So Here's My Life

The things we make,
the food we eat and
the shenanigans in between.

A blog about making things by
MICHELLE SEXTON

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Hot Air Balloon

This morning Joel and I were sitting in the office with the window opened about 6 inches. Then I heard a familiar sound - kind of a roaring sound. I realized what it was immediately, grabbed my camera and ran out the door. There was a hot air balloon directly over our house, about 20 feet above us! How exciting!! The people inside the balloon were talking to us too! The chase team was parked directly across from our house, waiting for the balloon to land in the empty lot across the street. Unfortunately the man driving/steering (whatever you call it) wasn't positioned right, and had to land a little farther down the block. So I walked down the street and was able to catch the balloon right after it landed. People were coming out of their house to watch all the excitement and then team even allowed the kids to come and get their pictures taken from inside the basket! The team came and talked to me while I was taking pictures, and gave me a card with a picture of their balloon, and information about it. (And just in case you are wondering, the balloon is called, "Uccello Nero", which is "Black Bird" in Italian) It was such a fun experience. I stayed around and was able to catch some shots of the team disassembling the balloon. It was really interesting to watch the process.
Here's the balloon right above our house! (I did too much level adjustments on this picture, which is why the sky looks so dark)


Just after they landed, a couple of blocks over.


Starting the process of deflating the balloon. The man is hold a rope that pulls the balloon down to the ground.





This is probably my favorite picture. One of the boys from the chase team is walking alongside the balloon, and moving the air to the end of the balloon, so it can go out.





The team stretching out the balloon to release the air.


The younger boys helping.





This little boy was so funny. He's only about 4 years old, but he told me to take this picture for my dog.

This weekend marks the beginning of the annual Balloon Fiesta, which is one of the most photographed events in the WORLD. We may be going at some point, but we haven't decided yet. I'm really hoping during these next two weeks that we will be able to have a balloon land in the empty lot in front of our house. That would be fun. It may happen, because there are literally hundreds of balloons that lift off every morning for two weeks.

1 comment:

Cara said...

Michelle - there may be no connection (to the balloon) but when I was a girl there was a Chevolet dealership called "Ed Black's Chevolet" that used to run ads on TV and this same bird was their "mascot". The announcer would ask "Where's everybody going?" Then answer his own question "To Ed Black's Chevolet!" Then this cartoon mascot would snicker - The whole thing was really low budget.

My gosh - I haven't thought about that in probably 35 years. I can close my eys and see my dad sitting in his chair watching the news and hear that commercial playing...my, my...

Thanks for the memory -