Shelflife

BALLOON FIESTA THROUGH THE YEARS

ABQ has long been a “bucket list” travel destination—thanks in large part to the colorful Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta®. The largest ballooning event in the world has brought hundreds of thousands of people to our city over the years for the annual October spectacle.

This month, Fiesta marks its 50th anniversary, and to commemorate the occasion, organizers have produced a massive coffee table book filled with incredible images of the event.

The co-authors all have connections to local ballooning: Paul Rhetts, the book’s designer, is a long-time member of a balloon launch crew. Kim Vesely, Tom McConnell and Dick Brown are all licensed pilots, members of the Balloon Fiesta Hall of Fame, recipients of AAAA’s Sid Cutter Award, and longtime contributors to the official Balloon Fiesta Program. Kim is the editor the Official Program. Tom, former President of Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta® (AIBF) and Albuquerque Aerostat Ascension Association (AAAA), is a senior member of AIBF’s Board of Directors and founder of the Heritage Committee. Dick is former editor of the Balloon Federation of America’s Ballooning Journal and recipient of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale’s 1979 Montgolfier Diplome.

The authors were tasked with selecting photos for the historical picture book, and were gracious enough to share a few of those images with Albuquerque The Magazine for publication. Enjoy! —CB

ATM: What brought you four authors together to create this coffee table book on Balloon Fiesta®? DB: This is a pictorial journey, filled with the very best pictures we could find showing all aspects of the event, guiding the reader through a day at the Balloon Fiesta. The authors of the book are experienced balloonists with many years of involvement in the Fiesta and the Albuquerque ballooning community. All four of us have been working together for over a dozen years as members of AIBF’s Heritage Committee. We worked together back in 2011 on the award-winning book celebrating the 40th Balloon Fiesta, The World Comes To Albuquerque — The Dream Takes Flight, and have been working on this 50th celebration book for over six years. Our hope as a group was to help convey the magic and majesty of ballooning — people enjoying a fantastic family sport — as well as the beauty and color, along with the serenity of balloon flight. We especially wanted to show that the original dream of Fiesta’s founder, Sid Cutter, is alive and well! ATM: What were you trying to do or show in this book?

TM: The title, 50 Years of Balloon Magic, pretty much says it. Our hope is to convey, through pictures and a few words, the beauty, color, and magic of the Balloon Fiesta and provide a sense of what it is like to participate in the world’s premier ballooning event. For those who have visited Balloon Fiesta and especially those who come back year after year, we hope the book will bring back memories of great times in Albuquerque and provide a way for them to share the magic of Balloon Fiesta with their friends who have not been to the event. We also hope the book will inspire those who have yet to make the journey to Albuquerque so they can discover the magic for themselves.

50 YEARS OF BALLOON MAGIC

By Dick Brown, Tom McConnell, Paul Rhetts, Kim Vesely Rio Grande Books 312 color photographs; 222 pages $49.95

ATM: How long did it take you to complete the book? PR: Fiesta has hired professional photographers for many years to document the event and we made our way through this huge archive of photographs, starting work on this project in 2017. The hardest and most time-consuming part of the process was winnowing down all the great photographs we had to choose that appear in the book. We literally started with more than 100,000 photos, selecting visuals of the major activities of Balloon Fiesta. Selection was based on showing all aspects of the Fiesta by organizing the book along the lines of a long day at Fiesta Park — from Dawn Patrol to Balloon Glow and Fireworks. This process took months as we tried to present the best and most exciting photographs of Fiesta since its humble beginnings with just 13 balloons in 1972. ATM: What is it that makes Balloon Fiesta so special? KV: We’ve spent literally years – in my case, most of my lifetime – trying to explain just what it is about balloons and the Balloon Fiesta that enthralls young and old alike. It is an incredibly immersive experience. Being in the middle of the launch field is being in a cave, surrounded by every color in the rainbow in every direction and even overhead. Through the noise of their burners, the balloons almost seem to be conversing with each other; some balloonists say it’s like dragons talking. You can actually feel the heat coming off the burners. All around are smiling, happy, excited people, young and old, of every race and ethnicity, from all over the world. It’s sensory overload in the best possible way. And this doesn’t even get into what it is like to fly off the field — to slowly ascend and watch this panorama of balloons above, below, and all around you. It’s magical. The other thing that makes Balloon Fiesta so special is the people you meet, from all over the world, that you otherwise would probably never get to know. The Balloon Fiesta is the town square of ballooning, and the friendships made there are a gift that keeps on giving.