I was sitting in the gate guard house at my new job as a private security officer for a luxury gated community. I suddenly heard this loud whooshing sound outside. I knew I had heard the sound before, but it was so out of context. I stepped outside and looked around. I didn’t see anything, until the noise came again, from right over my head. This hot air balloon was thirty feet above me. And yes, it is always sunny in San Diego, and not just at the Honda dealerships.

Since this high-end private, gated community is only six miles or so from my house, I am very familiar with these balloons. People pay for rides in them. There are dozens of them, and they launch near the coast, which is only a few miles to the West. They ride the prevailing evening winds inland, and try to come down near major roads so the follow trucks can come and collect them. We see them, almost every night when the weather is good, sometimes in packs of a few dozen.

It turns out that this community, with its large, open areas, is often the place where they come down.

The next day, there were more of them. I think I did a post a year or so ago when one of these balloons landed in the backyard of a street just a few doors from my own house.

I think I would like to try the balloon ride one of these days, but there is a lot that can go wrong. You are at the mercy of the wind. The balloon that basically crash landed in my neighbor’s yard ended up hitting a short chain link fence, and spilling all the passengers out. There were no serious injuries.