The News That the ABF Does Not Want You to Hear!

Hello my fellow Black Sheep! The following opinions stated by me are my opinions only.
This past week proved to be quite interesting as news circulated about a couple of problems that were associated with the Adirondack Balloon Festival. It is funny how they try to keep news out of the media but it finally shows up unexpectedly. Screw the Post Star for not having anything about the following story and kudos to The Chronicle for the unbiased report.
If you wondered why you did not see the Saga City Balloon after all the headlines that it received prior to the Festival this is why. On Thursday morning, 9/18/08, 3 pilots took the balloon to the Queensbury School where they were to inflate it for the children. I wanted to do the same thing for the school that I work at but figured that the 12-15 mph winds were just too high for me. Obviously the Saga City pilots thought differently and decided to inflate the balloon for the kids. During the cold pack it was reported that the balloon, which was tied off thank God, launched into the air a good six feet and came down on a woman thus breaking a vertabrae in her neck. She was transported to Glens Falls Hospital and later sent to Albany Med. where she is recuperating. Thank God that nobody else was injured in this "accident". My question to these pilots is quite simply put, what the hell were you thinking? Was the pressure to perform that much that you made the decision to inflate when you knew the winds were as high as they were. I thought that safety was paramount to the ABF and their pilots? Obviously you 'tards did not get the memo! So now the ABF has a reportable accident to the FAA or will they distance themselves from the Saga Pilots to keep their "perfect" record of no accidents going? I will be talking to the FAA about the accident to see if they have it recorded as something that happened with the ABF or as a separate incident.
The next piece of info was told to me by a crew member of a well known ABF pilot and how the next mornings briefing went down. The ABF launched their balloons quite late into the evening on Saturday. The BSS balloons had either made a landing or were making approach as the ABF balloons were launching. One balloon inparticular was continuing NE towards Fort Ann and was above power lines. They were having trouble moving away from the lines and finally ended up landing at 7:20pm. FYI: sunset was 6:55pm that evening. The balloon also landed within 50 yards of the power lines and had to be pulled quickly away from them.
At the next mornings briefing it was lightly taked about and pilots were cautioned about it. Pilots should have told the ABF Balloonmeister that by launching them that late they were only asking for problems such as this to arise.
Finally, the ABF tells a guy that he cannot participate in their festival anymore for simply wearing a BSS t-shirt. Is that discrimination or what?
I would love to hear any comments so please be sure to send any.
More to come!!!!