Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Hot Air Balloons + Photography Problems

First up, anyone else suffer from this problem?

I see something cool or take pictures of my kids {or any random event}, download them on my computer, and I have literally 300+ pictures to sort through, edit, and prepare for blogging or Facebook sharing.

Let's be honest...I don't have that kind of time and/or attention span.  Clearly I need to find a balance.  Either that or a nanny.

So here are some unedited {gasp} pictures from a hot air balloon we went to a few weeks ago.


The whole thing was so funny.  My mom and I heard about the competition, and the website said there were daily launches at 7am and 7pm.  It's about 45 minutes from my parents' 'lake place', so we decided to shoot for the 7am {my kids are morning peeps} launch.

We asked a few different people where to go, and no one had a clue.  So we just drove around and around, basically chasing the balloons around the whole town.  You know, like crazy people.  By the time we have initiated this awesome plan, the balloons were up in the air.  We did get to see them land, though, which was cool.

So we decided to come back for the evening event.  We got what turned out to be wrong information {again!!}, and as we were sitting in the car, all unbuckled, waiting for it to start, my mom saw a hot air balloon basket driving down the road.


I launched that Honda Odyssey into drive and off we went.  My mom scurried in back to buckle the littles.  It was an exciting few minutes.  We ended up in a field, and before we knew it, there were over 100 hot air balloons preparing to launch.  Seriously cool.


As it turned out, it was an international competition.  I pestered a volunteer until he gave me some more information.  There are several flight patterns that they have to follow in air {all monitored by computer}, and the ones that do the best and land closest to the specified spot are the winners.


And here I thought they were just for looks.

2 comments:

Shannon said...

SO COOL! That would be awesome to see! Before we were married, Mike impressed me by saying that he had been up in a hot air balloon. I got all wide-eyed and asked him tons of questions. After we were married for a couple of years, I found out that by "going up in a hot air balloon" actually meant that he was about 6-8 feet off the ground, tied to a post planted firmly in the earth. Such disappointment. To this day, I'm still looking for a way to surprise him with an actual ride in a hot air balloon...

Anna said...

We did this last year up in Kendallville? (maybe Angola?) and it was awesome! Love all the pictures! I will have to go back with my new camera!