the audience wasn't allowed on the field:

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For a sense of scale, those black claws are about 4' long. This nighttime shot also gives a good sense of scale when you see the people standing in and around the basket.

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This is one of my favorite shots, flying over a Swiss church:

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How the church looked from the balloon:

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And another favorite, at an evening "balloon glow" event in a stadium:

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Thanks for sharing these pic Vaughn, all great pics. This is definitely something on my bucket list. Will have to make a note in the calendar.

To me hot air balooning still retains that magical mystical appeal. Where all techie stuff today has begun to be taken for granted hot air ballooning is still oooohhh and aaahhhh.

Nightime pics are fantastic.

Hey have not heard from Brent i think he and Sharon attended a year or so back. Wonder if they got down there this year? Brent??? Sharon???
 
...Hey have not heard from Brent i think he and Sharon attended a year or so back. Wonder if they got down there this year? Brent??? Sharon???

The event you're thinking of is a similar (but smaller) festival in Reno, I believe. I think Brent's up north fishing this year.

I do highly recommend the ABQ event to anyone who's interested in balloons and ballooning. Best excuse I ever had for getting up at 4:00 in the morning. :D
 
Very cool pics Vaughn. That Darth Vader balloon is pretty cool but i'm still waiting for someone to launch a Zardoz balloon.

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There used to be a big event like that here in central Ohio but they lost their main sponsor. There are a couple of smaller events in the area but nothing quite like that.
 
I like the Zardoz idea. :thumb:

Here's a pic of the cow balloon someone posted on Facebook this morning.

Where does a giant flying cow land? Anywhere it wants to. :D This is some serious roadkill...

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Yep, been out for a few days.

Reno's balloon race is right around the same time as the air race. Only made it to the air race this year.

Went to the balloon races a couple years ago and intend to go next year as well!
 
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