HOT-AIR BALLOONING EVENTS

"The best way of travel... if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature."

— William Pene du Bois, 'The Twenty-one Balloons' (1947)

Zeta Balloon
at Glow

The larger hot-air ballooning events are often referred to as "Rallies". While the smaller events are usually called "Fly-Ins" (dawn) or "Glows" (dusk) and may even have fewer than a dozen balloonists on the flight roster. The Old Mesilla Balloon Glow (North of Santa Teresa and just South of Las Cruces, New Mexico), is one of the spectacular local events my crew and I attend.