John -- Blogmeister

I had just been playing a balloon game in my tiny box. Now I'm going to sleep. Suddenly the box was ripped open by a knife. I wonder what is going to happen? The ugly hand grabbed me softly out of the box !. Now they are laying me down on the blue plastic sheet. I wonder what they are going to do with me? I see the blue sky with white cotton candy clouds moving very slowly. I look beside me and I see equipment, and on my other side I see more equipment. Now I see the ugly hand again and it has a tube I think he is going to feed me something. I feel myself getting fatter. I have so much helium in me that now I am standing up. I am taller too. They are putting some of the equipment on me with string. They let me slowly rise into the air, but they are still holding onto the string. The person hanging on to me is counting backwards. Just as he gets to zero he lets go and I lift off. Now I'm soaring upwards towards the clouds and the deep blue sky! This is the ultimate experience of my life. I am so happy! I believed that I could fly. I am looking down at the people and as I rise into the sky they are getting smaller and smaller. When I look up the clouds are getting bigger as I get closer to them. I am having a blast as the winds blow me one way and another sometimes at roller coaster like speeds. This must be more fun than any video game they could ever invent. Just then I feel a cold blast of air because it is getting frigid I continue to rush into the atmosphere. It is so cold I shiver a bit. But I am having such a good time that I soon feed get about the cold. I can feel myself getting bigger and fatter as I rise higher and higher. It seems like I've been going up for a long time but I can still see clouds above me so I have a long way to go. A few minutes later I break through the clouds and now above me is only blue sky. Sometimes the wind blows me so much it seems that I'm going 4 directions at once. I'm being jostled and shaken and pushed all around. It is scary and fun at the same time. I think I'm 30,000 feet off the ground. The winds here are cold and I'm being blown in many different directions. I notice that I am even bigger than before! I am getting huge! Another 20 minutes go by and I am very, very high in the sky now. I am getting so big that I feel like I can't stand it any more. The pressure is too much to take. And then suddenly I feel the top of me stretch one last time and as it does it comes apart. At that moment I burst. Parts of my top fly off and begin to flutter through the sky like fall leaves. I flop down and hang like a wounded duck from the parachute. I'm being blown around and sometimes smack into string that ties me to the payloads. At first I'm falling very fast. It seems like a long time before there is enough air to cause the parachute to slow me down. I am getting close to the clouds now and as I pass through them it is like being in a fog bank. I am getting closer to the ground now and the temperature is a lot warmer. I can tell we are about to touch down and then plop we hit the ground a little bit hard and the then wind drags me over the ground and I bounce off a couple of rocks before coming to a complete stop. My trip is over. Now I just have to wait for the ugly hand to come get me and take me home.