Hot Air Balloon Ride

Many of you who know me well, know that it's always been a dream of mine to ride in a hot air balloon. It's something I've wanted to experience ever since I was a kid. Many of you also know that my husband is deathly afraid of heights and thus, I figured if I were to ever do it...it wouldn't be with him. Well, just about a year ago...he asked me to take a certain Friday afternoon off of work. He said he had an early Christmas present for me. So I called in a sub for the afternoon and met him for lunch. Then we proceeded to head out of town to Parsons, KS (pop. 11,000). At the time I had no idea what we were doing. It turned out he had planned to surprise me with a hot air balloon ride (and a diamond ring). However, when we got there, the guy who was going to take us up notified us that it was too windy and we wouldn't be able to go on our hot air balloon ride. I was bummed, but James was even more upset. His "perfect proposal" was ruined. We ended up going for a drive around town and found ourselves at a park. He asked me to marry him there....on the back of a green rocking dinosaur. It was perfect.

Anyway, I bring all this up because we've spent all fall trying to reschedule our balloon ride. It's paid for, so we definitely still want to do it. The last couple weeks we've been trying to get ahold of "Balloon Guy" but have had little success. Well finally, he called us back yesterday. He said we'd be able to do it at 7:00 AM Sunday morning. Well, Parsons is two and a half hours from where we live, so we weren't too sure about it, but we finally decided to go for it.

So we woke up at 3:55 this morning, hopped in the car and headed south to Parsons. About 45 minutes outside of Parsons "Balloon Guy" calls us and tells us the wind has really picked up and he wasn't sure if we'd be able to go up. We weren't happy, but decided we'd driven that far...we might as well take our chances and drive the rest of the way...just in case. So we got there around 6:30 and sure enough, he tells us it's too windy. HELLO DISAPPOINTMENT! So we got back in the car and drove for another two and half hours. Now, here we are at home. It's 9:30 AM and we've been up for almost six hours. I'm totally bummed.

"Balloon Guy" says we'll have to give him a call in the spring. Sigh...