Discover New Zealand, Home of Middle Earth
	Saturday, Day 13. Here we are at oh-dark-hundred in Methven at the Aoraki Hot Air Balloon Safari, laying out our balloon and clustering around the burners to get warm. It is colder than a brass toilet seat in the Yukon! Perfect ballooning weather!. We arrived in Methven late at night and were fortunate to get in touch with George, who directed us to a holiday park near the Bank of New Zealand where he would pick us up so we could lift off before dawn. After getting up at an ungodly hour and missing breakfast to get there on time, we were packed into a bus and taken back to the holiday park about 50 feet from where we could have slept another couple of hours if we had just stayed where we were. Oh, well....
	Inflating the two balloons turns out to be a significant group activity. The envelopes are packed into impressively small bags on the back of trailers behind the vehicles that take us to the launching site. While some of our group unpack the envelopes and lay them out, I and a couple of other neophytes naively volunteer to hold the mouth of our balloon so it can be inflated with (cold!!!) air from not one but two giant fans. Stefanie helps with one hand and takes pictures with the other. I am standing in a man-made gale in weather that is essentially November in Minnesota, fully as cold as I look in this picture. I am hoping that I will defrost a little bit when they turn the burners on to warm the air inside the envelope.
	Once the envelope has enough air in it so the burners have something to heat, they are turned on in earnest and our balloon swells much more rapidly than I would have expected. Then I realize that so far the only weight that has to be supported is that of the envelope itself, which is fairly light. It didn't feel all that light when we were dragging it out of the bag, though. I am rewarded for being blasted with frigid air by now being warmed by the burners as the envelope inflates to its full size.
	After our pilot, Chris Rudge, walks around inside the balloon to make sure all the control lines are free (and there aren't any holes or tears), we all climb into the baskets and the burners are turned on full blast. I had expected that we would have an anchor of some kind to detach from, but instead the whole vehicle just gets lighter and lighter and suddenly we are quietly airborne, just behind our sister aerostat, as we float gracefully into the morning air.
	We ascend gently and silently into a cloudless sky. The ground just seems to drop away from our apparently stationary gondola. My Garmin says we are ascending about 300 feet a minute and moving due north at about 15 knots, which, at the equivalent of over 360 horsepower from gravity alone, I consider is pretty respectable for a machine that consists mostly of 20 tons of hot air. I observe that this is the way God meant us to fly; otherwise He wouldn't have given us hot air (and politicians to generate some). It is so cold that there is still frost on the ground, but one unexpected source of heat turns out to be the graves in the local cemetery. An oblong patch of ground just in front of each headstone is frost free. Hmmmm.
	Pilot Rudge is navigating by a method which is not obvious to me, but both he and the pilot of the other balloon are adjusting our altitude to take advantage of air currents that are going in the same direction we want to. We are, of course, at the mercy of the winds as far as horizontal directions are concerned, but are masters of the vertical. We turn the burners on for a few moments to ascend, and leave them off to descend, with a perceptible time lag to overcome the inertia of 40,000 pounds of air (plus vehicle and people).
	Our aerial view of Methven gives us a good vantage point from which to admire one of the nicest things about New Zealand (besides the people and scenery, of course). Roundabouts! These are a great idea, much better than traffic lights! They don't use energy, don't wear out, keep everyone moving, and occasionally serve as a place to sit and chat and watch the traffic hurry by. They even provide excitement and entertainment when American drivers, like me, initially forget that the traffic to which you have to give way is coming at you from three to four o'clock. Once you learn that, they are wonderful!
	Finally it is time to return to earth and we watch as the shadow of our balloon, surrounded by the specular halo, moves inexorably across the fields towards us. As it touches the bottom of our gondola, there is a slight bump and our pilot tugs on the dump valve as the gondola rolls over and we all start laughing, just as George had predicted in his pre-ascension briefing. The balloon writhes around as a giant living thing mortally wounded. We are reminded of an account by Benjamin Franklin of an ascension in Gonesse, France, in 1783. Terrified farmers attacked a deflating balloon with stones and knives until, as the local paper reported, "the ogre was subdued."
	When we get our balloon deflated, rolled up and back in its bag aboard the trailer, George dons a top hat and tails and gives us a lecture on the history of ballooning. We are then treated to an aeronaut christening ceremony, which celebrates the fact that we all survived the experience, and an eagerly-awaited champagne brunch. I am reminded of my first airplane instruction. The instructor paused a moment as we were getting into the airplane to remember all the early pilots who died discovering the things he was going to teach me.
	After filling up on delicious fruit pastries, orange juice and coffee, we head out to Mt. Potts Station and the location of the site of Edoras. Stefanie finally decides to try driving Kiwi-style and pays me back for almost two weeks of scaring her half to death. Now I am the one sitting on the left side of the van watching things on the edge of the road flash past and feeling, in spite of knowledge to the contrary, that we are about to be creamed by oncoming traffic.
	The hill on which Edoras, the capital of Rohan and the home of King Theoden and Princess Eowyn, is located is instantly recognizable, with towering Mount Sunday in the background. The Great Hall and the houses are all gone, although it looks like there is a radio antenna or something on the top of the hill. We find a number of cars parked along the fence next to a road that appears to lead up to the hill, but after scouting around I decide it's too rough for our camper van.
	We arrive in Christchurch in time to go to mass at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, not to be confused with the Christ Church Cathedral, which is an Anglican church and museum. Mass on Saturday evening is a traditional Latin rite, which is reminiscent of the days before the Catholic Church discarded its solemnity. Stefanie finds the Latin responses, strange vestments, choreographed acolytes and unfamiliar rituals a little unsettling, but I convince her that it's the way her fellow Catholics, including J. R. R. Tolkien, worshipped for over a thousand years.
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