It is Balloon!!!

If you are a defensive driver you are always on the look out for possible accident situation with other cars, pedestrians, deer, etc. Being hit by a hot air balloon while driving a car, however, is really not something you are prepared for or even consider until it actually comes close to happening.

This Saturday I lead a ride to Schooley's Mountain from Raritan Valley College. This Saturday was also the annual Solberg Balloon festival. At the balloon festival there are over a hundred balloons so it is not uncommon to see them in the sky especially early in the morning when the winds are calm. There is no way to control a balloons flight path so it goes where the wind takes and lands where it can find some open space.

So as I drove along the main road in Raritan Valley College I saw a balloon in the parking lot to the right of me. I assumed it was getting set up to take off from there but then ahead of me I saw another balloon about to land, 50 feet ahead of me in the road. As I stopped to avoid the balloon I looked further to my left and saw other balloons approaching. Apparently these balloons had taken off from the festival and this is where they decided to land. The road was filled support vehicles that had chased the balloons and people who had stopped to take picture. It took me a while to thread my way around the balloons and people to get to the parking lot where we started the ride. I saw a few more balloons land before we actually started the ride. The parking lot and fields aren't that big so I was surprised that so many balloons were able to land in such a small area. It probably helped that there was almost no wind.

As for the ride I ended up with a good crowd despite competing with the popular Belmar ride that Joe had. Ron, Cheryl, Al, Blake,Tommy, Michael B and myself headed up to Schooley's Mountain and back. Here is the route we took. It's about 4000 ft of climbing (Al had 3750 ft to be exact) but there are a couple of steep climbs that make if feel harder than it is. Ron, Blake and I did a 4000ft of climbing a couple of weeks ago through the covered bridges and that was a much easier ride so total elevation is not an exact measure of how hard a ride is.

The other part of the Schooley's Mountain that is deceiving is that a lot of the climbing is after you get down off the mountain so just when you least expect it you make a turn and there is yet another hill. Of course there are some cool roads here that we normally don't get to do that often. Rockaway Rd is one of the easiest and nicest 300 ft climbs in the state. Middle Valley is also an interesting decent which was made a little harder by the fact that they had just stoned the road. Lastly you can't beat the view while coming down Fox Hill.

I have been doing a lot of hills over the past month so I think I'm in good hill shape and will probably do some flatter rides over the next couple of weeks.