Ballooning

Happy Valentine’s Day/Single’s Awareness Day, everybody!

After I got back to work on Wednesday, the work week progressed pretty regularly and without incident.

For the weekend, one of the guys we work with had a buddy passing through town on the way to his new job and it was great to have a larger group of people to hang out with.  We went to a movie and a club downtown while he was there.  All of us that work in my building were really tired because we wake up at five in the morning if not earlier.  The guy who was driving through town got up each day whenever his body got him up which means he was sleeping until eleven or noon each day.  At the club (it was a dance hall, really) we were all starting to yawn and get sleepy around ten and he was ready to party it up all night long.

On Saturday morning, we woke up ridiculously early to go and fly in a hot air balloon.  One of the guys on the team is a hot air balloon pilot and his dad has a few balloons that we used.  It was a lot of fun and despite the strong winds we came in for a smooth and easy landing.  We sat there with the basket on the ground and the balloon in the air for about twenty minutes while we waited for his sister to get there in a chase vehicle (to her credit, we were in a terribly difficult area to reach by vehicle).  She finally came on the radio and asked if we could jump the arroyo.  As we lifted off again, the winds went from approximately 1 knot to 14 knots.  The second landing was less than graceful with the basket on its side and us all laughing hysterically as we rolled out of the basket and off of one another.  We finally got things taken care of and our chase vehicle eventually showed up.

On the way back to the launch field, we found an old abandoned boat shell.  The festival we were participating in had a contest that involves cleaning up the town that was hosting the festival.  Basically you get points per pound for trash found out on the mesa and bonus points for unusual or interesting items.  A fridge is 1000 points, a couch is 300 points and general trash is 10 points per pound.  It was kind of interesting to see people’s reactions when a boat pulled in on the back of our truck and it was even more fun to see the look on the team’s face that brought in a car when they realized they had been upstaged.

We also played three games of volleyball, three games of basketball and then one more game of volleyball at the gym that evening.  We had a small group of people and were wondering what a good way to get some exercise as a group was.  It turned out to be a lot of fun even though neither sport was our best sport because we were all laughing at each other and having a good time.  Any time you can make exercise hilarious is a good time.