Sunday - November 08, 2015

gonna need a bigger sky

Fwooosh. Fwoosh. Fwwoooshh. They got me again.

Remember that scene in Jaws where the Sheriff is ladling out the chum, grousing away, and the shark rises right up behind him, and in shock he backs into the cabin and tells Quint, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”? Seems like something similar happened to me this afternoon.

I was out on the deck enjoying the late crisp afternoon air, nursing a smallish glass of Jamison Black Barrel to soothe my tired arms after digging for several hours in the garden, when I heard that old familiar sound. Fwoosh. Fwoosh. The sound of hot air balloons. So I’m looking up, trying to see through the trees here in our little piece of “friggin’ jungle”, and finally I spot one. It’s a big yellow job, with some kind of Navajo-ish cubist graphic on the side. A thunderbird or similar. It’s at a decent altitude, up there in the bright and gleaming in the late afternoon sun, while I’m in the shadows beneath the trees. “Gosh” I’m thinking, “the sound of those burners really carries a long distance!”. And it does. And then I hear FWWOOOSH FWWWOOOOOSSSSSHH really loud, snap my head around, and there’s a giant multi-colored balloon right the heck in front of me. Not 30 feet away, it had sunk down almost to the roadway behind us here, just the other side of our little cliffy culvert of trees. We’re gonna need a bigger sky!!

“Ach, crivens!” I said (yes, I really did. One of the perils of being alone so much) and ran in to grab the camera. And then ran back to close the door so the kitten couldn’t escape. Then ran downstairs because the camera wasn’t where I’ve been leaving it. Right. Grab the snapper and run back out, and the gas bag has gained a small bounce of altitude and 50 yards of travel, and is landing in the front lawn of the house across the street.

That’s the view from my porch. It took me a few tries to get the balloon in the picture; not that it was so big, but that it was actually so hard to see. The sunlight lit the colorful panels so well that they were almost transparent, nearly invisible behind the high contrast clump of branches in the dimness. It was that perfect instant in the day when the sun is just high enough to light the sky but nothing lower than the very tree tops. So the chase van shows up, and I’m watching them bounce the basket around as people climb out, and they have to make several big fiery blasts on the heaters to keep the slowly deflating bag from sagging into the tree branches, and of course the camera is too slow to capture those awesome moments ... and then I hear the familiar sound from above again.

Fwoosh Fwooossssh! And we’ve got a third balloon coming down, this one aiming for the landing spot a couple streets away, behind the condo where we used to live (and where balloons have set down several times over the years)

And as that fellow floats down to earth, another observer comes by. Just over the treetops, flying hardly faster than a horse’s gallop, this obviously old-school, fabric covered, bigger than a typical Cessna, high-winger, who circled the situation a few times and then putt-putted away through the sky.

I have no idea what kind of airplane this is. Definitely neat looking, and like the second balloon, brilliant in the upper sunshine when seen from the gloaming on the ground. Who’s good with their planes? What is it?

Never a dull moment here in Clinton. Except I’m now out of Jamison. Waily waily waily!!

PS - all these pictures enlarge a bit when you click them.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/08/2015 at 05:46 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Fun-Stuff • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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