HIGH ON HOT AIR

The flights usually take place only at dawn or dusk when winds are light and the air is free of turbulence. Bob Thomas, the owner of Balloons Unlimited, greeted us and the other dozen would be aerialists

First came the inflation of the balloons. (Balloons Unlimited utilizes two balloons for the trip.) Thomas asked us if anyone wanted to assist the ground crew. I volunteered and helped hold open the mouth of one of the balloons as a powerful fan forced air into it. Slowly the flat fabric on the ground expanded. A wicker basket rested on its side already attached to the balloon. The interior resembled a giant colorful circus tent.

As it grew to a height of several stories, the pilot, Randy Basley, fired up the propane burners to heat the air within and continue the inflation. I’d always heard that the noise from these burners was deafening. But improvements over the last 20 years have cut the noise levels in half. Even with the burners firing, I could hear the group of nuns giggling and talking incessantly. My wife and I decided that we’d wait to see which basket the nuns (or as they were now being called, The Flying Nuns) climbed into and then jump into the other one. We really were hoping to have a quiet peaceful experience.

Both crafts continued to take form and rise from the ground. As the nuns gravitated towards the eight-passenger gondola, Karen and I veered toward the six-passenger basket. With the balloons tilting up and becoming vertical, the ground crew scrambled to tip up the baskets and hold them to the ground as we climbed aboard.

Randy wasted no time after we were secure in the vehicle and signaled the crew to release us. He fired another short blast of the burners and we lifted into the sky. Up, up and away! (Sorry, just had to say it.) I initially imagined that the basket would be unstable and swinging like a pendulum. But it was rock solid.

We ascended higher and higher and drifted over the Virginia countryside. Since we were moving with the wind, and at such a slow speed, it was absolutely quiet when the burners weren’t running. I’ve never been afraid of heights. But I’m still overcome by a vertigo-like sensation of being pulled down when looking over the edge of a cliff or out a window in a tall building. There was no such feeling in the basket of the balloon. It felt more like standing still at a scenic overlook with the earth moving below.

And the views were breathtaking. Reaching an altitude of 2000 feet, we were treated to a panorama of the densely forested foothills and mountains of Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge. Below lay the town of Middleburg, surrounded by farms, lakes and ponds. Other towns dotted the landscape. To the North we could make out the winding line of the Potomac River.

This scene continually changed both vertically and horizontally as we rose and descended several times. Coming low to the ground, we watched deer dart across an open plain. We skimmed through a field of wildflowers, barely feet above the ground, and I was able to lean out a grab a bouquet for my Karen.

Ascending again, I spotted two men along our course fishing on a pond in a small boat. I suggested that we pay them a visit and Randy opened vents in the balloon, bringing us down right above their heads. We waved and shouted to them as they waved back. However, they were probably cursing us for scaring off the fish.

Flying with the second balloon, just a few hundred yards in front of us the whole way, added an unexpected dimension to the trip. We were better able to judge our altitude by looking both up and down at it during different segments of the flight as it also rose and fell under the controls of it’s pilot. And it often acted as a focal point. As it skimmed across a pond, the colorful pattern of the craft created a beautiful reflection in the water.

After about an hour in the sky, a landing area was chosen and Randy instructed us to bend our knees to absorb the impact and hold onto the uprights of the basket, but keep our hands away from the outside edges. The other balloon touched down first as Randy again opened the vents to bring us down. We skimmed across the grassy field, bouncing a few times before the bottom of the basket began to drag through the tall blades. As the gondola fell over and hurtled through the pasture, it reminded me of riding down a hill in a cardboard box as a kid. We all eventually tumbled atop one another in a heap, laughing, before coming to a stop.

Since balloons can’t be steered, one never knows where the flight will end. A chase car, therefore, tracks the journey and its crew was there to greet us and help us back onto terra firma. We finished up with a traditional Champagne toast.

When ballooning began in France in the late 1700’s, the early aviators would often be attacked by pitchfork wielding farmers who thought that the balloons were monsters or aliens. To convince the farmers that they were fellow Frenchmen, balloon pilots began presenting these rural residents with a bottle of champagne.Thus, a tradition was born of toasting the end of the flight with a glass of champagne and giving a bottle to the farmer to thank him or her for allowing the use of their property for landing. Unfortunately, no one told us this story until we, and the rest of the passengers (including the nuns who were still talking, drank all of the bottles.) Ooops!

The landowner didn’t appear to mind and seemed quite thrilled to have the unexpected visitors. I wish we had saved him a sip. It was a really great bottle of Champagne to end a really fantastic flight.