Wairarapa Festival Day One

There is something about the Wairarapa Festival that does not quite gel with me. Don't get me wrong, it's a great ballooning event - this is just a purely personal battle I seem to be having. When I have ventured down there from Hamilton in the past, it was often the weather that thwarted things (and I guess that wasn't just for me either). This year was almost entirely my own doing. Having "set" the alarm for some horrendous hour of the Friday morning, my intention was to gently ferry myself over the Rimutakas in time to help Denis and team set up for the Mass Ascension. That was the plan. The execution went something like: the alarm does not go off because it was not in fact "set". My partner Sonja rolls over and says something like "It's getting late dude" (Translation: it's still early, but too late to be getting up to drive 80-odd K's over some not-so-great road). Frantic phone call to Denis, frantic pack and then a semi-frantic drive over the hill (no point in killing meself right?), with a mercifully light traffic load see me reach the Clareville Showgrounds outside Carterton just in time to see the first balloon going up. Arriving at the grounds I am greeted by the sight of Denis' son Jonty hanging on to the crown line - I won't do him an injustice by saying nervously, but he did mention that it had been a year or so since he had done it last. Maybe tentatively is more the term - if you can be tentatively dragged along by a rope by something that can sometimes perform like a deranged collie as it inflates. It was quite nice to see someone else perform the deed actually.

So as they headed slowly for the off I had the opportunity to do a little camera work before heading off on the chase. The intention this year was to post updates on the fly, so I shot some footage on a horrendously low quality setting that could be MMS'ed to the blog. Despite various attempts it did not seem to want to work, so here is the video in all its blocky glory transferred from my home machine.

So there it was - a gentle waft away by everyone to the first target (except for Howard Watson, who flew up behind everyone and stayed just hovering above the launchsite where he eventually landed again - weird). After a quick review of my footage at the launchsite, I saw the error of my ways and upped the video setting for the 1st target drop. Because he was one of the last away, Denis was able to get a pretty good bead on the target, but after coming reasonably close they decided not to throw their marker as they were not in the same paddock. So here are some slightly less blocky pictures of the target approach...



Then it was a fly on towards the second target, but flying on the opposite side of the road to where it was located led Denis to pop it down in a paddock beside a farmhouse and a quick pack-up later and that was us for the day. Almost routine really.

But here's the rub - the Clareville Showgrounds just out Carterton have always been the traditional site for the Mass Ascension for this event. This is a kilometre or two from Carterton, with a population of just over 4000 people, so people can lug themselves out of bed from there without too much effort to get to the venue. However, the main town in the Wairarapa is Masterton to the northeast, with a population of just over 22,000. Anyone attending the Mass Ascension has to haul themselves 12 k's just to get to the event - and it shows by the number of people who turn up. And the flying itself in the years that I have been there have tended to occur out to the east, turning to the south, often missing even the town of Carterton and over open (and empty) farmland. This is great for finding a nice open landing spot, but hardly draws the spectators. Admittedly I was surprised at the quite a few that ventured from the launchsite to the first target drop, but by the second target the numbers had dwindled to the keen and hardy few who had the time to drive east and south to the next dropzone in a roadside paddock. Note the Wairarapa organisers: the huge advantage of ballooning is its ability to be done pretty much anywhere there is space. Why not take it to a space where more people are going to see it simply by looking up? Why make them get in their car and drive for 15 minutes? Let them discover it for themselves when they draw the curtains, then they can spent the 15 minutes taking in our fantastic sport, either by standing at the gate, or getting in their cars and driving to the nearby dropzone where they can appreciate the pilot's amazing flying skills on display.