Trans/plant/portation

The 2009 Walla Walla Balloon Stampede is this weekend, and events kicked off yesterday at the snappy hour of 6 AM. Stampede is kind of a strange word to associate with rudderless airborne vehicles that drift on the wind, but it is the wild west out here, so I presumed the name was really more about the other, more rodeo-esque events that take place in this region. But after going to take pictures of the hot air balloons, I now also realize it does refer—a bit, at least—to this event itself.

Balloons launch from several locations in town, and I plus a few friends picked a junior high school football field as our location to watch the events unfold. About 30 or 40 pickup trucks were parked within a few feet of each other, and just as dawn was breaking, they started unfurling their tarps and balloons and testing their heaters. This gave the audio effect, for someone who had gotten up at 5 and not had a cup of coffee, of little dragons learning to cast fire.

I was surprised that the balloons were set up so close to each other, thinking that they’d need lots of space for each one, but everything went off without a hitch, despite the fact that 5,000 people had gathered to see the event (which is about one-sixth of the WW population, for those who care about such things). Each balloon had vents at the top that the handlers made sure were properly velcroed in place, and the top of every balloon had a long rope that the presumably strongest handler would hold on to, in order, I think, the manage the rate at which the balloon went from horizontal to vertical. So picture the early breaking dawn, temperatures in the low to mid 60s, colorful fabrics strewn all about the grass, and thousands of children running around, dodging taut ropes and sleepy grownups who are looking at the sky taking pictures. And nobody got hurt.

balloon raising

One of these balloons launches first—it’s called the “hare” balloon—and is chased by the other launching balloons. Hence part of the stampede moniker. We knew this because we had, I should have guessed there would be one, an announcer to tell us this, and to call out the names of people flying each balloon like it was a very colorful, in-the-air quinceanera. This guy was a Garrison Keillor wannabe if ever there was one, which I know is a big statement to make. I really did a double take to make sure I wasn’t suddenly in an episode of Prairie Home Companion. Put this guy in a hockey rink and one would get a very entertaining play by play. Really all he lacked was the quality of tone that Garrison has, that kind of half a piece of toast in his mouth sound. If he would just talk with food in his mouth, he’d be a dead ringer.

balloons away

One by one balloons floated into the sky, they drifted east, chasing the rabbit. At this point the pickup trucks for each would leave the field (“Please give the trucks egress, folks,” said the announcer. Egress? Wow.) and then would chase their balloons around and out of town. I suppose this is another aspect of the stampede. I stayed put and snapped 200 photos instead.

balloon

After all of them had launched we headed over to Clarette’s restaurant for breakfast, and I have to really think hard about when the last time was that I ate breakfast before 8 in the morning. A long, long time. Perfectly serviceable eggs over easy, served old school with the toast already buttered. The coffee was delightful, and I’ve decided I miss coffee that hasn’t been overroasted into bitterness. It was a little thrilling to see the balloons making their way overhead while we were in the middle of the city. Probably the neatest thing I’ve seen since I’ve been out here, majestic snow-capped mountains aside. Now if I could just get Susanne to go up in a balloon with me, that would be the real stuff of fun.

We have been thinking of renaming our house. Without knowing it was the tradition around these college parts, we nicknamed the house shortly after we moved into it, decreeing it was “the Liar House,” namely because it looks cute from the outside (and in the picture we’d seen before we moved here), but hosting a series of minor to moderate problems once you get inside.

One of the issues has been that the tub from the full bathroom leaks through the ceiling and into our kitchen. As my 14-year-old niece put it, “your dirty tub water rains into your kitchen? Eww!”

We’ve asked the building manager to come out to fix this several times, and although he didn’t understand the severity of the leak at first, he has been here repeatedly to try different things, even opening up the ceiling at one point and having a bona fide plumber replace some of the pipes. We still had water coming down after that, but the ceiling was closed back up anyway.

While we were away on our tour of western Canada, the building manager had the kitchen painted in Susanne’s favorite shade of blue (the shade of which he had researched with me) in order to win her heart and soften her email messages, which by this point had become understandably more and more irate. Who wants to deal with putting four pots around the kitchen to catch brown water, after all? Not either of us.

We were assured the matter had been resolved. Until one of us took a bath. And then:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/evmaroon/3484892097/

We are considering changing the name of our abode to, “The Crying House.” There are a multitude of connotations, see, that we can address with this moniker, and so that may be the direction we take. Thoughts? Comments? Questions?

In my search for earnings on the Karma Credit Plan, I agreed to babysit one of Susanne’s colleagues babies—a 6-week old boy who is still growing into his cheeks, which are bountiful. Now, I’ve babysat little ones before, including my sister’s girls, babies of friends, that kind of thing. So I think of myself as a capable caretaker, if nothing else.

In the morning my charge was alert and curious. He is working the phonemes currently, so when I say “oo?” to him, he will reply with the identical sound. It’s pretty groovy of babies when they’re in that phase.

This particular morning we played around with sounds, and compared hand size, which was pretty funny to him. And then in a flash, the good times were over, something had struck him as all kinds of terrible awful horrendously bad, and he was off to the races with a good cry.

I knew it wasn’t feeding time, so I figured it was diaper time. This presents an immediate conundrum when it happens. Does one rush to change the diaper, knowing there may soon be more to come, or does one wait another oh, minute or so? Certainly most people don’t like the thought that a sweet innocent child is sitting in his or her own swill. But for the sake of the planet, not to mention the baby’s bottom, rushing to change a diaper only to change it again in a few minutes, seems inadvisable.

So I looked at him and I asked him if he was done with his business. Having misplaced my Baby Screams Decoder Ring that I got in my last box of Life cereal, he replied with a hearty, “waaaaaaaahahahaha!” I took this as yes.

It is not without a certain sense of accomplishment that I held him in one arm whilst opening up the baby changing pad, found a new diaper in the bag his mother left for me, and managed to get out the wipes and creamy paste stuff all at once. Only more impressive, I imagined, would have been me also running around the room spinning plates on wooden dowels, although the scene felt about that chaotic, even without the circus sideshow. Wait a minute. I was the circus sideshow. No worries.

I put him down on the matt and he eased up on the tears-making, realizing I’d figured out what his incredibly urgent need was. Such dumb big people, the baby thought, I’m sure. They’re so slow on the uptake.

I opened up the diaper and sure enough, there was a mess to behold. For some reason unbeknownst to me, he decided to start kicking. This seemed inefficient at best to me. If he wants a clean diaper, why was he making trouble?

I lifted him half-off the matt by his ankles and proceeded to do my babysitter/chosen uncle duty of wiping him clean, attempting at the same moment to steer clear of the mess and hold him firmly enough that he couldn’t kick anything onto either of us. In this effort I was unsuccessful, but I figured I could wash up easily enough afterward. And then the unimaginable happened.

It was like an orange-green waterfall of shit. His butt still up in the air, there emerged a projection of poo such as I had never seen before. In a blink, it seemed it was everywhere. I tried to get him back on the matt quickly, but it was a hopeless task. And now I had not only to start all over, but to also change his clothes and mine.

The baby, at least, was now quite satisfied. And the stupid grown-up realized why he’d been fussing. Stupid grown-up now plans to wait a few minutes and let the baby cry before running to change the diaper. I’ll consider it a good lung work out for him.