Would You Rather Game

With balloons on our minds, I decided to look into taking a ride in a hot air balloon for a future date. Sure, I might vomit, or simply recede into the basket like a turtle drawing his head back into his shell. In other words, my fear of heights would be seriously tested.

At the same time, being scared made me want to do it more. It would surely be beautiful. If I could look. And the hubby would be there, so I would feel the safest I could in such a situation.

I figured it would be expensive, like good seats at the theater or ballpark. I did not, however, expect it to be so unreasonable that normal people cannot ever, ever, ever go up in a hot air balloon. I found 4 local hot air balloon businesses. They were similar in price and in experience. About an hour up in the air, and my husband and I would be joined with 6-8 other paying customers. If we wanted to do it solely as a couple... Well, that is more expensive than our entire wedding and honeymoon was.

So here is the game my hubby and I got to play... It's called "Would You Rather" and is just super fun.

Would you rather have a date in a hot air balloon (with 6 other people) or buy groceries for 3 months?

Would you rather have the hot air balloon date or get new brakes for the car?

Balloon or get our eyes checked AND get new glasses with the expensive frames and lenses for both of us?

Balloon or make 2 car payments?

Get all 9 of our rescued kitties vetted for a year?

Get 102 Vintage Stars Wars Action Figures on sale?

Get Happy-Happy Wife Boots that would be too expensive to wear outdoors?

Get a stainless steel fridge? A giant washer and dryer? A riding lawn mower?

The only thing my husband would answer "balloon" to would be the following:

Would you rather go up in a hot air balloon or buy 2 purebred Weimaraner puppies?

Yeah. No way are we taking a hot air balloon ride. I get that they need to make money on the rides but you'd think it would be just a tad more... Plausible. I will not be spending over 300 bucks a person to throw up in the skies above St. Louis. Besides, I probably wouldn't be able to see anything through my tears, which I would be crying out of pure frustration at how stupid we were paying that much to go up in the first place.

The Forest Park Balloon Race Date

Every year, St. Louis has a weekend event with giant, colorful, hot air balloons. To see photos from 2009, click 2009 Balloon Race and then forget what you have seen, please. Those photos are not the date that we had.

We decided to go check it out. Looked fun. We've never seen hot air balloons up close before. Could be interesting. Although we ran many errands this morning (groceries! Hubby's hair cut! Mailing back some internet returns!), we were on our way to Forest Park by 11:30 am.

Friday night, the balloons were grounded but lit up and people could walk around them. Supposedly this is very beautiful and very crowded. We were glad we waited to go and missed that because this morning's radio shows were all a-twitter about how terrible the parking and crowds were. At the same time, we knew the actual race wouldn't start today until almost 5 pm, but the event started at noon.

We found a parking place near the Muny. The Muny is an open air theater in the middle of the park, and although we haven't been, we hope to remedy that next summer. Their season just closed, and none of their shows were quite what we wanted to see. Here is a pic of us in front of the Muny.

We reached the large, open balloon area fairly quickly. The walk there was full of very steep hills and very serious Balloon Festival patrons. There were tents. Grills. More tents. There was massive preparation and set up for a day of waiting on the balloon race. I say waiting because these families were just settled into close-by areas of the park and were not in the actual walking around and activity area.

If you have ever heard the song Joy Ride by Roxette, then you were in my head this afternoon. "She's tellin' all her secrets, in a wonderful balloon!" On repeat. I kept it deep, deep inside, which ended up not being that difficult due to...

The first thing we noticed was the distinct lack of balloons. I guess the balloons are not there for the first 2 hours of the balloon event. Which was really kind of disappointing. Look, here's the field where the balloons were last night and would later come back to!

Invisible Balloons!

We took it in stride. It was hot, sunny, and we hadn't been out in over a month. We walked all around the field to see the different... Sights? There were pony rides!

Ponies!

I definitely had a childhood full of this exact scene. And while I may not have outgrown my love of ponies, what's a girl to do? There were no adult horse rides. Which is good. I mean, what would they be? This set up only with full size horses? No one would do that.

Okay, I would have still probably done that. But it would have been less than fulfilling. I would have felt silly. Still. Where's my purdy horse?

There were tons of fair food booths and beer tents. I said "funnel cake" in the car about 9 times on the way there, but we weren't really that hungry when we were actually presented with it. Besides, 7 bucks for one funnel cake was a little too pricey for me.

There were a line of bouncy houses (again, for kids). There were balloon souvenirs! If I try really hard, I can pretend they're real!

Balloons! Kind of!

There was also this lonely balloon.

It was next to a line of new cars that were for sale. Who is impulse buying these?

Someone must have too much money. Walking around an empty field, waiting for balloons, then, bam! I could use a vehicle! That is on my to-do list! Won't my spouse be thrilled!

There was a highly advertised human chess board.

This made me think two things. Number one, maybe the car-buying money people could give some dinero to this little group. Number two, does this mean I'm a giant?

My husband got the most excited at this next... thing. He knew immediately what it was and got excited. He was the only one. Out of everyone at the fair. Every. One. 

 It's a longitude marker. Yeah.

It did not help that I said, "Touch it and smile!" in a weird, demanding voice while taking the picture. It felt dirty. Not good to be around the face painting booth and start diving headfirst into the brain gutter.

We collected ourselves and walked towards the area in the background of that picture. There was a dog show going on to the left, with a large crowd of people. We stood for a couple minutes, but people kept literally walking right in front of us and standing so that they were completely blocking our view. It was an exercise in super rudeness. But, it was also, gasp, a dog chasing and catching a Frisbee. Even my Mav could do that in her younger days. Shrug-able.

Suddenly, behind us, in the area fenced in white in the photo, we saw what was supposed to happen in that agility course. We had assumed dogs run through it doing great feats... Then, we saw a dog with a trainer, and the dog was low to the ground.

"He's scared," I said. Awww. Poor guy. That's when we saw the ducks. Holy sh*t.

At first, we thought maybe the ducks had just landed nearby and were about to fly away. Nooooo. These were FOR the show. The dog herds the crazy ducks and makes THEM go through the obstacles.

He made them go up stairs and then slide down the slide into the pool!



If my Mav had been released in there, I know with 100% certainty that the only place those ducks are going is over the fence and back into the wild. We bow to you, Dog-With-Divine-Restraint.

They stopped the interesting dog stuff almost immediately, I assume so that we could go back and attempt to watch dogs chase and catch tennis balls or something. So, we walked around some more. Passed up a psychic reading. But then again, don't they know we wouldn't spend 10 bucks on that? They didn't even have a tent. Just a folding tray table and a very cheap set of plastic lawn chairs. I was tempted, since there was so little else for us to do. And, more Joy Ride lyrics danced through my head.

"Don't need no fortune teller to tell where my lucky love belongs! Oh no... She says, hello, you fool, I love you! C'mon join the joyride, join the joy ride, love..." *Head bangs.

We decided then to call an end to our festival time. The hours before the balloons were just too many and our desires too few.

Besides, something was interrupting my private Roxette concert in my head. All anyone could hear, and IT IS A SHAME you missed out on this, was live music of such magnitude and magnificence that it couldn't be completely taken all in. It was too much. Too much awesome.

I honestly have no idea what his real name was, but I christen him "The Justin Bieber of Rap" and my cup was not only full. It runneth over.

"I can run a marathon, you can't even run on a treadmill!" Such rap lyrics will surely replace Yo Mama's putdowns. Something, something, something "Star Wars Spaceship". Mmmm-hmmmm. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

I should try to be a more positive person. Okay!

Chorus of cheerleader voices respond "Okay!" I can feel the pep and hear the rustling of pompoms. I can do it. I can be positive!

The 12 year old white rapper was very enthusiastic!

The end.

The hubby and I then went to find the venue where we're seeing Daniel Tosh in a couple weeks. I am both scared and excited. I just want him to NOT notice us and we'll be good. Love him but do not want to be any source for his funny. Might possibly die. This led us on more date, which I will talk about in the next post! The dating, it is back, and we're blowing it up! It was a date explosion! A date A-bomb! So much date! All in one day!

Oh, and on our drive to get working phones from Sprint, we passed a pizza place. I yelled, "It counts!"

And the great love of my life proved why he is the great love of my life. Without missing a beat, at the red light, he immediately said, "Do you still have the camera! GET A PICTURE!"

This was our balloon festival. We're lucky we didn't turn around and pose with it.

*Bangs head on desk.

*Starts hearing "In the wonderful balloon" and suddenly, all is right with the world. Happy sigh.