Silver Glow's Journal

by Admiral Biscuit


July 16 [Hot Air Balloon Ride]

July 16

When I woke up, Meghan was still on her side with her arm over my back, so I leaned over and gave her a gentle nudge with my head to see if she would roll over and she did. So I put my head on her breast and stretched my wing out over her stomach.

She was kinda awake, and after a couple of minutes she reached up and scratched behind my ear. I started rubbing her belly with my wing and that made her giggle.

Then she reached under me and started to tickle my belly and I flicked my tail at her but she didn't stop, so I started to tickle her with my wing and that turned into a close-range pillow fight.

Pretty soon both of us had staked out one end of the futon and she had taken the blankets to make a little fort for herself while I had a pillow in my mouth in case she got too close but I lost the fight 'cause she could reach farther than I could.

I jumped anyway and I got her once then she dropped her pillow and trapped me in the blankets and tickled my belly and there wasn't anything I could do. She asked if I surrendered and I said that I did, so she let me out.

Since I had fresh waffle-mix, Meghan made waffles and I made scrambled eggs (she mixed them up in the bowl for me, 'cause it's really hard to crack the shells and not get them in the bowl). She said that we ought to have a cooking show together.

I asked her if she knew how to put videos on YouTube, 'cause maybe I could get a camera like the one that Gates had loaned me before and then we could.

Meghan said she wasn't being serious, but I thought it might be a nice idea. Other ponies who didn't know how to cook could watch it, maybe.

When we were done eating, we washed the dishes and put them to dry, then Meghan asked what I wanted to do for the morning.

Well, I really didn't have any good ideas. It was kind of an overcast day, but it would still be nice to walk around, and she said that we could go on the river trail again if we wanted to. Or we could go downtown and do some shopping, or we could get an Uber-car and go to a mall.

I thought going to the mall would be fun, but maybe not today. The river trail sounded nice, even though we'd been there before. So Meghan said that there was another trail near her uncle's house which ran along Portage Creek, and we could go there instead. She said it was really nice, but it was a ways away.

Since it was in the daytime, she said that there was a bus that went close, and we could take that if we wanted. So she got dressed and I filled up my camelback and she put some snacks in its pockets, and we walked to the bus stop.

This bus wasn't as nice as the other one I'd ridden. It was lower, and the aisle was wider, but the seats weren't as comfy and it was a little smellier. But that was okay; we wouldn't be on it for all that long.

We got off at Meijer, and we had to walk back north to Kilgore Road to get to the park. Meghan said that there was a bus, but she didn't think it ran on the weekends.

We crossed over a set of railroad tracks and then when we got to the parking lot, we turned onto the trail. A lot of people must have been enjoying it, 'cause the parking lot was full of cars.

The trail went through the woods, and it was pretty nice. There was wide pavement to walk on and it had marks on it like on a real road so that the bicycles would know where to go. Meghan told me to be alert for them and not step in front of them, 'cause the bikes sort of had the right of way. Then she said she wasn't sure if that was totally true, but they acted like they did.

The creek was between us and the tracks when we started and the trail followed the river but the tracks didn't—they went in a straight line and crossed over it on little bridges whenever the river bent, so for a while it was on the other side of the tracks from us.

The trail crossed over a bridge and then went under a bridge for the 94 Highway, and then we went away from the railroad so that we could follow the river. There was a big field off to our right that Meghan said used to grow celery, and she said that the whole area used to be known for its celery and Kalamazoo used to be nicknamed Celery City.

She said that Kalamazoo was kind of strange because some cities had lots of suburbs around them but in Kalamazoo a lot of places you'd just cross a road and then be in farmland. I'd noticed that, too, but I thought that was normal. What I'd seen of Lansing was kind of like that as well. Michigan State just ended in fields and pastures, mostly.

The trail kept zig-zagging to stay on firm ground—a lot of the lowlands by the creek were pretty swampy. Then we came out of the trees and there was a people-bridge over the road.

We went through a parking lot and Meghan pointed to the buildings that were to the west of us—she said that they were historical, and one of them was a grain elevator and another one was an old school. She said that you could rent them and one of her cousins had been married there.

The trail went back along the tracks again (I guess people like building trails next to railroad tracks). We had to get out of the way of people on bikes a couple of times. Meghan said that there were two different kinds of bikers, the ones who were really serious about it and the ones who were just having fun, and she said that they were easy to tell apart. She said that the serious ones had lightweight bikes and would be wearing skintight clothes, and the people who were having fun had heavier bikes and wore normal clothes.

We also stopped to make friends with a big shaggy dog and the humans who were leading him along. He gave me a big friendly lick on the nose and I nuzzled his head and Meghan thought that was hilarious.

There wasn't a people-bridge to cross Romence Road, so we had to wait for traffic to go by before we could cross. I could see a big building to the west of us through the trees, and Meghan said that was called Sam's Club and it sold lots of things cheaply but you had to have a membership to shop there. Then she laughed and said that you could go in and buy alcohol without a membership, because that was state law.

When we got a little bit further she pointed off to the east and said that's where her uncle's house was and so I flew up and I could see the hot tub behind it and I said since we were here why not use it?

She got a sort of funny look on her face and then got out her portable telephone and made a call and when she hung up she said that they weren't home so why not?

We had to go a bit more down the trail until it crossed over the river, and then we went off the trail and through the woods and we finally got to the backyard. She rinsed my legs off with a hose, 'cause I'd picked up a bunch of mud, and then I got in the tub while she got mostly undressed and then she joined me.

She didn't take her panties off until she was in the water, even though she usually took them off before. Then she set them on the edge of the hot tub.

Meghan was kind of tense at first, but after a little while she relaxed and said that she hoped nobody else was going to come wandering out of the woods like we had.

We spent about an hour in the tub, and then she said that we probably ought to start heading back so that we had time to eat before we went on the balloon ride, and before her uncle and aunt got home. So she got out and hid up against the fence until she was dressed again, and then we went back through the woods and followed the edge of the stream until we found the trail again, and then we sat beside the trail and had a little snack before we went back.

Once we got to Meijer, we had to wait for the bus to come, and then we rode it all the way back to the train station.

Instead of going back to my apartment, we went to hers since it was closer, and she made sandwiches for our late lunch. She had lots of good vegetables, too, but there were some I wasn't allowed to eat 'cause she said she was saving them for a stir-fry. That was too bad, 'cause she had lots of different colors of pepper.

I told her that she ought to try a sandwich with timothy on it, or maybe daisies, and she said she wasn't sure about the timothy but she was willing to try daisies if I made them. Then she told me that when I bought flowers I had to be careful to find out if they'd done anything to them to preserve them or make their color better, because humans didn't eat flowers so a lot of times flowers had stuff on them that wasn't healthy.

She said that the ones at the farmer's market were probably okay, though.

Then I remembered that she'd brought food to my apartment that we were supposed to have had for dinner last night and then lunch today and I reminded her and she said that we'd have it for lunch tomorrow, so we'd ought to plan on that when we came up with our plans for the day. So I said that I would remember.

When we were done eating, we cleaned up and she decided that she'd get her digital camera and take that with her for our balloon ride, and then we walked back to my apartment. One of the ways we could go took us right along the wall beside the cemetery, and I mentioned how I'd gotten chased by a car there once, and she thought that was pretty funny. Then she told me how some people are jerks and do bad things to grave markers like knock them over or paint things on them, and that was why there was a car that went around.

I thought that was pretty disrespectful and she agreed that it was, but said that some people were like that.

We had some time before we had to leave to get our balloon ride, so we sat in the papasan and watched the birds, then Meghan said that she was kind of nervous because she's never been in a balloon before, and I told her that I hadn't either but I'd seen them flying around and they looked nice and big and stable.

Then she said that she was kind of afraid of heights, too, which turned out to be mostly afraid of falling. Well, I knew about that—Gusty had been afraid when she was in tall buildings, too—and so I promised her that no matter what, I promised that I could keep her from falling.

She said that was nice of me to say, but what could I do? And I told her that if she fell, I'd catch her and glide her down to the ground. Well, she didn't seem convinced, so I said that we ought to go out to the balcony, and I'd hold on to her and she could jump off and I'd show her.

Meghan looked me right in the eye and asked if I was sure, and I was . . . mostly. I'd never tried carrying anything as heavy as she was, but I was fairly sure I could. I wouldn't be doing any flying, but I could glide down gently.

I said if I didn't think I could, I wouldn't have suggested jumping off the balcony, and she said that was good enough for her and we didn't have to try it.

Then I talked about how things looked from the sky, and how different it was to see it from up above instead of down below, and how you could see stuff in lakes and rivers that you'd never see from the ground. It was kind of weird for me to talk about, though, 'cause I wasn't used to thinking from such a limited, ground-bound perspective. Although I'd started to see some stuff that way since coming to Earth, since I didn't get to fly as much as I was used to.

So she was actually pretty excited when the Uber-car arrived to take us to the hot air balloon.

When we got there, we checked in and I gave him my plastic-money to pay for the trip, and he went over some rules. He said he was Captain Green and he said that we had to listen to him and do what he told us when we were flying. And I asked if I could fly out of the balloon and he said that he'd make his final decision when we were at the balloon and he could get a better judge of things. He said that flying out of the balloon wasn't a problem; he'd taken skydivers up before, but he was less sure about getting back in the balloon without damaging anything, including myself.

We also had to sign a paper saying that we knew that ballooning could be dangerous, and that we accepted the risks, and Meghan got a little nervous and he said that he wouldn't be flying it if he wasn't confident, and I reminded her that I could catch her, so then she signed the paper.

Then he told us that we had to drive out to the launch field: since the balloon got blown along by the wind, he couldn't take off from the same place every time. And he said that we'd probably go over the north side of Kalamazoo, but he couldn't guarantee it because of the winds, and he wanted to stay out of the airport's control zone because they got mad when balloons came through.

I told him that if he brought an extra rope, I could probably tow the balloon along.

He said that he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

So we got into an old van called Voyager, and took it out to the launch field which was northwest of town 'cause of the wind direction. When we got there, there were a couple more people who had come in another van and they had already gotten out the balloon and set it out and were filling it with hot air. It was mostly stretched out on the ground still, and when Meghan saw it she reached out and squeezed my foreleg and told me it looked really insubstantial.

We stayed in Voyager until it was mostly full and the envelope was off the ground, and then he brought us over and explained the things which we needed to know, which was mostly follow his instructions and don't touch anything.

When the basket started to want to lift, he had us get into it and then he took over the burners. He liked short bursts of flame, which he said gave him more control.

I tested out the space between the ropes that held the basket, and said that I could get in and out of them without breaking anything, and said I could demonstrate, so he paused on the burners long enough for me to try. With it on the ground, it was actually harder for me to take off, 'cause I couldn't jump and pick up airspeed that way, and the basket wasn't big enough for a good stationary liftoff.

Landing was pretty easy, though. I just had to come in slow and be careful of the ropes. The space was bigger than Aric's bedroom window, though.

So he said that I could fly if I wanted to but that he'd still rather have me stay in the basket.

I thought that Meghan would probably want the support, so I decided I'd stay inside.

We gained altitude pretty quickly at first, which he said was important to make sure that we got above trees and power lines. Then the wind started to grab us and we began moving towards Kalamazoo as we climbed.

Meghan kept to the front of the basket at first, watching what was in front of us and I think she was kind of in his way, so I told her that she could see from all around and besides we were already too high to run into anything.

That wasn't true; I'd seen antennas that were a lot taller but we weren't near any of them.

So she came over to the side and I started pointing out stuff I'd seen from the air. We were a little bit northwest of where I'd flown, but I could see some things off in the distance that I knew, and as we got closer and closer to Kalamazoo, there was a lot more that looked familiar.

We did pass north of town, but it was close enough that she could see the Stetson bell tower rising up above the trees and how it was a good landmark, and I also pointed to the dirt mines, which were pretty visible, and then we decided that the lake with an island that we saw near the Kalamazoo River was the park we'd been to when we were on the river trail. And I showed her where the nature center was, too, and she thought it was pretty amazing to see Kalamazoo like I did whenever I flew.

Well, by then she was pretty comfortable in the balloon, and Captain Green had been curious about seeing me fly, so we all decided that I'd fly the last little bit on my own. He pointed to a field just past Morrow Lake where he intended to land, and then admitted it wasn't his favorite landing spot 'cause there were power lines right next to the lake, but he'd done this a bunch of times and he wasn't too worried. And then he pointed to a coil of rope right by his feet and said that he'd call me if he needed a tow.

So I put my hooves up on the edge of the basket and then boosted myself off, and I heard him dumping a little bit of air to make up for losing my weight, and once I got air under my wings I circled the balloon and then came back up and flew alongside and Meghan took a picture of me, and I flew next to the balloon until it landed in an open pasture safe and sound, just like he'd promised.

And then while his crew was helping to put away the balloon, Meghan said how much fun the flight had been and I thanked him for being such a good pilot and he said how neat it had been to see me fly, and we talked for a little bit about flying and feeling the air and knowing what it was going to do.

Once his crew had started packing the balloon away, we got back in Voyager, and he said that since he was taking us back through town he might as well drop us off at my apartment and save on taxi fare, which was really nice of him. And he also said that if we wanted to go flying with him again he'd give us ten percent off.

When we were back in my apartment, Meghan admitted that the flight had been kind of stressful but she was glad that I'd been there with her for most of it, and she got a beer and sat in the papasan and so I got one too and sat on her lap.

We watched the last of the late birds get their food and she said it was weird how different it looked from the air, and that the city looked a little bit smaller when you were looking at it from above. When we'd driven the Go-Karts, it had felt like it was a really long ways out to the airport, and yet even though we'd been north of town, she'd been able to see the airport off in the distance and it didn't look too far.

And she said it was also strange to see how many trees there were, even in places that she thought were pretty urban.

Plus, she'd seen for herself how water towers stuck up over everything else and were a really easy way to navigate from one spot to another.

When her first beer was empty I went to the electric icebox and got us two more and when I came back I saw that she'd taken off her shirt and bra 'cause she said it was kind of hot with me sitting on her lap.

It was dark out by the time we'd finished those beers and we moved to the futon and she turned on the kitchen light so we'd be able to see each other. And I sat down next to her and then after one more beer I was stretched out on my belly and she was preening my wing for me.

When she finished with that wing, I got up and got us a couple more beers to end the night (any more than that and I thought that both of us wouldn't want to get up in the morning) and she did my other wing, and I was feeling super-relaxed.

She had to get up to use the bathroom and when she came back she'd taken off the rest of her clothes, which meant she was probably ready for bed, so I folded down the futon and she helped to make it and then she went and had a glass of water and laid down in bed.

I thanked her for preening my wings and asked if there was anything I could do for her. She said not unless I knew how to give a back massage.

Well, I'd never done that before but that was no reason not to try. I'd gotten a couple when my back was really sore from flights, so I knew what it ought to feel like. So I had her lie down on her stomach and began to gently knead her back with my hooves and at first she kind of tensed up but then it started working and she started to relax.

She had a lot of tenseness in her shoulders, and then when I got down her back I figured from all the walking we'd done today her rump was probably a little bit sore, too, and she twitched a little bit when I first put my hooves on it but then she let me work the tension out.

When I was done she rolled over and said that she'd never expected that hooves on flesh could feel so good, so I was pretty proud of myself. And then I turned around and went all the way to the foot of the futon to get the covers, 'cause she'd kicked them down so that I could massage her and she said that she liked looking at my butt.

I told her she was being silly, and tugged the covers up and then curled up on her chest and she put her arms around me and said that wasn't silly at all, I had a nice butt.

I hit her with my tail, but I was really kind of flattered that she'd said so. And I thought about turning back around so she could look at it some more, but I'd just gotten comfortable and that seemed like it too much effort.