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What a delightful story 😄
Very nice news to see first thing in the morning, thanks
Yoooo I was JUST thinking about how this happened to me when I was a kid. The ballon landed at the end of my street and he stayed handing out business cards to all the parents who went outside to see what was going on.
He totally meant to do that.
I hate it when that happens!
That’s really cool! How did they transport the balloon & basket after it was deflated? Did they fold the balloon into the basket and load it onto a trailer or something? Did they have extra vehicles to bring the other passengers back? I know almost nothing about hot air balloons
They rolled it up into a big bag, then loaded it onto a trailer. Here, I got a photo. :)
Edit: s/folded/rolled/
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you about hot air balloons. You are completely and TOTALLY at the mercy of the wind.
I was guarding an empty warehouse on a quite Sunday afternoon. I was standing on the roof just relaxing. The warehouse was right on the edge of the city limits. Beyond it was nothing but farmland. Anyways while i was up there I noticed a hot air balloon starting to descend. It was descending and coming in at an angle quite fast. When it hit the ground I wold say it was still going about 30Kph. and the basket was dragged about a football fields length before it finally came to rest. while it was being dragged I could see two people just go ass over teakettle and fall out of the basket as it was being dragged along.
I assume it was an emergency landing because the wind had started picking up. Unfortunately the field they landed in didn’t have any access that wasn’t fenced off and was surrounded by deep ditches all around. The chase car drove everywhere around the field to try and get to them and eventually ended up driving up to a farmhouse and I assume they let them onto the field.
I had to get back to wandering the warehouse so I never got to see what finally happened. But it was and interesting part of a quiet Sunday.
Security guards see some shit. You wouldn’t think so; odd shifts, (most) people’s aversion to guarded places they’re not supposed to be, no expectation of anything but boredom, but nope.
You get a call to check on a flickering light and and you’re like ugh! You’re seriously gonna make me do stuff I’m being paid to do, right as I was near the end of the season finale of ______. So you roll your eyes and make a bunch of noises as you get up. It’s cool though, your show only has 10 minutes left and there’s 45 left in the shift. You’ll meander on down check it out, and think about where the show is going, then bam, you’ve got some cereal at home calling your name. But it turns out that “flickering light” is a tweaker walking an alligator and shooting off Roman candles… Please be off property, please. But you know it’s not and you’ve got some overtime in front of you while you give a statement to police and get them footage. All while your phone is blowing up with people asking you what’s going on.
In my 4-6 months as a security guard I’ve seen; an angry wife smash a guy’s car, a tornado in the distance, a flood in the building, a machine deciding to blow all hoses at once and creating a chem spill nightmare, a massively drunk dude trying to get in for his shift who was off for months for workman’s comp, a pair of off shift workers having sex in a filthy room that’s almost guaranteed to give you cancer THAT day, and a guy so ridiculously high that he locked himself in his machine (which would literally be torture if he weren’t being paid adequately for) as he slowly ate away at a giant part using a spot blast gun as some kind of protest? The part is bigger than a car door and made of thick steel. Basically he got one $600 part scrapped for the loss of a $30/hr job, and a court case for narcotics. And he couldn’t even remember the point of his “protest”.
And that doesn’t include the two years I was a bouncer.
Congrats, you now have the coolest story you’ll ever have to tell at parties.
You can’t park there mate
Who’s gonna ticket me, you?
Nice parking job rita!
They heat up the balloon so it just floats a little over the ground and then drag it by hand to a better parking spot to deflate and load in the trailer.
Came here hoping to see this exact comment. The internet didn’t disappoint.
I’ve heard a lot of hot air balloon pilots carry a bottle of wine or something with them to help smooth things over with property owners who are unhappy about them landing on their property.
So did you get anything good?
No, nothing like that. I got a really good story and video out of it, which is enough for me. :) I’m really glad he was able to set it down without anyone being hurt.
Like in games, when a rare chance occurrence happens like this, and you talk to the pilot and he gives you a rare item (untradeable, of course)
Came here to ask this. Growing up we’d have hot air balloons land in our neighborhood pretty frequently, they’d usually have a bottle of wine to hand out.
Yeah our neighbors got one it missed our property line by less than 20 feet. They got a bottle of champagne or wine. But it was provably 30 years ago.
The funny thing was in the mid 80s, chase vehicles would come down or street all the time and get stuck because it’s a huge circle with no outlet and 4 long cul du sacs along the way, but the maps showed a second outlet road that was never built and blocked off as a fire road.
They’d blast back up the road once they finally figured it out and have to catch up. This was all way before GPS and cell phones, so if they lost sight of the balloon they’d have to go back to sone office and wait for the pilot to call in.
What a cool experience!
And I love how you were laughing the whole time. It really brought me a smile
Nice, free balloon
Finders Keepers Losers Weepers.
Looks like something out of a Pixar movie
“The day a waning crescent moon eclipsed the sun in my back yard.”
What goes Up must come Down
Initiall I thought that someone set up a prop to make “Up” reference since it’s the pics cmmunity. It turned out to be even better.
Someone in the video also said it looks like Up (at 5:59-ish)
Yup, watched it whole. :D
That’s incredible! Makes the transportation nerd in me be fired up with jealousy! And fortunate that no one was hurt, the pilot and the helpers really did a great job jumping your house. Was there any reason they told you why they had to make an emergency landing? Maybe I missed that part.
But it looks like the gondola is lop-sided from the video. Is that it? Seems like the whole neighborhood came out to watch the spectacle :D
He said the winds died down, and he didn’t have enough fuel to keep it up any longer, so he had to set it down. The gondola being lopsided was only once everyone had gotten out and the pilot was the only one in there. It was a big basket too. There were 13 people on board (including the pilot).
this is easily one of the coolest things i’ve seen in lemmy so far. :D
thank you for sharing!!
That’s seems like some House Party shit lol. Damn did two guys from an internet show jump out?
Yeah nah mate, can’t park there!
