The Wizard Leaves Oz

Today I rode in a hot air balloon.

Crazy! I love balloons. I have loved hot air balloons from the day I saw the Disney Mickey balloon floating over our backyard in Manchester, Michigan at about the age of 3 or 4. It was definitely before Rachel was born. And no one else saw it. Just me! I don't think anyone ever believed me. But that balloon has soared with me for the last 24 years. And today, I got to ride in my very own hot air balloon!

My friend Dawn planned the perfect weekend. An afternoon of wine tasting in our own wine country, Temecula. Followed by a night at our friend Jessica's enormous new house in Fallbrook, the next town south. And then early, early, early in the morning a balloon ride over wine country. Sadly, I had to bow out of the sleep over because of my silly bird, who has to be let out of her cage a few times a day in order to do her business. But it was pretty cute to see her singing at her eggs at 4:45 this morning!

So we arrived right on time, all six of us, at Wilson Creek Winery, my parents' winery of choice. We unloaded into the ridiculously cold air - I swear to you it was 10 degrees! OK, maybe 45. But my tee, fleece and scarf were not enough. I was dying for my Midwest winter coat, fur-lined leather gloves, winter scarf and hat. We waited around on the gorgeous grounds while the pilots tested the weather, by letting a few helium-filled balloons go. Finally a test balloon was filled and lifted on the grounds and we were all loaded into vans and driven to a nearby field for take off.

As we were making our way, off roading, through a waist-high grassy field, we hit a rock. There was a silent pause as we waited to see if a wheel would fall off, and a subsequent forward movement to our place of lift off. There were about 20 of us in total, divided into 4 balloons. Tarps were laid out, the balloons were unfurled and the baskets hauled off the trailers onto their sides. Giant fans were pulled out of thin air and blown into the held-open mouths of the balloons. One-by-one, the four balloons were inflated until they were enormously huge lying on their sides with their sideways baskets. The fire was ignited and the hot air lifted the balloons slowly off the ground, righting the baskets as they lifted up. As the baskets righted, we were instructed to climb - quickly - into them for take off. A few Polaroids later and we were lifting off the ground!

I wasn't sure what to expect. Reading the waiver at 5:30 in the morning, I had thoughts of fire, falling and arrest for trespassing in my mind. But it was none of that. It was a slow fall away from the earth and a rise so gradual and easy that it wasn't at all nerve-wracking. Our pilot was able to spin us by opening and closing vents in the top of the balloons. We rose to the unthinkable height of 3,500 feet about the ground, 4,500 feet above sea level!, with a perfect view of the Pacific Ocean.

I have to back up at least an hour. As we were watching the test balloon and weather tests take their somewhat crazy test flights, the phrase, the rabbit died, came up. Way back when, doctors would inject the urine of possibly pregnant women into rabbits - if the rabbit died, the woman was pregnant. Thus the saying, the rabbit died. No idea how this came up. But it came up in relation to the Aerosmith song, Janey's got a Gun. And Agnes, one of the six of us, asked if Janey was pregnant. And I yelled out, "Are you retarded?!" There was a long pause. And then a lot of laughter. Followed by an apology by me. It was freaking early and I'd been up since 4:45a! My sensor wasn't exactly on. And after we'd laughed and talked through the song and made ample fun of both me for my un-P.C.-ness, and Agnes, for her naivete, we huddled together for warmth. Well, once we were up in that balloon, a lot of, "Are you retarded?!" jokes followed. We had a ball up in that balloon, looking down at the valley from several thousand feet,"seeing" our various deployed husbands on their various boats on the Pacific. When I shouted, "I'm going to die!" followed by a long pause and the clarification of, "Of hunger!" everyone laughed and Bill the pilot thanked me for my explanation.

Wouldn't you know it, there was a couple who arrived an hour late! Our balloon was split in half, with four of us girls on one side, two on the other with a married couple and his ridiculously annoying MIL. So we floated down to earth with a lot of interactions via walkie talkie with our ground crew. As we got within 10 feet of the ground, 3 guys in blue shirts came running out of a van that screeched to a halt. We were told to hang on tight, bend our knees and be prepared to fall over sideways! Thankfully our ground crew was able to hop on the corners and hold us upright while the late group climbed aboard quickly. We immediately flew back up to 4,500 feet so fast that we made our own wind! And man was it cold! A while more of floating around and we started to float back to earth.

We glided over a construction area with a big depression that had been dug for the foundation. We floated through the backyard of an early-rising man who happily waved at us while enjoying his coffee on his porch. We were warned that the second landing would be bumpy. After the addition of the extra couple, the extra two in our party climbed over the divider into our half of the basket. So now there were six of us tightly packed a hundred feet above the ground. The pilot told us all to face him, hold onto the rope inside the basket and bend our knees to prepare. The six of us made seats for each other as we sat on each other's legs, preparing for our landing. And bumpy it was! Our side was leather-lined - the skidding side. So should we tip, as is common, we would be lying on the bottom, heads in the dry dust. I sat hard on Jessica and held on tight while the van was slammed into park and our "landing gear" ran toward the basket and hopped on the corners. We bounced and skipped across 50 yards of dust before finally stopping. Whew! Our balloon flopped sideways and we all slowly stood. It was over!

After a ridiculously hilarious ceremony of stuffing the balloon back in its bag and jumping on the bag to compact everything, we piled back into the van for our ride back to Wilson Creek Winery where we had started.

We arrived back and dashed for the sunniest table under the gazebo. We had a basket of pre-packaged pastries and wine glasses ready for their filling of champagne. I had snuck a treat - orchid flowers that open with the bubbles poured on top of them - which I dropped into each of our glasses and one for our pilot, Bill. Bill stood up and told the story of the first hot air balloon, a doomed ride in Paris in the late 1700s. The first ride had risen over the town and crashed quickly outside of the town gates. The peasants saw the crashing, fiery balloon and thought, dragon! They attached and shredded the first hot air balloon, "saving" the two pilots. When the pilots went back to their king, retelling their story of "savior" the king suggested they take a drink with them on future flights to ease their passage into peasant-ville. The drink of the day? Champagne! Thus, a champagne toast following a balloon ride.

The Irish embraced the idea and added a "prayer" - i.e. a toast. And now there's a traditional toast that goes along with the champagne following a successful flight. In our case, topped off by a fruit-roll-up flavored flower in the bottom of our glass.

We all piled back into our cars and after a silly breakfast at a winery slightly down the rode, we all headed on our ways home. By the time I reached my apartment, my limbs were twitching. I felt physically exhausted, like I had had the hardest work-out of my life. I crawled up the stairs, let the bird stretch her wings and collapsed back in my bed, waking up enough hours after the stars had left the sky to be acceptable.

I have enjoyed the rest of the day browsing through my pictures, enjoying my pjs and finishing off a bottle of wine and a book. And now, it's time to collapse yet again into the heavenly comfort of my bed. And tonight, I will not require a lavender pillow, melatonin, a frozen eye mask, a regular eye mask, tingly lotion, jumping sheep, cold air or prayer. But the wine did help get me ready for my collapse! I can't wait to dream of my orange balloon . . .