Albuquerque Balloon Festival
Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 05-10-2012
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This weekend is the start of the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the time of the year for Sweetie and I to take off to other places on vacation. This year, however, we got a kink in our plans and are having to stay in our crowded metropolis for the duration. No, believe me, I want you to see our festival, it is worth the trip out, but it takes us locals forever to get to where we want to go, oh, well, you know the story. Here, our motels and hotels sell out, the rental car agencies have very few cars available at this late date, restaurants are full….all good for our economy, but a good time for us to have full pantry and eat at home and watch the few stray balloons that fly over our house. Some years, with the right wind conditions, our patio becomes a very good spot for balloon watching. Now, the special shapes very seldom make it out this far, but the regular shaped are routine visitors. Anyway, we are already planning for next years absence from Albuquerque in October….We will see..
Lucky! Lucky! Lucky! Tied up in Albuquerque for the entire week of the balloon festival! We are so unlucky for not being there. We had planned to take our vacation there (or at a timeshare near) Albuquerque this year during the balloon festival, but we decided that this might not be a good year because of the drought. Maybe next year. At least, by then the Aztec end of the calender crisis will be over, a new calender will have begun, and perhaps the drought of the century will be over hopefully. We hope to see all the colorful balloons in 2013.
One additional comment! When I was in Albuquerque in the late Sixties, I always heard that there were no such thing as locals in Albuquerque. Everybody was either an Okie that got waylaid by the Indians during their trip westwad to California, a transplanted Texan who got lost and wandered into the desert, or a drunk Arizonian who had too much sun and simply didn’t know where he was. This is the story that I always heard. In order to find a local in Albuquerque, one had to go way back in time when Albuquerque was just a settlement of teepees pitched along the Rio Grande River where the natives smoked their peace pipe and prayed to the Great Spirit to protect them from the fierce Apache. I heard this story from transplanted GI’s, including civilians, on Kirtland AFB.
I think the term you are wanting to use is “native New Mexican”, or those people born here. Locals are the people who now live here in Albuquerque. My Sweetie, as you know is a native New Mexican while I have only been living here since 1955….I feel like a native now. Anyway, we normally leave during balloon festival, like visiting Branson or Eureka Springs, Northern Arizona or Colorado.