This is me at 4:00 am
This was me at 4:30 am
And that is me at 5:24 approaching the gates. I was finally out of the endless line a little before 6:00.
It was still dark as pitch and no real signage about where anything was, so you just silently moved with the crowd surge and be careful with your footing because you are on grass. Until, that is, you realize it is probably a wise idea to make a pitstop because the grass is dewy and you have cold feet and head for an area with lights and vendors. I’ll spare you the details but the let’s just say the mens room had 35 urinals alone in one place. Much to the disappointment of the ladies in a similar situation, they were told the women’s room was closed and were directed to a dense grid of porta potties.
I decided to take advantage of the knowably smooth asphalt ground and so moved along the row of vendors. Surprisingly, the turkey legs were a big hit. The line for coffee was ridiculous and i changed my mind and looked for a redbull.
The audio that was starting to kick in featured a native american chant and probably one that was to greet the dawn which was still 30 minutes away. It made perfect sense and something was going on in the “infield” of the balloon park which is like a horse track – a big oval with a chewy caramel center.
The infield was having a drone show, naturally. Sponsored by a Casino, in between the drone commercials, we were mesmerized by the series of auto configuring morning scenes: The sun rising over the mountians behind us, a rooster crowing and an alarm clock that started to ring as it struck 6:00. The drones shivered when that happened and the clock exploded and dissolved away.
Because drones are silent, this was choreographed to various snippets of music. Drone shows are pretty amazing to see in person and this one had folks talking about it afterwards when you could actually see someone to speak with. If i had the presence of mind, i should have done short videos because these were not static images. The coffee pot poured coffee, The balloons rose, the rooster rotated and crowed and the there were eggs broken into a frypan and then fried. That last one was hard to pull off, but they certainly get points for trying.
The Big World 