Balloon Fiesta; Misc. Footage of Sights and Sounds from AIBF

アアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアア Azalech T

Ok, my name is Diane Carlson, and it's D-I-A-N-E-K-A-R-L-S-S-O-N, and I am from Chandler, Texas.

Can you talk me to your piloting style? As a style, I guess I've been doing this for 22 years, and I have a very, very strong self-preservation instinct. So my style is like many pilots, I check all my equipment out, use my checklist, get myself off the ground, climb up real slowly, enjoy it, but I climb up high, because I always climb up to see what the winds of loft are doing, then I come back down, and I enjoy my flight, and I do that so that I never get caught by what might be up there. There's no surprises for me that way.

And what's kept you in it for 22 years? Fun. When I got into it, everyone, all the other women around me were taking up aerobics, and that was really boring. And so I took up, a friend of mine took me for a balloon ride, and I was a classic case of how long does this take? What kind of license do you need? How much does it cost? And I think every flight that I do, no two have ever been the same. I guess if they ever became the same, I might not keep doing it, or if it ever became that fun or boring, but it's never done that. So I just enjoy it, and it's taken me all over the world. You can't beat that. What makes each flight different? The location, the people, the winds, the scenery. You fly in Albuquerque, and you have the mountains. You can't beat the mountains, but I live in East Texas, and we have pine trees, and it's beautiful. You go out to Reno, and it's mountains, but different mountains, and you have here. It's just different conditions everywhere, makes each one different, and the crew is different in every place. So it's a different people experience each place you go.

We're going to wait for the jet. It was in there, but I think it was all right. How do you feel about being a female pilot? Being a female pilot is very, very interesting. It's got some advantages, and it's got some disadvantages. We're a very small percentage of overall balloon pilots in the world, probably less than 10%. Of commercial pilots and I'm a commercial pilot, it's probably less than 5%. It's an advantage in that if you're a big, burly guy, and you come landing somewhere where maybe somebody doesn't think you should be, as a female, they usually won't kind of get in your face and say, don't be here. You can usually talk your way out of everything. So that's a real advantage to it. It's a disadvantage in the sense that I'm shorter than most pilots, so that I had to have my equipment designed a little bit different because I'm shorter. I enjoy it because I think it serves as a good role model. I do a lot of programs for Girl Scouts in schools that teach leadership things like Camp CEO with the Girl Scouts, and it gives the opportunity to show girls go for it.

And I think that's really important. And in your mind, what could you say to encourage other women to fly? What aspect have you thoroughly learned? I think it just needs a time to go try it because ballooning, there's two analogies to go with ballooning. One is it's like sailing without the waves. So if you like to be out on the water and you like to sail, it's an awesome experience and there's no waves, so you don't get seasick. The other advantage is it's the closest you could ever come to feeling like a cloud. So if you've ever laid in your backyard in the afternoon and you've looked up and you've seen these beautiful clouds up in this guy and watch them do all these things and think, boy, that's really neat. That's the experience that I get out of ballooning and I would hope that other people would get the same experience. And from taking the thousands of people I've taken over the years, almost everyone has had that. Can you talk to me about balloon fiesta and what you're doing here?

This is my 21st year as a pilot at balloon fiesta. It is a unique place in the whole world because of the box winds that are here and the number of balloons that come to fly here. With 700, I was here the year there were a thousand but with anywhere from 700 to a thousand balloons, people from 33 different countries, you get to experience every aspect of ballooning. When you fly in just one area of the country, everybody kind of flies similar. We're like lemmings, we follow each other. But when you come out here and people have learned all over the world and they have different equipment, totally different flying styles, I don't think there's been a single year that I've come out here that I haven't learned something new. And it's just fantastic and met great people. Can you describe something you learned this year? This year, I learned to trust my instincts this year. This year was unfortunately there were accidents out here based on wind conditions. There's always a temptation, the peer pressure temptation to fly because everybody else is thinking about doing it and you sit and listen to people who say, you're a coward, you're not going. But I learned to reinforce that instinct that I have to say something doesn't quite feel right.

So I think I'm going to stay down because there's always another day to fly. There's an old saying of ballooning better to be in the air. And on the ground saying, I wish I wasn't in the air saying, oh my god. And so I think that's probably something that I relearned again this year. Good time to learn it. Can you set up the weather that's happening here for us today? What are we seeing here? Wind. We're not seeing wind, but we certainly are. Oh, god. Sorry about that. We're going to have to redo that one. Talk to her. Find out how he is. Go back to where we were. What were we doing? The conditions we have here right now, we have wind. There is a front pushing in from the west right now about 30 miles from here. There's a severe storm warning. We don't fly in storms. We don't fly in usually winds over 10 miles an hour. And the reason for that is if you think about it, you're in this laundry hamper. It's the equivalent of a laundry hamper. It's wicker, it's cute. It's got nice leather.

It costs more than a laundry hamper, but you're in a laundry hamper in a big pillowcase with propane. The taking off part when it's more than 10 miles an hour is okay. But you're in this laundry hamper over the grass, moving a lot more than 10 miles an hour. I don't think there's a pilot out here who doesn't know how to land in it successfully. But I don't think there's a pilot out here who's going to say, that's fun. Let's go do it again. The most important thing you learn in ballooning is when not to fly. And I know it disappoints a lot of people when we don't fly. But it disappoints a lot more people if somebody gets hurt. So it's really, really critical. The most important thing you learn in ballooning is when not to. And so it's really, really critical to find the days that it works. And when it works in Albuquerque, it doesn't work anywhere else in the world. It's just fantastic. And there's always tailgating what you can do if you don't fly. Can you talk to me about that?

We're sitting on one right now. There's a tailgating is great. I have a big party out here every year. And I have for, I don't know how many years we have a Margaritaville party. We can drink alcoholic or non-alcoholic. It's a networking opportunity. It's a camaraderie thing. It's a huggy kissy. We haven't seen you in a year since we were here last year. At Fiesta, our party this year, we had a new feature. Everybody tries to outdo each other. So our new feature this year was an inflatable swimming pool full of ice. And that we filled with cases of beer and everyone did bobbing for beer. I don't know how we're going to top that. It was really good especially when somebody fell in. But it's really the social aspect of people from the 33 countries. We had pilots at our party from Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Texas. Because we're a whole other country all of ourself. And other people from all over it, which is great. And how do you feel about Piazza and Albuquerque compared to other rallies? This is my favorite event. It's the only one I've gone to 21 years straight.

They're not in the same class. I mean, there's other great events. That's great. And if you can practice it by saying Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, that way we have it. Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Registered trademark. I'll repeat that for you. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is in a class all itself. There are other fantastic balloon events out there. There are no other events in the United States. And I don't even believe the ones in Europe have as many balloons, certainly not the diversity, that have from so many countries. And from every state, it's in the flying conditions. You cannot beat the flying conditions in Albuquerque. There are other events that I go to every year. If I had to pick one to miss, this certainly would not be the one. I don't know where else I'd be in October if I wasn't at Balloon Fiesta. Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Thank you. Did you compete at all? I do. I don't take it die-hard serious. And I've done well here several years this year. I did a fourth place on the day we flew a competitive flight. Never get that medal. I don't know. I'm always like one part of the place out of the medal.

I enjoy competition. I'm not a die-hard serious competitor. It's fun. I've won first place in several events. And frankly, if I have a choice between landing in the soccer field with 100 children in it, and going to an X, I'm going to where the kids are. Because we are not an inconspicuous sport. We're big. You can't miss us. And every kid who gets to touch a balloon, the baggy snack I'm going to remember the X, but every kid who touches my balloon will remember that they got to do that. It's the mom instinct in me. That's the woman pilot thing that you asked before. That's really more fun. To me, it's more fun. And does the envelope color and the variety with it play to you? Does that keep you engaged in the sport? The color and the shapes.

I love the shapes. I absolutely love the shapes. They're beautiful. They're fun. They're too much work. I fly around balloon. I have flown a lot of shapes. There are a lot of work. You really need a lot more people. For example, I've got a balloon that's 105,000 cubic feet, and it's a regular round balloon. And I do it with me or two or three people. If you go out with the Energizer Bunny, you need 22 people. It's like coordinating an uncoordinated football team or so. It's just, and it weighs 1,200 pounds, and it takes an hour, and it slows up the tailgating because it takes so long. But it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful balloon. The shapes that have been out here this year, they're all just a lot of work, but they sure are pretty. What do you love about the special shapes? Aside from the work, what's really cute? They have personality. If you look out here this year, we had Wally the Clown Fish, and we had the Lady Bug, and we had, again, the Energizer Bunny, who's always really popular. We had stuff. I flew in the very first shapes rodeo, and to be in the sky with only stuff was really just fantastic. You know, to see paint cans and witches and clowns, and the round balloons are beautiful, but the stuff in the sky is just so neat.

Yes, you get that kind of, you feel like a little kid again, and it's fun. How often do you get that feeling with ballooning? At Fiesta, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta every year, I get that feeling that it's just really special. That in Dawn Patrol, there's one other event in the country that has a Dawn Patrol, the Reno Balloon Race. It has a Dawn Patrol that they choreographed classical music. That's another event that I don't miss, because it does something you don't see anywhere else. At Albuquerque, you see the sky full of stuff. There is no place else that has 70 special shapes. The number of people that are here are just overwhelming, but it's just beautiful. I've never lost the fun of it. I feel the same with every flight I take now as I did the first time I went up 20 years ago.

Can you tell me about your favorite special shape this year at Fiesta? The favorite special shape this year at Fiesta is the little Brazilian airplane. Happy airplane, they call it. I think he's just, he's got personality. He's just cute, and to see the little airplane in the middle of all the balloons, I just really enjoyed a lot. Yes, I have floated Dawn Patrol. It's pretty, it's scary. It's a very different feeling, because when you take off in Dawn Patrol, and I have not flown in the one in Albuquerque, I have flown in other places. When you take off, one of the things you do is when you take off the very first thing you do is look for a place if you have to abort the flight. So you take off and say, okay, if I had a problem, I would go here or here or here. It's really tough when it's dark. So you have to really know before you take off where you're going.

You have to know if there's big towers or power lines or the things you normally would see visually, you cannot see when you take off in the dark. Once you get up, and I can't imagine an Albuquerque, fantastic, it is because the lights of Albuquerque are beautiful. So once you get up and you have everyone's street lights and house lights, and it's really nice, and it's so quiet, because there's not a whole lot of people out there at, you know, six o'clock in the morning. So it's quiet, and it's pretty. When you fly over people's houses, what's the land in the community? How does that work with the community of blue people? Flying over neighborhoods is interesting. You have to follow the federal aviation regulations about how high you fly in different areas, different events, there's different waivers that will give you altitude restrictions. But when you're coming in to approach for landing, you can fly a lot lower. I have landed in people's backyards, I have landed in their front yards.

I have flown over their swimming pools when they are in various states of swimming attire. Most people, I would say 99.95% are so excited to have you there, and whole neighborhoods of kids come out, and people come out, and you pass out cards, and they help pack up the balloon, and it's really fun. Every once in a while, you will come across someone who is very angry. Either you may have scared their dog, or you scared them for some reason, or they believed you were going to hurt their house, or they thought you were crashing. And so you've scared them somehow. Normally, if you sit and you talk to them and you explain the logistics of a balloon, and what it was doing normally, they're just fine with it. There are some people who just don't like balloons, but those people probably don't like much of anything. And so you do your best to calm them down, and if you need to call the police, or you do what it takes to do it, but those people are very, very, very few with far between. So normally, it's a good experience.

What's your favorite memory of balloon fiesta over the years? Choose one experience that sums it up to you. My favorite memory of balloon fiesta, oh my god, there's so many. I guess I'd have to say my flight two days ago, because that's the most recent memory of balloon fiesta. We took off in the North Gravel Pit, fortunately the Sandia people are wonderful enough to let us launch from that gravel pit. We took off from there. We boxed the field several times. We forward scored on the target. We flew all around for an hour and a half and landed 10 feet away from where we took off. That's the elbow curky experiences, just that fantastic flight. And it's saved with the price of gas. It saves on fuel in the chase vehicle. So it was great. How important is your zebra to you? Critical. The zebra is a critical, critical, critical person at fiesta. We are out here in a sea of balloons. There are balloons above you, on the sides of you, all around you. If people just took off when they wanted to, it would be bumper pool in the sky.

It would not be a happy life experience. There's a saying, you know, with the FAA, if they're not happy too, you're not happy. If we didn't have zebra, the FAA would be really happy people. Because those are the people that guide us out there. They are the people who say you're clear above. They are the ones watching out for your safety and safety. At fiesta, safety has to be the most critical thing. There's just too many of us out here, too many kids out here, too much public out here. We have to be safe. We have to be safe to the launch directors are critical because there are children out here. There are vehicles out here. We have to be safe to the launch directors are critical because there are children out here. There are vehicles out here. There are so many spectators out here on the ground. They're watching for you to be safe. They're making sure you don't take off and hit someone's truck or they're wagon or any of that. They watch out above us because the balloon is big. There's no window in the top so you cannot see who is above you. The launch director is watching out for our safety, the safety of all the other balloons around us. They couldn't have balloon fiesta without good launch directors.

Have you ever been a passenger during a mass ascension? Have I ever been a passenger in a mass ascension? I'm wondering if you had a chance to really look around and take in all the balloons or what that's like. I don't know if I ever have been a passenger in a mass ascension. I do know that most of the time when I fly at fiesta, I take another pilot with me because it's like being on I-25 and 40 at rush hour and you need an extra set of eyes to say someone's coming up, someone's coming around. When I've let other people fly my balloon a little when the other pilots when I've been in it so yeah I guess I've been a co-pilot so to speak. So yeah I get to look around and you can't help it. What does it look like? Can you describe that to me? It looks like a pinball machine. It's bright colors and there's things up and down and around and lots of noises and the crowd cheering because everybody thinks we can't hear them once we take off.

We hear everything once we take off and it's just, it's just a pretty, it's just pretty. There's nothing like it out here. Go up that again and we're, when we're up in the air, over the field. Yeah, we can. Okay. Okay. All right. So when you're up in the air, what does it look like? We're up in the air, over the field. It looks like a pinball machine, except it's got special shapes in it too. I forgot that part. But the balloons are up and down and around and you see the tops of balloons. It's just an overwhelming sea of color. It's just beautiful. No, in fact you're, I mean you were, you're dumb. Okay, room time, quiet please. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to stick the mic in front of the lens just to show him he's got audio.

Okay, hold on. Yeah, go ahead anytime. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. All right. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.