I'm still enjoying recalling my visit with Gail Elliott. I would like to know her better. She's tough, she drives a cool pickup truck, and she attends the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta every year. I went one year and watched in wide-eyed wonder as the Burger King Whopper balloon took off. There was also a Dr. Pepper balloon and a Jack Daniels balloon and multicolored nameless balloons littering the fairgrounds until they took off.
The day my friends and I attended the Fiesta, we got up at three o'clock in the morning. We wanted to arrive before dawn as that is when balloons rise. Balloons may rise then, but I usually don't. I am a night person through and through. But somehow I got my straggling body out of bed for a 4 AM departure to the Fiesta grounds. I did not talk much on the way there.
When we arrived, it was surreal. The festival was in full swing. In pitch darkness, booths lined the grounds and vendors were hawking T-shirts, souvenirs, and food. I marched straight to the java booth and bought a cup of good strong Joe to open the eyeballs wider. Before long, I urgently needed to let the coffee flow on through. So I searched for the restrooms. My heart sank. There were about 20 Port-O-Potties about a quarter of a mile across a field.
I jogged over there and waited in the prodigiously long lines. Everyone else seemed to have had the same idea I did and paid the same price. When at last I had my turn and emerged, dawn had arrived and balloons were already rising into the atmosphere. I rejoined my friends. One of them, a sixty-year-old woman who taught English at Amarillo College, rolled her eyes as she greeted me. She grunted, "Ann, you'll miss the Second Coming because when it happens you'll be in the privy."
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