It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

We had an awesome opportunity this morning...Ryan and I got to go on a hot air balloon ride! Ryan's company sponsored the Frederick In Flight event in the nearby town of Frederick. Since ballooning is one of the major types of flight, they had a balloon rally as part of the event.

The whole thing was incredibly interesting. I had no idea ballooning was so technical. There are so many things the pilot and the crew have to consider when taking off. AND I didn't realize that there is really no way to steer a balloon...you just go where the wind takes you (obviously the pilots know what they're doing so you don't end up in the middle of the highway or anything like that, but still!).

This was our balloon, Windspiration.

This was the crew "laying down" the basket in preparation for the flight.

Ryan got to help with the launch, he was in charge of the fan. This was when the pilot was giving him the lowdown on how to work it. Apparently it's pretty dangerous and can really hurt someone if one of the propellers breaks or something like that. I made sure to steer clear of that thing!

Here's the crew getting the balloon inflated. You can see that the sun was just rising. We had to be there at 5:00am! For those of you who know me, that is EARLY!

All the other balloons were getting inflated too, there were probably 20 or so balloons that launched with us.

Look at that cute guy operating the fan. Boy is he doing a good job. ;)

Here are some of the other balloons taking off.

This is an inside shot of the envelope (that's ballooning lingo for the top part of the balloon).

And here we go... up, up and away.

This is a shot towards the mountains. You can hardly see them because of all the smokey haze from the fires. We need some rain to help them put those things out!

Ryan enjoying the view.

That's our shadow on the ground as we started our decent.

The landing was interesting, we bounced a bit and then they walked the balloon over to a smoother area of the field (while we were still in it). Then we got to help with deflating the balloon.

And Ryan helped "milk the envelope" to get all the air out.

Here's Ryan with the Volk & Bell sponsored balloon basket.

So, apparently there are a lot of traditions in ballooning. After a flight they have a ceremony for first timers. I won't divulge all the details in case you haven't experienced it for yourself, but basically it involved a history lesson on ballooning (very interesting) and champagne.

When we finished the ceremony, the crew chief turned the cork of the champagne bottle into a little balloon for us.

Seriously, the ride was so neat! Definitely something on my bucket list and I'm so glad that we had a chance to go.

As you probably noticed, the girls were no where to be found in these pictures. Since we had to get up so early, we decided to leave them at my mom and dad's overnight. It worked out great. Ryan and I got to go out for dinner last night after we dropped them off and our 4:00am wake up this morning was a little less grueling since we didn't have to worry about getting them up and ready to go. I was a little nervous because this is the first time that we've left Sydney overnight, but she did great and slept through without any problems. Thank you Superpop and Granne for helping out!