More Fiesta Flying

The opening ceremony and lunch:
 

After that we met our passengers from Ford of Hungary for an evening flight over town:
     

Practice flights are scheduled for both tomorrow morning and evening.  So far each one has brought with it a few more balloons, building to the final event total of approximately 123.  Between those flights will be a master briefing tomorrow, certainly at least 1½-2 hours in length.  It will be nice to put some structure to the event and start working on what we came here to do.

I arrived at the opening ceremony a little late, which was actually a good thing.  While everyone else from our hotel was there, I was able to make a 10-minute Internet call to my kids and lovely wife.  Outside of instant messaging it's the first time I've been able to communicate with them since Tuesday.  The quality still wasn't great, but without anyone else using the connection it was adequate.

After 3 flights the ground moisture that we've heard so much about hasn't been an issue.  There are certainly plenty of wet areas, but working around them has been painless.  Given that the event isn't using observers, the need to drive down non-paved roads is all but eliminated.  The problems may come if we get more rain, which some are saying will happen after this weekend.  We haven't seen the sun (literally) since we've been here, but save some showers on Thursday morning it's been dry.  It will be really unfortunate if that changes right at the start of the event. However, should that be the case our fearless leader Al would certain assemble the troops in the parking lot and deliver a motivational oration from his hotel room.