I got to FLY! (July 15th 2020)

[hotairballoonist]

Normal is creeping in…

My recovery has been going extremely well.  I had an MRI on my brain two weeks ago.  The results were good.  I am still showing residual blood on the brain but it is slowly being absorbed.  Two days after the online visit with my primary we get a call from the imaging hospital asking me to come back for another MRI.  Apparently they had spotted something they wanted another look at.  My wife has looked at the results from the second MRI, she said there was nothing alarming in the results but we have another tele-visit appointment with my primary to get his opinion.  I am still on a boat load of meds and take my vitals three times a day; however, I have been making great progress.  Working out in the shop and doing all sorts of projects around the house, yard work and web work has not only kept me busy but added to the speed of my recovery.  I have lost a bunch of weight.  When I had my stroke in February I was in size 44 jeans.  I have gone down a size nearly every six weeks since coming home.  I am now wearing 38’ jeans and doing so comfortably.  I have had no headaches in several weeks and the Dizzy Days are becoming fewer as well.   I still miss flying each day but I am no longer waking up before dawn in a panic, wondering what balloon and how many passengers and who is today’s ground crew.  (That was my normal for several weeks after getting home).

 I was able to make a FLIGHT.

https://www.thompsonaire.com/video/July4thFlight.mp4

Thank you to one of our wonderful local pilots (Kenny Shuemate) who asked me if I wanted to go for a flight.  He said he had a 140 with almost no hours on it and wondered if I wanted to go out for a flight.  I was nearly in tears while talking to him on the phone.  He said bring anyone you want!  I know, many of you taking a balloon flight is a normal thing and for some of you lucky pilots out there it is nearly a daily occurrence.  For me, I fully believed it would just be a memory and I would never get to fly again.  When Kenny made the invitation I had been feeling pretty good for a few weeks so I took him up on his offer.  I invited both my mother and father to join in and one of my old ground team had heard about it on Facebook and offered to come out and be our ground crew.  Kenny said you may inflate if you want.  I jumped right in and poor Kenny never got to touch the burner the entire flight.  For me every second was a thrill but one of the highlights I will never forget is my father looking at me and saying “You sure have not lost your touch” Thank you Kenny Shuemate!

TWITTER,

I know there are some of you out there that do the Twitter thing.  We have now installed a Twitter Promotion software on the HotAirBalloonist.com website.  When you start a topic on the site you will have the option to also post that same topic to Twitter.  Remember this is for logged in members of the site.  But next time you start a topic on the site in ANY category, up at the top of your post where the “Follow” button is you will see the Twitter promote button.  For those of you who want to follow us on Twitter just go to #HABalloonist on Twitter.

Ballooning in the NEWS

There are three locations on the HotAirBalloonist.com website where we have installed internet scrubbers.  The scrubbers scour the internet looking for stories that have anything to do with ballooning.  There is one on our front (Forums) page. On the right “Side Bar” section of the page.  You would be embarrassed how many times the word Emergency appears on that news feed.  There is also an entire page of news items. Under the Navigation heading “Current News” The page of news is called Ballooning in the News.  This is an entire page of news items and the scrubber on this page has a slightly different set of searching parameters so you may find balloon news here that you would not find on the front “Forums” page.   The third and final scrubber is located on the “Articles and News” page.  This scrubber is located on the right “Side Bar” and this scrubber has yet another set of parameters that looks for news primarily about balloon events.  During these difficult times many events are being canceled or postponed.  This scrubber is a great one for news about balloon events all over the country.

START A CLUB

Remember there are no additional fees to start a balloon club on HotAirBalloonist.com  You can start a club for the pilots who fly in your area and have your own Topics area, Download Center, Calendar, Photo Gallery, Member Map and even your own Chat room if you wish.  Only your members can have access to your club area.  You can even create your own newsletter to send out to your club members with a single click of a mouse.  Our email server is super powerful.  We send out nearly 1,000 emails in less than a minute!  Of course if you need any help I am happy to assist getting you set up.

WebWork

Seems now that I am not flying full time I have time for other things.  If you have a website that needs work or even rebuilt let me know.  If your site is a balloon ride site I know a guy J who knows quite a bit about ballooning and can make a great site for you!  All kidding aside, if you need any assistance on your site I am more than happy to become your web guy.  Here are a few sites you can look at that I have set up.  Appliancerepairoffourcorners.com, JodisSkiSchool.com, ThompsonAire.com, Ginathompsonphotography.com,  HotAirBalloonist.com,  DesiredDreamsBathBombs.com, WrappedUSA.com, Avaschickenchronicles.com just to name a few.  I would love to help you with your needs.  As my father would say, “It keeps you out of the bars”.

Thank you all who take the time to read my newsletters.  Please be safe, have fun and stay healthy.

Thank you for all you do for the world of ballooning.

OH!!!  I almost forgot!  We have more of our famous Balloon Masks in stock.  Our supplier has told us that this may be the last of that fabric available so if you want one get it right away!

Jeff A Thompson.