My flight

At last I’ve decided to post entry here about my recent activities.
Well, actually I’ve had a small vacation, but couldn’t find time to relax during it. Usually when you get a vacation you have so many things ‘you couldn’t find time to do before’ piled up that you simply can’t find time for a vacation itself… It is sad, but true…
Hm, I checked a calendar and found out that it was Thursday, the 3rd of September when I had an interesting experience with my friends.
We had gathered and had a flight on a balloon. Yep, those big things in the sky with a basket attached to them. :) Here’s the photo where guys from aero club inflate it:

We had a flight at the altitude of about 300 meters and it lasted about an hour. (And it was pretty expensive as I gather).
Before I got ‘onboard’ (inbasket, lol) I thought it might be scary. I’m not very good with heights in the city, I’m getting nervous looking down from the balcony of a 20-storey house.
But in the open space I’m doing ok, for example in mountains, I was doing fine even when I was riding a mountain lift which took us over 700 meters above sea level. Call me city-heights-holic ^^.
So it was ok with me to be 300 meters above ground in a open basket below the balloon…
Here’s a photo of bird’s-eye view of Ukrainian countryside:

And here’s photo of a village we passed (and then landed near it). All the village kids were ours… :)

Another view of a forest and a forest lake. The web-like cover on the surface – lilies and such. Funny, isn’t it? Also they look like veins.

About my impressions… Well, it was fun and maybe I even loved flying.
But there’re multiple cons: a) it is a very expensive passing of time; b) it gets dull after 30 minutes or so, because you get used to scenery and there’s nothing to do up there but look down; c) it takes much time to get to the flying field and back if you live in Kiev (min 1 hour to get there); d) view depends on weather conditions and time of the day; and so on.
Ahead lies field where we’ve landed… There were fewer furrows before us ^^.

Landing was fun… yeah, really it was, though my hands hurt even few days after. When balloon descended and basket touched the ground (upper part being still carried by the wind) we received quite a blow and nearly fell out of the basket which began to overturn… We’ve landed only after 2nd or 3rd hit when our pilot managed to deflate the balloon enough to make it fall under its own weight…
Hmmm… That’s all news for now… And now I’m going back to work.
And now few words about it in Japanese ^^

小さい休暇の中ので、私に短い暇がありました。今、休暇はほとんど終わりました。
月曜日には、きっと大変なことになります。本当の長い休暇が欲しいです・・・この四日で、休めるの可能性を見つけませんでした。
木曜日に、面白い経験をしました。友達と一緒にバルーンで飛びました。高いところが少しだけ怖くて、とても怖い飛行になると思いました。バルーン で300ｍまで上がりました。実際には、楽しかったです。バルーンから土を見て、高い場所の風を感じて、旅の提案を受け入れたのはうれしいです。
飛ぶことが好きになったかもしれません。
水泳が大好きだけど、飛行もいいと感じます。（高いことですけど）
まぁぁ・・・ニュースはここまでです。後で仕事があります。