Hot Air Balloon Day 2021
One of those things in life I believe I'll forego is a hot air balloon ride. It's not that I don't trust the technology per se ... it's primarily my wish not to be high up in the air. I have similar feelings about airplanes, helicopters, spaceships, and so forth. I remember returning to Chicago after leave from the Navy and thinking just how high up in the air 45,000 feet appeared. Shudder !It's not a fear of heights so much as a fear of falling. I even have issues with tall buildings. I recall going to the observation deck at a very tall building in the Post Oak area of Houston adjacent to the Bechtel office building where I was working. It felt as though the building were swaying in the breeze ... and I had problems awaiting the elevator's return to the ground floor.
Travel in a hot air balloon is about as old as flight gets for human beings. The first manned flight in 1783 by the Montgolfier brothers in France not withstanding; it simply has not been something for which I found allure.
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Each year Hot Air Balloon Day comes and goes. Each year I decline to involve myself in the ecstatic pleasure of being suspended from an envelope in the basket of a gondola hoping that the thing doesn't catch on fire from pilot error or come into contact with some set of high tension wires. Both present opportunities for abrupt drops to the ground and subsequent mortality.
I suppose I just don't feel lucky. If you do and are so inclined I hope you'll take any opportunity which may arise for a hot air balloon ride. I won't ever knock anything just because it may not appeal to me personally.
Happy Hot Air Balloon Day to you !