Day 3 at Fiesta.

Sunday the wind was too strong to fly, although quite a few balloons did take off Keith our very experienced pilot, along with most of the other local pilots, decided that it was too wingy to fly.

Went to breakfast instead, spent the rest of the day getting ready for Monday's tailgate party. Went shopping and made lots of jelly shots while drinking beer.

Monday was competition day we were due to fly from the field and had to fly over a target site and drop a bag to score points. Again it was a bit windy but today Keith decided to fly and took a couple of crew as passengers. Wind was starting to pick up a bit but he had a landing site in mind and reached it with little bother although there were many others at the landing site where he nearly crashed into a couple of chase vehicles. Due to the wind and the Monday morning rush hour traffic, he beat us in the chase vehicle to the land site.

While we were packing up the balloon we started getting reports of a fatality. It seems that a balloon got caught on a power pole which ripped out the side of the basket and one of the paying passengers fell out. Cannot really speculate on what happened as there will be a full investigation.

This news put a bit of a dampener on the tailgate party but it went ahead anyway. Was windy to start with but by midday the sun was beating down and all jackets were shed and sunburn was kicking in. We had a 50/50 draw that turned into an impromptu raffle with many gifts donated on the spur of the moment. The profits went to the 'Balloon Historical Society' based in Taos, New Mexico. They are initially trying to protect the Stratobowl site in South Dakota where the early balloon exploration of space was carried out.
George Yost

George Yost, son of Ed Yost the father of modern ballooning, drew out the initial 50/50 tickets. The imptomptu raffle was then conducted by the pilot of Sky Angel, Keith ReevesKeith the raffle king and a lucky winner.