The 2000S he Balloon Fiesta partied right along with the rest of the world in the millennial year 2000, meeting its goal of welcoming “1,000 [balloons] in 2000.” The first decade of the millennium brought new technological tools to the T world and to ballooning: GPS positioning and tracking, more remote weather stations, and better forecasting. Facebook and Twitter (and Wikipedia) came on the scene, revolutionizing the way people get information. With the coming of the iPod and iPhone and their competitors, suddenly everybody had a little computer in their pocket that they could also use as a phone and a camera. For the most photographed event in the world, this was a not insignificant development. The true tone of the decade was set by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. The Balloon Fiesta almost didn’t happen that year due to the closure of U.S. airspace resulting from the terrorists’ use of airplanes as weapons of mass destruction. That the show went on, and indeed provided a ray of light and color lifting spirits in a dark time, was nothing short of a triumph. But the Balloon Fiesta, like the rest of an increasingly dangerous world, was permanently changed. Safety and security, which had always been a top priority for the event, were enhanced even further. So were amenities on the launch site to make it a pleasant place for guests to linger. For a few hours, people could put aside the PHO cares of the decade and remember what it was like to be a kid again, fascinated by a floating balloon. T O B Y VIC T OR B ANT A OFFICIAL PROGRAM 201