I learned the hard way that going for a ride on Hot Breath, my first ride, was a major heart attack. H.B. had been with me for about six weeks when he decided it was time for my first ride. I had no idea this was going to happen. If I had known what he had in mind I would have run the other way, as fast as my short little legs would carry me. It all started off so innocently as we had been on the road for about two hours when he started getting antsy. It's his morning ritual as he has to go. I don't know about other dragons but this guy has to be flying to do his thing. Look out below...... We pulled into a rest area and I opened up the top of the sleeper and out he came. He ejects out of there like he's attached to a catapult. You can just see how wonderful this feels to him. When he shoots out he must be up at least two hundred feet before he spreads those huge, fantastic wings. He doesn't exactly fly off, he just hovers for a bit and stretches. His wing tips stretch towards the heavens as every other part of his body stretches too. It's amazing how he just hovers there while he's stretching, but then, don't you know, dragons are magical. Then with a couple of big flaps he's gone and this guy can really move when he wants to. This morning was just like all the rest, I was laying back on a picnic table just waiting for him to return so we could get down the road. Usually he doesn't take long. He'd been gone for about twenty minutes so far which was not like him. Then suddenly I heard this real loud scream/screech that could only have come from H.B. I jumped up to see what was going on when he came flying back at high speed. He dipped down and came to an abrupt stop right in front of me. Now you have to realize the size of this guy. When he's standing in front of me he's about thirty feet tall from his hind legs to the top of his ears. He has a tail of about another fifteen feet extending out past his hind legs. Then there are those monstrous wings, they measure about forty feet, wing tip to wing tip. So when he's standing right in from of me I can barely see the top of his legs. Anyway, he's all animated and very excited about something. I've learned to communicate with H.B. when things are calm, but when he's excited I have no clue as to what's got him going. He's jabbering and clicking and making all kinds of noise trying to tell me something and you can see he's getting frustrated with this. If I had known what was coming next I might have died right there. All at once he opened his mouth and reached down and grabbed me, he swung his head around and, not so gently, set me down on the back of his neck just before his wings start. Oh My God.....this guy has a mouth full of razor sharp, pointed fangs and teeth. There isn't anyway I could have survived an encounter with him picking me up with his mouth, but....I wasn't hurt in the least. He was gentle as a feather except when he sat me back down. I was sort of dropped from about five feet or so and I think it broke my butt..... Now the interesting part, this dragon has some kind of aura or all encompassing halo around him. It isn't anything you can see or feel until your sitting on him. The fact is that no matter how he's flying or how bad the flight is, I can't fall off. Of course I didn't find this out for awhile. In the mean time I'm making a total mess of my clothes and I'm rather vocal in my panic. Hot Breath flaps a couple of times and we're air borne. This kind of reminds one of sitting on a Boeing 727, out side not inside, also, with the protecting aura around him one doesn't feel the wind or temperature. It's like sitting in an all window cabin on top. So he's getting with it now. He turns his head around from time to time to make sure I'm still there and his lips are curled back into somewhat of a dragon smirk. He thinks he's won this one, rightly so, he has. I can't exactly tell him to land again, he'll get to it when he wants to. Actually the flight is quite nice, he's taking it easy and were cruising along. I didn't realize it at the time but this guy can fly at extreme speeds. Off in the distance I see a small plane approaching, it's one of these private twin engine planes. I think they fly at about 120/150 miles per hour or something close to that. H.B. is hiding up in the clouds when this plane comes passing by. He swoops down and comes right up along side of the plane. Ok, now you have to get your imagination going with this. Your sitting in this plane, traveling along at about 150 miles per hour and you casually glance out your side window expecting to see beautiful cloud formations. Uh huh, and what appears before your wondering eyes, why it's a huge dragon with a man riding on it's back. You look at the pilot and causally say, "Oh look, there's a dragon out there with a man on it's back". This is just a second before both you and the pilot go into shear panic. Your both glued to the windows trying to figure out what is actually out there that your eyes are playing tricks on you about. You ask the pilot if he's seen this winged creature before. The pilot is frozen in motion. He can't talk, can't breath and his heart probably isn't beating either. It's a good thing the plane is on auto pilot. The pilot is mumbling something about calling in and then he's talking about Holly Mother God. The pilot gets on the radio and is trying to tell them what's he's seeing up there. (The conversation goes something like this:) "Flight 4460, this is ground control. You have a distress signal, what is the nature of your problem?" Pilot; "Gr, gron, gron, grond contr, grond contr, I, I, I ha, I have a U. a U.F... a U.F. O......... I have a U.F.O. out, outside, side, side my, a U.F.O. out . side mmy righ, righttttttt, wing." The pilot tries to get some control over himself and states, "Ground control, I, I, I, have a U.F.O. sighting off my right wing". Ground control: Nothing but silence for several seconds, then they say, "Flight 4460, please repeat your last". Pilot: "Oh God, I don't, I don't, I don't want, want to, to, go through that, that again. We.....have.....a.....U.F.O.....sighting.....off.....our.....right.....wing". Ground Control: "Flight 4460, can you tell us the nature of your U.F.O.?" Pilot: "It's a, it's, a, a, a, it's a huge, Oh Holly Mother of God, it's a very, very large, drag, drag, it has huge wings and it's flying, flying, flying right along with us.. It's a, a, it's a huge drag, dragon.... It's a huge, huge, drag, dragon with a ma, man, man, a man on it's ba, ba, back". The pilot clears his throat and tries to report again. "It's.....a.....huge.....dragon...with.....a...man.....on.....it's.....back". Ground Control: "Oh boy, does anyone know who this pilot is? Does he have a record?" They bring his record up on the computer and it's absolutely spotless. He's a good pilot and never had an incident. From the radar people, "there is definitely something flying right along side of that aircraft but it isn't anything metallic, it has a heat signature like an animal or human". "Flight 4460, does your U.F.O. show any intention of coming near you?" Pilot: "Ground con, control, control......this isn't, is, isn't my drag, dragon, U.F.O. So far he's, he's staying out, out there". All of this conversation has taken place within just a few minutes. H.B. has had his fun so he peals off the chase and flies into a cloud formation. H.B. has kind of a chirping sound that makes me think he's chuckling or laughing. What ever the sound he seems to be having a great time. Just out flying around is a great time for him. As we fly out of the cloud formation were quite high up. Several thousand feet I would imagine. Ok, so now what are we going to do? I'm starting to relax a bit and enjoy the ride. He's being very careful and so far it's an uneventful flight. Uh huh, if you can call riding on a dragons back, traveling at about 150 miles per hour, an uneventful flight? All at once he noses forward and folds his wings back against his body. We head straight down. He is literally falling out of the sky. I thought I was having heart problems when we first took off. That was nothing compared to this. My heart has jumped right out of my body and I'm holding on to it for dear life. I know my eyes must be the size of basket balls. I'm not in panic at all, I've surpassed that stage long ago. H.B. decends to about 500 feet from the ground and tilts his wings out a little bit and we straighten right out, miss the ground, barely miss the ground and soars off into the wild blue yonder. Well, I'm a total puddle. I've wet myself from top to bottom. I can't breath, can't think, can't do anything. I need to get my heart back inside where it belongs. Talk about the shakes. It's like I'm sitting on a very powerful vibrator. I realized that I kept hearing some screaming sounds. It took awhile for me to conclude that the screaming was coming from me. Like I said before, I'm very vocal when in life or death panic. Hot Breath circled around once more then landed right where he'd picked me up in the first place. He brought his head around and grab me and set me down on the ground just as gentle as could be. Oh sure, buy this time who cares how gentle is was. I'm a total basket case. I won't ever recover from this, not entirely anyway. Going for your first ride on H.B. makes the scariest roller coaster ride seem like a walk in the park......
