“Travel Q&A: Insider's guide to Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta - San Jose Mercury News” plus 2 more |
- Travel Q&A: Insider's guide to Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta - San Jose Mercury News
- KSU grad's maps guide oil cleanup - Wichita Eagle
- Colo. businessman maps out beer drinker's guide - Denver Post
| Travel Q&A: Insider's guide to Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta - San Jose Mercury News Posted: 12 Sep 2010 12:13 AM PDT By Ann Tatko-Peterson Click photo to enlarge KRT TRAVEL STORY SLUGGED: BALLOON KRT PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT KRUG/DALLAS MORNING NEWS (FORT WORTH OUT) (September 25) Last year, 903 balloons flew during the 28th annual Kodak Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. This year, an even 1,00 balloons are registered to participate in the nine-day event. (KRT) PL KD 2000 (Horiz) (smd) -- NO MAGS, NO SALES --  Travel Q&A Q: Do you have any pointers on the balloon fiesta in Albuquerque, N.M.? My friend and I, both in our 70s, will be going in October for a couple of days. We already have reservations at a hotel, but would like any info on getting to the event, taking chairs and other inside info. We have contacted the tour board there and have asked hotel personnel for any pointers, but most of what they tell us is kind of sketchy. A: For starters, don't forget your camera. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is one of the most spectacular visual events in the world. Not much compares to the sight of 500 balloons rising during the mass ascensions Oct. 2 and 3). This year's fiesta runs from Oct. 2-12 at the almost 360-acre Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque. The park includes a staggering 78-acre launch field, from which the balloons take off.You can find a comprehensive 22-page downloadable PDF guest guide on the fiesta's official website at www.balloonfiesta.com. Included are a full schedule of events, a map of the venue and a parking and shuttle bus route map. For those without Internet access, here are a few things worth knowing:
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| KSU grad's maps guide oil cleanup - Wichita Eagle Posted: 05 Sep 2010 10:04 PM PDT BY RICK PLUMLEEThe Wichita EagleYou wouldn't think bartending and creating maps for the Gulf oil spill have much in common. But Matthew Hosey of Wichita learned this summer that they did. Hosey worked part-time as a bartender in Manhattan while finishing his bachelor's degree in geography at Kansas State University before graduating in May. "There's no such thing as doing one thing at time as a bartender," Hosey said. "You get used to dealing with pressure." Plenty of pressure, stress and chaos greeted him when he arrived at an oil spill command post in Mobile, Ala., in late June. "At first, my head was spinning," said Hosey, who grew up in Goddard. He spent the next six weeks working 12 to 14 hours a day — 14 days on, four days off — for one of the oil recovery companies contracted by British Petroleum to help contain the disaster that erupted with the April 20 explosion of an off-shore drilling rig. Hosey, 27, used his skills as a geographic information system analyst to collect data, create maps and make daily presentations for operations in Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. Much of his information came from satellite images and pictures taken from airplanes and helicopters. More data was picked up from workers rating the heaviness of oil that had washed up on the shoreline. Hosey pieced it all together to create the maps. And he had to do it often, usually producing a map every 10 minutes. Right from the start, he was asked to learn 10 maps. "The guy who trained me was intense," Hosey said. "He didn't sugar-coat anything." It prepared him well for what he would face. He made daily updates for 10 to 15 maps — aerial operations, oil observation summaries, boom placements and where oil was being washed up on the shore — plus met map requests from contractors and the U.S. Coast Guard. "But they didn't like you to call it oil on the maps because you couldn't be sure what it was," Hosey said. "So they wanted us to call it anomalies." His working environment in a large building with no room dividers was often chaotic, some 650 people all trying to carry out a mixture of duties. "A thousand different conversations going on at once," Hosey said. "All these people were trying to accomplish something." To help bring some order, categories of workers wore different colored vests. Hosey was in the planning group, so he wore blue. He and his co-workers lived in a make-shift tent behind the command building. They were fortified with three meals a day. Good thing; the work was long, hard and intense. For his final three weeks in Mobile, Hosey worked the night shift from 8 p.m. to about 9 a.m. One of his least-expected duties came each morning at 6 o'clock sharp. From his very first week on the job, he presented the maps in briefings to the operation's top brass, including executives with BP and the Coast Guard. "I'm sitting in the front of this room with 50 or 70 people behind me waiting to see the correct visuals on the screen," Hosey said. "That was part of the chaos." With the capping of the well in mid-July and the cleanup progressing, jobs were phased out — including Hosey's. But his work was regarded so highly that the Coast Guard has asked him to display his boom retrieval map at a conference next summer in San Diego, he said. He spent his last eight hours on the job creating the map, carefully highlighting the booms against a faded-out background. Some may wonder why a veteran analyst wasn't chosen to make those morning presentations. "I don't know," Hosey said. The obvious answer is that he isn't your usual recent college graduate. Besides being older, he came to the task with hands-on experience in the working world. A 2002 graduate of Goddard High School, Hosey went to Pratt and Cowley community colleges before taking two years off school to work full time. His duties ranged from driving a 7UP truck to working as a plumber. Last summer, Hosey was an intern for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "That's probably a big reason why I got the job," he said. But don't discount his passion for geography. As a first-grader he took home flash cards of the United States. He had them memorized and could write in the names of all the states. He later won a geography bee at his Goddard elementary school. "I've been obsessed with geography for a long time," Hosey said. And now he has the satisfaction of using that passion to accomplish something. "Before I went down there, I was pretty upset at the situation," Hosey said. "I had no idea I would be able to help out. "Now it will be one of those things to talk about for years." He's now back looking for a job, but you have to figure this summer's work will open some doors. "Coming out of college, it was the best job I could ask for," Hosey said. "I made a lot of contacts. My fourth day down there, I was asked if I would be interested in a full-time job in Anchorage, Alaska. "I told him I'd think about it. I'd love to go there, but I'm not sure if I want to plant roots there." But he is sure this summer prepared him to handle pressures that even juggling customers at the bar couldn't. "I can't see how it couldn't," Hosey said. "I learned and succeeded in that environment." Reach Rick Plumlee at 316-268-6660 or rplumlee@wichitaeagle.com.   This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Colo. businessman maps out beer drinker's guide - Denver Post Posted: 29 Aug 2010 12:08 AM PDT By R. SCOTT RAPPOLD The Gazette COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The late 1970s was not an easy time to find a good bottle of suds in America. In an age dominated by a few mass-produced, plain American lagers, why wasn't there a map showing where someone could get a better-tasting brew, beer-lover Mike Laur wondered. It took 30 years, but Laur has created that map. Laur, a Colorado Springs business owner, released the fourth edition of The Beer Drinker's Guide to Colorado last month. After initial struggles, the map and coupon book has begun to sell well across Colorado. "It's been a learning curve for us, figuring out how to sell the thing and market it," said Laur, over a glass of porter on a recent afternoon. He paused. "I wish I could say it's been extraordinarily profitable." That's fine, though. He's not in it for the money. He's in it for the beer. And Colorado is a good place to do it. The latest edition of the guide, put together by Laur and his 3.5 employees (one works part time), lists 126 breweries, 20 more than when he launched the publication in 2008. Colorado is among the leading states for beer production, and many of its beers—not just Coors—can be bought around the country. The Great American Beer Festival, the Super Bowl of beer festivals, is held each September in Denver. A Texas native, Laur came to Colorado Springs in the early 1980s. After a stint as a photojournalist, he opened his own graphics and video company here in 1983. He watched with delight as the microbrew industry spread in the late '80s and '90s. Colorado Springs' oldest microbrewery, Judge Baldwin's, opened in 1990 on the first floor of the Antlers Hilton. The large brewing companies that long dominated American beer, Laur said, "basically created a crappy product and tried to hide that with marketing." But while some beverage-producing regions have capitalized on that, such as the wine-tourism industry in northern California, the beer industry was disjointed, with nothing to pull it together, a "third-class citizen," Laur said. So in 2007 he pulled his beer guide idea off the shelf, like a vintage barley wine, blew off the dust and set about making it. The first edition came out in January 2008, a full-color map of Colorado's breweries, with facts about beer, beer-tasting tips and tidbits about Colorado. But Laur had nowhere to sell it. Liquor stores, which he hoped would be a significant market, refused to carry the guide, because it wasn't included on the Colorado Liquor Enforcement Division's list of what they can sell. When he asked the state to allow it, officials said no, although the state's liquor code allows the sale of "beverage publications, books or magazines, where the use or content is focused primarily on alcohol beverages or the alcohol beverage industry." Undeterred, he waged a 10-month struggle with the bureaucracy, finally convincing liquor-enforcement officials to take a look at the guide. They approved it for sale. The first edition, by then, had been collecting dust for so long that Laur recycled all 4,000 copies. Sitting in a brewpub in Pueblo one day, he and a friend were scratching their heads about how they could make the guide a success. Another patron overheard them and asked, "Why not give out free beer?" Free beer? That was what they needed. For the second edition, they got four breweries to include coupons for free beer. They sold most of the second edition. All 5,000 copies of the third edition sold. The fourth edition includes coupons for free beer, food or merchandise at 26 breweries around the state. Laur printed 6,000 copies. Laur laughed. "I don't know if the coupons have driven the map or if the map has driven the coupons," he said. Duane Lujan, brewer and "beer ambassador" at Rocky Mountain Brewery, a taproom and home-brew store in Colorado Springs, has seen an increase in people coming from other areas, map and coupon in hand. "They bring them in all the time and I always make the comment, 'That's the best beer in the world.' Grandpa said the best beer in the world is on someone else's nickel," Lujan said. They're the beer tourists, suds lovers going around the state and checking beers off their list. But Lujan also sees value in attracting more casual beer drinkers. "I think Mike and (employee Carole White) have done an absolutely wonderful job. They promote the breweries. They promote the home-brew shops. They promote tap rooms and other bars," he said. "I just think it's been a tremendous addition to the Colorado market." Laur sees the emergence of local beers as more of a resurgence. A century ago, beer was an intensely local product, brewed with local recipes and water, in the local climate, to create a product that was uniquely, well, local. "Beer is a perishable product. The only reason it has become mass-produced is because technology enabled the brewers to do that," he said. Like connoisseurs of wine or coffee, beer lovers learn to appreciate the subtleties of the drink, and while the vast majority of the market is still dominated by the major beer producers, it's the love of craft beer that keeps Laur publishing the guide. "It's not my swill in the glass. I would rather have something that's more interesting, challenges me, challenges my taste buds and makes me think about the possibilities that are out there," he said. "If we're able to make money off of this, that's great. But mostly it's supporting the message that craft beer is a great thing to appreciate." 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