temecula balloon festival, continued

so, i didn't really go into specifics about the balloon ride that brian and i took a few weeks ago. first, i have been wanting to ride on a hot air balloon since i can remember.... when i was in middle school, my parents took brett and i on a family vacation to colorado (driving there from PA, btw), and one of the many things along that trip was a hot air balloon festival in crested butte, CO. it was really awesome, at least for a 13-ish year old. but i'm wondering if my fascination hadn't started then...? not sure. the point is, i've wanted to do this forever.

so when brian and i first met he had mentioned off-handedly that his great uncle ken and aunt ro have a balloon. i of course was not shy in making it known that i wanted to take a ride at some point, but brian seemed a lot less enthusiastic about it. (he's kind of less enthusiastic than me about most things...this is mainly due to the fact that i am overly excited about approximately everything.)

so i finally got my chance--they participate in the temecula balloon & wine festival every year, and brian and i were going to get to ride! the only downer was that we had to be IN temecula at 5 am, and for those non-locals, that's a bit brutal. temecula is 1+ hours away. but it was totally worth it.

we met ken and ro at their hotel and followed them to the balloon site. then we helped set up the balloon, while i snapped a bunch of pictures of neighboring balloons being set up too. the whole thing is actually pretty complicated and takes quite a bit longer than i'd expected. (about one hour to set up and another hour to take down.) but eventually brian, ken and i hopped in the basket and started to take off. it was really amazing. in order for us to go up, ken kind of pulsed the propane torch on and off... so it was very serene when the torch was off, but i was initially a bit freaked by the torch... it was pretty loud and i could feel the heat on my head, since we were standing right below it.

anyway, we floated around for about 1/2 hour or so, and then we were floating toward a lake and ken was afraid we'd get stranded over there, so we came back down. it was a pretty great trip though...

so here are some pics.