Getting High in Albuquerque

October 3-11, 2009


Now I don’t say this lightly.

Actually, I do say it lightly, because this is about balloons. Not little balloons. Big, no, enormous balloons. We were fortunate enough to get to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta this year.

Oh what glorious blue skies they have in New Mexico. And to see them filled with floating, drifting, bobbing bacchanalia is to feel your heart burst from your chest and float straight up, untethered by life’s concerns. The fiesta producers called the 2009 Fiesta, “Mass Happiness.” They were right.

Imagine dragging yourself from your bed on a chilly desert morning, well before the sun, well before anything should be moving except the bedsprings. Imagine dressing without your usual shower because you just had to get outside. You put on jeans and a tee shirt, and then you add a long-sleeved shirt, socks, a windbreaker, scarf, gloves, earmuffs and you grab a cuppa joe because you won’t stay warm without it. What could make you do such a thing?

Dawn patrol, that’s what. In the dark of the earliest morning, two balloons would hoist themselves up to greet the rising sun. They would carry American flags, and suddenly the Star Spangled Banner would play over the omnipresent loudspeakers. Over 5000 people as crazy as you would clap wildly, as the balloons drifted overhead and the pilots took measure of the wind. That is the real reason for Dawn Patrol: to gauge the wind velocity and direction for the rest of the balloonists. Nevertheless, the moment always caused me to hold my breath.

Before long, the field, roughly the size of several football fields, would begin to develop a riot of lumpy, bumpy protuberances you hadn’t noticed before. Big mounds of colorful marshmallows, swelling and bobbing where before there had only been flat fabric, easy to overlook. Now they were demanding their piece of the atmosphere as they filled with gas and assumed their shapes.

One by one, they’d fire up, the heat of the fires causing the gas to expand and send them skyward in a slow aerobic ballet. Each balloon has one or two pilots and by my count about 20 handlers. Many are volunteers who come for the sheer joy of holding a guide rope in the freezing cold so the balloon stays in place until it is time to let go. Many get team jackets to wear. All are smiling. Now I understand what it is to be in a job whose only purpose is to make people happy.

At this point, you are probably imagining a sky full of colorful light-bulb shapes. But what is this that’s floating by? Pepe le Pew? A giant can of Pepsi? A United Van Lines truck? Two balloons, or I should say two bees, kissing? These are the special shapes balloons, wonderful variations that are generally bigger than the average balloon. Especially the Parthenon. No kidding. There really was a Parthenon balloon. And the space shuttle, a stagecoach, a huge chicken and a scarecrow (they usually flew together), the perfect clown head, and hundreds of other crowd-pleasers. There’s a competition every year, and this year it was won by the Creamland Dairy, whose entry was an enormous cow that dwarfed its competition and charmed the crowd. How they got that thing up every morning is still a mystery to me.

The biggest cheer, however, came when Darth Vader took off. The movies’ biggest villain always arose to a claxon of approval. “I am your father, Luke. And a balloon.”

Once you’d had your fill of fun, some two hours later, it would be time to venture down onto the field. We had VIP parking, high on a ridge above the field, so that our view of the skies was uninterrupted. But now it would be time to join the day-trippers for a stroll on the midway. Two facing rows of white tents housed vendor row, where people could get breakfast burritos, curly fries, mini donuts fresh out of the cooker, ice cream, chalupas, sopapillas, baked potatoes, free beer!, coffee, hot chocolate, funnel cakes, corn dogs and all the usual carny fare that is so bad for you and so impossible to resist.

There were tee shirts, sweaters, hats, mittens and gloves to be had. Jewelry, both real and fake, made in China, and made on the reservation. And pins. Oh the pins. The big thing at the festival is pin-collecting. Lapel pins, priced from $3 to $300 for the ones from years gone by. Most of the balloons were represented, and Darth Vader sold out on the first day. If you were nutty enough, you could buy a silly hat – a Cat in the Hat, or an oversized top hat, or a Viking hat, or a big Rasta topper – and cover it with the pins you’ve collected. Some jackets covered with pins must have weighed a hundred pounds.

And everywhere you went, any time of the day or night, all would be mellow. Can you imagine somewhere between five and ten thousand people all walking around with dopey grins, even if their kids were wailing, and saying “Excuse me, sorry” if they so much as ruffled the sleeve of your jacket as they passed? Balloons are a natural high.

Midway along the midway, you’d have taken off your jacket, because the sun had warmed the morning and unfrozen your fingers. You might venture over to the Balloon Museum, where you’d learn that ballooning originated in France in the 1700’s and was used commercially for a time. It was the first time ever that man had conquered the skies, so that in itself was a pretty big deal. Some more-industrial nations adopted ballooning fairly early on, but Japan never had its first balloon until 1969. Go figure.

The most famous balloon, of course, was the Hindenberg, but this is a happy chapter, so we’ll leave that alone.

Once your arthritic knee couldn’t take another drubbing, you’d head back up the hill to your motor coach for a hot shower and some down time. But of course, there are the Albuquerque sights to see, so you wouldn’t stay on the couch for long. Besides, whatever you had to do had to be done by 5, because that’s when the cocktail hour started, and preparation for the Glowdeo commenced. The Glowdeo is the twilight event, where the balloons are inflated but stay earthbound, and as soon as it is dark enough, the rodeo master commences the countdown and the fires are lit, illuminating all the balloons for about ten seconds and causing oohs and aahs that will be repeated at 9 o’clock, when the fireworks, as spectacular as any I’ve ever seen, start. You’d walk the field during the Glowdeo and see the balloons close up. They’re much bigger than you imagine and you can talk with the pilots, and ask about the balloons. Kids run around collecting balloon cards, like baseball cards, from each team.

I made the biggest gaffe of the week when I went up to one balloon’s crew and asked if the Koshare (ko-sha-ree) was a Japanese cartoon character. After some good-natured kidding delivered in a faux Asian accent, the pilot, an Albuquerque native, informed me that the Koshare was a Native American totem, a mischievous character who represented fun and good times. Ooops. Kachina, not Pachinko.

And so to bed. You’d retire early, because tomorrow was another day, because you’d now been up and about for 18 hours straight and because with all that heavenly wonder still rumbling around in your brain, the last thing you needed to do was to watch television.

You’d already made your own kind of magic, and Letterman just wouldn’t cut it. Not tonight anyway.

Betty