Birthday Ballooning

Well, tomorrow is my 24th birthday, and I wasn't gonna do anything for my birthday this year (besides getting mum to make me a pig cake!), but my siblings and Hannah & Giles had other ideas... on Saturday they got me up at 3:20am to send me up in...

A HOT AIR BALLOON!!!

Unreal!!! It was so bizarre - it was literally floating 2,600ft above ground in a large picnic basket! Very trippy! The most fascinating part was that you can't feel the wind because you're actually floating with it - it makes sense, but I'd never thought about the fact that it would feel so still. We got up to about 30km/hr, but also went to the other extreme - dropping to tree level, the air movement was so minimal we were at one point only moving at 2km/hr! It was awesome that we could get so low, and just be hovering above the forest. When the driver wanted to get moving again, he simply let out some more gas, and we moved up as if in an elevator, caught a faster moving wind stream and we were off again!

After an hour & quarter flying, we landed in someone's paddock (beautifully soft touchdown), and had champaign and chocolates, then trekked back into Bendigo for a scrumptious breakfast. Katie, who I sat next to at breakfast, knows a christian guy named Shaun living in Nagasaki, so she's gonna get me his email - yay!! Another friend! (Well, hopefully!) Adam, Ruth & Kelly were in the pick-up car that came to get us from the paddock and they got to come eat breakfast with us, which was cool too! Thanks heaps guys for such a memorable birthday!