Wasn't expecting this

So yesterday afternoon the Poobah and I went outside on the back deck to blow some bubbles. We were facing east, so our faces wouldn't be in the sun. I heard a noise, which was a bit different than the average ambient noise present in a neighborhood with a diverse mix of rednecks working on cars, mexican folks with loud stereos playing music that seems to have a lot of accordions, black folks playing music without accordions, lawnmowers, weedeaters, planes overhead on descent into Nashville, etc. The noise seemed a little strange, but not so much that I'd go looking to figure out what it was.

Poobah heard the noise too, and asked what it was. Now I had to investigate.

It seemed like it was coming from behind us, so we turned around and squinted into the sunlight and saw the source of the noise. It was a hot air balloon, and it was really close. Apparently the guy working the burner was trying to clear a tree line at the edge of our neighborhood and land in the field behind our house.

One of the things I've always wondered about hot air balloons was how exactly they are steered. Up and down I undertand, but left, right, front, and back seems to be a bit beyond my grasp too. Apparently it was beyond this guy's grasp too, because he missed the field and set down in my neighbor's backyard. Missed the field by about 100 feet.

Remember that part in Independence Day when the alien ships first started moving over the major cities? Remember when Will Smith first went outside and noticed the spaceships over downtown? (Speaking of which, how good of a stripper was Vivica Fox that she could afford a house in L.A. with a view of downtown as a single mom? I just realized I'm nitpicking the plausability of a stripper affording a house in a movie about an alien invation, so let's move on, OK?) In that part of the movie, everyone's doing normal stuff until catch sight of the giant spaceship and then they join everyone else just staring agape at the ship over downtown. Similar thing happened yesterday with the wife. She noticed the Poobah and I staring at the balloon landing next door, and her eyes followed ours to the giant balloon, at which point she stood on the back deck, mouth agape. Made me giggle a bit.

The rest of the process was fairly uneventful, except for when the guy fired off his burner a few times, scaring the piss out of the army of kids that gathered around the gondola. Scared the Poobah pretty good too, enough to make her cry. I got a little irritated about being so jumpy and starting to cry like that, but in retrospect I guess a giant balloon with a contraption that shoots fire landing 50 feet away from you would probably make you a lot more scared at age 2 instead of age 33. I feel appropriately bad about that now.

We took some pictures, but they didn't turn out great. I'll post them up anyway when I get home this afternoon.

This post is tagged hot air balloon and Murfreesboro

(ed. - Here's the pics I promised...)