Flight Review

Well, I hadn't been in the balloon since February (I probably haven't posted about this year's Hudson Hot Air Affair, it was another fun event!) and my last flight review had been in April, 2012, right before I moved from Arkansas, so as of the end of April, I was grounded until I could have a flight review. My friend Ed Chapman said he'd be free for a few weeks while the ground dried out, and he told me he'd be willing to make an early drive to Austin to fly with me. I guess I owe him a favor (maybe more than one!)

Well, last Saturday, we thought the winds might favor us with a flight, but the night before, the forecast told us it would be too windy; not on the surface, but just a little above the ground, so we decided to wait until another day. That day came less than a week later. Friday morning looked to be a beauty, so Ed agreed to come down. Dick Schindler brought his brother-in-law, Gareth to add to my regular crew of Bryan, Brad and Brayden Trimble. Vivian Trimble has yet to join the crew, even though I hear she's an early riser!

We met at my house, put up a pibal and headed to the fairgrounds. The winds aloft were a little quick, but nice and slow with a slight left down low. We flew just over an hour as the sun rose behind us. After flying 8 miles to the northwest, we set the balloon down in a still-muddy (but not too muddy) field. Thank goodness for the many-hands to pack the balloon the 30 or so feet to the road.

It was a great morning, and with the help of many friends I'm now able to fly again! Next weekend, off to see Michael Scott for my annual inspection. I always enjoy seeing my Topeka friends, and I look forward to Bryan joining me on that trip.

Several Events, Few Flights

From mid-September through early October we traveled to three events. Lots of fun, but not lots of flights!

September 13 was day one of the Faribault Airfest. Friday was a beautiful evening, and several balloons launched from the airport. The balloons were part of a whole airshow that included glider demonstrations, helicopter rides, historic military aircraft displays and acrobatic planes. We had a short flight to the north of the airport, then returned and inflated on the field for a glow. As you can see from this video, as shortly after we flew off, the acrobatic planes took to the sky for their show!

Saturday's balloon events were weathered out with high winds and rain in the area. My crew and I stuck around, though and had a great time enjoying the airplanes!

A week later, Bryan, Brad and I set off for Duluth. We knew that the likelihood of flying was slim, as there are limited landing sites around Duluth, but we were excited about seeing the area. We also knew that the terrain that made flying in Duluth difficult would make sightseeing there really nice. We weren't surprised that we didn't fly, and we were pleased with the scenic beauty of northern Minnesota!

Even though there were no flights as part of Le Festival des Montgolfières à Duluth, about 25,000 visitors enjoyed a great weekend at Bayfront Park with music, balloon glows, kite flying, a beer garden and lots of vendors. The balloons made for some pretty pictures in a beautiful setting!

Two weeks after the Duluth trip, Jill and I made our annual pilgrimage to Columbus, Kansas for their Balloon Regatta. We won't be able to attend next year's event, because of a certain upcoming wedding, but we've enjoyed the hospitality of Darrell and Marilyn Shumake for several years. It was fairly windy, so only a few balloons flew this year. We kept our balloon safe and dry in the trailer, and just enjoyed all the visiting.

The next event on our calendar is early December in Caledonia, MN. I'd better get in the air before then, so I stay current to fly!

Way to Kickoff Labor Day Weekend!

It's been hot here (for Minnesota), but the winds have been calm most of the week. As the
forecast took shape, Saturday morning looked like it would be ideal for flying, calm winds and comfortable temps! I had a list of people who I'd like to fly with, and our friend Deb was available to join us. Of course the Trimbles (Bryan, Brad, and Crew Chief Brayden) made the whole morning possible!

The only question about the weather was the possibility for fog, but when I woke up and went outside, it was very clear. Passengers and crew assembled at our house, and we ventured to Queen of Angels Church in Austin for inflation. An easy inflation gave us a chance to have Bryan and Brad perform different jobs than their normal positions, and we got the balloon up easily.

The forecast was for good steerability, with about 90 degrees difference between the direction of wind at the surface and at 500 feet. That proved to be true, but the surprise was that the winds a little higher "boxed back" to the east! If that hadn't been moving so slow, or if we were over open terrain, I might have worked that box wind in an effort to make a "round trip." Instead I dropped down a little, and moved toward the northeast over town and out into the country.

Once away from town, I saw a field to the south that had good access to the road (dry packup). I directed the crew there and steered right in for a nice standup landing.

While we were packing up, we glanced to the east and saw fog and clouds rolling in. It was a beautiful flight, timed perfectly for good visibility and good weather!

Wow! It's August, and My Last Post Was in December!

It's been a good year for ballooning, but you'd never know it from my blog!

In January, a group of pilots gathered in White Bear Lake to celebrate St. Paul's Winter Carnival. We had a great flight, and a death defying parade experience. Then, a week later (in February), I attended Hudson's Hot Air Affair. Another beautiful winter flight (also a fun parade and a snowy glow). My flight was especially nice because my good friend Donna braved the early morning and the frigid temps to fly with me!





I had a flight or two in the spring and early summer, just enough to stay current, including a
nice flight with Holly, who made a donation to a cancer fundraiser to be able to fly with me. It was nice to meet her and her husband, and they showed up a few weeks later to help us glow the balloon at Rochesterfest.

A flight in July gave me a chance to fly with my friend Ron. Ron's always so nice to our staff at the Y (he's a massage therapist, and comes through our offices doling out massages regularly!) so I was pleased to take him for a flight. He responded by inviting Jill and me (as well as my sister, Greta and niece, Rebekah) to watch fireworks at his house the next night. While we were there, Greta and Rebekah each enjoyed massages (Becka's first!)




In August, I was able to make a new friend in Juan, who has ballooning on his bucket list. He
also has cancer, so he's focusing on those bucket list items. I was pleased to fly with him on a really calm evening in Austin. We flew from southeast Austin, and in an hour landed about 3 miles away on the fairway of the second hole on the country club. It was a beautiful night, and I enjoyed flying with Juan. His friends who helped arrange the flight brought homemade wine for the toast, and gave Jill and me a bottle as well. While I don't drink wine, I knew our friends Chris and Melissa are wine enthusiasts, and they were coming to visit.

When Chris and Melissa were here, they enjoyed the wine and judged it to be of very good quality (some of the best they tasted during their Minnesota visit, which included tastings at two wineries!) I was also able to have a flight with Chris, which added a nice element to a really great vacation with them!

Well, that brings me up to date on my flying this year. I have three events scheduled in the next 6 or 7 weeks, so I may have some more to add soon!

A Few Flights in August and September

It didn't feel like I flew very much at the end of the summer, but looking back at the logbook, I was able to get some nice flights in! I was just too busy to write about the flights, so today, I'll try to catch up a bit.

In August, I was able to fly with my friend, Jerry. He was on the committee that hired me for my present job, so I wanted to get him in the air as a "thank you." It happened that we flew during fair week, and we were able to fly right by the fairgrounds, for a terrific view of the carnival. We had all the Trimbles crew for us, with Bryan and Brad taking the lead. We flew to the southwest of town, where I made an approach on a gravel driveway between a corn field and a bean field. Bryan and Brad were there to catch us for a great landing!

In September, Jill, Bryan and I went out to fly with my neighbor Joann. Her husband, Marty came along to help. The forecast was for calming winds as the evening went on. The forecast lied! The winds were light at the beginning of the flight, but they gathered as Joann and I flew north from Austin. We just kept going faster and faster, and there were no good landing sites for a long landing. As we flew north, we came to a road bordered by crops. With the fast wind, we were able to make a lay-down landing keeping the basket out of the fields. Not the most fun landing, but a safe one!

My last September flight for the year came on a beautiful Sunday morning. Bryan flew with me with Brayden and Brad driving chase. We launched from a field north of Perkins in Austin. We flew south over town, with Bryan manning the burner. He did a great job keeping the balloon level and high over town while I took pictures of the fall foliage. Austin looked fantastic in full color. Once we were clear of town, we descended and turned to the southwest. All the crops were out of the fields, which gave us TONS of opportunities for landing. I practiced landing the balloon a few times, making sure to keep my currency up. We chose a field to land on that was adjacent to a mowed lawn and barn. A quick packup, with the help of a passerby, and we were on our way back to town to enjoy the last day of Sepember.

Next up: Jill and Tedd's Excellent Annual Trek to Columbus, KS!

Caledonia? Caledonia? What Makes Your Big Head So Hard?

MOP!

I love you! Love you just the same!

(My apologies to the late Louis Jordan)

Had a great time in Caledonia, Minnesota last weekend! Bryan and Brad Trimble joined me, and we left Austin at about 8:30 to head east for a weekend of ballooning and meeting new friends.

Caledonia is a town of about 3,000 people in Southeast Minnesota. It's surrounded by bluffs and valleys and lots of livestock. For several years, balloonists have gathered there the first weekend of December in hopes of flying and enjoying the local hospitality. Normally, they only enjoy the hospitality as favorable winds are elusive this time of year (although the friendliness is abundant!)

This year proved to be an anomaly (with respect to the winds), and Saturday allowed two very nice flights. Saturday morning, I was accompanied by the brother of my sponsor (and propane provider) Hokah Co-Op, and we flew to the southwest of town. I attempted to fly low when I could, but had to stay up over lots of cattle and other livestock farms. We landed in a valley, and after I called our crew on the phone (cold weather kills walkie-talkie batteries), they were able to find us for a nice clean road packup.

Bryan and Brad and I enjoyed breakfast with Santa, a Lion's club fundraiser, then went back to our host family's house to relax and warm the tanks for an afternoon flight.

We're nearing the solstice, so afternoon flights come early! Inflation was scheduled for 2:30, and the weather looked good. A storm was forecast for later in the evening, and the pilots decided that short flights would be judicious.

We started inflating, and about the time the first balloon "stood up," a gust of wind hit the field. We turned off our fan and let the envelope settle while the wind calmed down. We didn't have to wait long, and the fan was soon running again. Once the balloon was standing, I had Denny Jorgerson climb in the basket for our flight. Denny and Janel were our hosts. We really enjoyed our weekend with them, and it was fun to fly with Denny.

 We had a fun flight playing "leapfrog" with Ed Chapman's balloon as we made our way south from Caledonia. All was going well, and I found a property with great alternatives for landing, so I set down. The crew wasn't nearby, yet, and the winds were blowing us around a bit (we were on a bit of a hill), so I deflated the balloon and we laid down there.

When the crew arrived, they got permission to pack up our balloon from the landowner, but reported that she might be a bit unbalanced. She complained that the balloons were part of a plot by Syrians to spread chemical weapons on her. It got worse.

We packed the balloon and as we were loading the basket in the trailer, someone said, "Hurry up! Here she comes!" We loaded the basket, closed the trailer, and sure enough, here came the woman who owned the property, asking for the names of the people who rode in the balloon. I approached her and discussed our presence on her land.

In addition to her concern about the Syrian chemical warfare plot, she was upset because:

• An eagle spent quite a bit of time in the big evergreen tree by her house last summer. As a result, she was unable to let her little dog outside. Because the eagle had "a white tail and a white head" the government prohibits her from shooting said eagle.
• The grandfather of the balloon event organizer had nefariously stolen the county snow plow operator's job from the previous snow plow operator. When the crazy landowner took a petition to one of the county officials to protest, the official threw the petition aside and refused to read it.
• There are hog farms nearby and the effluent might affect her land/air/water.

She also suggested that all ballooning activities should take place in Mexico, then she opined that they probably didn't want hot air balloons there. She was surprised when I said they have balloon events in Mexico and that most Mexican landowners are just as happy to have an unexpected hot air balloon land on their property as most landowners in the U.S., which is to say quite happy!

I listened to the woman for 5 or 10 minutes, apologizing when I could get a word in, for my imposition. She seemed to smile more when we neared the end of our conversation than she did at the beginning of it, but when we offered to give her a ride from her field back to her house, she declined, saying that she hoped she had a heart attack while she walked to her home, and that her children would then sue us!

So, we left our landing spot, drove back to the launch site for fuel, and returned to the Torgersons' house where Janel fed us sandwiches and chili. We enjoyed visiting with them and relaxing until it was time to go to the wine tasting and silent auction. Caledonia's community center is a beautiful building that hosts all kinds of parties and receptions for members of the community, and Saturday, it played host to the fundraiser for the balloon event. Wine and beer samples were served, and lots of neat items were available during a silent auction. I was unsuccessful in bidding on a few items, but I sure had fun talking to other pilots and members of the community.

We knew that Sunday morning would be snowy, so we didn't even bother having a pilots' meeting. We just gathered for breakfast and goodbyes. Elsie's restaurant was a super spot for our morning meal, and we left with full stomachs and great memories on our snowy drive home. The roads were a bit slick, so we took our time making our way back to Austin. We made it safely, and in time for the Trimbles to watch the Vikings beat the Bears! The cherry on the top of the weekend was the Packers' victory over the Lions.!

What a weekend!

If I'd Have Known You Were Coming

Well, we're finally through a long, but wonderful series of guests at the "Retreat at Turtle Creek" (or the "Turtle Creek B & B" as Jill likes to call it. "Retreat sounds too much like a psych hospital," she says. "You've met our guests, right?").

Anyway, when Carol and David were visiting from Memphis, the weather was great, so Carol went with me on a flight. The Moseleys have come to a few events where we've had the balloon, but it's always been too windy to bother to open the trailer, so they questioned the veracity of our assertions that a balloon was really in there. Well, week before last Carol and I had a nice flight. David, a Methodist minister, wrote about it. His words are nicer than mine, so here!

Pastor’s Perspective

“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8

Greetings from Austin, Minnesota. My week-long spiritual retreat is going well. I missed being with you all on Sunday morning.

The setting for my retreat has been wonderful. There is a meandering stream that flows nearby. I have seen deer, otter, ducks, turtles, and heard tell of beaver (made me miss Kalee a little.) I have studied, prayed, got some exercise, and slept well. You know, I might be dangerous, or at least a little obnoxious, when I get home.

But it hasn’t been ‘all work and no play’. The couple we are staying with has a hot-air balloon. On Saturday afternoon, Carol got to take a ride in it. While she is not a big fan of ‘floating in space’, in the end, she described the experience as ‘excellent’.

Ballooning is a great parable of life. Jesus likened the Holy Spirit to the wind that ‘blows where it chooses.’ When the balloon lifted off, we thought it would go east. It went north. We expected the flight to last 30 minutes. It lasted almost an hour. A park was chosen for a landing zone. They landed by a big red barn off a country road outside of town. In the process, we met a wonderful lady that thoroughly enjoyed the ‘unexpected visit’, and was waving happily when we departed.

So it is with all who live by the Spirit. We work, we play, we plan..., but most of all, we react. The Spirit is always working ahead of us (we call that Prevenient Grace.) As we move into any moment, we need to be responsive, ready to react to the ‘new thing’ the Spirit is doing.

It can be frustrating. Sometimes, the Spirit’s plan is different than ours. And so, we land in a field north of town instead of the park near home. But in those moments, look for the ‘unexpected neighbor’ that joins us on our adventure and becomes part of the story.

My advice – loosen up a little. Smile more. And look for something unexpected. It may just turn out to be one of the best things you have encountered in a long time.

It’s just a thought.

Bro. David Moseley