1997 International Balloon Fiesta
in Albuquerque, New Mexico
The KODAK Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is reputedly the most-photographed event in the world. Several of my friends and colleagues had suggested that I go see it one day, so, this year I went. I had the alterior motive of seeing my brother and his wife. They'd finally gotten settled into their new home and kept pestering me to come visit So I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. This is a brief story of my trip complete with scanned in pictures that I managed to snap while I was there. It should be obvious that I'm not a professional photographer. It will also probably become evident that I'm not a writer. ;-) This is not a story of balloons, per se, but rather a story of my trip. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to send me email with your comments, questions, or complaints.
Tim
Usually, I'm not one for long-distance travel by car. My general rule-of-thumb is that if it's farther away than 3 hours by car, take a plane. But owing to my utter lack of forethought and the fact that it was just a straight shot down I-40, I figured "what the heck, I'll drive it". Just prior to my departure date, it occurred to me that I probably ought to get the truck serviced. "Hmmm..." thought I. "Maybe I should just buy a new car." I suppose my reasoning was along the lines of "Well, this car's out of gas, let's by a new one. They come with a full tank!", but, as imortalized in the movie Risky Business, sometimes you just have to say "what the f***". So that evening I was driving home in a new Trans Am. Much more comfortable, from the driver's perspective in any case, than the truck on the highway. It tracks much better. It also, I noticed, had, shall we say, a bit less room than the truck. In fact, the random bits of miscellaneous junk that had taken up residence in the truck pretty well filled the T/A to capacity. "Okay, so I pack light." I thought.
At 10 AM on the appointed day, I call my brother's house, leave a message saying when I left, and head out on the highway. Well, I did stop to top up the tank. And to pick up some health food for the trip. You know, Gatorade, Gobstoppers, beef jerky, Lunchables. The essentials. Then it's off to the wild west for me. The drive was uneventful. The car hummed along nicely. Some of the scenery was stunning, to say the least. I also determined that Lunchables were not an especially good choice for food intended to be consumed behind the wheel of a car. The Gobstoppers worked well, though. The trip required about 2 tanks of gas which indicated that I was getting around 24 MPG. Not too bad, I thought. Just before reaching the Sandia mountains, I called to give them an estimated time of arrival and let them know that I was almost there. I wish I had been able to snap some pictures of the pass. The evening sunlight danced among the cliffs and boulders. It was a sight to behold. It also meant that, from time to time, I had the blasted sun directly in my face... As I neared the city proper, I noticed a great proliferation of vehicles trailing large, boxy trailers. Finally it dawned on me: balloons! This should be a fun weekend!
Well, I finally arrived. I got to meet their dog, Baron, for the first time. He's a german shepard/huskie mix. Bright dog, if a bit on the shy side. Then I got the tour of their new house. Here's a picture looking from my bedroom window out into their backyard.
There's the garden. If you look closely you can
actually see their rosemary plants. Fresh spices! It is also interesting
to note that most
houses have gravel yards. There is very little grass (for obvious reasons
;-). Anyway, I was late and they were starving, so off we were to
dinner. After dinner, we returned to the house. I was given the whole of
the second floor as my abode. I could stomp around up there and keep
everyone up all night. But not tonight. It's amazing how tiring a nine
hour drive can be. No sooner had I stretched out on the inflatable
mattress and my head hit the pillow than I was happily sawing logs.
I awoke the next morning to an odd noise. I sounded for all the world like
a propane burner being cycled on and off. Balloon! I rose and
stumbled quickly to the window where I saw a magnificent sight that I
would come to expect every morning. The Mass Ascension. Pizza anyone?
Due to the prevailing weather conditions, the mass portion of mass
ascension never really made an impact where we were. As the morning
progressed, several more of the colorful lighter-than-air wonders drifted
over. Some were so low you felt as though you could almost reach out and
climb aboard for a ride in the skies.
In fact, at least one was advertising just that: rides in the sky.
After a hearty breakfast of fresh onion and garlic bagels with cream
cheese, we were off to see Old Town. This is the old part of Albuquerque
where you can browse through shops in old pueblo buildings and buy anything
from authentic cachina dolls to UFO merchandise. If I hadn't been
feeling a bit conservative, I'd have walked out of one store with a
restored Remington rolling block rifle that'd been converted to .45-70.
What a piece of history! A wonderful area. Unfortunately I'd left my
camera at home :(. After lunch in a quaint little Mexican Ristorante, we
headed home for the next phase of the day. My brother shoots
competitively in local IPSC matches and wanted to take me out to the range
to do a bit of plinking. I'd brought a reproduction Colt Single Action
Army in .45 Colt (that's a good ole' cowboy Peacemaker) and he was a bit
eager to try it out. We ended up shooting at bowling pins from about 15
yards. We'd toss an object in the air and when it hit the ground we'd
move from a low ready position and engage the pins. He figured I'd have
no chance with that old SAA, what with havin' ta thumb back the hammer
each time while he was free to blaze away with his .40S&W EAA witness
semi-auto. Slow and deliberate action let me win more than one contest,
though ;-) Hitting once is a whole lot better than missing a lot ;-)
Strangely enough, when we switched guns, I found myself starting to do the
same thing - spray and pray. 90% of good shooting is mental. Anyway, we
the switched to carbines - short rifles. He had his new-fangled Ruger
which was also chambered in .40 S&W while I'd brought my Winchester lever
action in .45 Colt. Same game, but the action didn't matter. It was
about even odds on who'd get the pin, usually on the first shot. After burning up a bit more ammo,
we decided to head over to the rifle range before it got dark. I'd never
fired on an honest-to-god 500 m range before and was really getting a
hankerin' to try, if you know what I mean. Well, I unpacked the rifle,
set it up on the bipod and started to sight it in. It was the first time
I'd shot it and it seemed to be shooting high. Well, with the failing
light, I decided to try to put a round on the gong at 500m. The gong is a
metal plate that measure about 18" by 24" and is something like 2" thick.
You know you've hit it when you hear a distinctive "thwack". With Bill on
the binoculars, I fired. "High left" mumble bang "High left"
bang silence. "no way! You couldn't have..." thwack! Yep.
About 2 seconds from the bang to the thwack. The last two missed, of
course, leading my darling brother to the conclusion that my incredible
feat of marksmanship was somehow simply a matter of luck and not, rather,
a matter of my many years of intense training and skill. Yea, well... It
was now too dark to shoot, so we were homeward bound and I was determined
to get back out there again to repeat my feat of incredible marksmanship
(read: to see if I could pull it off again ;-). We tried to get to a good
vantage point to watch the Moon Glow, but the lights of the city
and new construction kept us away. Too bad, actually. I suspect it was
beautiful.
The next day, I was awakened once again to the sound of a burner and the
dogs in the neighborhood going nuts. Apparently the scout balloon
(for lack of the proper name) was drifting over the house dangling a light
of some sort beneath it.
The glow of the envelope in the early morning pre-dawn as the burners are
lit is magnificent. "Perhaps", I wondered, "we'll see a few more balloons
with this morning's mass ascension. As it turned out, we did. Coming
over in fours and fives, several balloons drifted casually by on the wings
of the wind, floating like colorful bubbles in the fresh morning air and
driving the local canines nuts.
A we were getting ready to leave to go to a gunshow, I glanced up in the
sky to see something I'd never have thought I'd see: A flying pepsi can!
As it drifted over us in near silence and moved into the neighborhood, I
snapped a picture of this surreal scene. A Pepsi can, hanging as silently as
a spectre over the landscape, then drifting off to appear to settle
serenely on top of a house.
Well, we're off to the gunshow. It was a good one with a good selection
of old guns. I'm just glad that I didn't bring much cash and most of the
antique vendors didn't take plastic. After a nice, relaxing home cooked
meal, we retired for the evening, once again, reflecting on a satisfying
day and anxiously anticipating the day to come. "Bah! It wasn't luck!
Twas skill pure and simple! And I'll prove it on the morrow!" I thought
in a strange, archaic accent as I drifted off to sleep.
I awoke again to the now familiar sound of balloon's burners whooshing as
they past closeby overhead. It was a glorious day, and we'd determined to
get to the range early in order to leave time to go out to the Petroglyph
National Park (or is it a Monument... I forget). The weather was
apparently cooperating this morning as the mass ascension was
apparently working well as we watched hundreds of balloons
drift easily with the early morning wind on our drive out to the range.
There were balloons everywhere! I noticed one and couldn't help but
think, "Gee is *that* what they mean by economy fare?".
One balloon wa passwd really brought out the fact that this was, indeed,
an International affair.
On crossing the Rio Grande, I got yet another chance to demonstrate my
complete disregard for all conventional wisdom when it scomes to framing
up a picture.
As we neared the range, I began to think about all of the things I'd seen
in these few short days. And to reflect on the fact that I was going to
get the pure pleasure of the drive home the following morning. But as we
pulled in to the range, my mind turned to but one thing. The 500 meter
gong. But first, my brother wanted to give me a little demonstration of
his skills with firearms as done in competition. First the draw,
followed closely by the first round down range. I have to admit, he's
very good. I'd surely place near the bottom of the totem pole if I just
dove right into competition. All of his shots were well placed, by the
way.
Then we headed over to the rifle range to play a bit with our carbines at
longer ranges and to give me the chance to warm up my baby-killin assault
weapon (Feh) and to show Bill how to reach out and touch something. But
first I needed to determine if the tendency to shoot high I'd experience
before was dur to stresses on the barrel from the bipod, or just
ill-adjusted iron sights. So first I shot a few ithout the bipod.
Bill and I played around at 100 to 300 meters like this for a while, then
I decided to get down to business. "You're kidding! You're not going to
try that again are you?" "Spot for me" was my only reply. bang
"High left" mumble bang... thwack bang...
thwack
"You were saying something about luck?" I smiled.
That thing in the circle is the target. I ended up with 4 out of ten on
target. Not bad when the target looks smaller that the front blade on
your sight. Of course I didn't mention the complete lack of wind to Bill.
He'll think of it eventually ;-) We ended up walking downrange
(the flag was up and we had it to ourselves). 500 meters round trip is a
kilometer. In the desert. We decided that we'd drive in the future ;-)
We *did* get to see several smallish lizards darting from burrow to burrow
on our trek out and back. A bit more shooting and it was time to head
back, have lunch, and see the petroglyphs. But I had to take one last
look at the Sandia mountains from the range.
A quick lunch (I *knew* those Lunchables would come in handy ;-) and we
were off to see the petroglyphs. If you ever decide to visit, bear in
mind that the Park is actually several separate locations scattered around
the western side of town. We picked a close one and headed out. The
Petroglyph National Monument was established in 1990 to help preserve this
cultural and archeological resource. More information can he had from
their web page We hiked up
a mesa and took a few pictures of the petroglyphs. An example:
In all, it was yet another great day. Dinner complete with green chilies
and green chilie stew rounded out a great trip.
As dawn broke the next morning, we were standing outside saying our
good-byes. "I wonder what I should use up these last two shots on?" I
queried. "Have you taken a picture of your car yet?" "well, no, why?" I
replied. "You always have to do that. And besides, if you do you can end
the story up by coming full circle." "good point" was my only comment.
And there it is.
So I mounted my modern steed, and headed back to I40. And home. And next
time, I fly!
If you have problems, comments, questions, or complaints you can
send mail to Tim Melton (tam@tamcon.com).
Last modified 16 December 1997.