Fickle winds but high spirits as annual balloon festival lifts off in Lewiston
The view from inside the balloon: America One pilot Barry DiLibero inflates the balloon Friday morning during the Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival in Simard-Payne Memorial Park in Lewiston. DiLibero also owns Flighthouse, the lighthouse balloon being shown at the festival, and is based out of Pennsylvania. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer)
LEWISTON — It wasn’t the result that Shawna Haley-Bear and Caleb Bear had hoped for.
The mother and son pair from Poland won tickets to the 6 a.m. balloon launch Friday morning that kicked off the 32nd Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival, but high winds canceled all balloon flights Friday morning.
Haley-Bear entered a contest for the tickets through Dirigo Credit Union, the festival’s special shape balloon sponsor. The contest asked entrants a question: If you could create any shape balloon, what would it be?
Haley-Bear chose the “Hopeful” sign.
“There’s so much that’s good in Lewiston-Auburn that we don’t think about, so I feel like that sign makes me think about the good stuff. The stuff that unites us and makes us a community,” said Haley-Bear on Friday morning, who said she has attended the festival for years.
While morning festivalgoers and pilots were disappointed by the grounding, the much larger gathering in the park for the evening launch Friday was treated to a successful launch that saw several balloons soar into the air.
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Friday morning, the festival’s balloonmeister made the final call shortly before 6 a.m. on whether balloons could go up; the winds were deemed too fierce to fly. Despite that, several balloon pilots inflated their balloons and stayed tethered to the ground as hundreds of early-morning festivalgoers watched at Simard-Payne Memorial Park.
To test the winds at various elevations, a small balloon is released 500 feet in the air. By using technology connected to the balloon, the wind speed is measured.
Wind speed Friday morning measured 20 mph. The ideal winds are around 5 to 8 mph, said Bruce Byberg, the balloonmeister.
The view from inside the balloon: America One pilot Barry DiLibero inflates the balloon Friday morning during the Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival in Simard-Payne Memorial Park in Lewiston. DiLibero also owns Flighthouse, the lighthouse balloon being shown at the festival, and is based out of Pennsylvania. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff Photographer)
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“When the sun comes up and heats the earth, the lower winds mix with the higher winds, so that 20 miles per hour will come closer to the surface. We don’t want to land at 10-20 miles per hour,” said Byberg.
Beth and Joe Hamilton were there Friday morning, having traveled from Florida to fly their balloon “Last One.”
The couple of 55 years started piloting after Joe bought Beth a ride for her birthday.
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Beth received her pilot’s license in California and Joe trained in Albuquerque. Both climates are more predictable for flying, in comparison to Maine, they said, but they’ve attended the Lewiston-Auburn festival since the very beginning.
When asked, after all their years ballooning, whether they get upset when weather prevents them from flying, they were emphatic.
“Hell yeah,” said Beth. “But that’s the life of the balloonist. The weather. You learn early, you have to be patient.”
Festival organizers were hopeful the weather would clear for the night and weekend flights. Come 4 p.m., the weather fulfilled those hopes and it didn’t take long for the festival grounds to fill up.
Just 10 minutes after the carnival adjacent to the festival grounds opened, there were lines for the big rides. Kids screamed from the stomach-churning Genesis ride and from the Pharaoh’s Journey just around the corner.
Mary Ellen Pinkham was there with her husband and three grandchildren: 13, 9 and 6 years old. The family had come from Norridgewock to their first-ever balloon festival.
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“We’ve been wanting to go to the big balloon festival down in Albuquerque,” Pinkham said, the kids off on various rides, “so we figured we’d come to this one and see how we like it.”
The verdict? They loved it. Loved the carnival, the food and the prospect of seeing the big balloons rising into the night.
Pinkham loves the sight of the balloons from the grounds, but was she hustling to get a ride in one?
“Not me,” she said, laughing at her own fears. “My best friend went on a balloon ride and said it was great until it was time to land, at which point it was just a controlled crash.”
And speaking of hard landings, Pinkham was also there to see the skydivers, who were expected to jump from a plane at 5 p.m. and land on the festival grounds five minutes later.
At 5 p.m. exactly, three dots appeared next to a plane that had been circling above. For several minutes, those dots grew larger, and each was accompanied by a flag that flapped and rippled all the way down.
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The skydivers landed one-buy-one at about 5:05 p.m., each drawing cheers. The band playing at that moment on the festival stage, JoAnna Hughes and the Ditch Lilies, even paused their show to give the divers a round of applause.
All around the festival grounds, waiting for the arrival of the balloons, hundreds of visitors were busy with one activity or another.
Lines at Damn Yankee Balloons were long as kids waited their turns to enter a half-inflated balloon transformed into a bouncy house.
A dozen or so danced in front of the stage as JoAnna Hughes and her crew pounded out country and rock.
Dave and Lisa, a couple from New Gloucester, were digging it all from their lawn chairs set up near the far end of Simard-Payne Memorial Park.
There was one thing specifically that brought them here.
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“I love the balloons,” said Dave. “It seems like a safe atmosphere and the people are friendly.”
Lisa, meanwhile, tended to agree with Mary Ellen Pinkham on the matter of hot air balloons.
“I like looking at them,” she said. “But I like to keep my feet on something steady.”
As it closed in on dark, the chatter across the festival grounds seemed almost singular minded: Would the balloons be able to launch this evening? Or was the stiff breeze blowing across the grounds still too great a risk.
Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline was of a like mind. All in all, the festival’s opening day was a big success. But what it needed most was calm and cooperative weather.
“So many smiles and beautiful weather,” the mayor said, “except for the damn wind.”
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Maybe the mayor’s ire helped out a little. Just before 6 p.m., it was announced that balloons would, in fact, launch.
A ripple of excitement went through the crowd, but then the wind picked back up again and the chance of a launch seemed uncertain again. Some pilots decided to take to the skies.
Such is the fickle nature of hot air balloons.
Some might say it’s part of their charm.
For more information on the festival and schedule, visit laballoonfest.org/festival/schedule.
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Tagged: auburn maine, lewiston maine, Lewiston-Auburn Balloon Festival
Emily Duggan is a staff writer for the Kennebec Journal. She graduated with a degree in journalism from the University of New Hampshire, where she was a news editor and staff writer for The New Hampshire. More by Emily Duggan
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal reporter and weekly columnist. He's been on the nighttime police beat since 1994, which is just grand because he doesn't like getting out of bed before noon. Mark is the. More by Mark LaFlamme
