Billings 2002

On Thursday August 1^st we left Rolling Hills in pouring rain to travel to Billings. Because of the wet conditions Bill was able to come with us for the first time ever, which meant Sue had to stay home on the farm!

We had a good journey down, I wondered what it would be like getting through the border but it was as easy as usual – apart from the fact that they were training a new girl who didn’t recognize our citizenship cards! We arrived about 3:30 PM, checked into our hotel and entered the parade. Afterwards we met up with our usual crew and made arrangements for our weekend. On Friday morning we had two sponsors to fly, a young girl and a local radio reporter called Ed who was broadcasting live and interviewing Jack as they flew – while he was going for targets too! We were listening on the radio and they had a lot of fun. After the second target the wind had changed a little which meant most of the balloons had to land in the streets! Interesting to say the least!! Jack threw us his drop-line and landed successfully. One of the Americans was coming in beside us and had no crew near us so we said "Throw us your drop-line" to which he replied "It’s in the chase vehicle" – Not a lot of use there! He had quite a rough landing through a tree and tore his envelope but managed to get it fixed. The next morning we had two paying passengers and a very uneventful flight in the opposite direction with a very pleasant landowner who shared the champagne. We couldn’t get either of the evening flights off and not even fireworks on the Saturday unfortunately. We managed a very borderline flight on Sunday so Bill managed to see Billings from the air. The weather deteriorated so we couldn’t do our show on Sunday but the awards were given out at lunchtime. Jack was 9^th overall out of 43 so we were thrilled. The results for the Canadians who took part are as follows:

We really enjoyed ourselves. The hottest it got all weekend was 86⁰, usually it is 110⁰+ !

Shelagh Bailey