Balloon - Take one

I am afraid of heights. Always been and ageing doesn't heal it. Au contraire :). If you want a more expensive word for that, I suffer from acrophobia, but it doesn't make me feel any better. Anyway, I've learnt to live with it,  and also started to do some activities to beat the fear. Have I seen any progress in that? Certainly, but I'm still not a big fan of roller coasters and funfairs' attractions that happen at distances higher than half a metre from the ground. Speed, that I can take easily, as long as it stays on the ground.

Years ago, in my first Holland's summer, on one of the few sunny days, I saw the first air balloon in my life, a real one that is. Actually, it was a sea of balloons, all beautifully coloured and floating freely in the air, at different heights. Some of them only seemed to be cruising around, you could even talk to the people in the basket!, others soared to greater heights, but all invaded the sky, a joyful fleet greeting a beautiful day. Such a show that was!



Of course I swore to myself that I would never set a foot in the basket of a balloon and any possible doubts were swept away when I heard the price for such a ride. As I never embraced the idea of paying to get my pants wet, I was on a very safe side with respect to this :).

Still, year after year I kept seeing balloons rising in the air and people in the basket very happily waving down to the earthbound watchers, so I decided to give it a try. After a few more years, I did it! It was really fascinating, a great experience of life, a unique sensation of never-ending boundaries when carried by the wind  (but not feeling it, as we travelled along at the same speed), in a word, marvellous!

Details of the balloon trip will come in a future post, but until then let me allow some pictures to replace a few million words :)
Not filled yet


This is actually the taking off position of the basket


Holland's houses

Still Holland

A peer :)


Like the Icarus of old

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