We’re three days into the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. The past two days illustrate just how unpredictable the world of hot air balloons and ballooning can be. On Sunday morning, we were in the van and heading to the balloon park at 4:45am, just like the day before. We went to breakfast at the Pilots’ Pavilion building again. We found that breakfast can be a real adventure. They had waffles, however there was a delay serving them. They usually had six waffle griddles going to serve hot, fresh waffles in years past we were told. But on that day, they only had three and most of the time could only use two because the circuit kept overloading and blowing the breaker. Plus, they forgot the syrup. Waiting in a long line for a dry waffle wasn’t for me.

We headed over to the hot breakfast table. At the fiesta, they serve some out-of-the-ordinary dishes for breakfast. Sunday morning’s hot breakfast entree was a creamy chicken green chile soup! It was actually quite good, but not something I’m used to eating  at 5:30am.

After breakfast, we walked in the dark to launch site H7 where “our” balloon Hearts A’Fire is stationed. I hung out at the site and watched the Dawn Patrol balloons set up and skipped the pilots’ meeting.

I was surprised to see them remain tethered for the duration of the pilots’ meeting. The day before, they launched during the meeting. They are equipped with special lighting that allows them to take to the sky in darkness.

As the meeting concluded and everyone made their way back to the launch areas, I saw the Dawn Patrol balloons beginning to deflate without any of them ever launching.

Our pilot, Brad Rice, told us that everything was on hold due to an unusual situation. There wasn’t enough wind. This is a rare occurrence according to Brad – usually they have concerns about too much wind. With little wind to move the balloons, they would essentially go straight up. Coupled with a low cloud cover, we would have balloons stacked on top of each other – a dangerous situation.

To further complicate matters, what little breeze we had would steer the balloons over the Sandia Indian reservation. The Indians do not take kindly to hot air balloons landing on their reservation. They make the pilots and crews jump through hoops to pack and remove the balloon from Indian land, often making them stay in their baskets for hours until they can be released. The entire city of Albuquerque embraces and supports the Balloon Fiesta, but the tribe uses the event as an opportunity to flex their muscles. I don’t get it.

So, we were standing by. Our pilot told us to start unloading the equipment around 7:30am. He said we would inflate and display the balloon if we weren’t allowed to fly. We started setting the equipment out. At 7:45am, the green flag went up – we were going to fly! Everyone scrambled. More than five hundred balloon crews raced to be airworthy in the hopes they could be released to launch.

You can’t release your balloon into the air without an official granting permission. This is necessary to maintain safe clearances between the balloons. We had our balloon ready quickly but Brad could see we had a problem. There were too many balloons within close proximity that were also at the same stage of readiness. Finally he lit the burner and we finished inflating the balloon.

Then we were in a waiting game. Brad and two passengers were in the basket. We leaned our weight on the perimeter of the basket to keep the balloon down. Brad had to periodically fire off the burners to keep the hot air envelope fully inflated. We stood by like this for nearly an hour.  Waiting burned a lot of fuel. Finally we had a clear lane – we took our weight off the basket and held on. The basket rose a few inches and we walked it back about twenty yards into the clear lane and were given the signal to release. Hearts A’Fire was airborne at last.

As Brad gained altitude and caught a current, another balloon was right next to him. Their envelopes made contact – this is referred to as kissing by balloonists. Having the fabric kiss isn’t a problem. The problem is when the basket and another envelope make contact. Scary!

The two pilots were able to talk to each other and maneuver to safely separate. We drove the chase vehicles to the east – the direction all of the balloons were going. Brad set the balloon down in a parking lot in a small industrial complex – it was closed and there weren’t many cars there. We held the basket down while his passengers got out and two new passengers climbed aboard. We released the balloon again.

We drove to the east side of the freeway and found our balloon again. We made our way to a residential area just south of the Indian land, near where Brad set down the day before. He put the balloon down in the street in front of a few houses. Several balloons landed in the area. When so many balloons release together on a day without much wind, they tend to float along together and land in the same vicinity. Unfortunately, some of them were on Indian land and were held up by tribal police.

After we returned to the park, we tailgated at another pilot’s site. Larry’s wife Ruth is on the crew for Endeavor piloted by a guy named Colin. We hung around there and had some food and drink before heading home around noon. I spent the rest of the day watching NFL football.

On Monday morning, we were at it again. We pushed our departure time back to 5am. I reset our alarm to allow an extra 10 minutes of sleep. There were far fewer cars on the road although there were plenty of people at the park. At the Pilots’ Pavilion, the waffle situation seemed better, but they ran out of syrup before 5:30am. Once again, I passed on the dry waffles. The hot breakfast table had green chile stew with beef. It was tasty but again, not my first choice at 5:30am. We had fruit along with the stew – Donna and I both passed on the Krispy Kreme donuts that are served every morning.

I went to the launch site while Donna went with Ruth and Barbara to shop at the midway. There are a number of vendors there in a carnival-like setting. I attended the pilots’ meeting with Brad and the rest of the crew. Today was a different twist. Some balloons would release from their normal sites with the goal being to have them all airborne by 7:30am. Others were entered in a competition. The object of the competition was to drop a bean bag on an X marked on the competition field. All competitors would launch away from the park and fly back to it to make their drop. The time limit was 10am. If you couldn’t make the drop by then, it was game over.

The Dawn Patrol went up during the pilot’s meeting, so that part was business as usual.

After the meeting concluded, we went back to site H7 and everyone started piling into vehicles. Brad told me to jump in the back of his Infiniti SUV. We were entered into the competition and were heading offsite to launch. Donna wasn’t back from the midway so I phoned her and told her to stay with Ruth and Colin’s crew.

Brad had sussed the wind directions – yes, plural – the wind shears and changes directions in layers as you move up and down in altitude. We went to an open field near the freeway that was blocked off and had several police on the corners. We were allowed in to use it as a launch site. Several other balloonists showed up after we arrived.

On just my third day of crewing, I’m obviously gaining the trust of our pilot. Brad had me straighten out the lines and connect the basket – I wasn’t just lending muscle, I was actually setting up. There are some intricacies involved with the task. Certain links have to be oriented properly and having the lines connected properly is obviously very important. Brad checked my work and gave me the thumbs up.

Trying to come in over the target would be tricky. Up high, the wind was blowing to the northwest at about 10 knots. This took the balloon past the field. Then Brad descended until he caught a breeze blowing southeast – but this breeze only moved at a snail’s pace. They came back toward the field slowly at about 1 knot. A minor miscalculation meant going up again and blowing back northwest, then descending for a slow pass back to the field. After two hours, Brad was low on fuel and called it a day.

When we returned to the park, Larry and I found Donna and Ruth along with Jim and Barb. It turned out that Colin had trouble with the burner on his balloon and put down on the reservation. The Tribal Police wouldn’t allow all of the chase crew to enter – so Jim and Barb made the long trek back to the park on foot. I wonder how long Colin was held up by the Tribal Police. We’ll find out tomorrow.

There are a lot of balloons here with unusual shapes like something out of the Macy’s New Year’s Day parade. I snapped a shot of an unusual and funny balloon.

We’ll be back out there Tuesday morning – a perfect way to celebrate my birthday!