AIBF Day 1

Well, here we are at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, at long last. This morning we got up at 5:45 (people who know Gene look shocked now) and caught a shuttle to the launch site. They told us just to follow the crowd, and crowd there was. It looked like St. Peter's Square when the Pope is speaking. What's more, the crowd is free to mingle amongst the balloons.

As luck would have it, we were standing next to a trailer when the crew started pulling out the pieces. We got to watch the whole process of setting up and inflating a balloon close up.

This last picture was supposed to be a video of the balloon taking off but only the last frame transferred.

The whole process took about 45 minutes.

Then we stood around and watched the scene around us. We were surrounded by balloons filling up and taking off. (Also by incredible numbers of people.) The pictures don't do it justice.

Hopefully more tomorrow if I can solve a sudden connection problem.