Right now there is lot of things I could say about Austria and ballooning but none of them are nice so I am going to try and explain what is happening here as politely as I can.I would love to say that the photo of Edwin to the left was from today's flight but it was actually from the practice week.
We are now at day two of the competition and have yet to make a flight. Two SMS messages from the event director, one at about 4am canceling the morning briefing and another at 9.30am canceling the afternoon briefing have given us the day off to enjoy the area, all be it under a layer of cloud and rain.
Day one of the competition was also washed out by rain. We arrived for the morning briefing at 0530 with light rain falling on the windscreen of out van. Two markers and a task sheet were waiting for us with the flight to be two hesitation waltzes. Due to the rain we were put on hold for 45 minutes but finally the flight was canceled.
After a long morning of drinking coffee and hanging out we had a group photo with all of the teams and officials, probably about 500 people in total and taken by the most bizarre photographer I have ever met. His large format camera was poised on top of a massive tripod that required a ladder and much fiddling to set up.
To his credit he kept the whole crowd in place and entertained with his balancing act on the ladder and repeated calls for the crowd to "looooook to meeeeeeee!"
The afternoon flight was also put on hold multiple times as we waited for showers to pass the area. Eventually with many balloons half set up on the field the black flag was raised as more rain arrived. Interestingly two fiesta balloons were wandering into sight further up the valley and heading in the wrong direction for the goals that had been set.
The reasons for cancelling were pretty obvious. Despite some light rain, the low cloud base and massive change in direction would have put the field of 100 balloons into a dangerous situation, looking for the right direction in cloud. Not fun at all.
To entertain ourselves we got an invite to the team USA dinner and had lots of fun chatting to them all while Al Nells chatted on about taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the competition. I have to admit I like their enthusiasm but intend on only letting them have places 2 and 3 at the end of the week.
So here we are back to this morning and more wind and rain. As I type this Andrew is Googling for a go kart track or paint ball so we can go and do something energetic before we go nuts.
