"Fun" Category

Adventure is still alive.

Two days ago,  young Falcon Heene of my hometown, Fort Collins, Colorado, was suspected to have untethered and climbed into his father’s experimental weather balloon, floated up into the atmosphere around 7,000 ft, and traveled over 60 miles south-east over the Colorado plains. My heart literally sank in my chest when I heard about this for two reasons. First was the fact that this boy, Falcon, whom I actually taught when I worked for the City of Fort Collins Recreation, was in danger of possibly falling to his early demise from over a mile-high. Horrifying. Second was that this is the type of adventure for a kid that only happens in movies. This is Huckleberry Finn, Where the Wild Things Are, and Never-Ending Story combined into a REAL adventure story of a six year-old boy. EPIC.

Think about it…. you crawl into this balloon thing, close the door, and you feel yourself moving just a bit. After a few moments of terrified speculation of what is going on outside the hatch, you crack it open and see the city falling farther and farther beneath you. That’s a freakin’ adventure. This could be the plot for an amazing child adventure movie.

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A young adventurous boy rides this air-craft over a city. He’s waiting for the movement to stop before he opens the door to his new destination. Once he does, it is nothing like the world he knew before the flight. He travels around trying to find someone to ask for help, but there are only bizarre creatures that follow him around. After a couple days of exploring, young Falcon would climb back into the craft, wave goodbye to his new-world creature friends and take off for home. During the ride through the air things get choppy, the craft starts shaking and begins to fall apart. Young Falcon tries to hold it all together, wishing in his head that he could be back with his family. In that instant, the craft splits and lets him fall into the open sky.

While free-falling from the broken balloon, Falcon screams cries of regret. While the wind is tossing him around mid-air, he cries for his parents, for his home, for his siblings. The ground growing nearer, he wishes it had never happened. And boom, he opens his eyes and pushes up out of a dark, small room. Falcon realizes that he had fallen asleep in the cardboard box in his parents’ attic where he was hiding. His family finds him, he reunites with his siblings. The adventure is over.
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Boo-yah.

Let’s start writing a script for this.

Thank God, Falcon was found to not be in the balloon at all, he was actually hiding in the attic at his home. But… now people are complaining that the whole event was planned as publicity, since their family was on Wife-Swap, the reality show. I am very sorry to say that I am losing faith in humanity. Whether or not this was a publicity stunt, I don’t care. I think until it is publicly announced, I believe that it was an accident and everyone should be very grateful that the boy is alive and well.

It is extremely insensitive to accuse this family that, if it was all true, went through tremendous emotional hardship thinking that their youngest boy might have fallen from over a MILE above the earth to his death.

Have we devalued human life so much that, once we find the boy wasn’t in the balloon, we accuse the family of some sort of fraud? It makes me sick.

All in all, I am glad Falcon is well. I’m inspired by what COULD have happened. And all of the people in this world who are trying to accuse their family of tricking everyone need to rethink their values.

Life is valuable and adventure is still alive.

*UPDATE*

Unfortunately, the story was a promotional hoax by the parents. What a sad thing, right? I guess there is some jail time for them. Poor kids.

Filed under: Fun, News by Nick Wichman
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Sketches make for fun times.

As a graphic designer, I spend a lot of time conceptualizing design layouts, logos, and illustrative elements for clients. Sometimes, on my free time, I spend time drawing random shapes and making characters out of them. I think this style of cartoony-drawing stems form my internal desire to do illustrations for children’s books. Take a look at the sketch here to see what I’ve been thinking.

Me and Trey, my bandmate in Ask You In Gray (an electroPOP dance band), draw shapes all the time and give them to one another to draw the characters. It is really fun and gets your mind ticking. Check out our sketches at the AYIGBlog.

Filed under: Fun by Nick Wichman
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