Went to the Tigard Festival of Balloons yesterday. Tigard is about a 2 hour drive from us so in order to get there for the early morning (5:45) launch we had to hit the road no later than 4AM. Having gone to bed late the night before it was quite a chore but we did it and arrived just in time to see the first balloon lift off. There were plenty more balloons laid out on the tarmac with their baskets on their sides. The crew would first roll out the balloon on teh ground and then attach the basket. Then a powerful fan would blow air into the balloon to start inflating it. As more air was pushed into the balloon it would slowly and magically rise into the air and the basket would be pulled to an upright position. This got everyone excited, especially photographers who crowded around the balloon snapping photos like paparazzi. Next the fuel and burner system was checked and a test flame sent up into the balloon. As the air was heated you could see the basket start to pull up from the ground. After a few comments (and probably prayers) the pilot motioned that he was ready for lift-off and everyone stepped back a bit. The pilot then shot a stream of fire that seemed to go halfway up into the balloon. It only took a couple of jets on the throttle to get lift-off. It was just an amazing and peaceful sight to see all these balloons gently soaring into the sky one after another. What a cool experience it would be to go up in a hot air balloon, soaring quietly over the country-side at the mercy of the wind, looking down like a stranger on a foreign land. I overheard one pilot talking about having to adjust altitude to catch different streams of wind in order to change direction of the balloon. What a great analogy of our own lives. We have ups and downs and we seem to labor and stress over the downs. But sometimes you have to go down in order to catch that next stream of wind and change your direction.
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