Albuquerque International Balloon Festival - Friday 10/11/19
Friday we had new crew members and we split up the people between the Smurf balloon and the gerbil balloon from England. The temperature was 31 degrees when we got to the field and very windy. These were the roughest conditions yet for setting up a balloon. Scotty helped out with the gerbil balloon and another neighboring English team which was the cheetah balloon. At one point, Scotty's job was to hold onto the cable and he actually wore a hole through his gloves from the tension today. On my team with the Smurf and after inflation helped the crew to keep the basket from rising. It was incredibly hard, even with many of us gathered around the basket as it was blowing back and forth with the wind. The crowd appeared to be incredibly impressed with our strength as we had to hold down the basket for a tense 15 minutes. At one point, the nose of Smurf reached down into the crowd and the crowd especially loved it. There were many times that the crowd cheered for us when a gust of wind blew the balloon into a different direction. It was definitely the most challenging morning of all so far. The gerbil balloon never did go up, but Smurf did and only went 4 to 5 miles across the city of Albuquerque. Koen landed the balloon in a gravel pit and strategically maneuvered the basket to land between two dirt berms so it would not drag across the parking lot where there was lots of equipment and trucks. Another successful launch so out came the champagne.
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