Albuquerque Aloft

     

Albuquerque, New Mexico      High 88 Low 57

Today we drove to one of the elementary schools, where there were two balloons scheduled to inflate for the school kids. I thought they weren’t going to go up, but as it turned out, not only did they lift off, but flew for about a half hour longer than was expected.

We helped unpack the balloon and get it put together. It took us a little while to get everything ready. Once the balloon was ready and the hot air had been applied, the pilot let the kids come around the balloon and talked to them about flying in a balloon. Cindy and the two girl helpers passed out cards, which the children seemed to like to get. Their parents were also there. On the way there, we heard that there were 60 schools involved.

The lady in blue with her back to us is the one that got to fly today.

One of the crew got to go up and later she said it was amazing. They just seemed to float along, with an occasional burn. The pilot told us that each of the two burners was 14 million BTUs. British Thermal Unit (BTU) is a measurement of heat. To give something to compare to, an average home has a 100,000 BTU furnace heating it.

I put this picture on the post just because!

The only odd shape we saw today.

There were a lot of balloons flying.

 

Sitting on the bag to get the last air out.

When we got back to the RV parking, there still was a long line waiting to get parked.

When we were chasing the balloon, a lot of the time we couldn’t see the balloon. The pilot had radio contact with the crew chief. We made a large circle around Albuquerque and went right past the school where we started. The pilot tried to land on the east side of the Rio Grand River, but was unable to find a suitable place to land. He finally found a spot in a new sub-division and landed in a field a little way from a cultisack.  We walked the balloon over to the road to make it easier to deflate and put it away.

He told us that the flame shot 14 feet into the envelope of the balloon. When we were deflating it, the air coming out of the balloon was still very hot and it took a while to get the hot air out.

We helped fold everything up and we all had to sit on the bag, which held the balloon to get all the air out of it. We then loaded everything into the trailer, ready for tomorrow’s flight.

After the ballooning, Cindy and I went over to the Balloon Museum, and learned a lot about the history of balloons, but this post with the pictures is already too long, so I will write about the museum at a later date.

Thanks for visiting.

They Flew

Albuquerque, New Mexico        High 88 Low 61

We got up early in anticipation of helping our pilot test his balloon. When I picked up my phone, there was a message from our crew chief that today’s flight had been cancelled. So we had a free day.

We were eating breakfast, when Cindy noticed that there were balloons flying, so we rushed outside with our cameras. There were around twenty balloons in the air. A lot of them flew right over the place the RVs are parked. A lot of them were commercial balloons with lots of passengers, but there were a lot of other balloons. With only 20 balloons going overhead, it is still hard to imagine the sky filled with over 500 balloons.

 

This one looked to only be a little way above our fiver.

We spent part of the day going to different quilt shops, and yes, we bought some balloon material and some patterns.

When we went to the second quilt shop, the owner showed us a balloon that was a raffle quilt in 1995. It represents some of the balloons that flew in 1994. He told us that when it was raffled off, the total money from tickets was over $19,000. He said that he had borrowed it a few times and knew where it was. He decided to try to buy it from the lady that owned it and was going to offer her $1,000 to $1,500, but when he got there, he decided he had to have it and offered her $5,000, which she accepted. He told us that it appraised at $10,000 in 1995.

He was a nice man and spent some time with us.

This was his wife's contribution the the quilt. The flowers are 3-D.

As we were about to leave, I asked him if he was the owner of the shop. He said he was and then he broke down in tears. He told us his wife had died in June and it was her shop along with his. We could tell that he misses her greatly. He pointed out the part of the Quilt she had made, the Yucca.

When we got back, it was so hot in the trailer, that we had to run the generator for a couple of hours to cool thing off. Next week is supposed to be cooler.

This afternoon at Happy Hour, there was another pilot that talked to us and answered some of our questions. As far as I know right now the thing at the elementary school is still on for tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting.