The GREAT Balloon Race

After a brief tangent on my obsession with Target, back to the Derby Festival… This weekend, the big event is the Great Balloon Race! Sound thrilling and exhilarating??? It is. It starts with the balloon glow this evening followed up by the race bright and early tomorrow morning. Looks like this year it could be cancelled due to weather, but I have been in the past and it’s more fun than you think.

When I was little, my parents would roust my brother and I with the promise of doughnuts for breakfast, pile us in the car, and take us down to the Fairgrounds to see the hot air balloons. They are all laid out in different stages of inflation and the shapes and colors were always my favorite part. And the best balloons give out candy and stickers. After that, the “hare” balloon takes off (floats off?) and flies to some spot and lands and marks the spot with an “X.” All the other balloons must follow the Hare (they are called the “Hounds”…how clever) and attempt to drop a bag of seeds from their balloon onto the X. The closest bag wins!

Now I did not know any of this until I checked the rules on the website….After the balloons started taking off, my family and I would run back to the car so we could follow them. Once we got bored, we would head back into town for the promised doughnut breakfast.

By the way....All these festival events have free admission with the a Pegasus Pin. I get one every year and if you get a gold one, you can turn it back in and enter a drawing for all sorts of cool prizes. Or you can hold onto the gold one and show it off to everybody and maybe sell it for thousands one day on eBay!! Right. My dad always gets the gold ones. Also going on this weekend is the Derby marathon and mini marathon. People run all over the city causing traffic. I could maybe walk a mile. Therefore, I will be getting doughnuts in honor of the Balloon Race.