Word: ballooned
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With the development in the mid-'60s of the modern hot-air balloon, equipped with a Ripstop nylon envelope and a lightweight propane burner, drifting aloft became a relatively simple-and safe-divertissement. In 1963 there were only six hot-air balloons in the U.S. A decade later the number was 300, and today there are nearly 1,000. In this age of Concordes and space shuttles, some 3,000 balloon pilots are licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and perhaps twice as many friends and relatives serve as nonlicensed crew members...
Some 150 aeronauts took their airships to Indianola, Iowa, this month for the twelfth Balloon Federation of America's national hot-air balloon championships. They competed in events testing precision flying, wafting in gaudy splendor over the rolling farm lands. Former B.F.A. President Bruce Comstock, who practices three times a week with friends in Ann Arbor, Mich., captured his third title with his striped balloon, christened John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt...
...balloonists ascend into the skies, the sum also rises. The standard hot-air balloon costs about $7,000, but custom-built models with designer graphics and suede-covered champagne carriers can go as high as $30,000. Insurance premiums, inspection fees and propane costs add another couple of hundred dollars. To keep down expenses, aeronauts often team up to buy an airship or they join a balloon club. Even so, a would-be pilot may have to pay up to $1,500 for lessons before he can be licensed...
...parties-in-interest," meaning institutions or individuals who have business or fiduciary relations with the fund; 55 loans were classified as "uncollectible" and 26 were in outright default. A generous proportion of the loans was granted on especially favorable terms, with minimal payments for years and a big 'balloon" upon termination. On one $4.8 million loan to a fund asset manager, Alexander Butcher, repayment of $4.2 million is deferred until...
...gawking at chariot races or lion-Christian munch-ins; of the 18th century Londoners who visited Vauxhall Gardens to goggle at fireworks and take in country music; and of the Parisians who in 1817 rode the original shoot-the-chute (it was called saut du Niagara) or gasped at balloon ascents at Ruggieri's fêtes champêtres. Some parkgoers today recall grandparents' tales of the great 1893 Chicago Exposition, which introduced the Ferris wheel; their parents may have courted at Coney Island...