Sisterchicks Go Brit! (13 page)

“Don’t worry,” Jeremy called over his shoulder to us. “It will
be fine. Today is an excellent day to go up, even though this is later than we usually launch.”

Jeremy gave a nod to one of the men already on the field who was working on unfurling the balloon. “We haven’t lost a tourist yet, have we, Sven?”

“Not yet,” Sven answered.

“Have you been doing this long?” I asked Sven, shading my eyes from the sun with my forearm.

With a professional tone, he stood a little straighter. “Your flight will be my second one.”

I turned to Andrea with a stunned expression on my face.

“He’s putting you on,” Andrea said. “This is his third year with us. Before he moved to England, he worked on a cruise ship. We think the time at sea did something to his gray matter.”

I stood to the side and watched the team prepare the balloon for flight. Kellie and I were soon called on to assist during the inflating. We each were given a pair of gloves and assigned a side of the long balloon. Our job was to keep an eye on the fabric now laid out on the field to make sure the balloon filled unhindered with air from a large fan run by a generator.

We took our places. The sudden noise as the fan whirled into action in the peaceful countryside sent a flock of black birds out of their grazing spot in the field. They took flight looking like two dozen black dots that all hung together as a unit. The many individuals comprised a whole flock as long as they stuck together. It was beautiful watching them swoop and soar in harmony.

I was watching the birds when I should have been watching my side of the balloon.

“Give it a tug!” Jeremy called over the rumble of the fan. “Gently!”

I bent over to straighten the fabric and felt something no one ever wants to feel. The seat of my jeans gave way. They were my oldest and most comfortable pair, which is why I had brought them on the trip. I had no idea they were worn all the way to the threads.

I snapped straight up and tried to assess the damage without appearing too obvious. I looked right and left as well as behind me. The others were busy with the balloon’s inflation. I slipped out of my sweater and casually tied it around my waist so my backside was covered. Stepping back, I gazed in awe as the massive balloon filled with air and seemed to come to life like a bobbing float from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I strode around to Kellie’s side of the billowing beast, then leaned over and said, “I ripped my jeans.”

“No! Did you really?”

“I wouldn’t make up something like that at a time like this.”

“I have a little sewing kit in my bag. Let’s go back to the van. I can sew them up for you there.”

Trotting after her I said, “Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate your organizational skills?”

“Yes. But you can tell me again if you want.”

“I appreciate your organizational skills. I just wish my dieting skills were as successful as your organizational skills.”

Kellie laughed the way a best friend is supposed to laugh when you’re humiliated and at a loss for what to do or say. The only protection at such a time is a clever attempt at a joke. And such attempts only work if your best friend laughs with you the way Kellie did just then.

We settled into the van’s backseat and made it look as if we were simply Lady Ebb and Lady Flo, two women of refinement who preferred waiting in the car rather than out in the fray of all the flight preparations.

I wiggled out of my worn jeans while Kellie scrounged for her travel-sized sewing kit.

“Oh, rats,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘oh, rats’? I’m sitting here in my undies, a few feet away from a male flight crew, and you say, ‘oh, rats’?”

Kellie held up a complimentary hotel-type sewing kit the size of a matchbook. The edges were crumpled, and it looked as if it had been in her purse a long time. “I have thread, but the needle is gone. I must have used it before.”

“Kellie!”

“I know. Rats, huh? Would you like me to ask Andrea if she has a sewing kit or first-aid kit or something?”

“I guess. Whatever you do, be quick about it because it’s feeling a little breezy in here.”

Kellie slipped out and hurried over to Andrea. I wrapped my jeans around my bare legs and put my sweater back on. Then I sat on my hands in an effort to keep them warm. From the confines of the car, I could see Jeremy checking the thick ropes that tethered the basket and its inflatable bonnet. They were going to be ready to launch soon.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on,” I murmured, watching Kellie as she talked to Andrea and pointed back at the car. Sven seemed to be listening in.

“Don’t tell the whole world, Kellie, please!”

Andrea shook her head. This wasn’t looking good. My guess was needles weren’t something people in the balloon business often carried.

I was about to slip my jeans back on and use my sweater once again for camouflage when I noticed Sven jogging over to the car.

“No! Go away! Oh dear. I don’t have time to get my jeans on! Sven, be gone!”

I tucked my jeans around my bare legs as completely as I could, then I sat up straight in a tense pose and prepared myself for the Swedish invasion.

S
ven tapped on the van’s closed window
in a gesture of politeness before sliding open the side door. A blast of cool air caused goose bumps to run up and down my bare legs.

“May I offer some assistance?” He kept his eyes strategically on my face. I thought his approach was odd until I remembered Andrea saying he had worked on a cruise ship. He probably had opened a lot of doors in the midst of unusual circumstances.

“I think I’ll be okay. Thanks.”

“You might want to try this.” Sven held up the universal answer to fix whatever is broken. “Duct tape.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll give it a try.”

Kellie was back at the van and saw me holding the duct tape. Sven walked away. She climbed in and closed the door. “Lizzie, I’m not trying to be negative, but don’t you think a nice, wide silver stripe up your backside is going to be noticeable?”

“Not if I put the duct tape on the inside of my jeans. Here, help me measure this.”

“Ah. Clever woman,” Kellie said. “Did I ever tell you how much I admire your creative skills?”

“No, and I’m not in the mood for you to start now.”

She took my grouchy response exactly as she should have at such a moment—with a shrug. The task at hand was all that mattered.

Turning my jeans inside out, I saw that the rip wasn’t along the seam. It was an uneven tear in the fabric. These jeans were more worn out than I had realized. They were ready to be tossed. But not yet. I needed them to hold together for a few more hours.

After affixing several strips of tape to the inside of my jeans, I smoothed each piece into place on the denim and then wiggled back into the repaired jeans.

“Now I’m going to get out of this van, and I’m going to sashay over to the hot-air balloon. I have only one favor to ask.”

“Sure, anything. What is it?”

“If you have any affection for me, I beg of you, Kellie, do not look at my backside. Do not make comments about my backside while I’m walking. Do not try to touch or otherwise adjust my backside. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kellie nodded, but I could tell she was dying to let loose with a few witty lines. Thankfully, she kept her quips to herself.

Trying to regain whatever regal composure I had left when I entered the car, I disembarked and gave a slight wiggle to adjust my repaired britches before walking over to the waiting balloon. Andrea, Jeremy, Sven, and the other three men were all waiting, holding on to the tethered ropes. All of them were smiling broadly, but none made eye contact with me.

I gathered myself and focused on the wicker basket, which looked even smaller now that the balloon was mounted above it. The balloon still was filling with hot air expelled from a unit that shot intense flames up into the expanding space. The balloon was a beautiful, colorful, fat, King Kong–sized monster, looming high and wide above that small basket. And here we were, on the threshold of Kellie’s wish.

Jeremy clambered into the basket first and then held out his hand to me. I was supposed to climb up on a box and step over the edge of the basket onto another box and then find my place to stand inside the basket. Easy.

Only my feet didn’t move. “Kellie, you want to go first?”

“No, go ahead, Liz. I’ve got your back …” She wisely didn’t finish her sentence.

This was harder than I thought it would be. I told my pounding heart to calm down and just enter into the moment. This was a rare opportunity. This was Kellie’s wish.

And we already had paid for it.

“I’ll tell you now, there is no dainty way to go aboard,” Andrea said loudly over the roar of the flame shooting into the
cavernous belly of Kong. She was standing to the side, holding one of the thick tethering ropes with gloved hands. “Just swing one leg over the edge, and you’ll be in good shape.”

With one foot in front of the other, I climbed up on the box. Then, trying to steady myself, I held on to the edge of the basket.

Jeremy adjusted the flame, and the air went astonishingly still.

Kellie had honored my request not to mention or draw attention to my backside all the way across the field. However, it seemed she couldn’t resist offering a single line at the precise moment that I followed Andrea’s advice and looped my right leg into the basket.

“I guess it’s true. Every cloud does have a silver lining.”

I tried to ignore her, but my smile broke through, and I let a nervous flutter of embarrassed laughter tumble into the basket before I did. And tumble is the key word. My footing wasn’t secure, and I’m sure I came close to dislocating Jeremy’s arm as I tried to steady myself. Once I had both feet firmly in the basket, I laughed myself silly.

I looked at Kellie just impishly enough to let her know I would get her back later. In the sweetest way possible, of course.

Jeremy directed me where to stand, and I took my small, small place as compactly as I could. He put one hand on the controls that regulated the on-and-off switch for the blaze and made an adjustment.

The flame kicked up again with a mighty roar.

“Next.” Jeremy held out his hand to Kellie. She took the first step up, grasped his forearm, and managed to climb over the wicker rampart without too much trouble. I’m not saying it was a pretty entrance, but it was controlled, swift, and much more elegant than mine.

“Show-off,” I muttered playfully.

“Actually, I think your show was much better than mine. Acrobatics are always a crowd pleaser.”

Before I could continue the banter, we started going up. We were moving slowly, as if we were in an elevator. We were leaving the earth below us, defying gravity, and making a smooth ascent. The moment was thrilling.

I looked over at Kellie. She was beaming.

Below us, Andrea waved.

Kellie waved back. I just held on and smiled.

The flame in the center of the basket seemed like a super-sized Bunsen burner. Jeremy turned it off. All was calm. We kept floating upward. The sensation wasn’t so much that we were moving but that the earth was pulling away from us.

The world around us was strikingly silent. We heard a lamb bleat from a field far below, and the sound was so crisp and clear it seemed as if the lamb were only a few feet away.

“It’s so quiet,” Kellie whispered.

Jeremy nodded. “That’s the first thing everyone says.”

“How can we be moving?” Kellie asked. “It feels like the breeze stopped.”

“We’re moving with the air currents.”

“This is amazing,” Kellie cooed. “What a sensation of tranquillity.”

Kellie and I stood with our feet firmly planted in the basket, taking in the expanding view of the countryside below us. The field had transformed into a dusty green patchwork quilt. Low stone walls formed straight lines between the patches. White, woolly sheep dotted some of the squares and rectangles of land. They became smaller and smaller as we rose above it all. It felt as if we were floating along in a raft on a calm river, only instead of water, the air current provided the silent river on which we bobbed.

All my apprehensions, real and imagined, seemed to have stayed behind on planet Earth. We were free birds, soaring above it all. I felt that initial taste of victory, such as when I’m trying a new recipe for company, and it seems everything is turning out the way it’s supposed to.

The burner fired up again. Kellie and I both flinched. We smiled at each other and then smiled at Jeremy as if to tell him we had made peace with the dragon’s breath. We needed the bellowing beast’s fire at its unexpected intervals to keep us aloft. We rose and caught a different current that floated us toward a small pond. At least from our vantage point it appeared to be a small pond. As we gently were lowered back to earth, the pond became larger.

“On some rides I’ve been able to lower the basket so that we skim the water. But don’t worry; I don’t plan to try it today.” Jeremy fired up the heat, and we rose. When all was quiet again
he said, “The currents aren’t usually so cooperative this time of day. We generally go up in the morning or the evening if it’s warm enough. This is an exceptional day.”