Last Flight In Levin

Starting to recover from my flu and after all the running around on the ground, I must admit I had a serious urge to be in the air this morning. And Denis duly obliged by bundling me into the basket with a few others who had volunteered their time to the event. One such person was Daniel, who had done a marvellous job organising the volunteers into teams and setting them loose on the balloonists. He initially seemed keen to give his ride to others, but we finally got him into the basket. As we took off he was very quiet, and it wasn't until I turned to him after about 15 minutes in the air that he actually spoke and relaxed a bit. It was a strange wee flight. It was a lovely morning with a beautiful view up and down the coast and back to the ranges (I'm trying to track down photos), but there was very little wind, and what of it there was, was very close to the ground. It was an odd sensation of ascending into stillness, just sitting in the air going nowhere. The higher we went, the less we moved - in fact at one stage over the main highway we started drifting backwards. After the discussions pre-event with CAA, there did seem a certain irony in the safest flying being at the lowest altitude.

Welly Over Levin (Photos by Marie) Originally uploaded by madballoonz.

So the flight became a park-hop through Levin as we angled to reach the target line at the furthest park, swapping passengers and working the balloon around the parks on the ground to get the best angle. We figured as the organisers that if we couldn't win by fair means we would basically cheat. With the conditions so still we were eventually able to lead the balloon towards the line from the ground, until we were ransacked by one of the other crews who took exception to our nefarious methods. So we landed pretty close to the line and took kids young and old for tether flights to finish off what was a very special event. While it was great to be heading back to Hamilton and to sleeping in my own bed, as I cruised back up the North Island, I felt that I was leaving a little something behind in Levin - the possibility that a balloon event could be about fun for the participants and spectators, without a heavy corporate mentality breathing down their neck looking for a return.