Up, Up and Away Festival in Indio

I did not ride the cloud-hopper. That’s a balloon that holds one person sitting on a seat made like an apple tree swing. The daring young man on the swing seat rises slowly into the sky as the balloon fills with hot air.

I know that dear little ladies ride the ones with the big baskets attached, but not this dear little lady. The wicker and reed baskets look like huge Winnie the Pooh picnic baskets, and what with the flames of the gas roaring away at the mouth of the balloon, I’m afraid I would feel like half cucumber sandwich and half toasted marshmallow.

A young man named Scott Caddow is the dreamer who decided that Indio was ready for a balloon festival. The clear desert skies over Indio and La Quinta almost always hold two or three balloons looking like 28-flavor ice cream cones in square holders. Apparently, the thermals are just right to buoy the balloons along.

Of course, I don’t know what a thermal is, but Dr. George Fishbeck, enthusiastic weather forecaster on television, speaks of them glowingly. It turns out that they are rising columns of warm air that buoy up balloons, glider planes or gliding birds. The effervescent Dr. George was the weather analyst for the balloonists.

He held a weather briefing for the balloon teams just before their third takeoff last Sunday, and I didn’t understand one word but the teams did. Actually I don’t know anything about ballooning, but it looks like great fun--except for the gas flames, which didn’t seem to bother the teams.

The teams are large. There are people taking covers off things, unfolding things, lighting the gas, poking, prodding, and when the balloon is nicely fattened with hot air, everyone jumps in the basket and rises majestically in the air.

It was colorful, soothing, a dreamy thing to watch. I think they decide the winner by determining who comes closest to a designated spot some distance from the take-off spot in the middle of a huge polo field.

Hundreds of people ring the polo fields for the balloon events and the polo matches. The entire three-day ballooning and the week and a half of polo matches were presented to the desert area by the Stouffer Esmeralda Resort.

Scott Caddow put the two-day balloon festival together and plans a lot more balloon events. The balloon pilots were from California, Texas, New Mexico, Oregon--and one each from Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina. All of the gentlemen are winners of championship events. There were 30 balloons promised, but I’m sure I saw 36 in the air at one time. They are wonderfully colored in bright, rich colors. Rather like watching flowers float through the sky.

My favorite was a balloon covered with the continents of the world and, near the base of the craft, flags of all nations circled the puffy wonder. There was one craft that had the head of a stork wearing a deliveryman’s blue cap and holding a sling in his great orange beak that, of course, held the special-delivery baby. It was called Great Expectations. Another one had the nose of a 747 jet on one side of the balloon.

A pair of sky divers jumped from their airplane. They joined hands in midair and floated perfectly in their parachutes to a designated spot in the middle of the field, separating hands just as they landed, standing perfectly erect, incandescent in red and purple.

The guests could take helicopter rides, eat all kinds of food, buy sweat shirts and T-shirts, see an art exhibit. They could see old-fashioned biplane exhibitions or take a ride in one.

There were horses gleaming like ebony, manes braided with satin ribbons in Andalusian fashion. The young women riding these gorgeous animals wore flat-brimmed hats with the front brims tilted slightly over their foreheads, surely the headgear with the most arrogance and panache.

A young woman with a plumb-line straight back drove a four-in-hand drawn by dark chestnut horses. She gave rides to delighted people, her carriage decorated at each corner with red velvet bows and Christmas greenery with a wreath fastened to the back of her elegant equipage. A team of immense mules pulled a great carry-all, also delighting riders.

And there was polo. Alexander Haagen III founded Empire Polo with its winter headquarters in Indio. A polo field is nine acres, and there are several polo fields at the Indio center.

I used to go with my father every Sunday to the Riviera polo field to see the matches when I was in high school. We saw great polo in Indio, with egg roll and crullers, which I don’t remember at Riviera.

The busiest and most gracious lady at the balloon-polo festival was Pansy Poulis, who dragooned a bunch of helpful young men and women to drive hospitality golf carts and dispense information and good cheer.

There was even a magician who made a Chinese dove appear and disappear. Most of all, I hope the rabbit who appeared in his tricks had a lovely day and enjoyed his work. Everyone else did.