Livin' In Levin

Well, it kinda felt like it anyways. After a brief rest in Wellington, it was back up the coast to Levin for the next four days to get into the nitty-gritty of organising our "own" Fiesta. This event was always aimed to be organised from the balloonists perspective, sponsors were being taken care of by a single balloon (Denis') to avoid putting pressure on pilots to have to fly other people apart from those they wanted to take. Balloonists were paid an amount relative to their participation (some could not make the whole event) and could then arrange their own feul and accomodation and food - so they could go luxury and burn it up, or go budget and come out with something at the end. having said that, we suddenly started to have a new-found respect for the professionals who organise the other events - even though they may not always know much about ballooning, the peripheral stuff takes up so much time and effort it is astounding.

In some ways we felt a little removed from it until the Tuesday night, when we had a meeting of volunteers and interested parties from the community, and suddenly it became very real. Here were a group of people working really hard to bring something special to what some have referred to as a dieing community. We even had our very own protester, who had written letters to the Council and CAA (Civil Aviation Authority - New Zealands regulating body) before before the event had even begun. this gentleman had set himself up as the spokesperson for the people of Levin, questioning the validity and safety of the event. Until now he had been the nagging voice of reason that you could almost believe, but after the meeting it became obvious that he was speaking for no one but himself.

We were also generating some media interest - although like much media interest these days it wasn't particularly well informed. If you check out the link you'll see that they have set an expectation by posting a picture of the two big lovely Buzzy Bee balloons - there was never any way we were going to afford to bring those two to the event. We had the local special shapes and that was going to be about it. To generate the interest in the town we took up local DJ Dave Key from More FM Horowhenua for a flight on the Wednesday morning. With a live radio link and a flight right over the town the effect was astounding and there seemed to be an almost electric atmosphere develop in the town. Could we come up to expectations?