Rollercoaster

Up and Away

September 26th, 2020
f i n o l a

"That looks fun." Braxton said, watching the tv commercial on the tv. This kid is probably the only person I know who actually watches commercials, and I'm not joking. He watches them every time.

I look up after taking a sip of my coffee, seeing it's a hot air balloon company in LA. "Oh yeah? Aren't you scared of heights?"

"No not anymore I don't think." He tilts his head at the tv, watching the balloon go high up into the air. It does look kind of fun to be honest, a little scary though. "Can we please go?"

"Let me do some research first and then we can talk about it." I pull my phone out of my pocket and go to the website it showed. $25 per person? That's kind of expensive but it's such a nice day outside, and we haven't left the house in a while. This LA weather is making it impossible to go out, it's been in the high 90s all week.

I text Evan where we're going, and get Brax off the couch to get ready. The Balloon rides don't start until 10am and it's only 8:30 so in the meantime we take the dogs on a walk around the neighborhood.

We walk for about half an hour, and decide to leave a little earlier than planned. With LA traffic it could easily take an hour longer than we think, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

We hop in my car and start our short trip to the hot air balloon place.

...

After about an hour we finally made it to the building, it's looks super nice too. There aren't many people here so we got to go up pretty quickly.

The man at the front desk led us to the open field behind the building, and even let Braxton pick which one we rode in. He of course picked the blue one, but I can't complain.

We got in the basket, and we took off within minutes. I noticed the wind was picking up, but didn't really think anything of it. That was until Braxton grabbed my hand and I noticed tears in his eyes.

"Buddy what's wrong?" I looked down at him, noticing how worried face.

"We're so high up, what if we fall?" He had tears rolling down his cheeks at this point.

"We won't fall, I promise. I'm here with you, you're perfectly safe." I said, wiping his tears away.

I look over at the man and notice he isn't even paying attention, he's just on his phone. I walk to his side of the basket, and clear my throat.

"Excuse me," I said, with an angry tone. "Is it safe for us to be flying with it being this windy?"

"Ma'am I'm sorry this is only my second day flying, I'm texting my boss right now."

"Well then get us back to the ground," I yelled in his face. Part of me feels bad for yelling, but our lives are in danger and I feel like that should be more important than making money right now.

He got a call from his boss, and he was talking to him for a while before he finally tried to land.

All of the sudden the balloon sped up, pulling us toward the ocean. The man starting pulling on a the rope, trying to lead us back toward land.

I took matters into my own hands and called 911.

"911 what's your emergency?" The man on the other end of the call said.

"The hot air balloon we're in is stuck in the wind, we're heading straight to the water." I say, looking down to see us getting further and further into the open sea.

"How many people are with you? Do you know your location?"

"It's me, my son, and the pilot."  I say, trying to see how far we are from the building. "I think I can see the building from where we are, barely though."

"Do you know the business name?"

"It's called above and beyond, it's just outside of LA." I say, falling over from the wind pushing us harshly.

"Okay I'm sending help your way. They're about 7 minutes away."

I hang up the phone and pull Braxton into my arms. I can feel him shaking, so I pulled him tighter into my chest.

I sit us on the ground, keeping my eyes tightly shut.