BALLOON IS NEGLECTED.

Topics:  Indianapolis 500

Indianapolis News
May 31, 1911

Bumbaugh-Lieber Craft Gets Stingy Glances From Crowd.

While the drivers were speeding around the brick course during the five-hundred-mile race at the Indianapolis motor speedway, Captain G. F. Bumbaugh, and a party of friends, started a balloon voyage from the field in the center of the track. The balloon was one that Bumbaugh built for Albert Lieber, of this city, and the voyage was the first.

There was a light wind in the northwest and when Bumbaugh released the balloon it rose slowly and drifted away. It was a pretty spectacle, its easy, graceful flight being a strange contrast with the performance of the machines on the track below. But the racers held the interest and the balloon floated away with little more than parting glances from the thousands.

The ascension was made about 4 o’clock, and after a trip of about twenty miles, the balloon was brought to earth in Hendricks county. A Mais truck followed the balloon party, and it was nearby when the balloon descended. The truck was used to haul the balloon and the members of the party back to the city.