My Secret Guest

So I just finished having lunch in Atlanta with... First Officer Sarah Blount. She's living in Atlanta and flying CRJ-200's for Atlantic Southeast Airlines, a Delta regional carrier. She was on call tonight, so she met me for lunch at the terminal. It really helped to break up a 4-hour layover prior to a 9-hour flight. For those that don't know, Sarah is the daughter of Alan Blount, the 1993 World Hot Air Balloon Champion.

I'm about an hour away from my departure to Vienna. For the aviation geeks, it's on a Delta 767-300ER. Again, stalkers can click here to follow my flight.

Moving at last

After seeing most of my son's first soccer game, I'm now at the Grand Rapids airport awaiting my flight to Atlanta. Traveling out of a small airport on a Saturday afternoon is great - there were 9 friendly TSA agents dedicated to screening me and my 2 carry on bags. The best news is that my lone checked bag weighed in at 50.0 pounds - exactly the limit.

For those folks who are monitoring this blog in real-time and would like to stalk me while I'm in the air, follow the flight here.

During my 4-hour layover in Atlanta I'm meeting a long-time friend for lunch. A lot of the balloonists following my travels will know her, but I'll leave you in suspense for now...

Getting closer...

Work day: done. Football game: done (our team won). The Incredible Hulk cake: done. My flight leaves in 13 hours. It's 11:55pm. I guess I should start packing. The posts will get more interesting tomorrow, I promise. Personally I like last year's Spiderman cake better...

The day before

It's about 28 hours before my flight leaves Grand Rapids (to Atlanta, then Vienna) and of course there's still a lot to do. I've got a full day at work. I have a few things to buy. I'm need to design and create a birthday cake for my soon-to-be-5-year-old son (I'll post photos if I like how it turns out). I also promised I'd take him to the local high school football game, something we do almost every Friday night during the fall. He's got a soccer game tomorrow morning. Of course I need to hang out with my wife and 3-year-old daughter too. And I should probably pack. I brought the suitcase upstairs last night, but didn't have a chance to get started...

Welcome

Welcome to my blog of the 2008 World Hot Air Balloon Championships.

Like my 2006 trip to Japan, the intent is to update this site very regularly with content relating to both our travels and the event itself. This time I hope to include more photos and videos, as well as comments from those following this site. Feel free to leave your thoughts by clicking on the teal red comments link at the bottom of any post. You'll need a Google account, which you can sign up for on that same page.

One thing we're still working on is the technical details for how we'll connect to the Internet while in Austria. Internet cafes seem to be fairly common, and we've been told there will be wireless available at the competition center. So at the worst, I'll post updates from there. I was hopeful that we'd find a reasonably-priced cellular modem that would allow us to upload photos and post updates from anywhere, including during the flight. And I think micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter) an event like this would be very well received. Unfortunately the options we've seen so far have been cost-prohibitive - if anyone out there is an expert on Internet service in Austria, I'd love to hear your advise.

Right now I'm still in Michigan, but plan to start updating this site daily with background information on the trip. I leave for Vienna on Saturday (September 6) afternoon, so at that time the updates will get more regular and exciting. We'll spend about a week being tourists (Salzburg & Vienna) and getting things ready prior to the first competition flight on the morning of September 14.