I once crashed in a hot air balloon

I absolutely love to play the game, Two Truths and a Lie. I'll let you in on a little secret to the game. Take your craziest experiences/facts about yourself and tell those while altering one fact to be just slightly off from the truth. I often share 

1. I have broken my left arm 4 times and no other part of my body. 

2. I have once crashed in a hot air balloon

3. I have a twin brother 

Now if you know me, you know that #3 is false. I have a twin sister Susan, not a twin brother. See? It's easy! 

Another fairly well known fact about me is my very bad luck with transportation devices. I have crashed on a horse, a moped, ski lift, dune buggy etc. I have been stranded at airports overnight over 8 times, I have had my luggage lost over 10 times. It's rare that I fly without some sort of delay. I have been involved in 4 car accidents, multiple times fallen off bikes or skateboards and roller skates. Etc. BUT I did go skydiving without incident with my buddy Paul! A fact I am proud of...but that is a story for another day. Today I would like to share about the time I crashed in a hot air balloon. 

At the time, my dear friend Rich was a balloon chaser. A profession I never knew about but says ridiculously fun! He would follow hot air balloons until they came down and would pick up the passengers after they finished their flight. 

Well Rich had been offered 4 free passes to ride on a hot air balloon and invited my friend Jenni and I as well as two of his fraternity brothers. We were required to wake up early in the morning around 4am to get to the launch site early. My college boyfriend at the time had spent the night and I was so very comfortable that I didn't get up. He convinced me to be a little late so we could have a little fun and I was easily convinced. I ran to my car and to get Jenni but we ended up being close to 45 mins late. Rich was really upset with us as it became more dangerous to be up in a hot air balloon, the later in the day it gets. But he was Rich and so very kind so he let it go and we set off for our adventure. There was a group of four people who would go first and then the pilot felt it was safe enough for us to still go a little bit later. 

When it was our turn we climbed into the basket and started our ascent. It was an incredible rush. I was fully aware that it was just a basket that held us up. The propane was uncomfortably hot but also created quite an adrenaline rush. We saw beautiful country landscape and watched the deer run across fields as we saw hunters in their stands ready for a shot. I was tempted to yell loudly to the deer.."Run! Run for your lives!" 

After we had been up in the air for quite some time, our pilot radios down to the van that we were running very low on propane and that we were in a no land zone. He said, "if we don't land soon, we will run out of fuel."  Apparently, there was an apple farmer in the area that restricted us from landing on their property. Now I know this is probably a common conversation pilots have but our peaceful day in the skies got a lot more scary hearing that. We frantically looked for a place to land but saw power lines wherever we looked. The van radioed back that there was a housing development nearby so we headed that direction. 

My neck was burning from the propane feeling like a bad sunburn and we were anxious to find a place to land. 

These next moments will stick with me for the rest of my life. 

As we entered the housing development, we see a man standing peacefully on his porch with his son in his arms casually waving to us. His look of pure happiness turned to sheer terror as he realized we were headed straight for his house! 

He ran inside the house and the next thing I know, instead of hitting the house we barely missed, we careened to the side and landed in a large tree. Our basket fell forward and I was on the basket side that was perfectly horizontal to the ground with several people who had fallen on top of me. 

We quickly righted ourselves and headed towards the ground. We hit the ground hard and bounced back up as we went back towards the heavens. I didn't think much of it until our pilot yells down. "You have to get us down! The balloon is completely ripped and won't keep us in the air!" 

I freak out for only seconds until I see several members of this housing development running towards us in their robes and pajamas...ready to save the day! They all start pulling on ropes and when we are about 5 feet up, our pilot directs us to jump. Now 5 feet doesn't sound like much but my twin sister is 5 feet tall. (She claims 5'1) so I jumped, skimmed my knee a little but one by one my little crew made it down and the basket finally came down as well. We celebrated with champagne and thanked the friendly neighbors and received our certificates of completion. 

All in all it was an incredible morning and one heck of a great story! 

The worst part of the day was that our poor pilot was set to retire that day and this was to be one of his last flights. He had flown these balloons for over 30 years and had never had an accident. 

Important life lessons/take aways: 

1. No matter how great it may be, morning sex could have catastrophic consequences if you have somewhere to be at that time. Thankfully no one was hurt...aside from the balloon! 

2. Never judge a housing development by its outside appearance...it's what's inside that counts...those people helped save our lives! 

3. Chase balloons, chase deer, chase people...but always live life to the fullest!