Balloon Chase Shot
Friday night I had the best date with my husband.
We ate out at Applebees, and then chased balloons all over the county. Driving out of the parking lot after dinner we saw balloons in the sky, and I remembered that the Eyes on the Skies balloon festival was going on over at the Alliant center.
We drove over towards that part of town and suddenly there were a half dozen hot air balloons ascending into the cloud dotted skies. It was beautiful.
I’ve chased balloons down quite a bit with my Mom. It’s one of my favorite things to do, but I’m not sure my husband ever really understood how much fun it can be to try to chase a balloon to where it lands, twisting and turning, trying to find roads that go where the balloons are flying over.
It was fantastic too, with him driving, and me shooting pictures out the window, both of us twisting around to try to get a glimpse of our current ‘marks’. We chased the pespi balloon down first, It flew out to fitchburg, I think, and for about ten min or so, it felt like we were the only ones in pursuit. Of course, nearer to the landing, we were suddenly surrounded by other vehicles driving as crazy as we were, and even the official Pepsi Pursuit truck. As we tried to get to where the pepsi balloon appeared to be heading, there were mothers with children, and dogs, in tow, racing down the street.
I hung out a window, to ask a roundish youngster if there was a park nearby, and he yelled out ‘Yeah, there’s one just over there, that’s where thye’re going to land!!’, and then he ran beside and after us as we whipped around the corner and headed where everyone else seemed to be heading.
We parked curbside, just in time to see the Pepsi balloon drifting over the houses and trees, and the over the park equipment, aiming for the soccer field. We jumped outta the jeep, and joined the kids racing towards the landing balloon for more pictures. It was crazy, there was so much excitement in the air, kids squealing with joy, dogs barking, and of course, me grinning from ear to ear. Several balloons touched down at that same park, so many many people had chased different balloons to get to the same place.
My husband thinks I’m a goof, of course, but loved seeing me so happy. I could tell he was really into it as well. Especially because, we weren’t done chasing. Several balloons couldn’t quite land at the same park, the wind lifting them up and over the clear open field.
So we jumped back into the Jeep, and started to follow the Re/Max Balloon, until we lost it, and then followed the pretty balloon viewed above, and it gave us a real run. They tried to land several times, but the wind kept swinging them further and further through the sky, over the beltline, and then over a little lake. The lake was a problem, because we couldn’t drive through it, and there were a lot of little dead end streets that couldn’t turn right.
At one point we started heading onto the onramp for the beltline, realized that the balloon was heading over it, and made a u-turn, down through the median, and back up onto the offramp.
All that twisting and turning meant we just misssed the landing of our current mark, and they had flown so far over all the other landing places that we were the first and almost only people to meet the people who had landed half in and half out of a baseball field. (basket hit the fence and bent it a bit).
The strangest thing happened when we walked up to them, one of the women strode right up to my husband and asked him what he was doing ‘here’.
Turns out, he had intructed her in his class that very day! What an amazing coincidence.
It was really really an awesome night. You never know where you’ll end up when you go chasing Hot Air Balloons.
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