Balloon blast off!

I seem to be posting only something related to photos these days :-\. Arey, what to do? As usual, I have so many "non-photo" things to write about, but somehow putting up the ones with photos seems easier, even though its actually more work (have to select and upload photos and edit them to fit into the format I want). One reason for this might be that I don't have to think about the post as such, just remember what happened ;-).

Oh well, time for our annual Bluegrass balloon festival trip :-D. For the not-so-regular-readers, the balloon festival happens the last weekend of September every year and it consists of races in the morning and glows in the evening. The previous 2 years we have been able to go to the glows only, mainly because its so inconvenient. Louisville is just an hour drive away, but the early morning races begin at 7 AM and to be there at 7, we atleast have to be ready by 5:30 AM :-p. In 2007 I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy and last year had a small baby. This year I wanted to see the race (my dream was to see a sky full of hot-air balloons :-p), so we thought of staying the night in Louisville, seeing the race and then driving back. But well, plans seldom have a way of going right :-p.

It rained cats and dogs all week. So till the last moment we hadn't even decided whether to go, leave alone staying for the night. The festival happens in an open field, so one of the main concerns was obviously the rain. Other meagre ones included the cancelling of the festival itself and the muddiness of the field (its one thing to let your child play in the backyard where even if she gets wet, we have a set of dry clothes ready and a whole thing altogether when you are out :-p). Finally we decided to go come rain or shine on Friday evening. There were a few drizzles predicted, but we thought we could manage.

So off we went. The evening was fine with a few rain drops, but the 3 (!!!) umbrellas we "back-packed" with us literally went to a waste :). The first sight that greeted us was a tethered balloon ride. They started this newly this year hoping to mint more money :-p.




$15 wasn't too bad for a 5 min ride, but babies weren't allowed much to my dismay :(. And somehow I didn't feel like going alone :(.

Anyways the evening went on without any sign of the rain and we were able to enjoy the glow :).




Except for one thing. Snugli was petrified of the balloons! I think I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts - these days we see fear instincts slowly creeping into her. But I was still surprised. She loves balloons, I guess she just didn't understand a gigantic balloon making loud whooshing sounds :-\. She clung to me and even refused to let Sri go anywhere (not even to throw the trash!). For a moment there, I had no idea what to do. I was getting frustrated more and more minute by minute. We tried clapping whenever there was a glow, making fun of the whooshing sound, jumping up and down (basically acting like a clown) and nothing seemed to be working.







Apparently, something did work :). After some time, she started enjoying the countdown to the glow and clapped when the balloons lit up :)).




We were upset about only one point, the parking this time was a bit far away from the balloons and walking for long without any shelter in the muddy road when there was a chance of rain was not really wonderful, to say the least. After enjoying a few glows, we decided to head back. As I said, we had decided to stay the night and so we did.

Next morning woke up early and headed back to the field. It was cloudy but not raining, so I was hopeful that we'd be able to see the race. We waited for a long time for the launch as they kept postponing it. Snugli was totally awake and started checking out the inflatables. Since they were wet, we couldn't really let her play on them, but she had a good time nevertheless..




While we waited we also got to see the Meijer cake balloon getting blown up (later even fly) and several other balloons.






But I was in for a major disappointment as far as the race was concerned. The race was cancelled as the conditions were not really proper for balloon safety. I understood the dangers, but felt sorta bad. I felt as if we stayed over for nothing :((.

Well, on the bright side, there's always next year..

BTW we are heading on another of our trips this weekend, so you have a travelogue and many more photos to look forward to :-D.