An Evening Flight and New Crew

With the taste of Lobster fresh in my mind, I kept studying the weather in hopes of finding a good flying day. Sunday, July 15 looked like it would be a suitable evening for a flight, so I recruited Belita and Dick to crew and Gareth to fly. My new friend Bryan (who is the son of a balloonist) came out to help, too.

We got to the launch site a little early and had to wait a bit for the winds to calm enough to inflate and launch, but the weather turned out nice, and we had an uneventful inflation.

Gareth and I flew north over Riverland College, over Target and the landfill. We kept flying north until we found a nice road we could drop in on. We made an approach to land on the road, and Bryan was right there to catch us. We had only flown about 30 minutes, so I invited Gareth's daughter (and my co-worker) Selena to get in. She climbed on board, Gareth climbed out, and on we flew.

We weren't in the air long before we saw two planes approaching from the north. They split up and each started crop dusting nearby fields. I climbed provide plenty of separation while they sprayed their fields. Once past them, we descended and picked another road on which to land.

Again, Bryan (oh yeah, his brother made it there, too!) was there to catch us, so we put the balloon down on a gravel road between a corn field and a bean field. It was a great flight with new friends in my new home town!