Rant over balloons

[CentralMass]

26. If they were that low in a residential area and "skimming trees"

It was likely they were looking for a landing spot and preparing for it. One summer years ago my now ex and I helped the same ballonist land on two different occasions in Westborough, Ma when we encountered him by chance. The first was in the evening on our ride home from work.
We spotted him as we drove along a number of back roads we were on and eventually caught up to him near a pond. He was descending and it looked to us like he was go to come down in the pond so we raced ahead and stopped at the pond. It turned out to be intentional. The pilot, who had and apprentice in the gondola was showing off a "pond skimming" where they get low enough over water to dunk the gondola into the water fir a bit. If they screw up and the basket takes on too much water they can get into trouble. We were close enough for a discussion and we asked him if he was in trouble and he explained it was on purpose. He then asked if we could follow him and help him land as his chase crew hadn't caught up yet. So we followed them. He gave it some gas and ascended. Were were headed north about to cross over a busy Rte 9. We found out later that he intentionally skimmed some trees with the gondola to slow them because he spotted his landing spot. It was an elementary or middle school up ahead. We raced a head and pulled into the school and he touched down in the schools field. The wind was dragging the ballon across the field towards a treeline with the two of them in the gondola. He asked me to try and get ahead of them and pull the rope hanging rom the top of the Ballon down to get it out of the wind. I was was in my late twenties and an extremely fit runner and sprinted ajead,, got the rope, and used my weight to pull it down. It even dragged ne along until the Ballon came to a stop. Although the pilot seems skilled doing the water skimming so close to having to do a landing in a residential area (he was almost out of propane) seemed like it was cutting it close. My ex and I helped him prep the ballon for the chase crew and we had it ready for the trailer by the time they arrived. For our efforts the pilot gave his business card. No offer of a ride or a discount for getting my @$$ dragged across a playing field to keep him from hitting the trees.

We ran into him again on an early Saturday morning on a trip to a family event. It may have been that weekend or the next (it was a long time ago) . He landed in front of one of the now defunct Digital Equipment Corporation buildings on Rte 9. We spotted him and arrived before he did.. it seemed like too windy of a morning for it
It was a large facility with a lot of frontage and he was being dragged parallel to the building across the lawn. We were parked down wind and I got out and did another pull down of the top rope but just blew him off after the landing and we got in our car and headed to the family event.