Saturday Night

Nightglows are a funny business for balloonists really. While it is a great thing for the crowd to watch, from a pilot and crew point of view they are a little, well, tedious basically. We get there mid-afternoon and have to be basically locked into the place while all the traffic arrives. We wait around, then semi-inflate while it's still daylight, then get it all up just after dark, burn for about 45 minutes then pull down and pack up in the dark, normally while the firework show is on. Ohh and ahh and it's all over. At least these days we get a decent nosh at the end (crew used to be locked out of the end-of-glow gatherings).

This year the glow worked fairly well, with just a few radio glitches and a dodgy character named Guido. Heaps of burning done, so subsequently lots of venting. I took over the burner from Denis after the condensation on the cow burner (the soft flame used for the best "glow" effect)caused the metal around the fitting to freeze, making it very uncomfortable to use. I had gloves on, so I took over. And we had fun co-ordinating the burns and all that stuff. Even with the gloves on, I had a dead little finger by the end of the glow because it had basically snap frozen.

I had a scan over the interweb for Nightglow images, and particularly of yours truly doing his thing on the burners. About the closest I came was this set of images, which despite being positioned very close to us, couldn't seem to get a decent exposure where you could see any detail of what was going on. We may be revelling in the digital age, but there are some very ordinary images out there folks. Back in my film days I'd have been there with a tripod and a B exposure to make sure I got a good shot...