Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1911 — Balloon Racing. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Balloon Racing.

The racing of balloons is becoming one of the most popular outdooi sports, and we have hopes that ii will be many years before any on* invents an indoor variety of the game Exhilarating and exciting to the extreme, the balloon race has caught the fancy of the public. The anchors have also caught several yearling shoata barn roofs, stake-and-rider fences—and one of them caught a hired man asleep in the hay field {n southern Indiana and yanked him aloft so suddenly that he thought It was Judgment day and confessed tq a great many things that had been blamed on other people, before he realized “tils error. The modus operand! of a balloon race is to assemble the contesting balloons in a flock and fill them with gks. At a given signal the ropes are cut and the great bags arise and dash madly hither and yon in their efforts to win. Each balloon is manney by a captain and a pilot All the captain and pilot have to do is tc furnish their pictures to the newspapers and walk home after the balloon comes down, unless they carry railroad fare with them. A captain trying to command a balloon or a pilot trying to pilot it has about as much chance of success as you or I, gentle reader, when we endeavor to convince a hen that she does not want to set After the balloons start in the race they go in all directions. That is the great charm about the sport. Nobody knows where a balloon will go. It is as Irresponsible as a thistledown. Two or three hours after the start one of the balloons comes down on the Baptist church in the next county seat, and after the captain has detached himself from the spire he explains that he could have stayed up for a week, but that the gas leaked or he couldn’t find the right current of air. - That is one annoyance in the sport. A espial* will go up and hunt everywhere for the right current, and not be able to lay his band on it, although he could have sworn it was right where he thought it should be. The other balloons drop from time to time in widely separated sections of the country, speeding in their m»d flight with all the abandon of a bunch, of empty barrels rolling down tall#. The last balloon to come down win* the race; the captain and pilot walk to the nearest town and wire home for money. Already the sporting blood of the country is being warmed. Soon the thoroughbred balloon will appear, and gentlemen farmers will have their balloon stables. Old balloons that have taken purses in many a contest will be rewarded by being turned out to air for the rest of thete lives. The gas companies are very enthn. elastic over the sport. s A L; * -