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Fiesta in the sky

Balloon chasing in the Albuquerque Box

By G.D. Maxwell

Thirty years ago, on a crisp Saturday autumn morning, I was sitting on my back porch in the rural outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico, sipping hot coffee, trying to clear a late night from my head and wondering what I might do to distract myself from the day?s main task, studying.

Morning?s chill was slowly burning off as the sun rose higher in a clear sky the colour of old blue jeans. Cars hissed in muted passing on the other side of the house but the sounds of the day belonged, so far, to chirping birds and the popping noises of an expanding tin roof.

Abruptly, the sun dimmed, shadows fell across the porch and a godawful noise, part hiss and part roar, like a pack of tigers falling into a pit of 10,000 agitated vipers, broke my reverie and sent me jumping off the chair, coffee flying everywhere.

A wicker basked dangling from a red, blue and gold hot air balloon threatened to collide unceremoniously with the top of a still-leafed apricot tree dropping sap on my VW beetle. With both burners screaming, the pilot just managed to miss the tree, negotiate safe passage between nearby power lines and finally tumble in a less than textbook landing in the pasture beyond.

By the time I closed the 150 or so yards to the scene of expected carnage, a gap-toothed man and two burly helpers all covered in dust and grass had bulldogged the balloon?s gondola to a stop and were in the process of deflating the seven story envelope of hot air. Two women who completed the flight crew were breaking out champagne and plastic cups. Before apologies and names were completely exchanged a comically outsized 4x4 Chevy truck carrying the chase crew, was barrelling down the levee of a nearby irrigation ditch, trailing a plume of dust half a mile behind.

There were 13 balloons that year, 1971, at a celebration more birthday party than big time balloon fiesta. It was Sid Cutter?s idea to "fill the sky" with hot air balloons for his mother, Virginia?s, birthday. Sid owned a local aviation concern and had, with his brother, flown just about everything airworthy, balloons included. He?d invited everyone he knew or had heard about who flew one to join the celebration. Their presence in the fall air above Albuquerque had caused quite a local buzz but no one had any idea this first rendezvous was destined to become the single biggest balloon celebration in the world.

To say hot air ballooning was a fringe activity in those days would be to give it way more credit than it deserved. A single balloon in the air was reason enough for cars to be parked helter-skelter alongside ? or often in the middle of ? any road offering a vantage. Jaded, seen-it-all, done-it-all people reverted instantly to childhood whenever one of the brightly-coloured, gravity-defying orbs bobbed and floated across the sky. It was an unconscious reaction.

Two years later, in 1973, the event was officially dubbed the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and drew 32 international competitors from 15 countries and almost 100 balloons. No one thought it could get much bigger and had it stayed tethered to the state fairgrounds, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods, it might not have.

But a new location north of the growing town?s sprawling development and south of the Sandia Indian band lands drew more participants and more wild stunts each year. Hang gliders were clipped to the bottom of baskets and dropped from a dead stop several thousand feet above the ground, seeming to plummet in death spirals until their pilots gained enough speed to fly them gracefully back to earth. Skydivers leapt from baskets and thrilled crowds by waiting until the last moment to pop their chutes. Contests of skill and duration were dreamed up to give what was only a bizarre pastime the pastiche of "sport."

And the phenomenon grew bigger each year.

Last year, more than 1,000 balloons took part in the two-week event. Most were what you might call run of the mill balloons ? colourful but dated compared to where the event seems headed. Many more were "corporate" balloons decorated in colours and scenes, looking like nothing so much as floating billboards for their sponsors. A growing number each year are specialized, shaped balloons: Wells Fargo?s stagecoach and piggy banks; J&B?s scotch bottle, Creamland Dairy?s jersey cow; AOL?s computer; Bacardi?s margarita and privately owned flights of fantasy like the Flying Purple People-Eater. All rising at the same time, the special shapes ascent is a hands down crowd favourite.

Not mine though. In a sea of shapes, colours and gaudy, hi-tech mechanics, I was drawn to a small pink balloon with a single panel of yellow at its draft. It was maybe half the size of the others, seemingly way too small to ever lift a gondola and crew. When I got up close I got excited. Suspended under the balloon was a single, small burner and below it was slung a nylon-covered propane tank maybe the size of three gas barbecue tanks. Straddling the tank was Sam Parks, looking like a bronc rider getting ready for the chute to open.

"This is no-frills ballooning," he explained when I asked him about his Cloud Hopper. Sam got the idea for his stripped down ride when "the whole enchilada just became too much to lug around." Small, compact, the balloon requires a crew of two: Sam and whoever he can get to help inflate it and drive the chase truck. "It?s the motorcycle of balloons, not the Cadillac," he said. I wanted one immediately.

Watching several hundred balloons rise into the thin, cold air ? a world?s record was set last year for the most balloons launched in one hour: 329 ? the inevitable question comes up. Why Albuquerque?

I like to think the answer has something to do with the Fiesta coinciding with New Mexico?s green chile harvest but the truth probably lies more in the unique mix of climate, altitude, open space and a weather phenomenon now known as the Albuquerque Box.

At almost a mile high, Albuquerque?s high desert air is thin. Balloons rise with less resistance and use less fuel. Tucked in a valley between the Rio Grande River to the west and the Sandia Mountains rising several thousand feet to the east, the "Box" itself acts a bit like a tether during the clear, cold mornings of October, keeping the balloons in a "controlled" flight pattern. Cool air flows south near the surface and north at higher elevations. Pilots taking off from the launch area on the northern edge of town fly south until they lay on the burners and gain elevation. Higher up, the prevailing winds blow them back toward their starting point where, on a good day, they can yo-yo in a squared-off circle until they run low on propane and then land near where they started.

At least that?s the theory. Wind being wind, it blows. Not always exactly the direction or the speed you might expect... or hope.

Mention Albuquerque to most people and their only association is, "Hey, isn?t that the place Bugs Bunny always made a wrong left turn?" Well, if Bugs had poked his cute floppy-eared head out of the ground almost anywhere on the south side of town, he?d of gotten his furry little ass blown away. That?s because the most benevolent thing south of Albuquerque is the airport. Everything else on that side of town is host to some of the most top-secret, sensitive, classified, if-we-tell-you-we?ll-have-to-kill-you kind of stuff in the home of the brave, land of the free. Sandia National Laboratories, Kirtland Air Force Base, and the Site Able testing grounds and storage facilities at what used to be Manzano base before it was folded into Kirtland. Scary, scary places.

Needless to say, in the years before a kinder, gentler protocol was worked out, errant balloons drifting helplessly into the military airspace were greeted with the kind of hardware generally reserved for enemy invasions. Stories are told of balloons being surrounded by helicopter gunships and forced to land immediately, whereupon pilots were detained and questioned ? at gunpoint ? had the film in their cameras confiscated, their belongings searched and the whole kit and caboodle "escorted" off the base. This was, of course, long after the military denied ever having seen them at all when chase crews showed up at the gates asking after their whereabouts.

Nowadays, even the spooks are used to the occasional balloon floating over whatever they deny is going on out there. Jason Violette, public affairs officer at Kirtland explained. "If they?re still in the air, it?s an FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) matter. If they land anywhere on the base, security police drive out to the landing site and escort them off the base."

And while Tom Lintner with the FAA can?t recall any difficulties between balloons and aircraft vying for the same airspace over the city?s international airport, it is a sight to see when pilots swing around the north end of the Sandias and a couple of hundred hot air balloons floating over the city pop into view. "Arcade-like," is how one pilot described it.

While there may have been no accidental meetings between powered and lighter-than-air craft in the past 30 years, there have been mishaps, some comic, some tragic. Half a dozen years ago several people were killed when a balloon caught fire. The pilot tried to land the craft on a sandbar in the Rio Grande but when several of his panicked passengers jumped out of the gondola too soon, the lightened balloon rose swiftly only to plummet once flames consumed enough of the fabric to render it heavier-than-air.

Most of the time though, flights go off without a hitch. Colourful balloons float lazily in the clear fall air and people?s imaginations take flight with them. For two weeks each year, it seems everyone but everyone wants to be part of what?s become the biggest party with the most balloons in the whole world.

And there are many ways to join in. From pulling in to the non-stop, impromptu party city that springs up every year in the expansive RV parking lot to signing up for free balloon rides to just milling around the launch area and being pressed into service by a crew in need of an extra pair of hands.

Or you can sign up for chase crew. That?s what I did. Wandering around the pilots? tent I stumbled on volunteers pressing people into working chase crew. They gave me a name and number and I gave Denise Despres, a pilot from nearby Cedar Crest, a call.

"Excellent!" she exclaimed when I told her why I was calling. "We launch tomorrow morning from site K4 at 7:45. Can you be there around 7ish? You can?t miss us, we?re the only two balloons out there that look like big tits."

"Did you say big tits?"

Yes she did. Denise pilots Bosom Buddy and her husband, Rick Hueschen, Big Breaths. "I fly left tit; Rick flies right," she said. Vets by trade, the pair have been flying the only breast-shaped balloons they know of for the last 10 years.

"We started out with what you might call regular balloons before that," Rick said, "but somehow, when we sat down to design our first-ever brand new balloons, well hell, what else would you want them to look like?"

To be truthful, they looked like balloons to me. Sure, they were a fleshy-coloured pink with big brown nipples and velcro-attached 60 foot long gold lamé tassels, but the only time they could truly be said to resemble breasts were when they were being inflated side by side, something the Fiesta officials pretty much never let happen. "They?re a little uptight about it," Denise said. "It?s not really what they have in mind when they brag about the special shapes."

Other than their obvious fixation ? and nine days of nonstop toga partying ? Denise and Rick were your standard, hardcore balloonists. Nothing gave them more pleasure than flying and no better reason to fly existed than the Fiesta, where they could catch up with old friends and take part in "...something really, really special."

Despite last year?s bad weather, balloons joined in the festivities from all corners of the earth. They came from as far away as the United Arab Emirates, Islamabad, Minsk, Malaysia, Germany, Brazil and Moscow. Nearly two dozen Canadians showed up to get high, representing Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and B.C. Denis Unsworth from St.-Jean-Sur-Richelieu flew the fleur-de-lis and Sandra Shannon from Ottawa flew the Maple Leaf. Both had been there before and both were planning on coming back this year.

Starting tomorrow, the skies over Albuquerque will be filled once again with balloons. The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington last month threatened to ground the Fiesta but New Mexico?s senators intervened and made their case to the FAA. "It?s like this, Commissioner, even if they slam one of those things into the biggest building in Albuquerque, it?ll just bounce off. It?s full of hot air." An explanation well understood in Washington.

So if you?re like many people I meet who say, "Gee, I?d really like to get down to that part of the world some time," this is the time to go. Great weather ? usually ? slow season in Whistler, green chile roasting in the parking lot of every grocery store in town, and more colourful balloons in the air than you can imagine.

Not to mention the biggest set of.... Yeah, not to mention.



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