WORKOUT 32 OF 50 It was quite the crazy adventure filming at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. We did a quick 12-hour trip driving down from Salt Lake City to Albuquerque early Friday morning. We arrived Friday evening, checked into a hotel that was triple the normal price, then went to where the balloon fiesta was being held to scope out a location to film the next morning.
The attendant we spoke with said we needed to be there by 4 am for parking and that we’d need to leave our hotel at 3 am because traffic is crazy! By the time we got back to the hotel and got the kids settled, it was 11 pm. Only 4 hours of sleep and we were back in the car to get over to the balloons. Traffic was so slow! We made it back to the place by 4 am and set up.
It was touch and go there for a moment, as the employees at the fiesta said if the winds were too strong, they wouldn’t be launching and balloons that morning. By 5:30 am we got word that they would be doing the grand ascension of launching balloons around 6:00 am, they were good to go! My cousin and her husband tried to attend the Balloon Fiesta the next morning and it was cancelled because of high winds. We felt very fortunate!
Tyler started to get my mic set up, and realized that they were blocking all wireless transmissions and my mic was only picking up static. We didn’t want to miss the big launch, so we decided to go ahead and film even though my mic wasn’t working. It was a little stressful, and I ended up talking as loud as possible and made bigger hand gestures for cueing.
Later in post-production, we voiced over the entire workouts. It was a fun workout to film, with lots of amazing energy, and beautiful balloons. We decided to drive all the way back home Saturday, another 12-hour drive, with a lunch stop at a Si Senor, a Mexican restaurant, to eat with another one of my beautiful cousins Amy.
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