We are into summer temperatures here in New Mexico. As I discovered a couple weeks earlier in El Paso, Tx, I had to keep my passenger weight down so I could fly. Bloomfield is a small town about 10 miles out of Farmington, NM in the Four Corners Region. The temperature range is about ten degrees cooler from my home town of Alamogordo, NM.

The San Juan River Balloon Rally is one of my small rallies but it is one rally that takes care of their pilots. If I remember correctly for the three days I flew there, my crew ate only two meals appart from the rally. The hotel was an upscale Best Western with an indoor pool which was warm.

We started out on Friday morning flying local media. There were newspaper, television, and radio persons in attendence. Post flight the crews went to the Casino for a brunch. Friday night was the registration dinner at the hotel.

Saturday we had the first rally flight with 17 balloons flying. My sponsors were from San Juan Regional Medical Center. They had a nice flight to the river and into the farm fields. Saturday noon we had a barbque at a farm close by owned by one of the organizers. Saturday night we had a balloon glow at our launch site which was nice and calm and well attended.

Sunday we had questionable winds. I was confident from the pi balls that we sent up that the flight would be very similar to the previous two days but a little faster. With all the farm land around I knew our available landing sites were plentiful. Following our flight we went back to the farm and ate brunch and then we packed up and left.