  This morning we woke up early and drove to Albuquerque—we’d lodged in Santa Fe at my bio-pop’s—making our way through breaking fog and clearing clouds as the sun rose. We wound around the Sangre de Cristo Mountains just in time to see the first balloons of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta lifting off.
The Fiesta is the biggest ballooning event in the world and it’s a wonderful family tradition to catch it every fall we can for at least one day. Mass Ascension today involved over 700 balloons from all over the world, and the best part was that admission was free because of a rain delay. I have to say it’s never very expensive. We often remark on the comparison of any crappy event in Houston charging $15-20 per person while the Fiesta charges a mere $5 per person for arguably the best show on Earth.
This year we actually knew one of the balloon teams. We felt such a sense of pride as we searched out B6 on the field, but when we finally found it, the spot was empty. Then, standing in their spot, we looked up just in time to see their balloon launch from the other end of the field! We were a little disappointed we missed them, but it’s impossible to be unhappy at this amazingly uplifting (I swear that pun was not on purpose) event.
They’ll be there all week, so if you go, look for the Driftin’ Along Balloon team at B6. Their balloon is black, blue, and red horizontally, with yellow vertical slashes. The big thing people do at Balloon Fiesta is to pick a shape or color of a balloon that you particularly like, then stand around it in a giant crowd as it fills.
Often, during this process members of the team hand out cards with a picture of their balloon on it and contact info, and if you’re very lucky, they’ll give out a pin. Then, when at last the balloon takes off the crowd that has waited so patiently all along cheers and claps and waves to the crew as they take off.
If you’re a truly dedicated fan, you keep tabs on the balloon as it enters “the box,” a phenomenon unique to Albuquerque where balloons raise up in the air and catch a north/south airflow down the mountain, push west at the break in the terrain, then catch an south/north airflow that returns them almost exactly to the balloon field where they land. When the box is not in effect, or plans go otherwise wrong, chase teams in four-wheel-drives have a fantastic raucous time reaching and collecting the crew. 
