The Ballunar Festival is here this weekend, and this year I finally had the weekend free to volunteer to crew for one of the balloons! (The past two years this weekend has been spent moving and going to Peru, respectively.)
Becca, Cari and I are all crewing for the same balloon, owned by a husband and wife, Dan and Sue, from Mississippi. (There are two other guys crewing as well.) Dan is a dentist, and so their balloon has two cartoon teeth on it and is called “Happy Teeth.” This cracks me up.
Of course I took my camera, so here are a few shots from this morning. We launched from the Kroger parking lot, hoping to get close enough to the target at JSC. I helped get the balloon unfolded and inflated. Dan asked for the lightest of the three of us, so Cari got to hop in the basket along with Terry (who was getting a ride because he works for a festival sponsor) as Dan piloted the balloon.
Cari looking excited:
Up, up, and away:
The rest of us followed in the chase vehicle as they floated slowly through Clear Lake. They came down in a field near Mamacita’s to swap Cari for Ken (another crew member), and then they continued to float along as we followed and all tried our best to guess which direction they were headed and hoped they didn’t come down in the tank farm behind the barbed wire! At this point, I realized there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ride.
Happy Teeth in flight:
Terry and Cari partaking in the ceremony that marks a balloonist’s first flight (with champagne!):
The best part was when Cari and I got to grab the crown line after the balloon had landed, and puuuuuulllll the top of the balloon down. Air is heavier than you’d think!! Then, as they squeezed the air out from the other end, we got blasts of hot air in the face. Apparently hot air balloons really do use hot air.
We do it again tonight, tomorrow morning, tomorrow night, and Sunday morning. Balloons are fun!
Kept your mouth shut, eh? You did about as good of a job at that as Becca did at driving. (Not that I’m the world’s best, but I didn’t hop behind the wheel, either.) Besides, I thought that only *you* knew how to get anywhere. 😉
Notice I said mouth shut *after* we switched crews and Becca started driving. Before that everybody was trying to direct, like we all knew everything. 🙂 I’m good with directions, but when everyone’s trying to give them I just get annoyed. Becca knows where she’s going around here anyway.
Glad you enjoy that. Waverly and I had a great experience in our early morning balloon ride in Albuquerque. There is one guy that we saw lift off that morning that is supposed to be at Ballunar this weekend. The first time they fired up the burner, Waverly almost did a Carl Lewis-like sprint!
It was delightful to read about your crewing experience with “Happy Teeth” at Ballunar 2005. Unfortunately I have some sad news. Dr. Dan Martindale, the pilot of “Happy Teeth”, passed away late last month at his home in Monticello, Mississippi. He had been suffering from leukemia for several months. He will be greatly missed by the hot-air ballooning community all around the south. Happily, his spirit lives on in all the pictures and stories about him and his balloon, all over the web, such as yours. Thank you.