Up, Up and Away!

Due to an IU home football game last weekend every hotel was booked in town so we had to stay at a motel in Bedford about 30 minutes south of Bloomington. Sara was very excited about this (no joke) as this was her first time staying in a motel. And it certainly lived up (down?) to her expectations as it was a very typical motel with some questionable cleanliness, but it was a roof over our head so it did the job.  We had to meet our pilot at 7am so we got up at 5:45am, had a bite to eat of Cardamom bread (homemade by Sara) and fruit, and headed out to Bloomington.

As luck would have it the other people that were supposed to be in the same basket as us did not show up which meant more space for us.  The basket wasn't too big so I'm not sure how we would have fit two more people in with us.  The day before the pilot had taken up eight (that's right, eight) people and they actually skydived out of the basket.  Wow.  We would not be jumping out of the basket today...just a calm trip up to about 3300 feet.

We drove out to the liftoff site (an open field used for band practice) and helped get the balloon prepped for flight.  Soon enough we had liftoff...

And, yes, it was that loud (and hot) when the pilot heated up the balloon. Sara and dad then followed along in the "chase" van.  Here are some pictures from the morning:



If you want to see more pictures that I took during the flight feel free to check out my Flickr page.