Up, Up And Uh...Wait

"Do you want to take a hot air balloon ride?" a friend asked me. Various news stories of hot air balloons hitting power lines and people dying flashed before my eyes. "Sure," I said. "Sounds exhilarating."

Turns out it's not as easy as scheduling a ride and going on the day you planned. The wind has to be just right. That means there has to be some wind but not a lot. Those days are few and far between. We scheduled various dates for six months with no luck getting a flight.

Then my friend called one evening and asked if I wanted to do the hot air balloon ride tomorrow. I asked if we were actually going to fly. She said the hot air balloon company called because weather conditions were expected to right, another group canceled and they knew we'd been waiting to take a flight. Sounded perfect. Why not? We booked and set an early alarm because we had to be at the meeting point at 6 a.m.

The alarm sounded at 4:45 a.m. I managed to get dressed and out the door to pick up my friend. We had about an hour and a half drive to the field in the middle of nowhere for take off.

We were yapping about something inane when the car suddenly lurched as a loud boom echoed in our ears. The car shot forward as a small box truck passed on the right on two wheels rolling across the guard rail with sparks flying as it sped by us. Unsure what just happened, I immediately pulled off the highway into a fast-food restaurant parking lot. I got out of the car and walked around it going from the front to the back. The car looked fine until I got to the very back corner on the driver's side. There wasn't much left of it. Somehow we managed not to get injured or hit another car in the ruckus.

We had to call the police to file a report. Turns out the driver of the box truck fell asleep at the wheel going about 80, woke up as our back end came speeding into view, turned sharply but still nicked the car. We were a bit surprised no tires were popped and no one was injured. We then walked to the nearby hardware store, bought zip ties and attempted to use them to keep the back bumper attached to the car so we could drive it back home.

We never did make it to the hot air balloon ride that day but the outcome was strangely the same. We thought we'd be high in the sky, peacefully floating while watching the sun rise saying to each other: "It's so great to be alive!" Instead, we had bad cups of coffee in our hands, a damaged car and a slow drive back home since one of the blinkers no longer functioned. We looked at each other as we watched the sunrise in the parking lot off the interstate and said "It's so great to be alive."