Awesome

This morning we did a practice flight from a parking lot near the race track. It was pretty low-key, but did give us a chance to connect some of the equipment in the balloon:

Paul picked a few goals and practiced maneuvering. There's about 400 goals that we can pick from, and some are very different than what we're used to. Here's an intersection of 2 roads that we used for the last one:

And here he is working slowly toward it, with Erica cheering him on (he landed right where she's standing):


After he landed, Erica and I took the balloon up for a 30 minute flight. The scenery here is absolutely breathtaking; probably the only comparable flight I've had is one over Niagara Falls. We flew down one valley, then over a ridge to another valley and landed on a small hill between a couple crop plantings. The pictures can't even come close to doing it justice, but I'll try to post them later if I get a chance.

We spent about 5 hours this afternoon wiring the vans for all the radios, GPS's, and computers we'll be using. Each vehicle will have several radios, at least 2 GPS's, and a laptop computer connected to a GPS that will display a moving map as we drive. That's in addition to the laptop, multiple GPS units, and radios in the balloon.

Shawn and Joe landed in Tokyo about an hour ago, so they're on the way to Motegi right now. Tomorrow will be an insanely busy day, we're leaving the hotel at 5:30am or so and might not be back until after dark. There's a morning flight, refueling, a master briefing, and opening ceremonies...