Boise Braces For Hot Air At River Fest

Imagine, if you will, that a 135-foot-high hot air balloon shaped like a Tyrannosaurus Rex has just landed on your roof.

It’s happened. About five years ago during the Boise River Festival hot-air balloon rally, Dino the Dinosaur set down on the roof of a home in southeast Boise.

“The lady that lived there was so thrilled, she was so excited she could hardly stand it,” said Scott Spencer, event director for the balloon rally. “She was busy taking pictures of it.”

This is the week that the morning skies over Boise fill with hot-air balloons. The balloons launch every morning of the River Festival that has the right weather conditions. This week, they started with 18 on Tuesday, and were scheduled to launch 70 balloons a day by this weekend. The festival wraps up Sunday.

Boise is something of a mecca for hot-air balloonists. Only Albuquerque has more registered hot-air balloons in residence; Boise has 35.

The draw? Stable air in the mornings.

Spencer says 200 balloonists landed on a waiting list this year because the Boise event has become so popular.

“They’re great transportation if you don’t care where you go or how long it takes to get there,” Spencer said. “That’s the beauty of it. You don’t know where you’re going to land.”

Most balloons this week landed in parks, school yards, streets, back yards or cul de sacs.

Spencer said the balloon pilots who come to the River Festival are among the world’s best, so problem landings are rare - though a champagne bottle-shaped balloon thumped down abruptly on a neighbrhood street Friday.

But he remembers easily the “goofiest place I’ve ever landed.”

It was a few years back when he was at an event near Monroe, Wash. Thinking he was setting the balloon down at a large warehouse complex, he landed at a state prison.

Guards converged and surrounded him.

“They were very nice to me, but suggested I should not do that ever again.”

Since you’re here…

The governor’s office was packed with supporters of longtime chief Court of Appeals Judge Jesse Walters, reporters had their pens at the ready and TV cameras were rolling.

“This is the most press coverage we’ve had for a long time,” Gov. Phil Batt said, “so it seems to be a propitious time for me to announce my plans for re-election.”

After the somewhat nervous laughter died down, Batt added, “But I must make it clear I’m not doing that today.”

The gathering was for Batt’s announcement that he’d selected Walters for the state Supreme Court.

Telling it like it feels

When Lt. Gov. Butch Otter spoke to the Idaho Press Club this week about his role as chairman of the governor’s committee to study gaming in Idaho, he stressed that the committee wants to look at all types of gambling. Most of the attention and coverage the committee is getting relates to Indian gaming, he said.

But in response to questions from reporters, Otter acknowledged that the vast majority of those attending the committee’s public hearings across the state also have been most interested in Indian gaming issues.

That must be because horse racing, the state lottery and the like have been debated at length in the state, Otter said, but Indian gaming is a matter of federal law and tribal sovereignty. It’s not something the average Idaho voter’s had much say on.

“I believe we’re thirsty for debate on that because we didn’t get to debate it,” Otter said. “It’s kind of like getting halfway through a burp.”

Bershers moves on

Khris Bershers, the ‘86 Coeur d’Alene High grad whose career took her to Washington, D.C., and a high-profile spot as press secretary to U.S.

Rep. Helen Chenoweth, says of her now-former boss: “I liked her immediately. She’s very open and she doesn’t mince words, which I think is hard to find in a politician.”

Bershers, 29, who’s worked for a newspaper, a political institute, a federal agency and worked toward a master’s degree in political science, left Chenoweth’s staff this week. “I want to do something different,” she said.

“I figure by the time I’m 35, I will have worked in enough jobs to figure out exactly what I want to do.”

, DataTimes