A Slower Day

Budapest and the Danube River, from the "Buda side" (west bank) looking northeast

We woke up this morning to the sound of rain.  No worries, as we weren't planning any flying until tomorrow at the earliest.  And we still 4 days until the competition starts on Monday.  Today will be spent in Debrecen.  We'll casually start to get the vehicles ready, and probably hit a grocery store (one of my favorite international activities as a tourist).  It does appear that my roommate Larry Coan will arrive later this afternoon, as his flight from Chicago to Brussels has now landed.  I believe that the award-winning team of Bob and Dottie Humbert, who will be officials at this event, are on the same flights.  Other Americans, including Team USA managers Al Nels and Brad Teymeyer, are scheduled to get in today as well.  The last member of our clan, Andrew Petrehn, arrives on Saturday.

Speaking of my room, below are some photos.  As best we can  tell all the rooms at this establishment are the same, save that some have just 1 twin bed.  We get 11 channels on the TV, 1 of which (BBC) has English audio.  There's one dedicated sports channel, and right now two are showing people painting walls.  The brown boxes on the table in the corner are the radios for the balloon and vehicles, and I'm sitting right now at the desk next to the TV, tapping away on my trusty netbook.


The event has put a notice on their website indicating that propane for any practice flights will be billed at €1.15/kg, which by my quick math works out to USD $2.95/gallon.  On Tuesday it was indicated that a digital copy of the competition map would be available yesterday, but that didn't happen.