This is my first solo flight in the first balloon I ever owned. The flight occurred on the Park Meadows Golf Course almost 18 years ago. If you were to go out to this course today, you'd wonder if the shot was manipulated in Photoshop. It wasn't. Today, this fairway pond is surrounded by condos and overpriced homes. The hay field we used as a launch site is populated by people who moved into an area known for hot air ballooning and started complaining about hot air balloons flying around. Park City will never be the same again; inundated and suffocated by a rich populous attracted by that exact charm that is now ruined.
What happened around the time of this flight? Let's see, Robert C. McFarlane had plead guilty to the Iran-Contra scandal. Funny, the more Park City changes, the less it seems the same. However, that's not how the saying goes. You know the one that says, "the more things change, the more they remain the same?" Politically speaking that saying doesn't hold water either. When I did this flight, George Herbert Walker Bush would soon take office, go to war, help out an ally, have an exit strategy and use it.
Today we have a much different picture. Son of Bush, the sequel, follows most Hollywood sequels into mediocrity. Handed a country with a balanced budget and no debt, Dubya has trashed our economy. He has learned nothing from his father's administration as far as getting in and getting out of warfare. And now it is rumored (while our troops are trapped in a civil war in Iraq) that he is considering attacking Iran over their nuclear program. Damned if he doesn't stop until he finds some weapons of mass destruction somewhere. Oh, and let's not forget that we have less civil rights than we did under his father's administration.
Nope, the more things change, the worse they get it seems on both counts: Park City and Bush Administration.
(Oh, yes, the photo below is a reflection, just like this little passage. And, yes, it is upside down, much like our country right now).
