Let it snow....I guess

It is my RDO (Regular Day Off for those non Dept of Defense/gov't acronym types out there-I work 9 hour days so that I have a Friday off every pay period), I've been to the grocery, I have my all day, on-line, annual ballooning Safety Seminar tomorrow, and the Super Bowl on Sunday. I don't have to leave the house until Monday morning when I go to the dentist for my follow up visit for having my wisdom teeth out. I suppose that means that Sunday afternoon (before the Super Bowl) I will have to try to find the driveway. But between now and then it can snow all it wants.

Bleahhhh, I hate snow. Almost as much as I hate rain.... I guess this means I need to live in the desert.

Well, I am not as wise as I was....

Friday morning I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled. Not fun. Luckily my neighbor Paul volunteered to drive me to and from (I think that there was a little arm twisting but he is retired and wanted to go down to the airport and check on his plane anyway - he dropped me off and then came back).

I'm doing okay...but I haven't bothered to get dressed for two days either. I am thinking now that I will take "sick leave" tomorrow and not actually drive down to Bloomfield until tomorrow evening. Get all of the pain meds out of my system before I try driving. I don't feel too bad but I don't want to push it either.

I am still alive...

sorta. Work is INCREDIBLY boring right now. Working on my DAWIA certification but that is the cure for insomnia. Going to get some training on a language that I don't really want to use next week....but it could be useful I suppose.

In the meantime I continue to be amazed by the wildlife sanctuary that is my workplace. Every night this week between my office and the gate I have seen multiple deer in multiple places. For example, this evening I saw one deer about 20 feet off the roadway at one point. And within a half mile I saw a group of four or five at the edge of the trees. Before I got off the base I saw two more groups (3-5 per group). And a flock (20+) of wild turkeys. I saw another flock of the turkeys on Monday about three miles from where I saw them tonight. Might have been the same ones, they all look alike to me. And last night I saw a fox.

What a whirlwind.....

Last Thursday very late in the afternoon I found out that I was going to a meeting in Sunnyvale, CA for work. On Monday of this week a little voice popped up with 'JetBlue' has really cheap tickets from the Bay Area to Long Beach'. After some quick checking with my boss and the travel folks I had them change my return flight from San Jose to LAX and grabbed myself one of those cheap tickets and here I am :-)

Certain little curly haired tot is napping right now but we have been very, very busy with going to the park and the zoo and reading books. She sure is a cutie but I wish that I had brought a camera.

And now we return to "real" life

Well, last weekend was pretty darn good. This weekend.....sad to say more normal. And six hundred dollars later the Suburb has a brand spanking new radiator. Guess I know where my ballooning budget just went. Sigh.....maybe next year will be better.

WOW!!

Two flights in two days!! My dear wifey does love me :-)

And Mother Nature has decided to behave. Nick and Ruthie mentioned last night that a week or so ago that they flew six nights in a row. But I will gladly take my two nights in a row. Other than Alice we had a completely different crew from the night before. And if I was going to be trying for a third night in a row (which I can't) it would probably be yet another crew. It is good to be flexible I suppose.

This flight we actually went over Morse reservoir. The other three balloons all went low and played with the boats. I heard a rumor that Gary tried washing the bottom 18 inches of his basket. I stayed high because I wanted to get west of the water so that I could practice a couple more approaches. I ended up landing about 200 yards to the right of where Nick landed (of course he was 500 yards further downwind) so my staying high didn't buy me much. But I did get a couple of approaches down to inspect the soybeans from close range.

The landing wasn't as smooth as the night before but this landing site (another new subdivision without houses) had a lot more obstacles in the form of lot signs and stakes. I was kind of indecisive about where to put it but when I put it we stuck it pretty firmly. With more experienced crew I would have been less hesitant to use my drop line but these guys were pretty much rookies all around. So we just "crash landed" with a thump. But we didn't come close to hitting anything either. Alice did a nice job of "spotting" the one stake during the deflation and we packed it up and headed that a way. But not before watching Geoff give his passengers the full flying at dusk experience. But that is another story....

So I am almost caught up for now. Of course, in a couple of weeks I'll be "itching" again.

Also, one of the Friday night crew guys and his 15 year old daughter took a BUNCH of photos and posted them at http://www.pbase.com/dowleyk/jaydotyballoon . Go have a look.

Back in the air!!

HOORAY!! For only the second time this year Trouvie got to get out of her trailer.

It was a very good flight with a very good "new subdivision" landing site.

Man! But it is neat to glide along, chat with the folks out in their back yard and with only a small pucker when I came up over a tree line (lining up on a great side yard for a landing spot) only to discover that the field between the trees and the side yard has four horses in it. I was already burning to get up over the trees. I just burnt about 10 seconds longer than I had planned and hoped that was enough to let me "coast" past the horses. Of course, it scrubbed the yard as a landing spot but none of the horses got "jumpy" so that was a good thing.

SMILE!!