Up Up and Away

I live near a city - a good sized city, not some little pseudo-city. We have complicated and various public transportation systems. We have a mayor and a City Hall. We have sports teams. Major League sports teams. And television stations and universities and lots and lots of hospitals. And a zoo. A zoo with one particularly aggravating attraction.

A hot air balloon.

The zoo balloon takes a safety check "flight" each morning before the zoo is open to the public - a public that includes bored stay-at-home moms, old people with discount cards and a need for exercise, PETA fanatics, and school, camp and tour groups - who all want to take a ride in the enormous balloon that floats above the city and the river at a height that makes it all seem pretty.

I drive on a major thoroughfare through this city to another state altogether every working day. And in the spring, only in spring, every day, just as I come around one long curving section of the road, everyone in front of me taps the brakes, just for a few moments, but just long enough for everyone behind them to tap the breaks as well, and to throw off the rhythm of rush hour. (Isn't the point of rush hour to be rushing? Why on Earth would we be breaking??)

And what I have come to realize, is that this joyous springtime phenomenon is caused by the balloon hovering over the road during its safety check flight. It sits dormant all winter (probably deflated and impotent all in a pile in some field house) and when spring time comes, the inevitable safety flights start, and so does the break tapping thing. We come around the curve and "Oooooh! Aaaaahhhh! Look at the pretty balloooooooon!" We are all for a moment mesmerized by the balloon. Balloon gazing.

As luck would have it, J. knows the safety guy at the zoo. (Natch.) On the 20th time this month that I have been forced to tap the breaks, slow to a glacial pace, and sometimes even stop, I hit the Blue Tooth and dial J.

"J. will you tell your friend that he really needs to pick a time that is not rush hour to do the damn safety flight? It is a safety hazard for the motorists! It is like it's the Hale Bopp comet and everyone around me is a Heaven's Gate cultist!" He laughs and stays on the phone with me long enough that traffic has resumed a normal neck-breaking speed. We hang up and I turn on the radio.

"I need a sign..."

I call J. back. He does not pick up. He is on the phone.

A moment later my phone rings. I assume it is J. It is not. It is his mother.

And she is inviting us to her house on Sunday to celebrate Fathers Day and J.'s niece Cassie's birthday. The cover is off the pool, and she's baking a cak, and bring the kids, it will be loads of fun...

I am stunned. And speechless. And I realize that I am now the one tapping the breaks and throwing off the rhythm of rush hour.