Adirondack Balloon Festival

I saw one of those I Love NY get of out town ads on the subway once and it was for the Adirondack Balloon Festival in Glens Falls in upstate New York.  I remembered this and suggested to my parents that we all meet in Glens Falls for this festival and they were actually excited about it so we jumped on it!

the corner of 3rd ave and 9th street in brooklyn, next to the Enterprise car rental place.  I would later make it back here AT closing time after a stressful drive getting it back in time.

it's held at the Floyd Bennett Airport

I got a sweet time lapse of the balloons launching, check it out below

Adirondack Balloon Festival 2014 Timelapse from Jason Raish on Vimeo.

The force was not with him the whole weekend.  Darth Vader did not fly.

so heavy!

the balloons fly at sunrise and sunset and fly and land wherever the wind takes them.  There are balloon chaser vans that go pick people and crew and balloons up when they land.

the weather on saturday was not good.  It was too windy for the balloons to fly.  at ground level it might seem fine but the higher up you go the stronger the winds get.  Is Kanye or Gaga gonna jump out of this X?  Also the line to get into the festival was pretty long but not so bad that I wouldn't do it again.

They still blew up the balloons for all to see though

What is this thing?  a mosquito?

Horton getting fired up

holding a balloon basket down.

Jason I am your father?

Hot air balloons are the oldest form of human carrying flight thingys.  In 1783 in Paris, France of all places the first untethered flight happened and French people were super stoked.  The balloons are made of nylon and the part at the bottom that might be hit by flames are made of fireproof material.  hey start inflating itwith a gas powered fan and then they hit it with propane flame

the mood of the morning

close up of a gondola (wicker basket)

awesome basketball player kid at an antiques place in town

isn't this supposed to be illegal now?  granted inside are candy balls and not cigarettes but they are still packaging it like smokes.  isn't that like marketing one vice for another vice?  like selling kids liquid candy in a beer bottle?

when the wind is too strong what do you logically do next?  go fly an f#@$#@#ing kite!

this is taking place at a small local airport remember.

little Jason couldn't resist anymore and bought a Red Baron kite, the coolest kite in the sky and also not for beginners and little Jason most certainly was a beginner.  

but with his sheer the Red Barron took to the skies.

in no time lil' Jason was a kite flying wizard, like a graceful symphony conductor dictating the very nature of the winds above Floyd Bennett Airport.

It got up there!  all 50 feet of string was let out.  It actually isn't a kite you can just stand there and like eat a half a chicken and stuff, you have to attend to it

the balloons didn't fly at sunset either because of the wind so they did this "candlelight" flame show thing.  We did not want to wake up at 5am for what they were saying was a low chance of balloons flying on sunday morning so we slept in a little and low and behold they flew that morning!  At least we saw the sunset balloon launch on friday.  We met many balloon crew people over the weekend and someone told us that they have been coming for many years and the balloons only end up flying a third of the time.

We packed a lot into this trip.  We stopped by Niskayuna to see Mel and Gerald and new baby and then on to the Dia Beacon, a museum an hour north of the city.  It used to be a nabisco box factory.  It's supposed to be super cool and everyone is always talking about it but now that we've finally been we found it to be very inaccessible to the common person, or even someone kind of into art.  See for yourself here.  If you love installations and abstract sculpture and a staff comprised entirely of hipsters and visitors entirely comprised of hipsters then this is the museum for you.  This is work by John Chamberlain.

This was interesting, Sol LeWitt drew millions of tiny lines in various colors and it achieves the effect of various tints, but it was meticulously planned out with math.