700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

[LoudPopper]

So this happened a couple of weeks ago, but I never got to share about my experience. I was long overdue for a good balloon busting session, so I decided to go on a balloon popping marathon. On Friday, I popped 200 balloons. And then over the next 2 days, I proceeded to go through nearly 500 more balloons!

I've got some photos of some of the phases of inflation over the weekend. Hope you all enjoy. Initially, you are looking at mountains of 15 and 16”ers Uniques. Half of em are half-tied of course for a quick BTP at the tip of my fingers. Also got some TT24’s, Cattex 32 & 36” longnecks, 96” Workers, and GL 500s read to get all of my rough loving.

By phase 2 of the preparations for Saturday and Sunday's festivities, added a bunch more bigger loons for riding, added lots of 14” and lots of fun clusters of 4, 6, 8 from 12” and 16”ers. There’s stuffed balloons in here and a bunch of half tied confetti balloons for an extra surprise with my BTP’s!

It was such an awesome experience while all the actual looning and popping was going on. So once I get through these 500, I’ll actually be setting a new balloon busting record for going through 700 balloons in a single weekend! I’ve managed to pop 1000 balloons in a week before, but to almost hit that number in just 3 days is both fucking awesome on ridiculous at the same time. Sometimes I think about how much looning I do, and think on all the balloons I go through in a year, and wonder if I got a problem. Lol but if i do, it’s a problem that I’m perfectly happy to have!

But as I started to round the corner to phase 3, where I was making a bunch of different sculptures etc. By inflating my 600th balloon or so, things started to get a bit dicey. So by Sunday, I had to push off the rest of my popping and inflating festivities and completing the marathon on Tuesday morning, (besides getting distracted by thinking and building tons of ridiculous sculptures) was because I literally sustained two ballon related “injuries”.

Turns out that I had tied off so many loons that the friction of the stretched nozzle running over my finger tips resulted in me sustaining a very narrow but respectably deep gash as the repetitive motion split my cuticle wide open. Speaking of repetitive motions, I also manipulated so many balloon quads and such while making clusters, clouds, stuffers, columns, etc. that I strained a ligament in my thumb. It literally was too painful at times to fill the room. Any left wrist extension motions or sustained muscle action involving left thumb extension or pinching to holding things in place against force led to cramping and sustained contraction of my hand muscles.

Basically it was my body saying “you’re doing too damn much! Just chill...” And it’s at dark moments like these you can’t help but think “get it together my dude SMH.” I’m being super dramatic here, but it’s not like I didn’t have a moment sitting next to my absurd existential looner fears about the overall “healthiness” of my balloon obsession.

It makes you begin to wonder if there really is a such thing as “too many balloons”. But you eventually persevere and realize that you’re a relatively well adjusted adult overall who just happens to have a quirky predilection for a certain toy, and a laughably large dose of enthusiasm in pursuit of my looning endeavors. So you just learn to laugh at the absurdity of actually getting injured in pursuit of some looner excitement. You eventually learn to accept yourself and even be thankful for the relationships and experiences you’ve had thanks to your love of balloons.

Anyways... enjoy the pics folks. I'll post them in batches in a few posts below.

[LoudPopper]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Here's a bunch more pics of a bunch of clusters, clouds and columns I made. You can't really make out the column that well in this photo, but it was made of 48 12"ers with alternating quads of 4 clear balloons and 4 polkadot balloons. At the end of each column was a giant round 24" clear balloon filled with red and gold confetti. You see some stuffed balloons, and a bunch of other weird clusters and clouds. The one giant cloud you see is of 50-60 loons ranging from 9" to 16" all tied together! Also here's a fun pic of the finger injury I got from tying so many balloons. I actually pushed through this injury, eventually wrapping it in gauze and tape, and kept on inflating lol! Aaaaand then... I sprained the ligament in my thumb. Ridiculous.

[Dude1234]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

That finger injury looks really sore. If I had the time to do that I would so go on a popathon like that. Great pictures

[JamesPopper]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Why are you in your garage?

[LoudPopper]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Yeah the nail bed/cuticle injury was a lot more painful than I anticipated. The strange thing about it was that I didn't notice the injury until the end of first session, and really didn't feel it until I started inflated on the beginning of day 2. I tried a couple of ways to bandage it and didn't land on an effective method until later that evening. So unfortunately I didn't get to go through as many balloons as I wanted to that day.

I actually think I got the injury so early, not necessarily because of how many I had tied off at that point, but what I was exactly doing with the loons while inflating them. I made a lot of stuff like the columns, that giant cloud, and other things. I worked with a lot of string to make a balloon garland, and the column to. Just a lot of friction on my fingers, and I was trying a lot of weird tight knots between larger bunches of balloons already. You'll see in the pic, not only did I make a TON of balloon duplets and quartets, I did a lot of extra twisting and tying of big of balloon clusters. I was trying a bunch of stuff I hadn't done before like 6, 8 balloons or the 10 balloon cluster you see that was made outa U16's. It was harder work on my hands than expected, think that's how I got the thumb strain as well. Next time I do a huge session like this, I won't leave of the fancy balloon sculptures and such for one block of time. I'll stretch out making sculptures and stuff over time.

Oh, and there's a couple of reasons that I was in my garage. I actually started experimenting with looning in my garage over the last 2 years. First, there's a lot of stuff going on in my house right now that's kinda preventing me from looning indoors. The biggest thing is that my wife and I had been preparing for the arrival of our twins over the last few months, so the 2 or 3 rooms where I would have balloon sessions were kinda taken over and converted into spaces for the kids. I considered maybe changing the way that I played and what I did during my sessions, like fewer or bigger balloons, or like less popping. It was alright, and I learned a bunch of new ways of enjoying loons that aren't as messy, complicated or time consuming. Guess it's good to have a couple ways of to get some looning done quickly, or less noisy and more considerate of my wife if I'm having some solo play while the wife is home. If she doesn't wanna play, she doesn't care if I have solo sessions how much I pop when she's home, but I still don't feel fully comfortable going absolutely nuts with like 100-200 balloons. I just feel like a jerk making all that noise while she's trying to do something else. Now that my twin girls have arrived about 3 1/2 weeks ago, looning indoors while they're home (which is always until they start spending days at my mothers in the fall) is just a total no-go.

I totally miss the old house that we used to rent because it was much bigger with more rooms so I could inflate 300 or so loons if I wanted, pop a bunch, and leave the room to play in or inflate more later that day or over a couple of days. So even though the new house we own is smaller, and all the rooms are occupied by baby stuff, I still have my garage. The garage is actually huge, and can store 4 cars in there. The balloon space that you saw I had tied off is at least double the size than any balloon room that I typically would play in.

The size of the balloon area was actually 20' x 20', and that we even with a boat parked in there and enough space for 1 1/2 more cars. We moved our old boxspring and mattress out there when prepping for the babies, so I even hav more than enough room to lay down a proper queen size mattress in the play area for riding, humping, sitting etc. I'm free to leave the balloon room inflated for days if I please again, and I get have bigger sessions. It's all around a better space even though its outside. The only drawback is that sunlight exposure through the garage windows can lead to oxidization of my loons. I like my loons, big, tight, shiny and super loud when the bust. Oxidization is basically kryptonite for my super loud and messy balloon popping needs. The only other downside is I've yet to figure out a plan for looning in the winter yet.

[ShredFox]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Jeez, 700 in one weekend, that definitely sounds like a lot of fun. You are lucky to have a space for popping sessions like that! :P

[Nopops4me]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

And available cash to spend!!!

[LoudPopper]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Thanks for everyone's responses. I appreciate it and I'm glad you all thought this was pretty cool. I probably average about 100-200 balloons per session; and while I typically have bigger sessions whenever I play and I get to have them a few times per month, I don't always do a super-huge session like this-- maybe 2-3 per year. I can already tell that having my twins is totally going to affect the amount (or the time/availability) that I have for looning. Tbh, that's actually why I decided to have such a huge session in the first place. Because it was kinda like one last big "blow out" (pun definitely intended) before my life would become radically different. Totally have no idea how that's gonna affect what I'm gonna do with my looning moving forward in the short term. Pretty confident that no major looning will be getting done this summer as I'm on paternity leave and in full-time daddy mode.

The big change has been that for somebody who pops 100's of balloons per month, I've only played with 3 balloons and popped one (by accident nonetheless) since the twins were born mid-June. Totally night and day in terms of my looner activity, but it's well worth it in the grand scheme of things. I know that when my mother starts watching over her grandchildren during the work-week come this fall, things will open up more. In the meantime, I'm eager to better capitalize on my personal free time whenever it shall come. With the stress of having 2 newborns at once, my wife and I try to be deliberate about granting the other a certain amount of personal time away from everything to recharge. Although before today, I hadn't really left the house in the previous 4 days bc life's been that busy between the twins and helping my wife-- who is also on family leave and home all day with me. Things are just different, but I'm thankful for it at the same time. Life is about change, and I'll figure out how to fit looning back into it soon enough.

Regarding the space and extra cash... yeah I'd consider myself lucky for the most part. Having the garage is probably more of a stroke of luck, that just so happened to come along with the house. However, I never really intended for that to be the purpose of the garage, and it did indeed take a lot of TLC with cleaning, organizing and preparing in order to make the space amenable to balloon play.

But regarding access to all the balloons, I'd actually say it also comes down to a lot of deliberate planning, budgeting and hunting for deals. I'm always hunting for bulk purchases and best prices, rigorously checking budgets, doing comparisons and planning orders on spreadsheets beforehand. Knowing how important looning is to my life and overall happiness, and just how many balloons I pop per year, it's kinda become a deliberate effort to make sure that I save and budget of afford to fulfill my needs. On top of regular exercise, meditation, therapy, I see this as an important part of maintaining my mental health and wellbeing. Therefore it's something I'm willing to spend on. I don't smoke, drink or do drugs; and you'd be shocked on the average person actually spends per year on those things alone. On one level it of course means being willing to splurge less on other luxuries/trivialities, but imo I see this as really the one big indulgence I'm willing to allow myself. I once calculated in college how much I spent per year on alcohol back when I used to drank, and despite going though copious amounts of balloons, it was actually more than what I spend per year on balloons. I see it as a far less unhealthy, harmful thing to be "hooked" on than the other things I used to be into when I was young.

As a platonic "closeted" balloon-lover friend of mine who I just introduced into looning once put it, "balloons are just your thing, they're what you collect. Like how some people are sneaker-heads, you're just a balloon-head." The only difference imo is that the things I "collect" just so happened to get regularly "used" rather than just sit on a shelf and collect dust or are worn a handful of times per year. I have good friends of mine in tighter financial situations who spend more on their hobbies like video games and collectors items. Other people watch a lot of movies per year, some eat out or do fast food a lot, while others collect things like comics or sneakers.

P.S. While I am definitely a candid person, willing to speak openly about my looning, if I crossed any line talking about how I can afford balloons while another may not as often or freely, I apologize. I fully respect everyone's personal lives/journey's and whatever position in life they may be in, particularly if it may be an uncomfortable one. I honestly empathize as I've been there before. I'm sorry if my response about this ever came across as insensitive to anyone's personal or financial situation. It wasn't my intent other than to be open and honest and offer a different perspective about the role balloons play in my life should anyone be curious or considering something similar.

[Nopops4me]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Thanks LoudPopper. You haven't crossed the line as far as I'm concerned. When you put it as you have, I suppose the cost of balloons put against the cost of other 'hobbies' it is but a small amount to pay, with the added bonus of interacting with your hobby and not just admiring it as a shelved item collecting dust.

[t17forLife]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

Too much fun? I'll leave some lyrics by the late country singer Daryle Singletary here....


Too much fun, what's that mean?
It's like too much money, there's no such thing
It's like a girl too pretty with too much class
Being too lucky, a car too fast
No matter what they say, I've done
But I ain't never had too much fun


I'd personally chance "class" to "ass" but the point stands, no such thing as too much fun

[Asclepio]

Re: 700 (almost) Balloons in a single weekend!

I’m sure we have never enough balloons...... but 700 in just one session? I use 350 in a year if I’m lucky hahaha, not for money just because I don’t have enough time to blow so many loons, congrats, 700 loons must be the paradise for every looney