melody's mindless musings: hot air balloons

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

hot air balloons

A few weekends ago there was an International Balloon Festival held down the street from our house at the Gymkana Golf Club. This festival had a number of hot air balloons present and gave people a chance to see them up close and personal, learn more about hot air balloons, and enjoy some music that went with the theme of the whole event. The Festival ran for three days and started at 6am and ended at about 9pm.

On Saturday, Matt and I woke up at 5:30 am and headed out on the motorbike to see the hot air balloons take flight. We got there really early and ended up waiting for about 20 minutes before the balloon people showed up and got to work on getting the balloons into the sky. Once the different teams arrived though, they got straight to work getting these humungous balloons ready. It was SO COOL (the two words I repeated over and over and over again) and such a rush to see the whole process up close.

First, the teams got out the baskets and tested the burners. Then they unrolled the balloons and spread them out on the ground. Once the balloon was hitched to the baskets, they used a fan to start blowing air into them to get them to partially inflate. When it was safe and there was space inside the balloons, they used the burners to inflate the balloons the rest of the way until they were ready to be set upright. Finally the balloons were up and the teams and some lucky passengers went in the baskets and off they went! I loved seeing the whole process and really enjoyed attempting to document what happened.

Enjoy the pictures!