The Computer Vet Weblog

You can tell it’s really summer when the hot air balloons show up. Every Saturday and Sunday morning during the early summer you see the balloons rising up on the horizon. They launch from Lampe Park, about fifteen miles away, and they show up as little rainbow-colored pinpoints in the sky. They drift along the air currents for an hour or so, and then one by one drop back to the earth and disappear. All of this happens at a distance; rarely do they venture over to our side of the valley.

Last weekend, though, was the Minden Balloon Race, and I awoke on Sunday to find them practically in our backyard. Balloons filled the sky, and some of them had even caught just the right air currents to bring them over to our neck of the woods. We went outside and watched them drift over our heads, so close that you could hear the people talking and see the flames licking at the fabric. One of them, that Keirra was especially excited to see, was shaped like a fish. That one flew directly over the house and we could see right up its gills. As it drifted off into the front yard, Keirra shouted, “Bye, fishy!” After that, she didn’t want to look at the other ones; they were too ugly for her. She picked up the sidewalk chalk, presumably to scribble curse words at the other, non-fish, balloons.

I guess if you can ignore the heat, and the dirt and sagebrush and drought, this isn’t such a bad place to live.