Six Thousand Feet in the Air

Chose promise, chose due.

 I promised to tell you all about my hot air balloon trip, and this is where it happens. This post is going to be long and full of pictures. You have been warned!

My first flight plan was cancelled due to bad weather. You don't fly if it's raining, or if the ground is wet. It'd be possible, but it takes more heat to rise, since water makes the balloon heavier. Plus, the view from the sky isn't as clear, and it's nowhere near as cool. So, we waited for the sun and a call from our trusted pilot.

The sun, it seems, decided to come one Saturday morning... at 5:30 am. Which means I was up at 4 am, a feat in and of itself! Honestly, though, I'd been semi-awake since 2 am, alternating between proper sleep and eyes-wide-open-with-excitement. Balloon Ride, my kid mind said. Proper research! my writer mind added. Happy times were to be had today.

So we got up, went there, and then moved with the four other passengers, the pilot and the rest of the crew to our take-off site. They took out the basket there, tied the enveloppe to it and only then did they begin to remove the enveloppe from its bag.

IT IS FREAKIN' HUGE!!

There it was. My first writerly heart attack.

When you read that something is X feet tall and X feet wide, you think "Wow, that's big."  But "big" isn't a concrete measure, and in my mind at least, it doesn't really click until I've seen it. Just like it's one thing to know the Eiffel Tower is tall, another to stand underneath it and look up. Or one thing to be told that northern lights are pretty, and another to see them. Some concepts are too abstracts to grasp with a solid exemple. Hot air balloon bigginess is one.

So we weren't in the sky yet and I already had one small plot problem to solve. But I took heart: that's why I'd come (in addition to the 'having fun' part).

Besides, I wasn't going to dwell on it. Not when they asked for volunteers to hold the enveloppe's mouth open!

Me with a crazy face, holding the enveloppe

So now I know how it strains the arms to hold it, how freaking complicated it'd be to take off alone, how hot the air gets once they use the burners to warm it (that's why the gloves) and about how long it takes. And yep, that's another balloon preparing for take-off behind us. We were three that morning.

Unlike the enveloppe, the basket was a bit smaller than expected. We weren't squeezed inside, but any tighter and it would no longer have been comfortable. But it was comfy. Also, you don't feel a thing when you take off. You're talking and enjoying yourself, and suddenly the world lowers and you wonder why. Then you look down and see this:

That's the third balloon. It was quite smaller

Once you're in the air, the entire world shushes down. Well, okay, not for the first half hour of the flight, because I kept asking questions to the pilot. "What's that rope?" "And that big red one?" "How does it feel when you go higher? In winter? In bad weather?" "How much propane do you need?"*

Once I shut up, though... complete quiet. Nothing but the soft whistling of gas heading to the burner, and the occasional WHOOOSH when he pushed the buttons. No cars, no birds, no people. Only you, the sky and the world, 6000 feet below.

Now, enough talking and more showing. This is what it looked like from above:

That's Quebec City on the other side of the St-Lawrence River

FWOOOOSH!

I call it the Brocoli Forest

We're at 3000 ft now. Nope, they did not crash in the river

Despite the fact that my mind kept wondering how I was going to fix my newly found plot problems, this hot air balloon trip is one of the most relaxing experiences I've ever had. It's an instant slow down. More than anything I've done in vacation, it took me out of my speedy-speed life and allowed me to take a breather.

The landing was super smooth too, and we shared champagne with the crew and the farmer whose field we'd used as a landing ground.

That's my pilot, in his super cool hat. He's awesome, funny and talkative.

My plot problems are now fixed, thanks to the boyfriend's many thoughtful suggestions and all I've learned on the trip. It's turned a cool scene into an absolutely epic one, and added a new storyline branch to the novel. The balloon trip was a great experience, both for the novel and for the pure awesomeness of it.

Oh, and just in case you'd consider flying around Quebec City or Montreal, my pilot is Jacques Brouard. He has his own little enterprise called Québec Montgolfière and has been flying for more than 20 years now. I recommend him. Seriously.

That's the little story of my brief time in a balloon. You can ask all the questions you want in the comments if there's something you wanted to know, and that I forgot to say. :)


*The last one is super important, considering propane is a rarity in my world.

The Complete Disconnect

Hello, interwebs!

You might've noticed my vacations where spontaneously extended. It's not often that I pull the plug on my computer and leave the strange lands of the internets for so long. It felt strange, at first. I kept wondering what you guys were discussing, what I was missing. I was worried I'd miss the gem of information that I needed to push me further as a writer.

Then I realised I was being silly. I stopped thinking of my life in potential blog posts. I stopped wondering what the internet was going on about. I pulled the plug on twitter, on the forums, on everything but e-mails.

It felt so good.

And I got so much done! I moved in a new house, I took a hot air balloon trip, I finished my third draft, planned its revision, planned a short story in the same universe, saw four music concert (it's the Summer Festival here. Lots of concerts all the time for 10 days), had fun with friends and boyfriends and just... lived. Without the internet. Yes, I assure you, that's possible!

Now I feel recharged. I won't be posting every day of the week. I want to ease myself into this smooth and easy. I think I enjoyed the taste of what can be done with all the freed time. But I promise you, by the end of the week there will be pictures taken from a hot air balloon.

Until next time!

Vacations in the Sky!

Ten days ago I announced I would be taking a blog vacation*, to go along with my actual vacations from work. I love you guys, but I believe this is a great time to take a real break for my brain. I'll try and keep up with the blogs, will certainly keep an eye on my e-mails, and might throw an extra post here and there, but I make no promises.

These are my vacations. I intend to do as I damn please with them! Enjoy these three visual clues of what that implies:

photo credit: maxymedia

Yeah, I'm taking off with the whole house.

For real. Real real real! Weeeeee.

Fun times ahead. I will, of course, bring a notebook to the balloon flight and harass the pilot with every single question I can think of. Who wouldn't want to do research when it promises to be so fun?

Oh, and I have a little something special in the works again. You'll hear more of it when I return. Secrets!

Enjoy your summer. See you around the interwebs!

*Wicked & Tricksy is excluded in blog vacation. I'll still post on Thursdays. We have a blogfest coming, after all!

Something Wicked..!

It would seem June is the month for giveaways and blogfests. The little contest to win a copy of Transfection is still going on, and you have until Wednesday to participate. Hurry! All you have to do is answer one tiny question.

In addition to this, my awesome Wicked Teammates and myself have collected items and books related to our genres and put them into Secret Boxes of Mystery. Which you can win!

You can click on the button for more instructions, but it's actually quite simple. When we launched Wicked & Tricksy, we told you why we loved speculative fiction. Now it's your turn. There are three potential questions you can answer.

The blogfest is from June 27th to July 1st. We'll reveal the Secret Boxes of Mystery content right before that. We promise it will be epic. If I could, I would hoard them all and breath fire on whoever dared to try and steal them.

Now, one more thing about that week. It happens to be both my birthday, and my first move out of my parent's house. Important things, I daresay. As such, I will be taking a vacation from blogging, between June 27th and July 8th.

I promise to read your awesome entries to the blogfest, and I will still be featured on Thursdays, on Wicked & Tricksy. The rest of my freed time will be spent enjoying myself with a sangria out in the sun (or crouched over my keyboard, finishing my first draft. Whichever!)

Now go and check out the blogfest! It'll be worth your time.