Hot Air Affair Festival Brings Balloons,Family Fun to CAA Event

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

By late afternoon Friday, before the first balloon has lifted from the field, the Anderson Civic Center’s launch grounds will begin celebrating Labor Day Weekend with more than just fun in mind.

As vendors arrange tables and children gravitate toward the KidZone, families will look upward at the wide September sky where more than 40 hot-air balloons are set to begin the slow work of filling with air and rising above Anderson.

The Cancer Association of Anderson’s “Hot Air Affair: Rising Above Cancer” returns Friday through Sunday to the Anderson Civic Center Balloon Launch Field, for a free event which combines the pleasures of a balloon festival — flights, glows, tethered rides, food, music, vendors and spectacle — with the less visible but more consequential work of supporting local people living with cancer.

This year’s affair will overlap with Anderson County’s “Celebrate Anderson” festivities, producing a Labor Day weekend in which balloons, skydivers, fireworks, drones, a color run, a parade of tiny Shrine Club cars and an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile will all occupy a relatively small patch of on the balloon launch field.

The money raised by the Cancer Association stays in Anderson County, where it supports cancer patients with expenses that accumulate around treatment, including mileage reimbursement, nutrition, insurance premiums, wigs, hats, education, referrals and other forms of assistance.

“This is all about how the Cancer Association of Anderson helps local cancer patients,” said Angie Stringer, the organization’s executive director. “So, all the money we raise from this event and other events that we do stays in Anderson County to help your neighbors, your family members, and maybe even you, to help with mileage reimbursement, to help with nutrition, to help with insurance premiums, to help with wigs, hats, education, referrals, anything that you need. We’re here to walk through you through that journey with you.”

The association’s signature event is free and is expected to feature more than 40 balloons, weather permitting.

The Hot Air Affair will begin Friday evening and continue through Sunday night. Flights, glows and tethered rides are scheduled during the calmest parts of the day, early in the morning and again toward evening, but every balloon activity remains subject to weather conditions, particularly the winds above the ground.

“Saturday morning, we’ll kick off with our balloons in the air early in the morning, around 7-9” Stringer said. “Then in the evening, it’s from like six o’clock to about 8:30.”

Friday’s festivities begin at 5 p.m., with balloon flights, glows and tethered rides planned from 6-8:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday morning balloon sessions are scheduled from 7-9 a.m., and evening balloon programming is planned from 6-8:30 p.m.

The festival will also include more than 100 vendors, food, a KidZone and tethered rides.

A new visitor this year will arrive in the shape of an oversized hot dog.

“We feel like we’ve kind of arrived,” Stringer said, “because we have the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile coming out. So come get your weenie whistles and enjoy seeing the Hotdoggers.”

The Hotdoggers, the brand representatives who travel the country in the Wienermobile, will join a weekend already dedicated to the proposition that fundraising often works best when it includes something people would not normally expect to see in a parking field.

Saturday will be designated Warrior Day, with programming for cancer survivors, people currently receiving treatment and the families who accompany them through the long work of illness.

The Lift Off in Color 5K Color Run and Walk will open registration at 6 p.m. A welcome and warm-up will follow at 6:15, and the race begins at 6:30. The route will travel around the Civic Center before returning to the balloon launch field. Registration is $35.

“That evening we will have, starting at six o’clock, the Flying Tigers jumping in with flags onto the field,” Stringer said. “They’re exciting to see. We had them last year, so anybody that was there knows they do a really good job jumping in.”

The day’s more emotional centerpiece will come later, at about 8 p.m., with the Warrior Walk, to honor cancer warriors and survivors, people in treatment and those who support them.

For that event, if weather permits, balloons will be arranged in a line, their baskets visible beneath the enormous fabric envelopes. Pilots will light their propane burners in what Stringer described as a “candlestick” display. Participants will walk between the balloons beneath a banner, then have a chance to see the baskets close up and take part in a symbolic gesture involving the burners.

“Ringing the bell is amazing when you finish treatment, but there’s nothing like pulling that propane,” Stringer said. “And it’s freeing and it’s exciting.”

The walk is designed to be accessible to people at every stage of treatment and recovery. Golf carts will be available for those unable to complete the short route on foot, and participants will receive a small gift from the Cancer Association.

“If you’re a survivor, come on out,” Stringer said. “If you’re in treatment now, come on out. It’s a very short walk, and you’ll be able to do it. And if you can’t, we’ll get you there.”

This year’s festival will introduce a new indoor event at the Civic Center: the inaugural Rural Agricultural Expo.

The South Carolina Agricultural Museum will participate with a demonstration cow that children can use to learn how to milk. The museum will also bring two rescue potbelly pigs, creatures whose presence at a hot-air-balloon event is not self-evident but will likely be welcomed by anyone under 10.

Outside the Civic Center, organizers are planning a “cow drop” fundraiser. Two cows will be released into a fenced grid. Participants will purchase squares, and the winning square will be determined by the cows’ eventual choice of location.

“There’ll be two cows, they’ll be released into a fence,” Stringer said. “We’ll sell the squares and then wherever the cow drops, we’ll win.”

Sunday night will join the Hot Air Affair to Celebrate Anderson, the county’s larger Labor Day weekend festival, and the balloons are expected to fly before the Celebrate Anderson drone show and fireworks begin, then depart the field before the aerial entertainment takes over.

“It’ll be pretty exciting,” Stringer said. “A lot of things going on, a lot of things in a small space. But it’ll give you an exciting night to come.”

For Stringer, though, the event’s meaning is less complicated than its schedule. A field full of balloons, a color run, a Warrior Walk, a Wienermobile and two rescue pigs are all means of turning public attention into private relief for people who need it.

“We have a full schedule of fun things for you and your family to do,” she said. “We hope everybody will come out and join us.”