Eager to Get Airborne Again

Saturday 10 May - morning report

Saturday dawned bright and clear - but not until after we’d had our morning briefing in the dark and set up the balloons for a sunrise flight…

Mario & I were chase crew for Dutch 🇳🇱 Oven with a Tomkinson family crew on board, while Josh took Annabel & Georgia up in the Waikato balloon and Louis chased them. It was almost a repeat of Wednesday’s launch as eleven of them gradually ascended and drifted off southeastward, in the general direction of the Waikiriri or Selwyn River. Setting up on a cold morning , the top job is always holding the balloon envelope open - the first bit of blowing the cold air in may be chilly, but when the flames are blasted in to heat that air it is an absolute joy!

We retrieved Dutch 🇳🇱 Oven from a field beyond a field and only just made it back in time for breakfast. There was an elusive search for the farmer to get permission to enter the fields, and a bizarre triumvirate of gates to navigate, but once in the crew had already deflated and we just had to roll and pack the envelope and sort the basket & burners.

Josh, meanwhile had landed near a duck shooting pond and arrived back at the Hall with two brace of freshly killed honk/wah ducks aka Paradise Shelducks or pūtakitaki/pūtangitangi. They are a funny NZ native duck that lives in pairs (the female is chestnut with a white head and the male is mainly charcoal) and one goes honk and the other goes wahhh! A plan was soon hatched to add them to the meat won at the raffle the night before and cook them over a balloon burner later!

We retired home to Banjo with extra full bellies as the community had excelled themselves, providing fresh baked salmon for breakfast - AND the best ginger crunch for breakfast pudding!

The briefest of siestas followed before we were back in action for the main event - the Hororata Glow! So many pics for one day - I’ll put the Glow report in a separate post…