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Quick, Albuquerque citizens! Run for your lives! Balloon fiesta is coming!

Take precious belongings and escape, making sure first to rent your home to rich out-of-towners! Flee through roads soon to be choked with awe-struck balloon-gawkers, while there is still time!

For years now I've ranted against the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta - a lone voice squawking into a pastel-colored sky of communal balloon love. Stating a dislike for the event is regarded as not only curmudgeonly, but reason enough for instant deportation.

Letting my fiesta feelings slip, in social settings, generates looks of disdain strikingly similar to those given methamphetamine dealers and door-to-door political canvassers. It is the look that says: "You are not human; you are to be expelled from society immediately."

So, I don't bring it up much. At the same time, I'm not terribly smart. Hence, I'm here to tell the entire Tribune world in a loud, proud defiant squawk: I detest the balloon fiesta!

Before I board that balloon fiesta deportation train let me state a few of the many reasons:

The traffic: If there was a competition for worst drivers worldwide, Albuquerque motorists would definitely make it to the playoffs. Few places exhibit the combination of 20 percent of motorists driving 15 mph to 25 mph below the posted speed limit, while another 40 percent simultaneously drive 15 mph to 25 mph above the limit. Add hundreds of giant visual distractions, lost out-of-towners still trying to find Balloon Fiesta Park, nearly stopped vehicles littering the roadway and blinding early sunlight into the mix, and you have a balloon fiesta morning on I-25. The only road surface more dangerous is the drive to the Baghdad airport.

The trademark: I am wary of "fun" copyrighted events. The fiesta is copyrighted, and it's full of terms that are also trademarked: e.g., Glowdeo, Special Shape Rodeo and AfterGlow. What? They trademarked the word afterglow? Does the adult movie industry know about this?

The whaammmmmmmmmmppppp: I'm teaching at a local middle school on a brilliantly beautiful October morning. Students bask in the autumnal sunlight and my compelling insights into "To Kill A Mockingbird." Suddenly, the room is violently disturbed by an all-encompassing whaammmmmmmmmmppppp sound directly overhead. Kids rush to the window. Sure enough, somebody is trying to land a large, wobbly, pastel-colored craft onto our dinky play field. Youngsters press noses to the window in an excitation never exhibited toward Harper Lee. School is pretty much over for that day.

The animals: Maybe your Aunt Martha from Chicago loves the fiesta, but animals don't love it any more than a stay at an Albuquerque animal shelter. Between the whaammmmmmmmmmppppp, the huge pasteled attackers plunging from the sky and flames noisily shooting up again and again, every dog, cat, horse and goat in town is absolutely freaking out. Maybe a drug company is among the 835 or so sponsors of the fiesta and can provide enough doggie downers to every pet and farm animal in town.

And I haven't even mentioned getting up at 4 a.m., the overly-chipper local "news" coverage or chase vehicles. Better pass some of those doggie downers over here, too. It's going to be a long, long 9 days.