When I read this week that Chicago investment millionaire Steve Fossett had become the first person to fly a balloon solo around the globe, stirring the imaginations of millions, I went back into our newspaper files to recall when Bangor had the honor of being at the center of the international ballooning world.

It has been 10 years since those 90-foot tall, helium-filled balloons lifted off from Bass Park that September morning to begin the first-ever transatlantic race to Europe. Looking back, I could have sworn it was an exciting time in town, a momentous period when the world looked to Bangor to witness the unfolding of aviation history. And it probably was, to some degree. But memory can be deceiving, as it turns out. For as I rummaged through the reams of copy that we reporters churned out at the time, the true picture that emerged was of our little Queen City trying desperately to maintain the proper level of excitement for an event that took five interminable weeks to get off the ground. I’d forgotten that part.

By the time the majestic gasbags finally floated away into the predawn darkness, as I commented less-than-enthusiastically at the time, a lot of us around here were nearly ballooned out. The international ballooning teams had been in town so long by then, and so many possible liftoffs had come and gone, that it had become increasingly difficult for most of us to maintain a head of steam over the whole business. By the fourth week, I had almost expected to hear that the affable aviators – a group that did not include the indomitable Fossett, by the way – had decided to buy homes in the area and settle down to less lofty careers.

“If those guys don’t get off soon, nobody’s going to care anymore,” a woman remarked to me after the second launch plan was scrapped.

I understood her frustration. Modern ballooning is a high-tech affair, at least where world records are concerned, and we who followed the event for the duration waited endlessly for word that the perfect weather patterns had emerged to allow a take-off. Then along came Hurricane Andrew, and the wait continued. At the height of the race doldrums, an elderly couple showed up at the newspaper office to ask about the much-hyped balloons.

“We’ve driven all the way from Boston to see them,” the woman told me. “We don’t mean to offend you, but we haven’t seen a thing in this whole town that would indicate there’s even a balloon race going on.”

I told her we hadn’t either, but that was not entirely true. The local TV news kept us entertained at the time with tape of the racers driving their cars around town during a scavenger hunt. We got to see the racers out shopping at the mall, too, and even watched them playing softball at one point. We were good and genial hosts, all right, but having to wait more than a month for the big show was clearly testing our patience.

“Most people, if we told them we wanted to race balloons and wanted to take off from their city, would think there’s a screw loose,” the race director said at the time. “Whatever we asked for, no matter how outlandish, it’s appeared. Bangor is very much a can-do city.”

The only thing we couldn’t do, it seemed, was to get those damned balloons into the air. Finally, the weather gods began to cooperate and the city’s mood began to lift once more.

“This is a very serious alert,” a breathless TV anchor said. “Activity is at a frenzy.”

Another anchor said, “We’re

all holding our breath.”

Still another, imitating Walter Cronkite’s first-man-on-the-moon broadcast, intoned, “This is history in the making.”

Hearing that, I gulped a cup of coffee and headed to Bass Park. The atmosphere wasn’t really “at a frenzy,” as the TV anchor had promised. It was closer to “a buzz,” as a competing station observed, which was much better than the “boring” that one Boston newspaper had used in a headline to describe the earlier stages of the highly publicized event up in Maine.

Crowds lined the rails of the racetrack and wandered the brilliantly lit infield, festively aiming videocameras at one another. The international press was there, too, interviewing their hometown heroes. The five white balloons began to inflate at last, lifting their massive domed heads slowly from the grass until they stood towering above the spectators, who were serenaded by New Age electronic music.

“So how do you feel?” a TV reporter asked one of the racers as he squeezed into a high-tech gondola that looked like a space capsule.

“Ready,” the daredevil replied, speaking for everyone in the can-do city of Bangor. “We feel ready.”

As the crowds cheered, the balloons began to lift off, one by one, sailing over the lights of Bass Park and quickly disappearing into the dark sky. The historic international transatlantic balloon race was finally underway, and then it was gone, just like that. Ballooning, you might say, is not much of a spectator sport, unless you’re a bird. But in a race that no one in the world got to watch 10 years ago, the people of Bangor definitely had the best seats in the house.