Palestine Heritage Flight Festiv

My second full adventure with the SunKissed crew has to wait until the Spring of 2005. During the winter, Ann spends a couple of weeks and $$'s in Albuquerque and gains her commercial license. ..... Graduation is so close to the Palestine Heritage Flight Festival opening of 2005 that Ann tow's SunKissed directly from Albuquerque, NM to Palestine, TX after "graduation" to get there on time. A few emails, just before the "Palestine Media Flight" and Paula, Marsha, Ann and your's truly meet up for dinner the night before the media flight. The media flight launches from the state park in Palestine - part of the "Antique Railroad" that runs between Palestine and Rusk. ( http://www.texasstaterailroad.com/index.html ). Again, Ann draws a "no-show" so, at the last minute before the media launch, the crew is Ann, Marsha, Paula and me. (Me and three women ... do you have to ask if I'm having fun?) It's time for my second flight as Ann want's a "Physical" passenger (hahahahahaha) along just in case some physical work is need during the landing. As a "veteran" passenger now, I remember to take the camera and actually use it.

Just me and three women (a bachelor's dream come true) too busy to take pictures before the launch. As soon as we are secured after launch, here's Plano's balloon, getting ready to follow us.

And Engine 300 that showed up for our "Send Off" decides it's time to send herself off about then.

A picture from a "local" in a balloon following us, about 1/2 mile behind. That's us, lower-middle and Zoopendus, far left. Lots of morning "haze" - it looks bad in pictures without UV filters (like this one) but in the real world, your eyes can "sense" this haze and, although the picture looks like very low visibility, it does not hamper the pilot's VSR procedure.

After about 30 minutes of drifting over the "springtime" Palestine landscape, it's time to find a landing spot. Again, the "local" finds us following the "fleet" to a landing near a local farm pond. We had lots of fun, "stalled" just above the pond, "negotiating" with pilots and crew who had laded before we became "becalmed" about 50 feet above the pond. It all has to do with throwing a "tether", who's going to pull us down, who's going to re-coil the tether line, who-owes-who-for-what and lots of other good-natured "jibing" between pilots and crew we see and work with/against on many festivals. We (Ann and I) end up making the landing, "un-assisted" but lots of help, jibes with the other pilots and crew before our chase team gets through all of the farm gates to help us "pack up".

Dick rides with Ann during the "Festival Opening" ride the next morning ..... all of about 1/4 mile - just over the north "wind break" and we're down and packing up. We made another flight that weekend but I'm still looking for the pictures.

One "Down Day" allowed us to go to Rusk for a "kick-a__" brunch at the PITT GRILL and then catch the train back to Palestine. Since the Palestine/Rusk trek (car, antique train or bicycle) is something I've done many times with my cycling buds, I chauffeur the team to Rusk, drive back to Palestine to meet their return.

Brunch over, we head for the train station in Rusk. After some souvenir shopping, tickets are bought for the ride back to Palestine. Here's Dick and Ann after the ticket purchase, very happy that their return trip to Palestine is secured.

It will be steam engine, "300" that brings them back to Palestine. (Yes, the engine that participated in the media flight lift-off a couple of day's ago.)

Crew rides "300" back to Palestine. I drive crew car back to meet them. Upon arrival:

.... followed by the rest (do captain's and crew-chief's always disembark last?)

Most of the rest of the weekend's flights were cancelled out, but we did make a showing at the airport on "glow night".

Lots of "toys" brought out for the crowd to enjoy including this replica, racing, pre-model T car.

Someone catches Dick and me, waiting for what will happen next during the "ad-hoc" glow performance.

Sunday's weather breaks "bad". Two announcements at the pilots' briefing; 1.) The rest of the festival's flights have been cancelled, 2.) One of the festival's organizers is a NASA official in their high-altitude balloon department and 3.) One of NASA's prime terrestrial balloon launching sites is "just around the corner" from the Palestine airport - would we like a tour?

Well, 1.) and 2.) are not questions so the unanimous response from the pilots and crew members present to 3.) is, "Not yes, but H___ yes!!"

Sunday morning's flight was cancelled, also. Again due to high, unstable winds at multiple levels. Our Balloonmeister and chief meteorologist for NASA's Scientific Balloon Facility headquarter in Palestine, Bob Redinger, was very apologetic about the weekend's weather. After canceling Sunday morning's launch, he offered us a tour of NASA's Scientific Balloon headquarters, just a couple of miles up the road from the Palestine airport. Well, you know the Sun Kissed crew - we all accepted the invitation. Here Bob begins the tour, describing all of the buildings around the facility's main entrance.

Here's the bottom-half of the front of "Tiny Tim", NASA's vehicle for securing and starting the larger balloons' payloads on their journey to "near space". Can that be Zack and Ann on the right? Zack has some growing to do but Ann isn't that much bigger compared to "Tiny".

Look closely near the horizon, just below the trees in this picture. This is NASA's Palestine launching pad - capable of accommodating the lay-out of envelopes up to 40,000,000 cubic feet. (That's Sun Kissed's volume times 500!) At the end of the tour, Bob was gracious enough to allow us to take our vehicles out on the pad to "play". Bob may have told us during the tour the size of the pad but my A.D.D. did not allow me to retain the value. A quick check of the odometer at the start and end of a lap around the edge, then applying some basic Euclidian geometry and algebra yielded a first-order approximation of 280 yards (almost 3 football fields) as the diameter or "width" of the central pad. .....

A little later, Bob invites us to take our cars on to this launching pad and "have fun". Before anybody asks, Dick in his Miatta and I in my MR2 decide to "have fun". Dick wins because; A.) His passenger, Zack, deserved a "Win", B.) My passenger, Ann, hates lateral G-loads if she is not controlling same, C.) Dick is a better driver than me, D.) Dick's Miatta is a better overall car than my Spyder or E.) some combination of the above. The answer is "E." but vanity prohibits me from stating what the actual combination is. <grin>

Our thanks to Bob and to all the citizens of Palestine involved in the production and execution of the Heritage Festival. I have another group of cycling friends that visit the Palestine, Rusk, Crockett, Nacogdoches area every year for Fall and/or Spring rides through the forests of East Texas. I am very impressed by the progress Palestine has made in the last few years and anxiously look forward to my next visit.

Finally, a picture and article of Sun Kissed was the front-page feature on the Palestine Herald-Press (www.palestineherald.com) Sunday morning edition this weekend. While the article is no longer available, I did capture the picture, caption and article in to a DOC file. If you are interested, view/download a copy of the file by clicking here.

In retrospect, after Albuquerque and my first balloon flight in Plano, this is my favorite balloon trip because of the diversity of activities.