AIBF - Day 2

Saturday - Today was the official opening day of the Balloon Fiesta. My shift started at 4am so I caught the 3:15 shuttle from the parking area. There was quite a bit of traffic on the road even at this time of day. The shuttle dropped me off within a hundred yards from the “booth”, which a small container with a roll-up door. 

After a wind delay, balloons started launching. The prevailing wind was towards the NW instead of the normal southerly direction. The first balloons launching were the commercial ones with paying customers. Then the ones to the south end of the field. 

There was a drone show earlier in the morning. It was hard to photograph as the phone used a long exposure. As you can see, there was quite a crowd. 

The booth I’m volunteering at had a decent view of the launches. The wind picked up but it was low enough to continue launching. After my shift, there was a welcome lunch at the pilots building. Nothing fancy but decent food. 

AIBF - Day 1

Friday - There were a few balloons up this morning. Tomorrow is the first day of the Balloon Fiesta. I suspect that tomorrow’s mass ascension should be spectacular.

Yesterday, I went and picked up my volunteer packet. Besides my lanyard, passes, party tickets, and promotional books, I got a fleece vest and a jacket. The picture is the back of the jacket. 

My first shift is tomorrow morning at 4:30am. I met with the group leaders today to find out where to go and what I’ll be doing. 

Albuquerque, NM

Wednesday - We arrived at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta (AIBF) around mid-morning. They found our registration but couldn’t locate the packet of parking passes. Probably as I registered for the RV parking separate from volunteering. They gave us a nice elevated location so we would have a nice view of the landing area. 

As an experiment, I just placed the StarLink antenna on top of our slide under the slide topper. So far, it seems to work fine with download speeds of over 300 Mbps. I was thinking of setting it up on the roof but this is easier as I don’t need to climb up on the roof. 

All of the parking is N-S so the solar panels can’t be tilted. They are peaking at under 400watts so not very good. We will be running the generator quite a bit while we are here. Dry camping. No power, water, or sewer for the next 11 days. 

Santa Fe, NM

Sunday - Cochiti Lake is under an hour from San Antonio so we took advantage of this to visit a former colleague from the university. On other visits through NM, we didn’t have the opportunity to meet up but since we are in the area for a couple of weeks, there were no excuses. 

Monday - We spent the day exploring the plaza area of Santa Fe with the Marx’s. Very touristy area with expensive stores and lots of jewelry shops. Lunch was another tasty Hatch green chili burger for me. 

There were quite a number of street vendors selling mostly jewelry. It has been quite a while since I’ve been in Santa Fe. I think the last time was around 2005 for a Joint Tech meeting in Albuquerque. A couple of us visited Santa Fe between events.