G la fille: oh right, balloon fiesta

Lawdie! How! Have! You! Been!? It's like we're stuck in summer here, huh? Only recapping the antique summer memories, we might as well watch the OC together for old times sake. Lots o' weird stuff going on. This is not one of them tho. We'll catch up later. LOL (lots of love).

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta TWO THOUSAND NINE! (Prepare to get a boner for New Mexico.)

Marc's Stache is holding up pretty effing well.

This pic looks like a nuclear explosion went off in the background. But it didn't.

Obviously, Marc made us get there at nerd o'clock for the Glowdeo. What would you do? Really. I'd like to know. If you were completely sober and stuck waiting in an unwashed mob of hillbilly tourists and Christian Republican families for four hours without any money or alcohol/drugs or ipods or mags ... WHAT WOULD YOU DO?!

WHAAaaaaat WOULLlllllddd YOOOoooouuu DOOOOooooo?!?!?!?!

Food and other commercial nonsense. It looks, smells and sounds like entertainment, but it feels like burning your newly transacted, crisp dollar bills. Empty source of fun. But, I'd bet you a quarter you'd give your pinkie toes to smell that lovely roasted green chile.

People-watching was just ok. Once you've seen one sweatshirt wrapped around a waist, you've seen them all.

The sun was still pretty high when they started to roll out the balloon fabric.

It felt orgasmic when the first two balloons went up. After spending four hours in the atmosphere of a middle school assembly on obesity, that first presence of a hot air balloon felt that much more fantastic. Everyone gathered around like the 2nd coming (on our faces) of Jesus Christ.

Bet ya can't guess what this is!!!!! Hint: KHHhhuuu-HHHuuuuh (raspy breathing).

What? This is normal. Best part was how the crowd treated them as actual police.

Bla bla bla jokes about huge gaping holes.

You could really tell who was from the North and Midwest. They were wearing coats as thick as mattresses.

Danger! Danger! FIRE DANGER!

I guess if I had to go full-EMO and pinpoint what is most magical and touching about the ABQ BALLOON FIESTA, it'd be the feeling that you, as an observer, can do your part to lift these hot air balloons. There is the obvious distinction between the actual balloon teams/workers and the paying audience, but unlike any other massive-scale entertainment you are communicating and interacting directly with the event.

We walk under the ropes and talk with the wranglers. We stand close to the torch engines and warm our bodies before moving on to the next balloon. We anxiously hope and cross our fingers that the balloons will safely rise off the ground and fly away. And it's the whole community, worker and observer, that fills up with happiness and warm excitement when that floating balloon ascends into the sky.

It reminds us that we're together and are able to love and enjoy something together as an enormous crowd of varying individuals. And if that's emo, so what?

It was weird to not be drunk or high on caffeine and have this much fun. To simply observe and enjoy an event is probably good for my blood pressure anyway. I highly recommend it.

This whole stretch of time was really engaging. Most of the balloons were still on their side, so the whole grass field looked like a garden with humongous rainbow-colored pumpkins. Except the jack-o-lantern balloon. That one looked like a humongous regular-colored pumpkin. We watched the torch fires heat up a balloon, then walked to the next one and so on and so forth.

Triple awwwww!

Once most of the balloons were up, you could really see how large the crowd was. And the cops/security did a good job of staying the fuck out of view. It would've ruined the whole fantastical experience.

Oh, and that was the other thing ...

We argued whether it'd be a good idea to be on mushrooms there.

This one is scarier in picture form.

I don't particularly like the popsi can balloon, but this photo does a really good job of demonstrating the scale of the balloons. Look at how effing gargantuan the bottom of the can is to that little girl in pink! COOL!

WDYTTAPA?! (what do you think they are pointing at)

Basically, at this point we all are just waiting for the sun to go down and biding our time by taking pictures, scaring children with weird faces or playing MARRY, FUCK, KILL.

Ok, so Marry, Fuck, Kill: the Darth Vader helmet balloon, the Tweety bird balloon, and the Noah's Ark balloon?

I was like really into taking pics of the sun blinding my camera lens.

This is taking forever. Let's skim through the rest of the day pics (WITH LIMITED COMMENTARY! I'll try to not type too much!!!!!!) and get to the cool night photos.

Bunny ears!

Almost sunset!!

We're here! THE GLOWDEO!!!!! zomg, i die!

I wuv the expression on this lady in the lower left corner! (above pic)

I'm getting soooo ......

EXCITED!!! The moment we've been waiting hours for has finally arrived! GLOW IN THE DARK BALLOONS!! KILL ME I'M TOO EXCITED AAAahahahah

WOOOOO! We went insane waiting for Glowdeo to start and then went double insane walking under the clouds of glowing balloons! GO INSANE WITH MEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

SCARY! BUT COOL!

That squirrel looks evil! But is friendly!

OR IS SHE?! AAAAHHH! Just kidding! She is friendly for the most part! NOT EVERYONE CAN BE FRIENDLY AT ALL TIMES, WE ARE ALL HUMAN! EXCEPT HER! SHE IS BALLOON!

Everyone. Literally everyone. Had their cameras or camera phones out. I saw kids in STROLLERS taking pictures with their own cameras! WOW IS THAT WEIRD OR WHAT? IS IT ALREADY THE FUTURE?!