Tag: Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

Gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Photo by https://kaboompics.com/ on Pexels.com

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is up, up and away.

The Journal‘s homepage, never a thing of beauty even when it’s not rearranged for tourism, still isn’t displaying properly in Safari. And the managing editor was tapped to write the story about day one’s calamities, which included balloonists touching down in power lines, parking lots, and other unsanctioned locations.

Trust issues? Beats me. I got yanked off the Gazette copy desk once to help cover a tornado in Manitou Springs. But I was just a rim rat, not the managing editor. There’s a lot of names on that masthead you’d expect to see atop that story before the ME’s. But it’s been a lot of years since I pulled a shift in a newsroom.

Whatevs, as the kids probably don’t say anymore. I don’t attend the Balloon Feast for the same reason I’ve never driven up Pikes Peak. These things are for tourists, and I don’t do tourism even when I’m not in my hometown.

“Balloons. OK, what’s for breakfast?”

I rode a mountain bike up to Barr Camp once. And Herself and I bicycled down to the Balloon Feast one afternoon, early on in our residency in The Duck! City, before we realized that all the action takes place in the morning and evening.

Now I walk out onto the driveway at 7 a.m., squint to the northwest, and mutter: “Yup. There’s one.” Then I go back inside and finish breakfast before kitting up for a ride.

Summer’s heat and that late monsoon appear to be in the rear view, and the October weather is fine for cycling. The traffic is a little less so, but you can’t let it bust your balloon.

Humbugs and gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
The Wizard of Ooze. (Behind the curtain: Stephen Miller, Generalfeldmarschall, Twatwaffen SS.)

You will recall that Professor Marvel, a.k.a. the Wizard of Oz, traveled by gasbag.

His very distant cousin in humbuggery, the Wizard of Ooze, likewise gets around on hot air, with an assist from other people’s money.

But I don’t expect we’ll see him at the 2025 Albuquerque International Balloon Festival, which begins today. Oh, sure, there’s a golf center at Balloon Fiesta Park, with a driving range and a six-hole pitch-and-putt course. But there is a distinct lack of screening foliage and even the most myopic of Repuglicunts could see him improving his lie.

The Great and Powerful Ooze might send the ICEholes in his stead (darn those bone spurs!). What a fine addition to the spectacle that would be — fats with tats in masks and battle-rattle snatching up brown people and stuffing them into locked baskets beneath unmarked black balloons, to be spirited away to Kansas or someplace even worse, flanked by escorts of flying monkeys.

But I expect those boyos are busy too, lumbering after nekkid bike riders in Stumptown or the more easily caught deep-dish pizza in Chicago.

Eat up, fellas! And don’t worry about the legs on the black olives. Ramón says they’re free-range. Organic.

Soggy doggy bloggy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

We’ve been enjoying a pleasant off-and-on rain, and by “we” I mean “not the Balloon Fiesta people.”

Welp, the Balloon Fiesta people have another year and a day to get their traffic problems sorted, because their final launch of 2018 got rained out this morning.

What does a balloon aficionado do when there is no ballooning to be had due to inclement weather? Beats me.

I know what a cycling scribe does. He stays inside and blogs.

Well, this one does, anyway.

Fiesta or fiasco?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

The Kona Sutra at Albuquerque’s Balloon Fiesta Park, which sits right on the North Diversion Channel trail (from Feb. 2014).

It seems the best way to get to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is … by balloon.

Or is it?

Motorists and park-and-riders have suffered mightily this year, getting stuck in traffic and/or at bus stops, reports The Albuquerque Journal. With a record 21,000 park-and-ride tickets sold, the problem was “sheer volume,” according to Dennis Christiansen, Fiesta coordinator of traffic and P&R.

Added Fiesta executive director Paul Smith: “We have a limited number of access points to and from the park. We are kind of landlocked here. We have a reservation (Sandia) to the north, a neighborhood to the west, and AMAFCA (flood control) channels on two sides.”

’Tis a puzzler, to be sure. Until one considers that a bike path parallels one of those channels — the North Diversion Channel Trail, which runs straight into Balloon Fiesta Park, where a bike valet service awaits.

Neither the Journal nor the Fiesta mentions this transportation option, though I was riding that trail to that park before I even lived here. I tell ya, we don’t get no respect. …

Gasbag

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

No snow here yet, but the trees know it’s fall.

No, not that one.

Last night Herself and I were walking The Boo around sunset when I noticed an object in the northwestern sky.

“If that’s a balloon,” I observed, “it’s not tethered. That sucker is on the move.”

And so it was. The gasbag sailed right over El Rancho Pendejo at dark-thirty, bound for the East Mountains and points east, as part of the 22nd America’s Challenge. I hope the pilot got over the Sandias without incident. There’s more than gold in them thar hills. Yogi and Boo-Boo would dearly love a pic-a-nic basket, especially if it’s delivered.

Meanwhile, as you can see from the photo up top, the trees are turning with all possible haste. And there’s a winter-storm watch in effect for the Front Strange.

Lucky for us we’re residents of the Duke City, where we’re looking at a sunny stretch of 60s and 70s.