When I am at home I have the interesting experience of working for a hot air balloon company. There are a lot of things that make this job interesting. First off, of course is the fact that it deals with hot air balloons. Big, beautiful balloons, floating through the air, all controlled by little pulleys and ropes and fueled by the hot, hot propane burners (I always like watching the spiders that crawl into the balloon scuttle away and then curl from the heat... even though that's super morbid.) Second, I'm generally the only girl ever working on the crew. Third, my two bosses are a little on the crazy side. I guess you would have to be to live off the kind of work they do (high stress and not a steady earner).
Work at this job means early mornings (waking up around 3:30-4:00 depending on sunrise and travel time to launch site) and lots of lifting, running, rolling under barbed wire fences, and being wind-born on a regular basis while attempting to yank the balloon into the right direction. Weather is of utmost importance and as the winds change and become warm with day, funnel currents called thermals pretty much mean the balloon could potentially crash and burn and die if the balloon is not brought down immediately (which would mean no paycheck and lots of screaming from the crazy bosses...). Other hazards with weather come when the wind blows the balloon in the wrong direction.
One morning the winds changed while the balloon was in the air, making the balloon go toward the mountains (mountains = BAD). My boss started screaming over the intercom for us to come get him. For some reason I was the only one on the crew that wasn't a newbie that day... and the two big guys got stuck in the chase back in a different field. I ended up in the driver's seat with my boss screaming for me to "GUN IT!!!!" So... I did. We went bouncing along at full speed through hay fields, chasing toward the mountainside. We jerked to a stop and I began running to the balloon, dropping under barbed fences and rolling through dust. My other boss(the one piloting the balloon) threw down the leash to the balloon and I was supposed to try to stop the balloon, single-handedly, from going into the trees and mountainside. Needless to say, I went flying... and pretty much thought I was going to die right there, dangling from a hot air balloon.
And that's pretty much the ballooning experience in a nutshell. I also work for a chocolate factory back home and BYU Campus Floral here at school. But those don't entail the same kind of adventures... maybe that's a good thing?
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