Interesting Weekend

This week was the Balloon Festival here in Mesquite. The Casa Blanca Casino host the event. The year we were here Jim and Elaine came up and we attended the event. It was a pretty cold January that year, but we had fun watching the balloons take off and we went at night to watch the glow. After Jennifer passed I started helping with crew balloons. What this entails is being a person that helps get the balloon ready to inflate, helping the pilot inflate it, helping them launch it, and then chasing the balloon to were ever the pilot lands it. Getting the balloon deflated, and then packing the balloon up. Usually I volunteer all three days of the festival. This year I only worked for two days because I had a conflict the third day. The first two days after the balloons launch the various balloon crews have a tailgate where everyone gets together and the balloon owners cook up food and everyone just grazes and sits around and visits and drinks.

Anyway this year, the weather was all over the place. The first day was a great day for flying. It was cool (but not cold) temperature day and there was hardly any wind. This year I got assigned to a crew that had two balloons. A husband and wife team out of AZ. Well on Friday, one of the balloons (husbands) went up and ended up landing in the same parking lot about 500 feet from where it started. So that was the easiest chase I have ever been on and made packing the balloon back up easy.

Unfortunately on Saturday the weather changed, it was still a cool morning, but it was windy. In fact too windy for the balloon crews to safely fly. However, the balloons do a static display. Meaning they unpacked and inflated but stayed on the ground. My friend Chantile (Chantile and I are in Rotary together) had volunteered this year, so on Saturday I stayed with her (the ballon’s I was with had plenty of crew) and we ended up sort of helping a balloon from New Mexico. It was a father/daughter team from New Mexico. The daughter was 16 years old and is working on getting her balloon pilot license. On Saturday there was a large contingent of Civil Air Patrol cadets from Utah that had come down, so we had a bunch of nice young backs to help.

Well after the static display, Chantile and I went over to a local soda shop that was having a grand re-opening and was giving out gift bags (they said they were valued at $100) to the first 40 people in line at 10:00 am. They were also having $2 Biscuits and gravy from 8-10. Well Chantile and I were able to get there at just the perfect time. We were able to get a order of biscuits and gravy and were about 10th in line. So we both got gift bags. The bags had a collection of stuff (coupons, some kind of drink/snack holder (or at least that is what I think it is). It did have a free carwash coupon, and a $5.00 gift card to Jimmy John’s. The other things were spa type coupons, which I will not be using. Chantile and I had met one of the new owners of the business at a Chamber of Commerce dinner. She seems like a very nice lady and we hope to get her over to the club to speak and see if we can get her to maybe join the club.

After that I went and met up with one of my old golf buddies from San Antonio who just happened to be visiting Mesquite with his in-laws. His wife’s sister and her husband live in Telluride, CO and they board there horses for the winter at a horse farm here in Mesquite. They have been doing this for several years and have formed a good friendship with the farm owners who let them use a ranch house on the farm. My friend Tim and I golfed together for 11 years and over that time became friends.

It was very nice to see Tim and his wife Susie. It was also nice to meet Tim’s in-laws. Tim had talked about them over the years so it was nice to put a face to the stories. They invited me to stay for dinner and they had a couple of other horse friends that joined us. We had a very nice dinner. Over the years we golfed I also got to meet Tim’s son and Susie’s son and so it was nice to hear about what they are doing as well as catch up on the status of my other golf buddies in San Antonio. I still occasionally text and harass them.

On Sunday I did not volunteer at the Balloon festival, because I needed to help set up a memorial service for the wife of one of the guys in our Pickleball club. It was a Pot Luck type event and was nice little service. The folks were Jewish so the religious part /prayers of the service were in Aramaic, so that was interesting. The rabbi would say the prayer in Aramaic and then in English. Anyway that was done. Then after the service I came home and caught the fourth quarter of the Denver and New England football game and then had a FaceTime call with my friends Dale and Lorie. It was nice catching up with Dale and Lorie.

Then I watched the second half of the Seattle game. I was happy to see Seattle win, I was hoping Denver would win that game, but alas that did not happen. So I guess I will be pulling for the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.

Jennifer would have so enjoyed this weekend and it was tough not having her here with me. I was constantly thinking of her as I was doing all of these things.

Of course the events in Minneapolis were also in my mind. The blood in the streets has started and I am afraid is going to continue to escalate. Our Congressional representatives of both parties need to grow a spine and investigate and impeach numerous Trump cabinet members. The death of Alex Pretti was flat out murder and the leaders of ICE and the justice department are flat out lying and doubling down on those lies. ICE needs to get the hell out of Minnesota as well as several other US cities. I am totally for getting any violent criminal, regardless of their status off our streets and in our communities. But what I am not for, is trashing our Constitution and breaking of our established laws to do it. The Trump administration and ICE are trampling on both and that needs to end NOW!

Well enough for today, my old blood pressure is rising and I need to hang it up for today.