Ali gave me a hot air balloon ride for my birthday. I had no idea what I was getting even though she had been giving little hints all week.

• You’ll need to wear old pants and shoes that can get dirty
• We may be walking through fields or tall grass
• We have to leave the house by 4:45 am
• It involves going up

You get the picture. The closest guess I made was a bi-plane ride, though I really didn’t think too hard on it. Ali said, “If you guess it, I won’t be able to lie about it, so don’t guess it.”

Early Saturday morning (two days before my birthday) I roll out of bed at 4:15. We arrived at the place by 6:15, and we’re the only ones there. “Are you sure we got the right place,” I asked. At this point, I knew what we were doing because a sign a block up the road said, “Hot Air Balloon launch site ahead.” Ali said, “We saw the sign this has to be the place.” Turns out we’re just punctual, unlike almost every other person in the world. Eventually other riders show up, and the balloon people show up, and things start happening.

There were enough people for two groups, and the company typically flies two balloons, but they were short staffed, and so only one was flying. This however was cool because we got to ride around in the van and chase the first group in the balloon until their ride was over. After a daring customer swap in a Holiday Inn parking lot — daring because there was barely any room to land. Trees on one side, a Holiday Inn on the other. The pilot dropped a line out of the balloon and all us on the ground grabbed and pulled. It was like having a tug of war with a hot air balloon, and instead of mud, or goal was to keep it from crashing into the Holiday Inn. How exciting, but I digress.

Now it was our turn! I got a bit of a rush as we ascending into the ski. It was only when we were close to the ground and there were reference points near by that you could actually tell the balloon was moving. It was so smooth, that when you didn’t have anything to use as a gauge, you couldn’t even tell it was moving. As we went over the roof of the Holiday Inn we saw ice where water had pooled from rain the previous day — it’s the end of September for crikey’s sake.

At one point I believe we went just over 2500 feet. To the South we could see the New York City sky line; and to the North Hunter mountain. We had the most beautiful morning for ballooning. Fog was hugging the ground everywhere, and in one place it looked like a river flowing through the mountains — Gorgeous!

If you’ve never done this, I would highly recommend it!

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