HOT AIR BALLOON FEST
Clark Airbase
Angeles, Pampangga
February 09, 2007

This wasn’t supposed to be a story about, um, l-o-v-e. Never mind that it was the weekend before Valentine's Day. Never mind that there was a big red heart filled with heated gas rising above the ground. Never mind that my first and only time to ride this thing happened a lifetime ago in Napa Valley and the only other couple in our basket, strangers to us and dressed in a tux and wedding gown, exchanged ‘I do’s’ in a ceremony officiated by our pilot hundreds of feet above lush vineyards glowing red and yellow from the rising sun.



Anyway, I just wanted to get out of town and eat the famous ‘sisig ni Aling Lucing’ by the ‘riles’ in Angeles and maybe pop in one or two bars that line Field’s Avenue and, since I was there already, take photos of the Hot Air Balloon Fest in Clark, the former American airbase.



I left Manila just before the crack of dawn and arrived at Clark at about 5:30 in the morning just in time to catch the multi-national participants setting up their balloons. The place was crawling with photographers from the media and from various camera clubs it was difficult to get a shot with just the balloon crew. I looked around and spotted a team at the far end of the field that had mostly escaped attention from the crowd. I decided to hang with that group. Chatting with the pilot, I found out she was the only female pilot in the race and that it was a race and that she was the three time defending champion and that she single-handedly stitched her balloon together. I thought that was my story. I was going to get into the technicalities of flying and racing this inflatable, flying contraption.





Then I get a tap on my shoulder from this girl whose face looks familiar but I just can’t place. Playing 20 questions – by the 3rd actually - we figured out that we had both gone to the state university and had common friends. It was at this point that my story took its romantic turn. As Myla explained, she and her husband were actually celebrating their wedding anniversary and she decided to surprise her hubby Mejul (which sounds too much like ‘mahal’ which translates to ‘love' which I know is a stretch) to a hot air balloon ride. He knew nothing of her preparations except that it was a surprise and they had to leave Manila at 4 in the morning. With the rising sun reflecting off their eyes, the sweet as sanzrival couple held hands and jumped aboard the basket and lifted off. At this point I will avoid cliché’s like the plague and just say when it comes to love, it’s up in the air.







As a mode of transport, it is probably the most impractical vehicle. Like love, it only goes up or down and mostly you can’t steer right or left and you are at the mercy of the winds. If you want to stay buoyant and keep from sinking, you have to keep the heat up. But it can be exhilarating and take you on the ride of your life. Much like how Myla and Mejul and the two couples in Napa must've felt.









The air show lasted four days, from Thursday till Sunday. There were a lot of foodstalls and a marching band kept the atmosphere festive as people brought their familiies and pets even.





Love or something like it seems to have infected some student pilots who gathered enough g-force (a.k.a. guapo-force) to introduce themselves to some of the pretty young things.



The festival featured other forms of flight as children flew kites and daredevils flew ultralights and paragliders.