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2004 Pennington Balloon Championships
Congratulations to Gary Odom and his wife for placing 6th in a field of 38 in the Louisiana State Balloon Championships here in Baton Rouge this weekend. Gary is an Assistant Professor in the Professional Aviation Department at Tech and was piloting his balloon Nuper that was sponsored by Tech. The Odoms are a great addition to the Tech family and it was a pleasure to meet them.
Some of us from the Capital Area Champs group helped out Ryan Richard and Vince Miller run the Tech tent this weekend. Hats off to Ryan for getting Tech involved in this event. Let me tell you folks, we definitely need to do this every year!
The paper estimated 45,000 people attended the competition Saturday, and I imagine they had a similar turnout for Friday night. During the five hours we were in the Tech tent I bet we handed out 250 (wild guess) Tech posters to little kids and teenagers. Nothing is more satisfying than watching the child of a parent decked out in LSU gear snatching up those Tech posters.
But what shocked me the most, and I live down here, is the lack of name recognition Tech has in southern Louisiana. I always knew we had some work to do, but damn! Some actual (and sincere) quotes form Saturday night: "Where is Ruston?"; "Do y'all have doctorate programs?"; "Are y'all part of Louisiana Technical College" (a technical school in the Baton Rouge area). Granted some of these people may not be in the main stream of academia, but I still think we could benefit a great deal by showing our face down here every once in a while.
Again, congratulations to Gary Odom and thanks to Ryan Richard and Vince Miller. Next year maybe we can sponsor a balloon with the Tech-T on it. I would love to see that flying over Baton Rouge!
P.S. - The poster that was so popular with the kids was designed by Keely Perkins and titled "Red and Blue Dawg". They loved it!
The following link as some pictures from the event.
http://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=cre...90&AID=1700781
Last edited by RougeDawg; 08-08-2004 at 01:00 PM.
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Re: 2004 Pennington Balloon Championships
Wish that I could have been there, but we had a prior commitment this weekend. Looks like Tech was well-represented by you guys. By chance, were there any posters left? If so, I would like to have one to put in my Tech room. If not, we will continue gathering other items.
Sounds like it was a lot of fun........Thanks to all our volunteers!
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Re: 2004 Pennington Balloon Championships
Kewl, I had a balloon land next to my place the other day. I didn't even know about the competition until I was going down Kenilworth and saw it. Good to hear someone from Tech did well.
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Re: 2004 Pennington Balloon Championships
Nice setup in those pics, guys. You're right, a giant Louisiana Tech logo (or two) on one of those balloons would look outstanding!
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Re: 2004 Pennington Balloon Championships
I imagine some LSU board member helped create Louisiana Technical whatever with the idea of having just such confusion arise.
You guys did a great job of representing Tech in BR. I hope we can do something similar up here in Arkansas some day soon.
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