The 1970S he first balloons flew in the first Albuquerque International Balloon Fiestas® as the city and the nation transitioned from the turmoil of the 1960s and the anti-war protests of the early 1970s through Watergate and the T end of the Vietnam War. The Beatles broke up, Elvis left the building, and Saturday Night Fever set in as people danced to the new rhythms of punk and disco. Society was changing; women’s lib and gay lib began to move into the mainstream. Down in southeast Albuquerque, two young entrepreneurs, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, working with a small hardware developer called MITS, were busy creating a new company: Microsoft. Those early years, for Balloon Fiesta and ballooning in general, were years of learning and experimentation. Pilots sometimes discovered balloons’ limitations and the impact of weather the hard way. But it was also a free-spirited era when balloonists dreamed big dreams and set records, and freely welcomed wide-eyed newcomers into their ranks who became balloonists themselves, growing future Balloon Fiestas. PHO T O: BILL W AL T ON FL YNT OFFICIAL PROGRAM 33