Tuscaloosa Balloon Race
Exciting exciting exciting... I got to go up in a hot air balloon, but not just any hot air balloon the Energizer Bunny Hot Hare Balloon. The Pilot's name was Glo Kehoe and her Crew Cheif was Kimberly Whiteman, they are the only all female corporate special shapes balloon team in the country. And it's just the 2 of them touring the country with this huge balloon! It takes about 20 people to get the balloon off the ground, all of which are volunters. Here's some stats about the balloon: Total Height - 166 feet, that's 15 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, the ears alone are 60 feet tall (thats the average size of a hot air balloon), His Sunglasses are 32 feet wide, the drum has a diameter of 45 feet, the sandals are 60 feet long, 12 feet wide and 4 feet deep. The volume of the balloon is 180,000 cubic feet or the equivalent of 550 million AA batteries.
The day started early, around 6am I arrived at the airport and met Glo and Kimberly.
they had a pilot and crew meeting after which the work began, we had to unroll the balloon, and seal all the vents, there are 93 on this balloon, hook the basket up and start filling with air from a fan. All which took around an hour and a half, then the fun begins heating the air inside the balloon which did not take too long and we were up and gone. Kacie was not happy at this point she didn't want her daddy going with the fire!! And everyone said I was looking a little green. The ride lasted about 45 minutes, we crossed over the river and almost directly over the Hunt Oil facility here in town. We stayed just below 1000 feet or so. The ride was extremely smooth and quiet (unless the burners were on then it was loud and hot on the noggin(if you have the chance to ride wear a hat of somesort, I was told too but forgot)). As we got close to the landing area, Glo looked over to me and said "I'm going to brush up against some of these trees to slow us down". And I said to myself WHAT!! BRUSH UP AGAINST TREES!! NO WAY!!. Luckily we didn't have to do that. We dropped a line to some of the other ballooners that had already landed, and down we went smooth as silk. Then there was more work, we had to put the balloon back in the trailer, and get back to the airport which took about another hour and half.
Now the reason I got to go on this ride was for the Tuscaloosa News, they were not going to send a photographer on a ride, so I volunteered to go and they made it happen. So I had 4 photos published in the Sunday edition of the Tuscaloosa News, 2 on the FRONT page and 2 more on page 8.
We went back for the afternoon launch and I got take a few more photos of the other balloons, the weather and lighting was a little better.