Engaged!

Mar 12, 2008

Yes, after four years, nearly a month I; and one crazy morning I asked Nikki to marry me and she (surprisingly enough) agreed. The morning of September 1, 2007 was just another balloon flight in a long string of them since I finished up my license back in march, but little did Nikki know that it would become one wild ride.

The morning started off unusually. I picked Nikki up at six and from there we made our way to the Home Depot parking lot where we would meet the crew. When we arrived one our crew walked up and said a tire on our trailer sounded like it was leaking, and sure enough when we got out and checked it it was already nearly flat with a huge gash in the underside (which we found out later). So I called dear old Dad, never having dealt with a flat on the trailer before, and he suggested just throwing the balloon and equipment into the back of the two trucks we had there and still flying. So, that's what we did.

When we got to the local school we had planned to launch from we discovered that with the cool damp conditions of the night before that the mosquitoes were out full force and had to battle them while inflating. Finally Nikki and I got in the air about 7:00 and at about 2000 feet our crew calls to information me that in my nervous and harried preparations for flight I forgot to leave the keys in the truck and they were securely stowed still in my pocket....oh brother. So the crew, being the smart improvisational people they are, decided just to chase in the other truck and car that were along and leave my truck at the field.

Finally, at 2600 feet and about 7:15 I got down on one knee in the basket and asked Nikki to marry me....it didn't take long. The remainder of the flight was beautiful and we landed with a little wind just south of Old Moulton Road out west of Decatur. We did have to rip the top out but Nikki did much better with the landing this time around and we both were laughing as we crawled out on the ground.