Hot air balloons!

Yesterday was a good day, other than some truly disastrous commuting. Not that that has ever happened to me before on a Tuesday.

This morning was the opposite, I woke late in a panic – and managed to bolt through my morning routine in record time. Fortunately, I’d made lunch the night before and only needed to be wearing casual clothes. Further, I’d left my oranges for fresh squeezed juice at the office (I went to the Victoria Markets yesterday at lunch). So I threw my stainless-steel hand juicer in my bag and ran for the door.

I was aiming for the 8.40 am train, and I made the 8.27 am – which from a late start made me feel terribly efficient.

I should wake up late more often. Yesterday I was up an hour earlier, but managed to take longer to get to my office only ten minutes earlier. Disaster Tuesday.

However, the subject of real excitement for an ex-Canberran was that it was a grey, not entirely cold morning, with louring periwinkle-dark clouds, and low in the cloudy sky there were -

hot air balloons!

Just bobbing around in the sky like colourful, upside-down pears. Admittedly, the ones I saw were kinda mist-shrouded and a dullish green. Still, I had two good views on the drive to the station, including a good glance at one that seemed to be landing nearby. (Landing a hot air balloon must be a damn tricky business … “Hmm, just aiming for that school oval over there, don’t worry this’ll be fine!”)

Apparently some basic rule of physics about hot air rising has the consequence that the best time to go ballooning is a winter morning, when it’s really cold. Between dawn and 9ish many winter mornings in the ‘Berra the sky seems thick with colourful balloons – and it’s an insanely cheerful thing to drive beneath on your way to work.

While sharing a flat with Marissa I used to drive to uni (or my part-time librarianship job) over the cotter dam and around the lake foreshore into the university precinct. It’s a pleasant, calm, windy sort of a road that was, until the recent fires, flanked with plantation pines. One winter morning, there was the most gorgeous collection of balloons hanging, it seemed, just above the road. Really perked me up, and this morning was an echo of that.

Apparently, though, balloon rides are really expensive.

So, who’s done it? Was it worth the moolah? Who just wants to try it anyway? I used to be too scared of heights, but I think I’d get a kick out of it these days.