No 2: Greatest Sports Books Ever

Hi Everyone —

I don’t really do vacations. I’m not proud of it — I think it would be much healthier for my life if I did. But my mind isn’t geared to relax.

But if all goes well, as you are reading this, I will be on my flight heading back home today after our first vacation in, well, a pretty long time. Margo and I went to Mexico City as part of the Vanishing Inc. Magic Retreat — Vanishing Inc. is an online magic store co-run by my great friend and world-class magician (and Brilliant Reader!) Joshua Jay. I met Josh back when I wrote my book The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini.

The idea behind these retreats is to mix some of the best magic on the planet — legendary magicians Armando Lucero and Gregory Wilson were on the trip to perform and talk magic — with some awesome experiences. The big one this trip was a hot air balloon ride over Mexico City.

I was a touch nervous because, as Mike Schur said, getting on a hot air balloon is exactly the sort of thing that you don’t HAVE to do. In other words, if for whatever reason, the balloon started going down, the only thought in your head will be: “Wait, I did this VOLUNTARILY. I mean, the balloon drops you off pretty much where you started.”

But I did it, and it ended up being fantastic in unexpected ways. For one thing, our pilot was a woman named Margarita Benítez Jiménez, who is the first woman hot air balloon pilot in Latin America. She’s been at this for 38 years. Here she is explaining in Spanish about flying a hot air balloon, so now I’m an expert.

The second thing that stood out was how peaceful it is. I mean, yes, every so often, Margarita needed to blast a super loud burst of fire to keep the balloon from falling out of the sky. But when the fire wasn’t raging and we were floating over Mexico City, it felt surreal. I’ve been on so many planes all over Planet Earth over the last 40 years. So many. And though I’ve tried to avoid getting jaded, at some point, the miracle of flight stopped feeling miraculous. It started feeling like a profound hassle, weather delays and baggage issues and blocked gates and mechanical problems and turbulence and all the rest, there’s so little joy left in it.

But this was joy. Wonder. We were standing in a basket and floating on top of the world.

And Mexico City was glorious. I had an al pastor taco that I will be dreaming about for the rest of my life. I was so taken by the friendliness that surrounded us everywhere. I guess this is why people go on vacation.

Oh, by the way, Margarita was not really explaining how to fly a balloon in the photo above. No, she was pointing up to have me look at the balloon. “It’s beautiful,” she said. She was right.