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13 September, 2023
He’s up, up and away
YOU hear people talking about making or even attempting to complete a bucket list. Hollywood even made a movie about it, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, called The Bucket List. It was a great movie, of course.
What is a bucket list some of you may ask? Well, the way I see it is a list of things to try to accomplish before you kick the bucket.
It is normally contemplated by people getting old or those terminally ill. For me, it’s both.
Now don’t get depressed because I am not, in fact for me, it’s the opposite as I am enjoying all that life has to offer and, so far, I have crossed off a heap of items on my list.
I have swum with penguins off Phillip Island, which of course led to swimming with white pointer sharks hunting the penguins (I added this to the list after the fact), swum with dolphins over in the west, completed four solo skydives in the Isa, wrestled a wild pig, rode bucking bulls and horses, raced cars and motor bikes, was a speedway announcer for many years, been solo hang-gliding, para-sailing and the list goes on and on.
A few columns ago I wrote about hot air ballooning. Well, I recently crossed that one off the list by getting off my butt and booking a flight with Mareeba Hot Air, leaving at 4am.
It was a brilliant experience. On arrival at the launch site you get to watch the setting up and filling up the balloons and there were two going up that morning.
After the mandatory safety briefing on how to enter and exit the basket and how to brace for landing (not at all that scary), 11 of us climbed into the balloon and was introduced to our licenced pilot.
After a brief G’day it was up, up and away with the roar of the propane burners boosting the balloon’s temperature. We gently left the ground into the beautiful but very cold air, even the two children on board had huge smiles which stayed on their faces the complete flight.
It’s hard to try and describe the calm of the flight as we gently floated upwards to four thousand feet with only the peace disturbed by the propane burners infrequently and the happy chatter of my fellow passengers.
For an hour and a half we floated above and around Mareeba which looks completely different from a slow-moving open aircraft.
But all to soon our time was up and it was time to land on a designated private property.
As we got lower everyone braced into the landing position and the landing was very smooth, calm and enjoyable.
After we disembarked, we all got into the balloon for a photo session then helped fold up balloon and bag it, winch the basket onto the trailer, then it was back to the coach parked nearby to enjoy champagne and pastries and talk about the flight after which it was back in the coach and down the mountain.
Only five items left on my bucket list.
Smiling is living.
Wayne
