This year is the 254th aniversary of the start of hot-air ballooning and the 5th for the first solo flight around the world and the 19th for the world altitude record and 19th for the record-breaking trans-Atlantic flight. The history is as colorful as the mass annual event gathering, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in New Mexico. From the invention of the hot air balloon in 1783 with a launch of a rooster, pick and a duck, it has ballooned today to a mass spectacle nine-day event drawing over 700 balloonists from 41 states and 19 countries and a crowd of 900,000. Starting on October 6th, the begins with a mass ascension with all balloons lifting off in under two hours. Imagine the colorful, magical spectacle in the clear skies!
Albuquerque natives Maxie Anderson and Ben Abruzzo are probably most responsible for the blossoming of ballooning, the push and inspiration to break records and the people behind the beginnings of the mass balloon-orama. Distance and height barriers have only been broken in very recent years.
With next year being the big 250th anniversary of modern ballooning, the 20th for the first big record-breaking flight and the 20th for altitude records, ballooning has gone big time in recent years.
I haven't seen it since 1983 when I was first pregnant and ballooning myself (my stomach, that is). Big things with a lot of people as spectators? ( Not the birth of my baby. ) The two-hour lift-off rivals the Superbowl half-time show as far as things dancing around untethered.
More on the flip...
You would never see something this massively spectacular in New York with that jungle of high-rises in a landscape of concrete. Nor would you see it in Atlanta with the trees or for that matter, most anywhere else. The unique features of this environment beckon balloonists and fans world-over. What makes this specific place so specifically suitable (and a paradise for balloonists) is the phenonmenon called "The Albuquerque Box" -- crystal skies, perfect October climate, and a combination of landscape and weather patterns perfect for balloonists to tool all around above the ground. Abruzzo's practice field attracted others to his playground.
Now world renowned, the mass event in New Mexico started in Albuquerque in 1972. The first multi-balloon launch event in the Land of Enchantment began with 13 balloons but it has grown so large that there is now a 365-acre Balloon Fiesta Park. After its invention in 1783, in 1785 a hot-air Balloon piloted by a Frenchman and co-piloted by an American crossed the English Channel. In 1932 a Swiss scientist took a balloon into the stratosphere and ballooning took off. It was only 1978 when Albuquerque balloonists Ben Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson along with Larry Newman crossed the Atlantic, set a world record and set ballooning on fire with this famous Double Eagle II. Abruzzo and Anderson set a challenging benchmark and the team attracted others to their Albuquerque playground. In 1982 balloonists crossed the Pacific. Eight years ago in 1999 a balloon went around the world. It has been 19 years since the altitude world record was set in Plano, Texas in 1988.
Maxie Anderson died in a balloon accident in 1983. Ben Abruzzo and his brother, Pat Abruzzo, died in a plane crash in Albuquerque two years later. Afther their deaths, the Anderson and Abruzzo families began an effort to commemorate ballooning and the lives of these and other balloonists who have been behind the amazing feats of recent years in ballooning history. Three years ago the Anderson-Abruzzo International Balloon Museum opened in Albuquerque.
We'll have the college daughter coming home (which is now in New Mexico since we moved here full-time from NYC this summer) for Fall Break and my parents will be visiting, too. All three have never witnessed this. Christmas Eve in Albuquerque has balloons lit up at night, a unique way to light the night with colorful lights. This will be a very memorable thing to see. You think stars in the night are something special and unusual to see (especially now with all of the lighting blacking out the stars from our urban growth and bad light policies), just imagine what the clear blue sky looks like with all of these colorful balloons wafting hither and yon. Unforgettable.
photo credit: Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
This event is so spectacular and incomparable. I was at the first one when it was launched from the Fair grounds. To view the balloons from the foothills in ABQ is breathtaking. Nothing says fall in the Duke city more than the Fiesta, at least for me!
Posted by: allison | September 25, 2007 at 09:00 AM
That is an incredible photo! I'd love to be able to see it in larger size! Balloons are just so... poetic!
Posted by: Claude | September 25, 2007 at 12:49 PM
There's a man in a nearby town that has a hot air balloon for hire.
I've been wanting to do this as a surprise gift for my Hubby.
Great photo!
Posted by: Rhonda | September 25, 2007 at 05:07 PM
As I read your wonderful blog, I was vivdly reminded of the comment one of my passengers made as we lifted off the field during the Saturday morning mass ascension in the late 1990's,"The only thing that could possible equal this is sitting in the Parthenon at sunrise"! She said that as tears coursed down her cheeks. It truly is breath-taking and spectacular. s/RAM
Posted by: Robert Manchester aka The Ballooning Barrister | September 26, 2007 at 07:09 AM