I'm not keen on balloons

You will know, if you read yesterday's entry, that I had kite flying on White Horse Hill penciled in for today. There is an irony in this that will become clear later.

Kite flying did not take place today because I told the dragon that the annual Bristol balloon festival was to take place this weekend, and she wanted to see it. I don't much like the balloon festival because every year the balloons seem to reamin stuburnly grounded due to wind or rain. The organisers historically tend to release optimistic announcements throughout the day, but the weather always seems to keep the balloons from launching in the end. It frustrates me.

I agreed to postpone kite flying to go to the balloon festival anyway. There are always other things to do there and it's never a complete wash-out. So we went. It really wasn't a bad day. We saw camels, went to the French market, ate good food, saw parachuters land, and an aerobatic display. As usual however, the baloons reamined on the ground.

There were hundreds of them laid out in the arena at 6pm. One or two were even inflated, but remained tethered. The the announcement came. Wind was up over nine knots and they were going to wait an hour for the wind to die down. Nine knots is like slow walking pace and even I thought this was over cautious. Then 7pm came and a second announcment went out. The wind was still too strong and they were going to have another go at 7.45. By this time I knew it wasn't going to happen. I could see the balloons being folded up and packed away in the arena.

The dragon however remained hopeful that something would take off, so we waited. Then the 7.45 announcement came, as it always does, confirming that we were wasting our time. And at that point 15,000 people all rushed to their cars as one and attempted to leave through the single exit gate.

I'm not grumbling. It wasn't a bad day at all, and let's face it, I knew it was going to happen. I don't even let the optimistic announcements lull me into some false hope of a launch any more. The irony that I mentioned at the top of this post, in case you missed it, was the fact that I cancelled a kite flying day, to go to see a balloon launch that was cancelled due to wind.