Day 752: I Make Friends With A Balloon Pilot

Time passes. The days in my new job (in Montreal, not in Toronto) spin like the dog-eared cards on a Rolodex; I realise that I am old and that the world is not shaped the way it was when I was a girl.

At lunchtime I shut my office door and feverishly search the Google for articles containing a number of search terms, including "I wish Generation Y would fuck right off", "In my day, we had to work for a living", "How dare you fucking talk to me like that, ingrate", and "How to explain the notion of earning a promotion and/or payrise rather than demanding it".

It is quite exhausting and a world of richness is contained therein, but sadly I would be fired for writing it (which is not to say I am not thinking about it quite a lot and 'jotting down' notes in a secret booklet). Suffice to say that the only conclusion I can draw is that we become our parents or, if that notion is too ghastly to contemplate, we find ourselves saying the things the generation before us said.

At the weekends, however, life takes a turn for the better, for it is then that activities happen. These activities are many and varied, and often include a 'wine tasting' or perhaps a trip to a set of tunnels made of coloured plastic. Occasionally we might mount our bicycles and tour about the place pointing at things and wishing for a picnic, but there has been rain in Montreal lately and we have been driven indoors, leaving the house occasionally to steal from our neighbours' recycling bins, take potshots at raccoons, and spy on the twelve Mexicans five houses down.

Yesterday, however, was different, for I travelled in a hot air balloon. It is one of those things that everyone says is great (e.g.
organisms, Paris, crack cocaine, support tights, etc), and it is also one of those things that really IS great. (I will not gush anymore, but a) you have to have a license to fly one; b) it is totally and weirdly still; c) it is very solid feeling and not wobbly; d) you can control one of those muthafuckers to within a foot if you are handy with the gas; e) it is very wonderful; f) it is also totally pointless, and therefore even better.)

"My name's Wes, and the fire extinguisher's between your thighs." Yes! It is our P.I.L.O.T. speaking to us! PILOT! We are three of us in a basket: me, Wes and the pathologist (and giver of this quite extraordinarily good present). He is a bit alarming: we think he might have been a killer, or at least in the army (or navy) and/or the CIA. But he is really nice! He listens to all my stupid questions (whilst putting fire in the balloon and steering it 14,000ft in the air) and also answers them in quite a patient way, e.g.:

Me: How long have you been doing this?
Wes: I've been flying critters for 42 years now... (list follows of all flying things, including Harrier Jump Jets, etc)... and hot hair balloons for six.
Me (on verge of winning Most Fucking Original Question Ever Asked By A Passenger To Balloon Pilot Competition 2008): Does it ever get boring?
Wes: No.




I am not surprised it never gets boring. It is really great, particularly when you are landing. Up down up down up down. "I'm feeling for the wind", says Wes. I am thinking we are about to land in the St Lawrence. We are landing in the garden. No we are not. We are going up again! We are landing in the cemetery. No we are not. We are landing in the carpark. No. The garden. No. The cornfield. Yes. Definitely the cornfield, which is in fact also a bog. No! We are not! We are, with two feet to spare, landing in the corner of someone's garden. "That was ... amazing", I say to Wes, and I mean it - for although the flying bit is good, the landing bit and waving at small children bit is even better. He rests his big mangloved CIA hand on my face and says "Why thank you, my dear!". He is really great.

But I digress. Yes. We are in a balloon, in someone's garden, in the middle of a town, and we have drawn a crowd. The people who live there are out for the evening, possibly at the balloon gala that is happening thirty miles away.



They are all loving it, even the small children who have been brought up on for e.g. Nintendo etc and can't be impressed by anything anymore.

An hour later, we have folded up the balloon and the tarpaulin and put away the basket. It took ten people an hour. We have been chewed up by Canadian mosquitos (they are approx 300% bigger than European mosquitos) and we are all in the big truck, apart from three people who are riding in the basket on the back. They get out a bottle of 'fizzywine' and we drink it; Wes gives us his telephone number and says we must telephone him so he can take us up again before he goes back to Florida. I am nearly sick!! It is too much.

I sleep all the way back to Montreal, and the next day the lady who was with Wes (not his wife - she is showing Quarter horses in Colorado) sends us an email with a photograph of us in the balloon. I'm the one on the left.