![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 23rd, 2020 11:09 amA few days ago, for my mother's fiftieth birthday, we flew in a hot air balloon.
(My mother Justy is fifty-three, but the ballooning has been postponed till now by illness, family complications -- the answer to 'How many aunts fit in a hot air balloon?' doesn't necessarily relate to the size of the basket -- and, most recently, Covid-19).
The atmosphere is most predictable when the land is cool, so balloons around Hamilton go up at dawn. Coming from the middle Waikato, we got up an hour and a half earlier than that, and drove through the dark. We met the balloonists in a parking lot -- they stood in the driveway waving us away from the early-morning alarm beams of the shop it belonged to -- and my grandmother Ann met us there -- coming from Ruapuke, where she is still not in a house of her own but in an old friend's cabin, awaiting her new house, which we hope will be built by November.
We assuming we'd be flying from beside the nearby lake, but instead were driven another fifteen minutes windward, and decamped on the back lawn of a neo-classical wedding venue manor, wide and cool and good for running around on. (After driving for any length of time, I briefly turn into a sheepdog). Two balloons would be flying: their baskets were unloaded from the trailers and set on their sides, one large and one small. My stepfather and I held up opposite sides of the large balloon's mouth while its pilot set a big fan blowing into it. The rainbow fabric began billowing in a most Doctor Seuss-like way. It surprised me that a fan could inflate such a large space -- I'm used to higher-pressure air-tight inflatables, like boats. Once it had gone from long collapsed tent to mysterious rainbow billowy thing, the pilot walked inside and went around prodding and unfolding bits of it, turning it into a large dome, with wonderful billowy things still happening on its inner floor as it slowly rose. We let go the opening, which stood on its own by then, and stood back for him to shoot fire into it from the metal coils of the gas-burner, (being careful to keep the fabric clear).
Next we all helped tip the basket upright and climbed in. To keep us on an even keel, the wicker-sided basket was divided by a Y-shaped partition, four people to a side, pilot and gas bottles in the smaller head. There was a roof between us and the flame, with a gap for the pilot to reach up and grip the burner's switch.
Takeoff felt even less plausible than in an aeroplane, and perfectly smooth. I could feel the basket shifting slightly when I paid close attention, but otherwise it seemed stable as a platform. There was no sense of acceleration; only the size of the ground let me know we were rising. At first I was in a weird state of fear in calm surroundings. Every thirty seconds or so the burner roared, but betweentimes we drifted in quiet. I kept consciously relaxing, looking at the peaceful expanding view (striped shadows of hedgerows on Hamilton's edge were long and clear on the green, with us and the land further east in full morning sun) and then finding my mind drawn back toward panic. "If I'm this scared in a balloon," I thought, "I will never go parachute jumping." I didn't feel consciously endangered; I tried imagining falling to my death to see if it would make a difference, but it didn't register as extra-bad. I just felt Too High Up. Kneeling down helped. I spent a while with my chin at the level of the basket's padded edge, looking in the safest direction, back east the way we'd come -- and ignoring the pilot pointing out a temple, the university, and other sights westerly.
But I slowly got used to it. Once we'd reached 2000 feet (or a little higher - "Shh," said the pilot, whose radio occasionally crackled with the movements of planes, and who was only cleared up to 2000) I stood up, regretted it, knelt down again, stood up again, and eventually started letting go of the basket with one or both hands -- which let me take photos:
( Read more... )
As promised, it was warm up there, just as though we'd still been on the ground. After long burns, gusts of warmer air came down around us. The pilot had no steering except up and down, so where we went was a matter of wind and forecast. We saw the second smaller balloon dip down towards a sports field, miss, and rise again, losing its chance to exchange one passenger for another in its two-person basket.
When Justy and Seahearth and I lived in Hamilton we fairly often saw balloons. Our cats hid under the bed whenever the huffing of the burners went over. I looked down on the Waikato campus where Justy lectures, straight down at palm trees, auto yards, yards full of bright-colored barrels. As we flew lower, dogs started barking, children came out to wave, cars honked, and we saw the unusual wedge-shape of our trailer and its van pursuing us through the streets, pausing whenever we seemed about to land, driving on whenever we missed a park or sports field. We missed the treeless portion of a large park by twenty metres and went on toward a much smaller one below a little hill. (The balloon was responsive, though on a 20-second delay, and could happily have jumped the hill if we'd missed -- could have gone along at ground level jumping over fences, come to that). We came gently down on one edge, caught, bobbed up and along, caught again, slid, settled.
The trailer caught up with us quickly -- its driver has the keys to the gates and chains of forty-odd Hamilton parks -- and my stepfather and I got out to lighten the load while the trailer winched the still-buoyant balloon into position behind the trailer -- easier than angling the trailer just right. By then we had a crowd, some who'd been watching us from across the street as they came down, still in dressing gowns, and some regulars as well, who'd been following us like our trailer for the fun of it. I counted twenty-two small children. Some of them got to climb about in the basket while the balloon's air vents were opened and the balloon rolled up:
( Read more... )
My fear of heights had vanished at some point, unnoticed. After the flight I felt light and happy, going to check the sign and see where we actually were. It isn't often one gets to arrive from the middle of a park instead of the edge.
After balloon and basket were stowed, we were driven back to the parking lot, where we learned that the shop whose alarms we'd avoided that morning was a cafe, and all went in for coffee, english muffins, and ballooning questions. What do you do if you miss all the parks? 'Land in a street if need be, but usually drift on out into the countryside and hope for a friendly farmer.' I regret not asking a followup question about what happens if the farmer isn't friendly; either way, that's why their balloon rides stop for calving season. We were also told about various possible complications and accidents -- our pilot ran into a lamppost and got a puncture last year, with no injuries -- which had somehow escaped discussion beforehand. (I see the logic. Confused and worried passengers can't actually be helpful, so he wants to be able to wear a calm face when the sky's behaving strangely. Once he got shot up through a cloud bank by a mysterious updraft, and just kept on standing there thinking, "I hope it becomes possible to descend again soon," with his passengers none the wiser).
The only thing which you could call a balloon accident we had was that my grandmother hit her head hard on the top of the van when getting into it -- but she was fine, as a visit to an emergency clinic confirmed, and an email from her that evening saying 'I drove cautiously and am now safe at home' further confirmed.
Ballooning wasn't deliberately a winter solstice activity, but it seems like a good one, to fly on a flame. Also accidentally solstitially, I've been reading Laurie J Marks' Fire Logic, and The Dark Is Rising -- but our intentional celebration (a day early) was to light a great bonfire of scrap wood my stepfather has been hanging onto just in case it will be useful since time out of mind. (He says he hid the best bits, though).
(My mother Justy is fifty-three, but the ballooning has been postponed till now by illness, family complications -- the answer to 'How many aunts fit in a hot air balloon?' doesn't necessarily relate to the size of the basket -- and, most recently, Covid-19).
The atmosphere is most predictable when the land is cool, so balloons around Hamilton go up at dawn. Coming from the middle Waikato, we got up an hour and a half earlier than that, and drove through the dark. We met the balloonists in a parking lot -- they stood in the driveway waving us away from the early-morning alarm beams of the shop it belonged to -- and my grandmother Ann met us there -- coming from Ruapuke, where she is still not in a house of her own but in an old friend's cabin, awaiting her new house, which we hope will be built by November.
We assuming we'd be flying from beside the nearby lake, but instead were driven another fifteen minutes windward, and decamped on the back lawn of a neo-classical wedding venue manor, wide and cool and good for running around on. (After driving for any length of time, I briefly turn into a sheepdog). Two balloons would be flying: their baskets were unloaded from the trailers and set on their sides, one large and one small. My stepfather and I held up opposite sides of the large balloon's mouth while its pilot set a big fan blowing into it. The rainbow fabric began billowing in a most Doctor Seuss-like way. It surprised me that a fan could inflate such a large space -- I'm used to higher-pressure air-tight inflatables, like boats. Once it had gone from long collapsed tent to mysterious rainbow billowy thing, the pilot walked inside and went around prodding and unfolding bits of it, turning it into a large dome, with wonderful billowy things still happening on its inner floor as it slowly rose. We let go the opening, which stood on its own by then, and stood back for him to shoot fire into it from the metal coils of the gas-burner, (being careful to keep the fabric clear).
Next we all helped tip the basket upright and climbed in. To keep us on an even keel, the wicker-sided basket was divided by a Y-shaped partition, four people to a side, pilot and gas bottles in the smaller head. There was a roof between us and the flame, with a gap for the pilot to reach up and grip the burner's switch.
Takeoff felt even less plausible than in an aeroplane, and perfectly smooth. I could feel the basket shifting slightly when I paid close attention, but otherwise it seemed stable as a platform. There was no sense of acceleration; only the size of the ground let me know we were rising. At first I was in a weird state of fear in calm surroundings. Every thirty seconds or so the burner roared, but betweentimes we drifted in quiet. I kept consciously relaxing, looking at the peaceful expanding view (striped shadows of hedgerows on Hamilton's edge were long and clear on the green, with us and the land further east in full morning sun) and then finding my mind drawn back toward panic. "If I'm this scared in a balloon," I thought, "I will never go parachute jumping." I didn't feel consciously endangered; I tried imagining falling to my death to see if it would make a difference, but it didn't register as extra-bad. I just felt Too High Up. Kneeling down helped. I spent a while with my chin at the level of the basket's padded edge, looking in the safest direction, back east the way we'd come -- and ignoring the pilot pointing out a temple, the university, and other sights westerly.
But I slowly got used to it. Once we'd reached 2000 feet (or a little higher - "Shh," said the pilot, whose radio occasionally crackled with the movements of planes, and who was only cleared up to 2000) I stood up, regretted it, knelt down again, stood up again, and eventually started letting go of the basket with one or both hands -- which let me take photos:
( Read more... )
As promised, it was warm up there, just as though we'd still been on the ground. After long burns, gusts of warmer air came down around us. The pilot had no steering except up and down, so where we went was a matter of wind and forecast. We saw the second smaller balloon dip down towards a sports field, miss, and rise again, losing its chance to exchange one passenger for another in its two-person basket.
When Justy and Seahearth and I lived in Hamilton we fairly often saw balloons. Our cats hid under the bed whenever the huffing of the burners went over. I looked down on the Waikato campus where Justy lectures, straight down at palm trees, auto yards, yards full of bright-colored barrels. As we flew lower, dogs started barking, children came out to wave, cars honked, and we saw the unusual wedge-shape of our trailer and its van pursuing us through the streets, pausing whenever we seemed about to land, driving on whenever we missed a park or sports field. We missed the treeless portion of a large park by twenty metres and went on toward a much smaller one below a little hill. (The balloon was responsive, though on a 20-second delay, and could happily have jumped the hill if we'd missed -- could have gone along at ground level jumping over fences, come to that). We came gently down on one edge, caught, bobbed up and along, caught again, slid, settled.
The trailer caught up with us quickly -- its driver has the keys to the gates and chains of forty-odd Hamilton parks -- and my stepfather and I got out to lighten the load while the trailer winched the still-buoyant balloon into position behind the trailer -- easier than angling the trailer just right. By then we had a crowd, some who'd been watching us from across the street as they came down, still in dressing gowns, and some regulars as well, who'd been following us like our trailer for the fun of it. I counted twenty-two small children. Some of them got to climb about in the basket while the balloon's air vents were opened and the balloon rolled up:
( Read more... )
My fear of heights had vanished at some point, unnoticed. After the flight I felt light and happy, going to check the sign and see where we actually were. It isn't often one gets to arrive from the middle of a park instead of the edge.
After balloon and basket were stowed, we were driven back to the parking lot, where we learned that the shop whose alarms we'd avoided that morning was a cafe, and all went in for coffee, english muffins, and ballooning questions. What do you do if you miss all the parks? 'Land in a street if need be, but usually drift on out into the countryside and hope for a friendly farmer.' I regret not asking a followup question about what happens if the farmer isn't friendly; either way, that's why their balloon rides stop for calving season. We were also told about various possible complications and accidents -- our pilot ran into a lamppost and got a puncture last year, with no injuries -- which had somehow escaped discussion beforehand. (I see the logic. Confused and worried passengers can't actually be helpful, so he wants to be able to wear a calm face when the sky's behaving strangely. Once he got shot up through a cloud bank by a mysterious updraft, and just kept on standing there thinking, "I hope it becomes possible to descend again soon," with his passengers none the wiser).
The only thing which you could call a balloon accident we had was that my grandmother hit her head hard on the top of the van when getting into it -- but she was fine, as a visit to an emergency clinic confirmed, and an email from her that evening saying 'I drove cautiously and am now safe at home' further confirmed.
Ballooning wasn't deliberately a winter solstice activity, but it seems like a good one, to fly on a flame. Also accidentally solstitially, I've been reading Laurie J Marks' Fire Logic, and The Dark Is Rising -- but our intentional celebration (a day early) was to light a great bonfire of scrap wood my stepfather has been hanging onto just in case it will be useful since time out of mind. (He says he hid the best bits, though).
