Here We Go Again

Thanks for joining me for a personal account of my trip to the 2010 World Hot Air Balloon Championship in Debrecen, Hungary.

As the title of this blog suggests, this will be my own personal postings of events over the next 16 days, both balloon and non-balloon related.  Obviously I'll have updates on the event, but hopefully the official website will be on top of such things.  I'm optimistic that Internet access in Debrecen will be easier to come across than it was in Austria, allowing me to post more photos and video than I was able to in 2008.

As in 2006 and 2008, I'll be leaving my own balloon at home and helping out Paul Petrehn, one of the 6 Americans that qualified for the event.  The rest of the team consists of his girlfriend Erica Hahn (the famous balloonist, not the fake doctor), her parents Bruce and Bonnie Hahn, champion balloonist/Ford employee Larry Coan (the "Ford employee" part is important - more in a future post), and Paul's brother Andrew Petrehn. With the other five US teams and a handful of event officials there should be about 40 Americans in Hungary for the competition.

Like my 2008 blog, you can leave your own remarks by clicking on the red comments link at the bottom of any post. I've tried to make that as easy as possible, so right now you don't need to enter any passwords or decrypt any graphics to do so.  However if we get too many spam-posts I may have to change that.  Also, check out the space on the right for the option to get email updates anytime I make a new post.

For those interested in ballooning, you can get ready for the event by checking out the following sites:

• Official event website : The list of competitors and rules are posted here.  An electronic copy of the map is supposed to be there as well, but it's not yet.
• Event Director's (Mathijs de Bruijn) page of notes : This is a somewhat haphazard "dialogue" on topics related to the competition.  From a preparation standpoint, the most notable is the Austrian/German Nationals Aug 2010 link at the very bottom.  Those are the task sheets from an event run recently by this same director.  It's probably safe to assume we'll see some of those same tactics in Hungary.

For those less interested in ballooning, you can click here to check out my family's website.

And lest anyone think competitive hot air ballooning is extreme, click here to follow along with what's going on right now elsewhere in Europe.

Once again, thanks for checking in and following along.  There will be a few posts as we leave the US, with more frequent updates after we arrive in Europe on Tuesday afternoon.