After arrival in Alice on Wednesday lunchtime, it was straight into checking gear, assembling the balloon basket and a team meeting to cover the plan for the following days.
Despite original plans to do the first 10,000ft flight the following morning, it became apparent that more work was needed to ensure that the first dress rehearsal had every bit of gear in place and all flight crew were rested. As such the flight was postponed until Friday morning giving us all of today to go over every last, nut bolt and connection.
Just to get everyone in the mood, Glenn, Heather and Greg went for a ride in Cessna 210 to 11,000 feet for a quick wing suit jump into a small airstrip just north of Alice Springs called Bond Springs.
For the jumpers this was a full gear jump while the rest of us watched from the ground.
A full twelve hours latter and we left the balloon gear at the shed and headed home for dinner.
One of the funniest parts in all this so far is that Glenn's repeated patter with the media is that some people are genetically pre-disposed to adventure or risk taking activities. In short, it has become a team joke that we all have a medical excuse for being trouble makers.
There was no better example of this than tonight. On arrival back at the apartments we were chastised by the complex manager because one of the team drove the landcruiser out the in diveway at some point during the day - seriously reckless behavior. It was not helped by the fact that he could probably hear us all snickering as he walked off after breaking this seriously important bit of news.
Not more that 40 minutes later, upon opening the oven to extract some tasty garlic bread, a cloud of smoke set off the fire alarm in our room. As you do, we stood on chairs, waved tea towels and generally laughed at the noise and interruption to the team dinner.
After a few moments it became apparent that the alarm was not going to turn off. While opening the front door to the apartment to let the smoke out, I noticed that the alarm was also sounding in the hallway. A quick look left and right revealed a number of confused faces peering down the corridor looking to see who was causing all the commotion.
In a flash, the commandant of the complex appeared and instantly demanded "What have you done now?" Again he was met with grinning faces, most of which were still sitting at the table eating dinner to relaxing sound of the fire klaxon.
He was not impressed and informed us that the fire brigade were on their way and that there was no way of shutting it off until they responded to the call. Bugger. He then asked us to evacuate the building!!! We opted to retire to the balcony and giggled like kids while eating dinner and listening to the approaching sirens.
On arrival the axe wielding fireman paused briefly for a photo before realising that we had not followed proper evacuation procedure and then scolded us for not assembling at the proper fire point.
The poor guy was not more than two steps out the door before someone suggested that it was all the result of genetics resulting in peels of laugher.
Anyhow, it is time for bed. Everything looks good for the morning so with some luck we will have achieved the first jump and be on our way towards Ayers Rock tomorrow afternoon for the 25,000 foot flight.
