Fiesta day 7...

Still going strong... have not had a decent nights sleep since leaving home last Tuesday, 10 days and counting. Having too much bloody fun.

Yesterday (Day six) was the first day of 'special shapes' where they flew from the field and all the regular baloons had to fly from off field. 'Sky Angel' had a companion for the day, 'Salida del Sol@ piloted by Scott Esposito. As Scott had no crew we helped launch and land his balloon as well as 'Sky Angel'. As they landed at different times it gave us plenty of time to do both.

Some of the special shapes are pretty interesting.

There was the Brandenburg Gate

A Shamrock called Paddy

Darth Vader

And some bees kissing

Today (day seven of 4am starts) was again special shapes only there was a competition for the regular shapes. They had to fly from off field and drop a 'baggie' onto a target on the balloon field. Due to the odd winds and the 'Alberquerque box' Keith, the pilot for Sky Angel' took of south of the field, flew north, climbed and then went east, dropped lower and headed west to get himself positioned for a run south across the field. He hit just inside the first target and with his second baggie landed about a foot off the center of the big X. Scored some points, will have to wait for briefing tomorrow morning to find out how well he did.

There were some more special shapes today that did not fly yesterday including...

An American Eagle

The Orient Express

The Space Shuttle

After flying it was back to the field for another tailgate party. Someone turned up with a box of stuff called Tarantula, this was a blue Tequila drink that was bloody nice. Haveing just toooooo much fun here, I am sure I will pay for it somewhere along the line.

Fiesta day 5.

Wednesday Day 5 of Fiesta.

Went flying yesterday, Tuesday. Due to the fatality on Monday and the cancellation of all further flights, the 'brains trust' that runs fiesta decided that ALL pilots who wanted to compete for the days competition would leave the field and fly back to score on the field. This would mean 600 balloons trying to find a launch space to the north of the field, probably in the gravel pit there. Keith decided to just fly for fun, so we left from the north end of the field and flew south. We dropped low over the old field so the emmets there could take pictures and then dropped into the flood spillway and finally landed on a vacant lot.

Sky Angel

Yesterday afternoon I bought a new camera, the newest model from Cannon the SX100 IS. Checked on the internet for prices back home and found that here in the states it retails at $299 where in the UK it retails at £299. Brits are paying double the price........

Today was flags of the nations day. This means that all the international balloons could fly the flags from their home countries. Darth Vader was flying today along with some other neat balloons.

This afternoon was the Zoo party. The Alberquerque closes for the day and the balloonists take over for the afternoon. Fiesta lay on free food and drink supplied by the sponsors, Warsteiner and Admiral Nelson rum. Good excuse to have even more fun and get to meet other balloonists from all over the place. Talking to these people I get the feeling that the Fiesta days are numbered as many are concerned by the lack of landing sites due to the rapid growth of the city as well as the bumbling incompetence and down right comercialisation of the whole event. Examples of the weather predictions constantly stating low winds and good flying conditions when the pilots can see the flags around the field are standing out stiffly.

Another fun day was had by all.

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.

Fiesta time.

Left home last Tuesday morning and nearly missed the bus to the station, not sure if it was early or I was late but had to run the last 100 yards with suitcase. Got to London and went to see Millwall play Northampton in a league match, We won 2-0 and did not look too bad.

Wednesday was London to Peoria, Illinois via Detroit. No problems with getting into the US this time and even arrived in Peoria 15 minutes early.

Left Peoria early Thursday and drove to Alberquerque with an overnight stop in Elk City, Oaklahoma. Arrived Friday evening not sure what day or time it was.

Fiesta started today so we were up at 04:00 to get down to the balloon field. Wind was looking to be a problem but luckily it held off long enough to fly at 07:30. Was part of the mass assencion where up to 700 balloons took off in 3 waves.

Mass Assencion

This afternoon we went down to the Trinity site which has 2 open days per year. Trinity site is where the first atom bomb was set off. It is in a very empty part of New Mexico. All there is now is a n obelisk made of lava rock.

Trinity Site

Offer accepted

I have finally received an acceptable offer on the house. After ten months of not very much interest I finally switched estate agents and had a deluge of viewings. Eventually 3 different people were bidding against each other which helped push the price to an acceptable level.

All I have to do now is get the soon to be ex-missus to sign the forms and we can finally get divorced. I don't know why she has been sitting on the divorce papers for the last year and it is difficult to find out when all she comes out with is 'I'll have to get advice from my lawyer'. Very frustrating.

Off on holiday this week. Going ballooning in Alberquerque, New Mexico amongst other things.

Club de plungee

The first day off in Algeirs I found the local diving club down at the spa in Sidi Fredj, a couple of miles from the hotel. Needless to say I took the plunge and went diving in the med.

Terrible decision to make.

The rental of the equipment, shortie wetsuit, BCD, bottles, weightbelt came to around 8 pounds sterling. The people there while not speaking much English and my french about as bad made me feel very welcome, brotherhood of divers I'm sure.

From the surface the med looks delightful, under the water it looks like the toilet it really is. Visibility was around 2 meters and there was lots of things floation around down there. Diving off the rocks was a new experience for me and the buffeting from the surf and the tidal currents was disconcerting at first but got used to it after a little while.

Whilst initially getting my bearings and balance underwater and getting used to the current I inadvertently put my hand on a small brown spikey creature. Picked up what I thought was a thorn of some kind. Thought nothing of it at the time.

The next day while eating lunch one of my colleagues noticed a red mark in my arm which looked like a pressure mark from leaning on the table. A couple of hours later this mark had not gone and was in fact creeping up my arm and could clearly be seen to eminate from the 'thorn' I picked up diving the previous day.

Heigh-ho off to the quack, very pretty lady incidentlt, where I had an anti-toxin in the arse and a course of antibiotics for the infection. tried to go diving a couple more times but the weather and waves were not right and visibility would be zero so did not get to repeat the experience or get back there and kill one of the little things that poisoned me.

Algeirs cont...

Algeria is a police state.

There are cops and gendarmes everywhere. Tight security at the hotel and work site. Cops at every street corner and at all junctions on the motorways. Looked a real raggety outfit so not sure how effective they would be in a firefight with terrorists, but I suppose they are there for show mainly.

The hotel we stayed in was a Sheraton and probably the worst sheraton in the world. the service was pretty appaling and for the most part I had to have luke warm showers. Only once in the entire 33 day stay did I get a really hot shower, sometimes it was cold. Complained often to no avail.

Most of the people that worked in the restaurants and bars were very helpful and sometimes too attentive, while some were downright rude. Had one barman refuse to serve me unless I spoke french to him, very wierd.

Worked six days a week so did not have too spend too much time at the hotel. Took to drinking wine on the beach or by the pool on our day off.

Beach at the sheraton Algeirs.

The last month or so.

Sorry it has been so long since my last post but access to the website was blocked by the company I have just been working for in Algeria. Coupled with an extortionate internet access rate at the hotel I have had to wait until I arrived back home.

Rather than one big entry I will jot things down roughly as they happened over the last month or so.

Getting the visa for Algeria was fraught with problems, sent the forms off to a visa processing firm by royal mail with a guarenteed next day delivery on what turned out to be a day of strike action. Long story short, after 4 phone calls from me and some from the agency I was finally told that postman Pat would not redeliver the letter and I had to get somebody to pick it up from the sorting office. These delays caused me to be over a week late on the project in Algeria.

Eventually arrived in Algeirs to work on a disaster recovery project that was already 2 weeks old. Again the team was a pretty odd collection of people, there was the part Indian very British ex-government employee PM to the converted muslim Canadian. The guys I spent most time with was a Californian and a Brit from Aldershot.

Drinking buddies from Algeria. Victor and Todd.

Back to Cornwall

Home again. The job in Kuwait ended rather suddenly at the end of July so arrived home during the week and had a few pints to celebrate. Actually a bit more than a few.

Things around here don't change much, the lass that runs the Mounts is still a misery with no people skills. The county is full of emmets Wednesday was a terrible day to get home as it was Culdrose Airday, when the local navy base is open to the public. It is located on the only road from Helston to the Lizard and took me 45 minutes to do the mile past the camp.

Have been busy cutting the grass in the garden as it was left to grow while I was away, looks bloody awful now and will grow again when I go off again next week.

Leaving Kuwait early has enabled me to drop into another project immediatly, I am off to Algeria as soon a a visa is obtained.

Went around the local estate agents Friday to see if any one else can sell the house as the ones I am with at present have done nothing. I now realise why selling a house is such a traumatic experience, you have to deal with arsehole estate agents. I thaugnt lawyers were full of double speak but these clowns are in a league of their own. I had one idiot try to convince me that their sliding scale of prices that depended on the value of the property was not in effect a percentage based fee structure. He was also explaining how it was harder and therefore more expensive to sell a more expensive property. Still did not explain what extra work they had to do to justify the extra fee. Greedy bastards the lot of them. I cannot see why they just dont say it will cost x pounds to sell your house regardless of the value of that house. Rant over.

Highlight of my week..........

...was getting a haircut.

That just about sums up the excitment there is to be found in Kuwait.

Mind you it is only the third haircut that I have had overseas, and what a haircut it was. Not only did the young Indian lad spend over half an hour snipping away and then finishing off with a cut-throat razor. He then proceeded with a 5 minute scalp massage. I wondered what the hell he was doing when he started to beat me around the head. Was all ready to cuff him one but soon realised what was going on and tried to relax. After that he got out a hand massager and spent the next 5 mins doing my back as I leant forward in the chair. Very odd haircut. All for 2KD. I then bought a pair of Levi's for 4KD, not sure if that make it an expensive haircut or a cheap pair of jeans.