Monday 9th April….yep, a work day…..BUT……..for us it was a mega early start!
I am sure our colleagues are totally fed up with our woeful tales at how the hot air balloon keeps getting cancelled….once, while we had a BBQ in a sandstorm and the other time, we actually got up and dressed!!! (that was the day of the races!) and it was too windy again! We are running out of weekends so the next best option was to go on a morning during the week…….Monday was that day!
We checked with the company the likelihood of flight and they were optimistic, but instead of going to bed early, we just had to wait till we were tired……
0415hrs the mosque clock called….Got up and dressed and the only phone call we got was the pilot saying he was out side the flats waiting for us!!! (not in his balloon! In his car!!!) Surprisingly we were able to contain our excitement….after all we were still half asleep! We wanted to text everybody, but knew that it still could have been cancelled! We jumped in the people carrier and we were off to the Hyatt! Catching ZZZzzz’s until we got to the hotel. At the hotel we had to wait what seemed like an eternity! I think there was a mix up with telephone numbers or something…but eventually a young couple (I say young cos they were in their early 20s if that!!!) came down and jumped in. Then it was more ZZZzzz’s to the flight site…….unfortunately I cant tell you how long the journey was, or where exactly we were….i know we could see the Oman mountains…and I believe we were on our way to Al Ain.
There was a balloon already in the air….it had a big basket holding around 18 people! Our pilot told us there were only 4 of us plus him going up in our balloon…..BONUS!
The balloon was sat rather limp on the sand! They were blowing it up with a fan to start with and the occasional blast from the burners when they could guarantee the nylon wasn’t going to burn! The first thing that surprised me was the size of the basket!! It looked a bit small for all of us!!!! Very quickly, it came to life! The basket was up turned and we were beckoned to jump in!! both CJD and I bumped our heads…but at this point the adrenaline was kicking in and you could have punched me and I wouldn’t have felt it!
THIS WAS IT…..we were really going for our flight!!!
We helped the girl into the basket….she was quite delicate….and very quickly and soooooo smoothly we were airborne!.......Silence (well, except for the periodic blast from the burners that were a few inches from our heads!!!)….oh yeah and the little screeches that the other girl let out when we had to get more heat in the balloon……we had a brief safety chat, but to be honest, if anything had have happened up there, there was not a lot that we could have done to save ourselves…..WOW that made it even more exciting!! we started with a little low flying…..then we went up…..2700 feet (ok so I have been told before I should state it in metric, around 823m)…the view was fantastic..i then thought to look at the way the balloon was coupled to the basket....Wow, those wires dont half look thin when your 0.8km from earth!!!….there isn’t really a lot that words can do justice……just check out the photos….we could see a massive dry river bed, sun rise, mountains, camels, goats, sand dunes…..oh yeah and smog from the city in the distance….Right TEXT TIME...out came the phone everyone got the same text in the UK and Dubai, we just had to share our experience! Was ok except we forgot that UK was only at 3am…Sorry Nick n Steve!….….we came down and did more low flying, and a touch and go…..well, I felt a bit robbed by that actually……we didn’t touch the sand at all! But it was still cool……then faster than we dropped, we were up high again! ACE! We managed a circuit (no idea how he steered it) there was no breeze! Ok so landing……totally poised for excitement!!!! Being dragged across the sand by the out of control balloon, basket thrown all over the place….sand and dirt all over our work clothes, BUT NO………………the calmest, softest, smoothest landing EVER! And we came in to land where we took off…….really amazing! We jumped out of the basket still buzzing……..was excellent…..definitely has to be better than going gliding with cadets!!! And I really love that too!
The other balloon came in to the same place and they all decamped and jumped into a bus (cattle truck) and disappeared! Our pilot got the picnic chairs out, and we had fruit, yoghurt, croissants, pain au chocolat, Tea, juice (BREAKFAST BASICALLY) in the desert! HOW COOL! Well actually by 7:40 it was starting to get quite humid and warm! we chatted about all sorts…….how our pilot got into ballooning, ballooning and the UAE etc it was great. But then reality hit in….we had to go back to Doobers for work!!!
We dropped the tourists off at the Hyatt and we were dropped at Union Square…..in for 0900….HOWSATT!
I am sure our colleagues are totally fed up with our woeful tales at how the hot air balloon keeps getting cancelled….once, while we had a BBQ in a sandstorm and the other time, we actually got up and dressed!!! (that was the day of the races!) and it was too windy again! We are running out of weekends so the next best option was to go on a morning during the week…….Monday was that day!
We checked with the company the likelihood of flight and they were optimistic, but instead of going to bed early, we just had to wait till we were tired……
0415hrs the mosque clock called….Got up and dressed and the only phone call we got was the pilot saying he was out side the flats waiting for us!!! (not in his balloon! In his car!!!) Surprisingly we were able to contain our excitement….after all we were still half asleep! We wanted to text everybody, but knew that it still could have been cancelled! We jumped in the people carrier and we were off to the Hyatt! Catching ZZZzzz’s until we got to the hotel. At the hotel we had to wait what seemed like an eternity! I think there was a mix up with telephone numbers or something…but eventually a young couple (I say young cos they were in their early 20s if that!!!) came down and jumped in. Then it was more ZZZzzz’s to the flight site…….unfortunately I cant tell you how long the journey was, or where exactly we were….i know we could see the Oman mountains…and I believe we were on our way to Al Ain.
There was a balloon already in the air….it had a big basket holding around 18 people! Our pilot told us there were only 4 of us plus him going up in our balloon…..BONUS!
The balloon was sat rather limp on the sand! They were blowing it up with a fan to start with and the occasional blast from the burners when they could guarantee the nylon wasn’t going to burn! The first thing that surprised me was the size of the basket!! It looked a bit small for all of us!!!! Very quickly, it came to life! The basket was up turned and we were beckoned to jump in!! both CJD and I bumped our heads…but at this point the adrenaline was kicking in and you could have punched me and I wouldn’t have felt it!
THIS WAS IT…..we were really going for our flight!!!
We helped the girl into the basket….she was quite delicate….and very quickly and soooooo smoothly we were airborne!.......Silence (well, except for the periodic blast from the burners that were a few inches from our heads!!!)….oh yeah and the little screeches that the other girl let out when we had to get more heat in the balloon……we had a brief safety chat, but to be honest, if anything had have happened up there, there was not a lot that we could have done to save ourselves…..WOW that made it even more exciting!! we started with a little low flying…..then we went up…..2700 feet (ok so I have been told before I should state it in metric, around 823m)…the view was fantastic..i then thought to look at the way the balloon was coupled to the basket....Wow, those wires dont half look thin when your 0.8km from earth!!!….there isn’t really a lot that words can do justice……just check out the photos….we could see a massive dry river bed, sun rise, mountains, camels, goats, sand dunes…..oh yeah and smog from the city in the distance….Right TEXT TIME...out came the phone everyone got the same text in the UK and Dubai, we just had to share our experience! Was ok except we forgot that UK was only at 3am…Sorry Nick n Steve!….….we came down and did more low flying, and a touch and go…..well, I felt a bit robbed by that actually……we didn’t touch the sand at all! But it was still cool……then faster than we dropped, we were up high again! ACE! We managed a circuit (no idea how he steered it) there was no breeze! Ok so landing……totally poised for excitement!!!! Being dragged across the sand by the out of control balloon, basket thrown all over the place….sand and dirt all over our work clothes, BUT NO………………the calmest, softest, smoothest landing EVER! And we came in to land where we took off…….really amazing! We jumped out of the basket still buzzing……..was excellent…..definitely has to be better than going gliding with cadets!!! And I really love that too!
The other balloon came in to the same place and they all decamped and jumped into a bus (cattle truck) and disappeared! Our pilot got the picnic chairs out, and we had fruit, yoghurt, croissants, pain au chocolat, Tea, juice (BREAKFAST BASICALLY) in the desert! HOW COOL! Well actually by 7:40 it was starting to get quite humid and warm! we chatted about all sorts…….how our pilot got into ballooning, ballooning and the UAE etc it was great. But then reality hit in….we had to go back to Doobers for work!!!
We dropped the tourists off at the Hyatt and we were dropped at Union Square…..in for 0900….HOWSATT!
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