Balloon Fiesta Week in Albuquerque: Parking, Traffic, and a Car That Starts

Balloon Fiesta fills the north side of Albuquerque for nine days, and almost everyone arrives by car. Park and Ride lots fill before sunrise, the shoulders along Alameda turn into parking, and thousands of vehicles sit cold and unattended through a dawn patrol on mornings that can start in the forties. If your battery has been limping since August, Fiesta week is where it finally quits. Here is what to expect and what to do about it before the first ascension.

• The first cold mornings of October are the hardest start of the year for a summer-worn battery
• Fiesta breakdowns happen in fields, Park and Ride lots, and North Valley side streets, the hardest places to get help
• A two minute battery test this week beats a dead car in an overflow lot at six in the morning

Cold Mornings Are the Test Your Battery Has Been Avoiding

All summer, heat has been quietly damaging the battery under your hood. High temperatures evaporate fluid and corrode the internal plates, and the damage does not announce itself while it is happening. What it does is eat into reserve capacity, the margin a battery keeps for a hard start. You do not notice a thinner margin in August, because a warm engine asks very little of a battery. You notice it on the first genuinely cold morning, when the oil is thick and the engine needs everything the battery has left. In Albuquerque that morning usually lands in early October, which is exactly when Fiesta puts your car in a field at five in the morning. A battery that started fine every day in September can fail on its first forty degree morning. That is not bad luck. That is the summer bill coming due.

Where Fiesta Breakdowns Actually Happen

Not on the interstate. They happen in the places Fiesta parks people. The Fiesta Park lots and the overflow fields, where cars sit for four or five hours in the cold with no one nearby. The Park and Ride lots, where a car sits all day. Residential streets in North Valley neighborhoods where visitors park and walk in. Hotel lots on the north side full of rental cars that were last serviced by someone else. What these have in common is that they are bad places to be stuck. You may be a long walk from a main road, phone service gets uneven when the crowd is at its peak, and traffic control means a tow truck cannot always reach you quickly. A mobile battery truck, which works at the car instead of hauling it away, is usually the only kind of help that fits the situation at all.

The Five Minute Version of Getting Ready

If your battery is three years old or older, have it tested before the first weekend of October. That is the whole recommendation. A test takes a couple of minutes and tells you whether the battery has real capacity left or is running on the last of it. Watch for the signs in the meantime. An engine that turns over slower than it used to. Headlights that dim at idle and brighten when you rev. A clock or radio presets that reset on their own. A battery light on the dash. Any one of those in a battery past its third summer means get it checked now, while you can still pick the time and the place. We walked through each of these in detail in our guide to end-of-summer battery warning signs.

If It Happens Anyway

We come to you, anywhere in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, any hour, straight through Fiesta week. Our crews cover the whole metro, including a dedicated team for the North Valley and Los Ranchos, the neighborhoods that carry most of the Fiesta parking load. We test the battery on the spot and tell you what it actually reads. If it is finished, we carry replacements and install right there, backed by a 2-year warranty, so you are not waiting on a tow to a shop that opens Monday. Tell the dispatcher which lot or cross streets you are near and where you are standing; during Fiesta, meeting the technician at the nearest street entrance is often faster than describing a spot in a field.

Save the number before you go: (505) 823-9696. Then go watch the balloons.

Dugger’s Road Rescue
(505) 823-9696 | Toll-free 1-877-823-9696
duggerservices.com