So they are back again, the balloons and all the trite metaphors reporters strain for when covering the biggest hot-air event of the year.

Balloons are jewels floating on a sea of blue. They are the contents of a toy box strewn across the sky.

They are baubles, bubbles, orbs, ornaments, eggs. They are flotillas of color, flights of fancy, rainbows of joy. They dot, decorate, pepper, float, festoon or are sprinkled.

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta brings out the worst romance writer in those of us forced to capture the Kodak moments in black-and-white words or in overwrought ooh-aah sound bites.

We try. Really we do. I'd like to think The Tribune does a better job than most. Still, I've often wondered if we wouldn't best serve readers by providing tons of pretty photos and information on whether the balloons will fly, how many layers to dress in, why the heck you have to pay $10 - twice as much this year - to park your dang car.

But sometimes we are the ones full of hot air. So we try, year after year, hideous prose for a pretty event.

Reporting on the balloon fiesta is something akin to forecasting weather in New Mexico. Unless a major catastrophe or some stray anomaly strikes, what do you say? There are only so many ways to describe "sunny and warm."

The truth is, you can't report the balloon fiesta. Not really. And not enough. Since that first flotilla of color peppered the sky like toys - uh, sorry - from a Coronado Center parking lot in 1972, we have been privileged to behold a sight few in the country can boast.

It ties our tongues, mesmerizes our minds.

And yet, so many of us do not go to the balloon fiesta anymore. It's too early, too cold, too crowded. You've seen one balloon, you've seen them all.

I see more locals grazing at the Golden Corral meat bar than I do at Balloon Fiesta Park these days.

Have we gotten so complacent? Are we like tenants in an ocean-view home with the shades drawn?

Have our clumsy metaphors scared you away?

Perhaps beyond just plain old bad writing and expository bluster we reporters, cynics already by nature, have also grown vapid in our balloon fiesta coverage.

Yet each of us, journalist and average joe, has a story to tell on balloon fiestas past and present.

For myself, I recall walking to class at Albuquerque High School in a rare snowstorm as balloons floated overhead, their colors imperceptible in the flurries.

Years later, I drank champagne in the early dawn with a group of giddy balloonists who reveled in the freeing decadence.

A month after returning to New Mexico to work at The Tribune in 1987, I remember being awakened by a loud whooshing sound outside my Corrales apartment. Coverage of the balloon fiesta played on my tiny black-and-white TV set, but that sound outside was one of those balloons hovering just above me, so close I could see the weave of wicker in the gondola, the smile on the pilot's face.

The fiesta had found me again.

Once, a massive balloon shaped like Santa Claus landed near my office. Out of the gondola strode comedian Flip Wilson, who graciously signed autographs and entertained reporters' questions.

I saw Al Gore at the balloon fiesta. But I was more thrilled with meeting the crew of QVC, who used the fiesta as a backdrop to sell Southwest jewelry.

We can't tell you how many breakfast burritos and Johnsonville brats we have consumed at the balloon fiesta.

We can explain, at least in elementary fashion, the Albuquerque Box, that odd confluence of air currents that allows balloons to hover gently above the fiesta park.

We have watched our children race gleefully across the park field as each balloon prepares for takeoff. We have been sprinkled with sparkling confetti as the gas balloon ferrying former Gov. Gary Johnson arose and sailed away to places unknown.

And we've wondered: Just how many times can KOB-Channel 4's Steve Stucker parade around in that goofy hat before he crumbles under the pressure of enough ballooning pins to sink a canoe?

Beyond the bad metaphors, stories remain to be told about the balloon fiesta if we allow them.

So go, rain or shine, bad metaphor or no. The story, glorious and colorful and fun, is a good one.