An Early Morning in Canton

We woke up at 4:00am this [Saturday] morning to get to a hot air balloon launch in Canton, GA. Amy thought it would be a great photography opportunity, and none of us had ever seen anything like this in person. I was skepticle that any balloon launch would be at 6:00am, as the advertisement said in what Amy read the night before. We got there a little after 6:00am and couldn’t find the place. We looked around for about 30 mintues before we happened upon enough clues to actually get us to Heritage Park, where the Festival of the Arts was being held. Of course, we got there before most of the ballooners were there. 6:30am was absolutely too early. It was still mostly dark. We did get to see them all get blown up and run short test hops over trees. Ironically, the launch occured around 9:30am while we were at Hardees’ eating breakfast. There weren’t as many balloons involved as we had expected, so we left for breakfast thinking there would be many more balloons coming before the launch. We screwed that one up! Regardless, we did enjoy ourselves at the festival.

They had a large kid’s arena in the center where young and old children could just play. Balthazar actually climbed all the way to the top of a Titanic slide. The irony there astounding, but not appropriate to talk about in this context. We were agasp at how deftly he climbed the really steep incline. I’m sure you’ve all seen these before. He’s just two! Without thinking anything about it, he hopped down to his butt and scooted off the edge of the slide to zip down two stories of historical catastrophe into two elated parents. The suddenly realized contradiction of fear and excitement in his face was enough to make our day. He did so well with the endeavor, but I think he may have soiled himself on that slide down. Needless to say, he did not wish to do it again.

About twenty seconds after that, I began spontaneously nose-bleeding into the grass in the kid’s arena. This is always a bit uncomfortable for me, because it usually happens in a public place where others are likely shielding their children and talking of drugees at the park. I’m not a drugee, I just have blood-prone nostrils. Forgive me, but I bled long and thick into the Porta-Potty’s blue bowl. It was disgusting for me, but I’ll bet it’ll be worse to the next person to use that bowl. Once I had managed to staunch the flow of blood long enough to stuff a wad of tissues into my nose, I made my way across the field of horrified on-lookers to a creek where I could bathe as an animal does. By this time, I had nicely stained hands. The creek did the job and I was back on my way in no time. With this, we called it a day and pushed off. By 12:00pm, we were home and ready to relax. Amy slept, I laid on the couch, and Balthazar played with his train set. Although an empty Saturday by anyone else’s view, we were satisfied with the results.

1 comment

  1. Hahah, sounds like Balthazar had fun. 🙂 By the way, you need to have both my cell numbers in your phone. You called and text messaged my work phone. During the weekend that thing doesn’t see the light of day unless I’m on call.

    Donna and I were up at my Mom’s on Saturday afternoon. I was hoping to get out of there in time to give you guys a call, but Mom suckered me in to staying for dinner. 🙂

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