Ah the weirdness that the Google search results will sometimes throw up:
Bay City News Service
Posted: 10/24/2009 11:04:35 AM PDT
Updated: 10/24/2009 02:35:24 PM PDT
A bicyclist suffered minor injuries this morning when she rode into a line tethering a hot air balloon to the ground in Napa County, a Cal Fire spokesman said.
According to the spokesman from Cal Fire's Napa County unit, the woman encountered the tethering line stretched into the roadway as she was bicycling on Henry Road, at Dealy Lane near the Napa-Sonoma county line.
"She didn't hit the balloon, she hit the tether," the spokesman said. The woman was treated for minor injuries, he said.
Cal Fire did not have information on whether the balloon had just landed in the area. According to the spokesman, hot air balloon companies usually launch farther north and work with air currents. "They come down where they come down," he said.
The California Highway Patrol received word of the incident at about 9:30 a.m. Preliminary reports said the bicyclist injured her ankle and suffered lacerations to the neck, nose and hands, according to CHP Officer John Short.
Possible scenario: Woman riding bicycle along road. Oh, what's that? A balloon? It seems to be coming down. Fascinating. It appears to be falling down in my direction, so I won't take my eyes off it. There appear to be some people crossing the road in my peripheral vision dragging a rope, but I will continue watching this balloon very carefully and intently. Hey Lady! Look out!
Careful with those crown lines out there kids - sometimes crossing a seemingly empty road with it when you are deflating may seem like a good idea, but never underestimate the meandering abilities of the public. I don't think it was a "tether" line for a second. I do get a bit disheartened sometimes reading these things that appear to be second or even third-hand account of "incidents" that somehow pass for local news on third-rate (predominantly American) news websites. I guess there are others involved with special interest hobbies or sports that are equally despairing of the kind of coverage that they get. Ah well, hope the lady on the bike was not badly hurt.
Monday, October 26
Saturday, October 24
All Quiet on the Flying Front
It is at this time of year that it seems like the most important thing going on is finding the perfect colour sceme to re-jig your blog with. Or just re-jigging your blog for want of something better to do. Not that you don't have something better to do, it's just that when it takes your interest it becomes all-consuming. Then, when you can't quite get it right, and the other templates you download just don't seem to fit properly, it doesn't. So you just kindof rehash what you have and carry on, realising that it has been absolutely months since you have actually contributed anything tangible whatsoever to the blogosphere. So, you ask eagerly, what has been happening? Lame.
On the ballooning front, the most recent foray was on a school tour to Featherston in the Wairarapa as a promotional exercise for the Asthma Foundation. It was a most excellent winter's day a couple of months back that allowed for inflations at the two schools in the one morning. In some ways it's great to be able to show the balloon to kids, but doing two inflations of a morning is of course twice as much work as actually taking a flight, so it was a decent workout. Pilot and ZK-PUF owner Denis Hall is currently off visiting in China, checking out various things, including the ballooning situation. I'm not sure if he caught up with this situation in China, as I'm not sure how much media gets around in those parts, particularly in English. As is always the case, when there is little going on in ballooning in this hemisphere, there is always something going on in the northern one. And of course with the media being the media, you are more likely to get stories like this one, where the news is all bad, if somewhat indecipherable.
And of course the other thing that inevitably happens in October is that behemoth on the ballooning calendar the Albuquerque Fiesta, along with the inevitable mishap that is going to happen when you get that many balloons together and competing. At least they got their special shapes back in time from China, but as always seems to happen, something happened:
Now I wasn't there, so wasn't able to clap eyes on the whole sequence, and I guess tipping your passenger over the side when hitting the tent would be a hell of something to happen, but whipping that top out from that height hardy makes it look like a controlled descent and would have been one helluva ride coming down. No one dead from this has to be a good thing.
On a personal note, the lack of distraction from ballooning has at least meant I have been productive in other areas, finishing producing a series of online videos for Skylight, the organisation where my lovely partner Sonja acts as Fundraising Manager. This was my first full HD project, done with volunteers and pretty much zero budget apart from tape costs (Sony HDV gear was borrowed). The videos are a series of interviews from young people offering advice to other young people about how to get through the tough times. It was fun to work on and produce, providing me with some real gifts in areas such as music (with some great Creative Commons track from the wonderful Josh Woodward), and certainly proved more uplifting than reading about balloon accidents elsewhere in the world. Enjoy.
On the ballooning front, the most recent foray was on a school tour to Featherston in the Wairarapa as a promotional exercise for the Asthma Foundation. It was a most excellent winter's day a couple of months back that allowed for inflations at the two schools in the one morning. In some ways it's great to be able to show the balloon to kids, but doing two inflations of a morning is of course twice as much work as actually taking a flight, so it was a decent workout. Pilot and ZK-PUF owner Denis Hall is currently off visiting in China, checking out various things, including the ballooning situation. I'm not sure if he caught up with this situation in China, as I'm not sure how much media gets around in those parts, particularly in English. As is always the case, when there is little going on in ballooning in this hemisphere, there is always something going on in the northern one. And of course with the media being the media, you are more likely to get stories like this one, where the news is all bad, if somewhat indecipherable.
And of course the other thing that inevitably happens in October is that behemoth on the ballooning calendar the Albuquerque Fiesta, along with the inevitable mishap that is going to happen when you get that many balloons together and competing. At least they got their special shapes back in time from China, but as always seems to happen, something happened:
Now I wasn't there, so wasn't able to clap eyes on the whole sequence, and I guess tipping your passenger over the side when hitting the tent would be a hell of something to happen, but whipping that top out from that height hardy makes it look like a controlled descent and would have been one helluva ride coming down. No one dead from this has to be a good thing.
On a personal note, the lack of distraction from ballooning has at least meant I have been productive in other areas, finishing producing a series of online videos for Skylight, the organisation where my lovely partner Sonja acts as Fundraising Manager. This was my first full HD project, done with volunteers and pretty much zero budget apart from tape costs (Sony HDV gear was borrowed). The videos are a series of interviews from young people offering advice to other young people about how to get through the tough times. It was fun to work on and produce, providing me with some real gifts in areas such as music (with some great Creative Commons track from the wonderful Josh Woodward), and certainly proved more uplifting than reading about balloon accidents elsewhere in the world. Enjoy.
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