Live from Tormville!:

Last evening, Greg started churning up ideas on how to spend Father's Day.

"How about the zoo?", he said, somewhat predictably.

"Well", I replied, "I actually have a surprise planned already"

From there it went into guessing, and after several outlandish suggestions from the boys, I ended up telling him. Greg loves to research, so a little heads up allowed him to look up some videos, history and facts.

It was a few weeks ago that I had bid on a glider flight in an online charity auction. Unfortunately, I had a meeting during the final hour, and was outbid right in the end.

I waited a bit to see if anyone would reach out, as they sometimes do, to see if I'd like to match the donation if they could offer another prize.

Nobody reached out, so I contacted the pilot myself.

I explained how I was outbid, but that by then - I kind of had my heart set on giving this experience to Greg. Greg worked helicopters when he was in the Navy, has a knack for understanding all the language, mathematics and other stuff that is involved with flight, and loves the sky.

I received a quick response, and the answer was perfect.
Let's get Greg in the air, and I'll send my bid in as a donation to the charity.
PERFECT.

The original plan was for last Saturday, but the evening prior - Greg asked, "Do we have any plans for tomorrow? Charlie asked if I'd like to go to the Grand Prix"

Um.

A quick email to Sam, we rescheduled, and Greg got to enjoy both the Grand Prix and a flight in the sky.

I love that this worked out.

There are no engines in glider planes, so they get lifted and let loose once all the variables are correct. I had NO clue that the passenger sits in the front seat. Bonus!

The pilot sits on the nose when the passenger gets out, else it'll give like a teeter totter does when a kid jumps off the low end.

Now to rest up and get ready for a new week.

Also - a little out of order, but I will blog last week's backpacking trip soon. We're rocking summer over here this year.

Mark has one of those calendars that daily tell him what day it is. This morning he came downstairs and said, "Mom, did you know today is Hot Air Balloon Day?"

My favorite day!!

The pandemic kept us grounded last year, so we are all appreciating this year just that much more. We flew twice this last week, and on Thursday I was lucky enough to go up. I still work for another week, but my summer mood starts the day the kids get out - and I can say that Summer 2021 is pretty awesome so far.

This isn't the school that I work at, but I spent a lot of time here this last year photographing events. By my count, I photographed 141 events from August - May, and I loved every moment. It was a great way to get out and be active when the options were limited. Besides, it was my stress relief.

I loved being able to shout to the drumline to play something, knowing they had no clue who was requesting, and then sending them an immediate picture. I had the thought that I should have recorded them (they sounded fantastic) but then remembered - HAH - the burner doesn't make for good audio background. (wink)

It's always fun to fly with other balloons. Sometimes we stick close together, other times we end up being pulled in different directions. The directions can vary depending on the altitude. Dennis (the balloon on the left in the second picture) took off more East pretty quick, while Joey stayed closer to the path we were on. Joey's grandma subs in the office and library for us at Three Fires, and got to the launch in time to wave me off.

I plan to ask her to sub for me next year (For Real! I am!) but today I used my perfect attendance bonus to purchase some new photo equipment that I'm pretty excited to play with.

Happy Sigh

The lake you see is the one that Mark puts in a lot of his swims. He did the pool this morning for swim number 69 of his 200 swim goal, but since it was so warm today - he went for another swim in the lake after dinner.

At this point we were looking for a place to land, and had our eyes set on that subdivision just past the church.

Roof is looking good.

Joey is still tracking pretty close to the same path we are.

The subdivision ended up not working out. We came down low, talked to a few people, skimmed between a few homes and had to pop back up. We had picked up speed at that point, and between that and numerous fenced in yards, the conditions were too risky.

By law, we have to be out of the sky by sunset.

By personal choice, we prefer to be out of the sky before the dew starts getting the grass wet. When we pop up and see mostly trees we reflect upon past experiences and think this could get interesting. The wind likes to play and it often pulls us just out of reach of perfect landing spots, or teases us with what look like fields - only to find that they are wetlands or crops.

Until we find something - we just enjoy the moment.

Here we yelled, "HEY JIM!" No response. Then we tried, "HEY TOM!!"
Still - no response. Either it really wasn't them, or they were ignoring us. They seemed pretty focused.

Right on target towards a perfect landing spot. The first flight of the year was a pretty rough landing, but this one was probably the smoothest that I've ever been a part of. The grass was dry, the landing was smooth, the owners were helpful and even brought us ice cream.

Life is good.

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In other stuff: I'm going to work towards getting back into a blogging routine now that I'm back in summer mode. It's my family that gets on me if I lapse too long.

Also hoping to share some kayaking, backpacking, travels, balloonfest and maybe a brain drain or two as the summer goes on.