Shit Happens

The local balloon club gives out a "Shit Happens" award every year. It's a recognition that sometimes, things don't go so right. There are some tacit rules - this is not an award for ignoring safety, or putting lives at risk, or even when there is significant material loss - it's an award for the funny little things that happen in the course of a year in ballooning.

My friend Robert has won it twice - once for getting bounced out of the basket (with his passenger, another balloonist) during the Irish National balloon championships. The balloon and basket ended up flying off unmanned, and got stuck 50 feet up in some trees (the only strand of trees for miles around, and the balloon found 'em). On another occasion, he tried to land in a fellow balloonists backyard launch site on a windy afternoon, came screaming across the field, knocked over a couple of metal sculptures before slamming the basket into the side of the barn and draping the envelope over the roof of the barn. It's one thing to gift wrap a building, yet another when that building belongs to a fellow balloonist who will be sure to tell the story (with appropriate levels of hyperbole and hysterics) at the next club event.

Other's have won the award for landing in Long Island sound (coast guard pulled them out....), for landing in a swamp with no vehicle access, requiring the balloon and basket to be hauled out a 1/2 mile by hand, for not tying down the balloon on the trailer (it fell off, never to be seen again), for gift wrapping a bulldozer. One poor soul forgot to unplug his tank warmers (used to keep the propane warm in the winter) before driving off; two 100 ft. extension cords trailing behind all the way to the launch site.

Carlos won it this year because as he was inflating his balloon, he noticed some twisted lines - not all that uncommon. Standard operating procedure is to deflate the balloon, fix the problem, start over. But it's tempting to try to fix things while the balloon is inflated, which he did - and in the course of it, his balloon slowly settled to the ground around his ears, requiring some effort to untangle and reset. Not a major catastrophe, but funny as heck to watch.

It's an odd award. It's a bit of an embarrassment, of course, but looking at the award last night, Carlos commented "there are a lot of really good pilots' names on this thing". And yeah, the good pilots are the ones who fly a lot. And when you fly a lot, shit happens. It's an annual reminder to everyone to be diligent: equipment condition, maintenance, safe practices, training, and pilot and crew decision making. We've never had a serious balloon incident in CT - and that's saying something. Local pilots are forced to be a bit more highly skilled due to the large swaths of the state that are forested and developed, and the few really good landing spots. Flying in other areas is easier - large farms, wide open space, plenty of places to land a balloon. That's where folks get into trouble - used to such easy flying, when they do need to get into or out of a tight spot, they have no practice.

So yeah, shit happens. A good life lesson. Figure out what went wrong. Learn from it. Take your lumps. Move on. Carlos has the award this year. Next year, someone else will earn it.