Becalmed

Which I think adequately describes the state of our blog, too! The long delay has many reasons, none of which we'll delve into here, but since we're on the subject of being becalmed:

One of the great joys of hot air ballooning is that each flight is different from every other flight in the same way that each day is unlike every other that has gone before. Oh, they all follow the same pattern in a general way but each is different. This past weekend we had a flight planned for the Saturday afternoon before Mother's Day. A young couple, parents and grandparents were in attendance as onlookers. Sadly for me, Jim, our incredibly competent Crewchief is halfway through Arkansas on his Harley and headed north on an extended bike tour, which left responsibility squarely on Cookie and I.

Well, we bucked up. Found our launch site, sent up another PI ball, reviewed the map, figured out which roads we'd be chasing on, and set up High Hope. The inflation went well, the passengers boarded and the launch went off without a hitch. That's about the last quiet minute I had.



You see, to begin with there simply weren't any roads near the intended flight path. Cookie and I ended up having to veer northwest of HH, then back northeast to the general landing area. The main sections of road we'd be getting into are heavily forested, too, so we lost line of sight very quickly, then radio contact shortly thereafter.

Now, I worry. It's what I'm good at, so I started. I know David is wildly competent, but being out of visual AND radio contact? Scary. So, after failing miserably to spot HH I finally called David on his cellular and got his whereabouts. Come to find out he was ahead of us a bit, but roughly where we thought he'd be.

As the hour wrapped up we began to worry. Not many inroads toward him, and still no sign of a huge yellow balloon. We kept driving in and out of roads, driveways and turnrows hoping for a sight, but nothing ever presented itself, and dusk was drawing close, as was the fuel limit onboard--I knew he'd be setting down soon, but I couldn't FIND him! Pretty sad stuff for the guy driving the chase truck.

Word soon came--High Hope was down safe. I'd stopped near where I thought the landing spot was, but several honks on the horn went unheard by David, and I couldn't hear the burner. He was further away than we thought. (I found out later that David wasn't just being mean, he had in fact been becalmed--the wind simply stopped, and instead of making it to the highway like he'd planned he had to put down at the only safe spot he had.)

I was about to venture a little gentle trespass into a huge field full of massive Texas Longhorn steers when a Yamaha Rhino ATV truck pulled up, filled with landowners. Seems they'd seen the flight land on their property (I was close, by several miles they told me, if he'd landed where they thought he had) and that it'd be tricky to get to them. Seems these nice folks own eight THOUSAND acres, and we'd landed in the midst of them. No roads, no easy access.

So, just to be sure they took Cookie away in one of the ATVs into the very pasture I was about to break-and-enter, and I sat and waited with two generations of the family, phoning back and forth to David. He'd had to walk the still-inflated balloon quite a ways across ankle-deep water mixed with knee-high briars but had the gondola and passengers safely on high ground and was headed for what he thought was a road.

Long story short (I know, too late!) I spent an hour, perhaps more trying to reassure the parents and grandparents that we'd not lost their kids. This in the midst of a night of that quality of dark that only the deep country can manage. We kept seeing headlights flicker in and out of the treeline, but never a sound. Come to find out the balloon wasn't but a few miles from where we'd finally stopped, but the route getting TO them was so torturous and twisted (following fencelines and paralleling natural barricades like deep creeks and a huge lake) that it took twenty minutes at a good safe (fast) speed on the ATV just to get to them. Cookie and company met David, then got to the balloon and rescued the passengers who were hunkered down in the basket swatting mosquitoe swarms with the flight manual. After an hour and a half I saw headlights and heard the burring of the ATV returning. The passengers (in good spirits) reunited with loved ones and went back homewards.

Not so us. We still had a recovery to attend to, and it was already 9 pm.

We followed the ATV and landowner back into the forest preserve that was their property. Twenty five careful minutes following in the truck, wending our way down dirt tracks, embankments and around massive creeks and sinkholes brought us to a retired rice paddy thick with mosquitoes and, we were told, over two hundred head of wild boar. We packed balloon and envelope up after a sweaty struggle through thick grass and biting bugs and locked up the trailer. After a brief confab with the landowner, David, against his better judgement turned the truck around off the embankment and through the standing water, as the landowner was certain our four-wheel drive truck could make it, instead of having David suffer backing truck and trailer up some fifty or sixty feet.

Naturally we got stuck. The heavy truck and equally heavy trailer managed to sink us up to the axles, and sadly the little ATV couldn't pull us free, so...another twenty minute ride back to civilization for the landowner, who drove back (another half hour) with a truly massive, two-story tall John Deere. Without headlights. How he managed to drive that monstrous thing through that winding pair of dirt ruts and barely visible trails back to us sans headlights is beyond me and a testiment to his night vision, but that's what it took.



The tractor made short work of getting the truck out (that's David there, directing the tractor back onto high land,) but during the daring Rhino rescue we'd unhooked the trailer, thinking the little ATV might be able to pull just the truck out. What it DID manage was to pull it just far enough forward that we couldn't get the trailer hooked up again. The tractor had to creep back into the water and, using a nylon tow strap David had in the truck the two of them tied the trailer's tongue to the forklift bars mounted to the front of the tractor and the most ginger excavation began. It would have been comical, were it not so late, were we not so exhausted and were the mosquitoes not so starving for our blood.



My writing this tells you we did finally escape, hale and hearty, but from the landing to the moment we closed the last gate behind us and touched solid asphalt took just over four hours. In eighteen years of flying, David related to us, THIS was the longest recovery in his almost seven hundred flights, including, he pointed out, the recovery wherein the local rescue services had to bring out a helicopter to help the chase crew locate the balloon.

Talk about a feather in my cap.

But, lesson learned. As Tolkien once said, not all who wander are lost, and best you learn to keep your feet when you walk out your front door to go hot-air ballooning--you never know where you're going to end up.

Hope And Faith

Flying with Skybird and her crew is never a dull event. There's always something to learn, some new experience, some unfamiliar bit of road (or field or pasture or landowner's back yard) to find out about and usually drive through.

When a flight is complete we always have the after-flight ceremony, and at some point David will ask the passenger(s) if they enjoyed the flight. So far as I know he's never gotten a negative answer to that question, but I do know that invariably he tells them some variation of the sentiment "Good, but we enjoyed it more." I'm starting to see the very deep truth of that as I continue to grow with this extended family of the air. No matter how much our passengers enjoyed themselves it still remains that we've been able to BRING them this experience; the joy, the sense of freedom, the beauty that is flight, and that makes the returns to us manifold.

This past Thursday we had a very special passenger aboard indeed. A passenger who has been trying to go up in a cross-country flight for a very long time, ever since she rode with us on a tethered flight at a church social she attended, and probably long before that evening. Her name is Hope, and while it's not polite to reveal a lady's age I will say that she's probably in the Top Ten of our Oldest Passengers. I think, however, and much more importantly after Thursday's flight she's been ranked Number 1 on our Most Special Passengers list.



Miss Hope, you see, has had severe cerebral palsy since she was born. I can only assume that she's been in a wheelchair all her life, and she couldn't talk to us with words, but such things don't seem to have stopped her from doing whatever she sets her mind to, and going up for a free flight in a hot air balloon was on her mind. Her family bought her the flight for Christmas and between one thing and another it didn't come together until this last Thursday.

The meet went as planned--a whole convoy of friends and family came along to witness this flight. The wind wanted to be uncooperative at first, but I could tell by the set of David's jaw that as long as he could keep his safety margin intact he was going to make this flight happen if he had to go it alone. Susie, Cookie, Jim and I were there though to make sure he had all the help he and Miss Hope needed to become airborne. A quick test-fit of Miss Hope's wheelchair, a careful arranging of pillows and such and a little quick work with a wrench on Miss Hope's chair rendered it small enough that it would fit inside the gondola. Granted it left just enough room for David and Miss Hope's caregiver Justin to sort of cram in, but that's all they needed!

One propane tank of Skybird's four had to be sacrificed for space but the lightening of the load just made it that much easier to get aloft, and get aloft they did, from a friendly landowner's pasture in Lecompte. The flight itself was one of the more lovely ones--clear skies almost the entire time, lots of fields and forest to fly over, and acres of yellow flowers dotting the landscape. The chase truck and us of the crew had a grand time watching the parade of cars follow us from point to point as we kept just ahead of Skybird, and we even garnered a few extras along the way, folks who couldn't help but notice the beautiful blue and white and orange sight!

The landing was one of the more picturesque David has performed, and actually took place in the same spot as the last time he impressed me with his flight skills. The approach occurred over the course of some fifty yards, with David holding the basket aloft less than a foot over the ground, drifting along like a giant blue and orange seagull-covered snowflake. It never ceases to amaze me what control he manages, and I could see by the joyous expressions on Justin and Miss Hope's faces that they were really enjoying the extra treat. David drifted the balloon carefully across the field like a Pasha in his palanquin, bringing along his passengers on a royal parade toward the eagerly awaiting arms and smiles of family and friends. He even managed to 'run over' a fire-ant mound with the corner of the gondola, just to put the icing on the cake!



The sunset was exceptionally beautiful as we performed the ceremony, and all too soon the family and friends bundled up and headed home. They left us crew with smiles and a deep sense of pride that we could bring such joy to folks, and that we could manage to overcome a few minor difficulties to carry along a wonderful lady whose needs were a little more special than those of other folks. I can't begin to imagine what she's had to overcome in her life, but I know this--the fact that we could in some small way bring some light and joy to her simply by being there to help her dream come true was worth any difficulties, any discomfort. She helped remind us that no matter how hard things might get, no matter how steep the path is, all you have to do is keep moving forward, keep your eye on the horizon and let your determination guide you.

I said earlier that she couldn't talk with words, but she could certainly talk with her eyes and her smile. There's no question about it--we all knew that she was feeling the same joy, the same freedom, the same sense of having done something exraordinary by going up in the balloon, feeling for just a moment that, as the famous poem says, we've slipped the surly bounds of Earth and touched the face of God. We know that feeling very well, and saw it alight and take fire in HER eyes. She's one of us now--an aeronaut, a wind-walker, a traveler with the birds.

Thank you, Miss Hope, for sharing your joy with us.

_________________
Photos of Miss Hope's flight can be found here.

Earning Our Stripes, One Engagement At A Time

Remember that young couple I wrote about back in mid December of last year? I think they've earned the Most Patient Novice Balloonists Of The Year Award, if we gave out such a thing. Their sheer perseverance in the face of inclement weather and a pilot who refuses to take safety risks paid big dividends this last weekend.

Winter, or at least the colder months are more suited for ballooning. Naturally, hot air rises faster in cold, thick air, so the pilot gets more flight out of less fuel, and the passengers get more air time. The drawback to winter flying, beside the cold is the tricky weather.

That nice young couple that wanted to fly? I couldn't mention, then, that the young man who was buying the flight for his girlfriend wanted to use the opportunity to propose marriage to her! I have to tip my hat to him--he was forced to reschedule THREE TIMES. Every time we met for a flight the wind would either be just about gale force or would come up at the last moment and force the flight to be scrubbed. Safety is the operative word here--a high speed landing in a hot air balloon's basket will easily outweigh any pleasant feelings engendered from the engagement and the sparkling ring.

But, he was patient, and he persevered, both traits which will serve him well in married life. The fourth flight was the charm.

And almost didn't happen.

Wind again, you see. Lots of it. We met at the local Burger King, sent up a PI ball, got a heading and set out to the launch site. Upon arriving another PI ball was sent up, and we found that the wind direction had changed. Not just a few degrees but radically, causing us to all pile back in the truck and head for a whole different part of the country to launch from!

I guess the traveling time from Sommerville Airport to the Milton Family Christmas Tree Farm made the difference--the wind settled, we unloaded the gear and set to setting up. Skybird was just standing up good when the wind whipped up, and our couple got first-hand experience in helping wrangle a lively critter indeed, while yours truly at the ground control line was dragged back and forth across the ground. Again, perseverance paid off and we completed the inflation and had a clean launch into a beautiful, cloud-dappled evening sky. The chase crew recovered our gear and piled in, cameras snapping.

Engagement Flight Set on Flickr


Vulgar Wizard's Flickr set

The chase was fairly uneventful, taking place across terrain fairly familiar to us. We all cheered inside the truck's cab when David came on the radio and said, joyously "We have a proposal!" and the two photographers piled out at a perfectly-picked fly-over spot and snapped like mad.

The landing turned out to be the moment where we'd have to earn all those free post-flight breakfasts. Thus far as a ground crew we've had it pretty easy, to be quite frank. A few high-wind inflations, a few fast landings, a barked shin or a scratched finger. Nothing to test our mettle, I guess you could say. Well, this was our opportunity.

A certain sugar cane field has served in the past as an excellent landing spot. Lots of wide, clean turn rows, excellent road access and acre upon acre of open, flat terrain. This was to be our landing spot this evening, but unfortunately lots of rain the previous nights had turned it into a mud pit. We were forced almost immediately to put the truck in four-wheel drive just to get CLOSE to a good recovery spot, whereupon it became mired. My cohort and I leaped out and started talking, through Jim, to David to decide what we were going to do, where we'd recover, etc.

She and I ended up traipsing through LOTS of mud a hundred yards or so from the truck to the recovery spot. The landing itself was excellent, thanks to the efforts of our skilled pilot. The mud, however, refused to help, and being unable to get the truck to where we were (Jim fought it bravely long enough to get it unstuck and back to the highway before losing it for good in the sucking mud) we decided to carry her.

Now, we didn't carry her in the conventional sense. I'm sure the ride was more like a palanquin ride for our passengers and pilot--VW and I walked alongside while David kept Skybird about two feet off the ground. Each of us hauled on a handhold and pulled until she was moving along at about walking speed. It didn't help that we were next to a rodeo barn, so we had a whole herd of cowkids yelling and whooping at the sight--two people towing an 80' tall balloon across a muddy field while three others rode along in sun-setting splendor.

I'm not sure of the exact distance but I'm thinking we covered the better part of half a mile that evening, towing that huge orange and blue beast. The groom-to-be did an admirable job of operating the burner when David decided that our gasping and rattling was cause for him to debark and assist in the towing, and after an interminable time we got close enough to the highway to pull the top and let the envelope deflate.

A heck of a lot of very rewarding, VERY physical effort, a nice post-flight ceremony and a cold trip home in the dark wrapped the evening up, and I have to say it was memorable for more than one reason--while I personally haven't had to unpack every item in the gondola so we can lift it over a fence (apparently it's happened before) I did had to put a heck of a lot of effort into crewing that evening. Furthermore, we made an otherwise 'ordinary' balloon flight into an extra special one for two very nice folks, and it all built further pride in me in our team.

Bring it on, swamps and fences and tricky recoveries! I've earned my stripes!

_____________________

All our best wishes for a long and successful marriage go out from the entire Skybird crew to our newly-engaged couple! May you have many long years of happiness ahead of you both!

Some Days The Bear Bites You

And some days you bite the bear.

This morning was gorgeous. A sunrise that coloured the sky all roses and pinks and purples, a gasping cold temperature that makes for excellent ballooning, and no rainfall. Great for being out, but lousy for ballooning, because we had a steady 15 knot wind blowing.

Ah well.

We had a nice young couple out this morning to meet us at 7. They found us standing around the parking lot of Burger King stamping and blowing in our cupped hands and wondering aloud, repeatedly, why in the name of all that was right were we standing in a parking lot in the cold wind when we had a warm vehicle right behind us. We never answered that question. Nor, strangely enough, did we ever get back in until it was time to go.

After a brief confab on why the young lady was sitting in the back seat while her beau drove we adjourned to IHOP for breakfast. Since we were already up why miss a good opportunity for some breakfast? And that's when the fun started.

One of the reasons I hang out with this bunch of hooligans is the company. Excellent teachers, ample opportunity for hard, rewarding work, lots of beauty and the stories. Oh the stories. Four of us sat (myself, Cookie, Sky and HotAirHarley, aka David and Jim) and over pancakes and scrambled eggs and a BLT for Cookie and the biggest freaking spinach and cheese omelette I've ever seen in my life, David and Jim started with the stories.

Tales of woe and incredible humour. Tales of how to use the Red Line, an emergency-only red nylon strap, and how it nearly got David pulled out of the gondola when he forgot to ATTACH it to something. Stories of becoming becalmed over a lake and having to be towed back to land, something that I'm sure made someone a rather surreal photograph. Tales of a certain new pilot who managed to get the handle of his crown line caught in the crotch of a tree, and how many people and how many rounds of ammunition it took to shoot through the line, and how high this new pilot went once he became suddenly free and the immense heat and lifting power of his balloon was unleashed.

It went on and on. Laughing, sharing stories, talking about ballooning and old cars and their idiosyncrasies and more. Bonding. Fellowship. Whatever you want to call it, I got a good glimpse into why balloonists tend to hang out in large, gregarious groups: the stories.

One other thing popped to mind while sitting there. All the stories we shared seemed to stem from an event that, when it was happening, WASN'T funny, but with the benefit of time and distance and the ability to see the funny in any situation they all turn out hilarious. After the fact.

I'm just saying this--if I ever solo and become a hot air balloon pilot, I hope I don't generate any stories for a very, VERY long time.

A Weekend of Pride

(originally posted at my personal blog 10/20/2008)


I know at least one or two of you have been curious about the Great Mississippi River Balloon Race that I attended last weekend, and I'm sorry for holding off until today to write. I've been trying to mentally sort and catalog all the wonderful, scary, exciting things that happened, trying to put them into some sort of order, carefully cataloging all the astounding bits, knowing full well that when I sit to write it all down I'll miss about ten important points.

With that in mind... *g*

It was an extraordinary weekend. I've never gone to a hot air ballooning festival, much less been such an integral part of one. It took place in Natchez, MS, a very scenic little town right up against the Mighty Mississippi* and since there wasn't a single place big enough to put some 70 hot air balloons it took place all OVER Natchez.

Friday night was the Balloon Glow (my first!) which involved a number of balloons set up stationary (not flying) on each side of the river. As dark fell, at certain orchestrated times and as needed each pilot would fire their burners, which in the cool dark of the evening made the thin nylon skins of the envelopes glow like huge stained glass lightbulbs.



There was enough crew there (SkyBird has a lot of loyal followers!) that Vulgar Wizard and I could occasionally wander off throughout the weekend and take photos, which was a nice bit of lagniappe. Here's her set of photographs, and here's my complete set. Hope you enjoy!

One of the things that most stood out to me is the variety of chase vehicles and balloons and genuinely nice people that I saw. Crews showed up in everything from plain white passenger vans with home-welded steel platforms on the back to carry gondolas all the way up to what the pros called "Chase Commanders:" huge modified RVs decked out with sleeping quarters, air conditioners, blacked out windows, the works. Crews wore everything from Goodwill bargain jeans to colour-matched button-down Oxford shirts with sponsor patches and embroidered names and balloon emblems. Lots of four-wheel drive trucks with baskets simply stored in the back were there, and every type, shade and colour of balloon. There were corporate sponsored balloons (Curves had THREE, Budweiser had one, the POW balloon was there, and even two local dentists with bizarre tooth-themed balloons) and there were even a few professionals with racing balloons present.



Yes, racing balloons. I swear, you put two men together with the same kind of toy and they're gonna try to figure out a way to prove which is faster. I think there were four there out of possibly 70 that attended this year. Tall, spindle-shaped things, traveling almost eerily faster than the other graceful, full-bodied giants that filled the sky. Me, I'm old school I guess, like I am in most anything else--give me those beautiful, full-bodied round envelopes, moving around the sky like bubbles in a blue champagne flute.



I even got my moment in the sun. I had my first cross-country flight. No tethers, no limits to how high I wanted to go, nothing but David and I and SkyBird there in the sky, surrounded by like-minded aeronauts.


(Balloons jostling for position to drop their sandbag 'bomb' onto the big red "X" in the church parking lot. That's the Budweiser balloon right in the middle, and "Zephyrus" to the far right.)

I was under the impression that Natchez was Jim's time to fly. Always had been, and I thought always would be, so I'd given zero thought to burner time of my own. Saturday morning we'd gotten SkyBird inflated and upright and were waiting for further developments. She was straining gently at the weight of our bodies clinging to the edges of her basket, ready to be aloft and over the target. I knew it was almost time, could feel that lightness in the gondola that signals it's time to fly, and I knew that any moment David would get Jim on board, would say "Weight off" and we'd all step back and he'd be on his way to the first target-bombing flight when instead he said "Paul, get in."

Needless to say I didn't hesitate.

We took off into the cool, foggy morning and it was as magical as the first time I flew, back when I was just a paying passenger--quiet, eerily so, watching the huge round shadow we cast pass across trees and houses and cars. David found the breeze that gave him the heading he wanted and I snapped photos and gawped. After we both realised we were off course for the first target and therefore pretty well shot on the second David looked at me and said "Well, are you going to take pictures or are you going to fly?"

I'm not sure what I said, but the next thing I remember was David moving to one edge of the basket and saying, in that calm, low voice, words that will stay in my head forever: "The aircraft is yours." He showed me how to rest the red line over my right arm so I could feel it move as the envelope changed shape, and he gave me a few briefs about how we'd communicate over the roar of the burner. He showed me how to watch the horizon to tell if we were climbing or descending, and showed me how to anticipate the descent before it happened, so I could burn enough to keep us flying more or less level. I was flying SkyBird. I was flying a hot air balloon.

I was flying.

I still can't quite get my head around it. I was piloting a hot air balloon in a competitive environment. In the air, hundreds of feet up. Free flight. Even that Sunday afternoon during our after-festival ceremony when he introduced me to the gathered crew as "his student pilot" it hadn't quite sunk in.

I remember two years ago, around mid September blogging about my first hot air balloon trip. I remember Scott from Oregon telling me about his experience in the comments, warning me against making myself free labor to someone who would use me every chance he got. Well, Scott was right, but only partially. No one can take what I freely give, and I gave of my time.

I loved crewing, still do. I never once thought about asking David to make me a pilot, never considered saying "Hey, could you train me?" even though I knew he was a pilot instructor. It simply never occurred to me until one day I found myself standing in the center of the gondola holding the burner controls in my left hand. I still haven't officially "asked" David to train me, it's simply happened, as naturally as a seed sprouts when given sun and water and soil. Two years and one month later I own a Pilot's Logbook and am logging my flight hours, logging them toward being certified as a licensed pilot. It's reassuring to an old school boy like me that sometimes hard work and dedication pay off, and pay off big.

The flight was incredible, and I managed to punch us through the top ten feet or so of a tree (flying a hot air balloon is TOUGH!) toward the end, when I was desperately trying to integrate dozens of different sources of information and thereby earned my new nickname: "Treehopper." I even managed to pick out a landing spot and put the balloon down within a few hundred feet of that spot. Gently. I stood there by myself as volunteers who had happened along pulled her down, balanced myself in the gondola as it tipped onto it's side, and was awakened from my reverie when David barked "Don't just stand there like you're the pilot or something, get out there and help snake the balloon!"

I helped snake. I crewed with a light heart and feet that never quite touched the grass of the landing field.

I will say this, though: above all what stood out to me throughout the entire weekend was Crew. Us. The big grinning knot of sixteen or so of us that were there every morning at 6am and every evening at 4 for the Pilot Briefing, who enthusiastically showed up in cold pre-dawn dampness and in late afternoon sun, who spent most of the flying time sitting in the back or in the cab of a very fast-moving chase truck, watching eagerly for sign of OUR balloon, SkyBird, waiting for word on the radio. Our hearts swelled as one when the balloon cleared the treetops one morning and an unseen group of onlookers cheered, and we all grinned together when SkyBird leaped into the sky with what seemed boundless joy. The loyalty, the enthusiasm, the teamwork, it all made me so wildly proud to be there, to be a part of this fiercely loyal family that worked so well together.

_________________
* "Em eye crooked letter crooked letter eye, crooked letter crooked letter eye, humpback humpback eye." That's how I learned to spell it as a kid.

Happy Anniversary!

Some two hundred years ago the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph Michael and Jacques-Étienne were the first men ever to learn how to fly.

On 21 November, 1783 Pilâtre de Rosier and an army officer, François Laurent d'Arlandes became the first human beings to engage in free flight. The launch took place from the grounds of the Château de la Muette in the western outskirts of Paris. They flew about 3,000 feet above Paris for a distance of some five miles. They landed outside the city walls on the Butte-aux-Cailles.

This year Skybird and her crew, along with two other balloonists celebrated with an anniversary flight. The launch took place on the outskirts of Libuse, LA on a very chilly (30 degrees) morning. Cheers went up from the assembled ground and chase crews as Shadeaux Dancer, Ski Lift and Skybird leapt into the sky with barely any heat applied and we chased merrily across Pineville, across the Red River and through Alexandria en route to safe landings for all three balloons.










A massive (and legendary) annual celebration took place after the after-flight ceremonies.

Today I've taken the liberty of launching our blog, having already been handed the reins to the Bayou Balloon Adventures website. Hopefully as time goes on we'll add insights and posts from others of the ground crew, from our passengers, and from our pilot and Skybird's owner, David Miller. I'll share stories from my own experiences learning the fine art of hot air balloon piloting and hopefully I can entice stories from anyone and everyone we encounter on our flights.

For now we send out our fondest wishes for a continued speedy recover to Jim Crosser, our Groundcrew Chief and Head Bottle Washer. He just had his hip replaced (he likes to refer to it as "his new butt") and is doing marvelously well, even to the point of helping at the anniversary launch, though I doubt seriously we could have kept him away. The long and convoluted chase would have been a nightmare without him!

Check back with us soon, we're just beginning!