The Big 2-9

I pulled off a terrific surprise today.  Josh's birthday isn't until Tuesday, but because I am leaving for the field tomorrow, I told him that we would celebrate his birthday on Saturday.  Last night, we went to see the 'Bodies' exhibit downtown (which I have to say was very cool, but slightly disturbing at the same time) and then went to a great dinner at Cafe Poca Cosa.  I told him that we were going to have to wake up early in the morning for his present, but refused to tell him anything else.

4:30 this morning the alarm goes off.  I wake up Josh, who is quite unhappy to be awake and pretty confused as to what we're doing.  Get in the car, start driving... he has no idea.  We drove up to Marana, and pulled into a dirt field in the middle of nowhere just as the sun was about to come over the mountains.  Josh asks me if I'm planning to push him into a ditch and abandon him for dead.  He then learns that my intentions are less hostile: we are going for a hot air balloon ride!!  It's apparently something J has always wanted to do, and I've heard him mention it many times, so it seemed an obvious choice to me.  I was actually very shocked that he hadn't guessed where we were going, but he said he was completely surprised and had no idea.  Score one for me, the awesome girlfriend who pulled off an awesome early birthday surprise.

The folks who ran our little excursion were wonderful.  Our pilot, Pat, is a world record holder and has flown balloons all over the world for something like 25 years.  He's the kind of guy who tells stories that would be unbelievable from most people, but he's so quiet and humble about it that you kind of have to believe every word out of his mouth.  [He's piloted balloon safaris over the Serengeti desert, flown Ronald Reagan and the Queen of England, holds the world record for the highest altitude in a hot air balloon (23,000ft!!), and more...]  Pat's wife Boby and their kids helped with the launch and the packing up, along with a few other crew members, and everybody was supremely nice and funny.  It was a great experience.

Our balloon got up to a top height of about 3,200ft, and we flew for about an hour.  There wasn't much wind this morning, so we didn't actually travel very far from where we took off, but the scenery and views were amazing.  Being in a hot air balloon feels like you're standing still on the ground and watching the scenery change around you-- you can hardly tell that you are moving at all.  The landing was surprisingly soft (no doubt that with other, less experienced pilots this would probably not be the case).  Once we had landed and the crew started to pack up the balloon, we were presented with a great little breakfast of pastries, fruit, and sausage-- and champagne!  It was quite the spread.

The birthday boy was thrilled with the surprise, and we both had a blast.  We were back home by 9am and promptly went back to bed as a result of the early wake-up and the champagne breakfast.  We have agreed that between my birthday present of skydiving last year and this, we're going to have a hard time trying to one-up each other for future birthdays.


In other news,  I'm leaving for the field tomorrow morning and will be gone until June 20th.  I'll be in a tiny place named Mule Creek, New Mexico... helping out a couple of friends from school with some of their dissertation research.  Off the grid, digging stuff up.  Just the way I like it.