I've always wanted to ride a hot air balloon, and David didn't seem interested, so I invited Megan. For the company we went with, she was just old enough (8!) When they heard there would be a child, they told me they would get us the smiley balloon. Awesome!
The day was perfect (our earlier date was cancelled due to excessive heat), and a technical delay made it even cooler and prettier as we watched the sun start to set.
We lifted off from an airfield just north of Lebanon. Along with Megan and I, a nice CalTech couple joined us. I interrogated them on the MIT-CalTech rivalry, of course. The pilot made 5 in the basket. But after about 10 minutes, his time was devoted to finding us a place to land. (walkee-talkee to our chaser, his wife) We were up in the air 70 minutes, which was a perfect amount of time! Megan blew bubbles, and all of us tried to identify various sights down below. A dog? A horse? Some were hard to decipher.
There is very little steering in a hot air balloon, so we were at the mercy of the wind. We ended up coming down in a large neighborhood park. It was perfect, and so fun to watch all the kids chase us, and get super-excited when they realized we were actually going to land there!
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