Let’s review:
Balloon Glow on Friday evening. Cardinals game early Saturday afternoon, balloon race late Saturday afternoon.
Now it is Sunday, and going online I remember that there have been signs everywhere warning of delays due to the Tour of Missouri coming through St. Louis. I check out the route, and it turns out that it runs right down Lindell (my street). So I clean up, dress up, pack up, and head out the door. No sooner than I arrive on the street the lead cars and motorcycles go racing past. Followed by the professional cyclists - including the bikers of the Discovery Channel Team, on their last US race before disbanding. ZOOM! they go. And 20 seconds after they arrived, it was over.
EXCEPT: the St. Louis stage is a circuit race, and the riders do 7 laps of a 10 mile circuit. And the front side of the race runs down Forest Park Parkway, 3 blocks away. So I pick up, pack up, and take off. I arrive just in time for the leaders to go through, a 4-man break that was soon followed by the peloton, or the main body of racers. ZOOM! they go. And 20 seconds later, it was over. So I pick up, pack up, and take off. ZOOM! Pick up, pack up, and take off. There goes the Tour de France winner, ZOOM! Pick up, pack up, and take off. Levi Leipheimer, 3rd at the Tour de France, ZOOM! And so on, and so on. No fences, no gates, no security cops. Just me standing on the curb with the other race observers, while these world-class athletes ZOOM! 5 feet, 3 feet, inches away.
I’m no fan of professional cycling in general, but a circuit race like this one was very much worth the effort to see. Instead of one fleeting glimpse, there are many. Oh, and in what other sport can a participant be involved in a serious crash with an armadillo?
I had a fun day today. I am doubly glad that it occurred on a Saturday, which gives hope that I can look forward to days like this even when I am working…if I can get away on Saturdays.
Last night, of course, was the Balloon Glow. Conditions were generally lousy for photography because of large, dense crowds, bad traffic control of said crowds, and lots of wind. I still managed a few good shots, but the evening was not nearly as fun as it had been the past few years. The crowd conditions were caused by the location of the Glow, which had to be moved because of the renovations on the World’s Fair Pavilion grounds (very close to being done, by the way). This year’s Glow was held on a golf course. Certainly was the super’s worst nightmare: tens of thousands of people with food stands and hot air balloons and trucks and trailers and vans and lawn chairs in your tee boxes, your fairways, your bunkers (kids love sand), etc.
So today, I went to the Cardinals-Cubs game at noon, a makeup game from April, I think. We lost, I had fun. I rushed home, had a quick lunch of leftover hamburger and home-made onion rings and biked out to Forest Park for the Balloon Race.
The softball fields were packed. There could have been a hundred thousand people there, easily. Still, I managed a not bad spot to shoot from on the perimeter of the field. After a few balloons were up, I couldn’t help but notice that the balloons didn’t seem to be going anywhere. The race is a hare-and-hounds format (one balloon goes somewhere, lands, and the others try to put a marker close to their landing point), but the hare was going northwest - very, very slowly - while the hounds were drifting northeast. Suddenly, before I knew what I had said, I commented out loud that the hare balloon was travelling so slow I could outrun it on my bike.
On my bike. What an idea. I packed my stuff and did just that - chased the hare balloon (the Energizer Hot Hare Balloon, to be exact). When I caught up with the chase team, I decided to stick with them. Eventually the balloons did catch some wind and they all started travelling west, and the hare balloon started coming down in a neighborhood north of the Delmar Loop. It landed in a parking lot of a community center in the middle of this neighborhood, and the other balloons landed in other open spaces (I hope) in the area. It turned into a real neighborhood event as all the people came out to see the giant pink bunny hovering over their homes, and eventually landing in their ‘hood.
Apparently I had caught the notice of the chase team, because when I started taking photos, a couple saw me and commented "oh, you made it!" That was neat. And they enlisted the help of the entire neighborhood to bring down and deflate and roll up the balloon. That was also very neat. Except that at one point the team coordinator started shushing the crowd. She actually managed to get everyone to shut up, though we were all a bit confused - especially when she put her ear to the fabric - until she asked the boy next to her what the ring tone sounded like. Apparently this neighborhood helper had been rolling around on the balloon (as instructed to get the air out of the balloon) and had dropped his cell phone. Then the 166-foot tall bunny made of 5,000 linear yards of fabric was tightly rolled up, cell phone and all. Eventually the bunny had to be unrolled, but the phone was found.
