Ballooning My Passion

Nothing is better than the feeling you get when you are up in the air looking down on everything. It is a feeling that you never forget. I have been up in a balloon twice now but my passion for ballooning has been lifelong. Growing up my favorite summer activity was not going to the beach or barbecues, my favorite thing was going to the Great Falls Balloon Festival. I love it and ballooning so much that (as far as I can remember) I have never missed a launch, even the morning launches at 6:00 A.M. (except one that I thought would be canceled and wasn’t). The morning launches are by far the best launches I have ever seen because the wind is so slow that you can see all the balloons in the air for a long time. Sometimes the wind is just right that the balloons stay right over the field the entire launch and they land right were they took off it is truly beautiful. They are one of the few things that I am willing to get up for at 5:30 in the morning.

I have had the experience of going up in a balloon during the festival and it was agreat ride. What most do not relies about being in the balloon is that the basket is study enough that people can stand in it with out them loosing balance and falling out (believe it or not people have told me they do not want to go up because they think that will happen and they do not trust the basket just dangling from theballoon), however they do not know just how careful the pilot and every one on the crew go through to ensure the safety of everyone on board. Others have told me they would not go up because of what happened at the festival two festivals ago were a gas can exploded as a balloon was inflating injuring everyone but those incidents are just that incidents sometimes that happens same as every time someone gets in a car or a plane it can happen, and out of all the festivals so far with participating balloons ranging from nineteen to twenty-five per year and this was the first incident since L/A has had the festival statistically speaking it is unlikely for something like that to happen. Peaceful and beautiful are the words I’d use to describe the experience, even though it is something that to truly describe the experience to those who have never experienced the feeling you get in a hot air balloon would be impossible as no words can truly do the experience justice.

One of the coolest things I saw when up in a balloon happened during my second flight, my first at the festival, we went up and got up between 1,000 to 15,000 feet and when we looked out we saw the city of lewiston under us and when I tried to see beyond the city all I could see was fog when I asked about it the pilot told me we were in a fog pocket, an space surrounded by fog that was wide enough for the balloons to go up. While I stared out past the city and in to the sea of fog I saw nothing except the tops of hills and distant mountains as well as smaller pockets where lakes, possibly rivers, were peaking out from the fog and it was a breath taking scene that I wish my camera could have captured because it was truly breath taking to see a natural wonder that most will never see, the tops of the green hills, shadowy and distant mountains, along with the sparkling lakes with light wisps of fog hovering over that when surrounded by the dense fog made a picturesque scene that I will never forget.

When I tell people I have been up twice in a hot air balloon they ask me the usual questions. Weren’t you scared to be up that high? Or weren’t you scared in that basket being held up by inflated fabric. My answer is always no because when you are up there you don’t even think about what’s holding you up or how high you are because it is so serene up there that you forget all that and just enjoy yourself. While I by no means know all the science behind ballooning I do know that the balloon will only go up if the air inside is hotter than the air outside. Also many people have this misconception that the balloons use a special gas to inflate them but most do not relies that it is really just propane and the gas only stays within the confines of the balloon for a tiny amount of time because it goes up to the top and seeps out. Another thing most people do not relies is that there is a hole at the top of the balloon that is covered by a flap and when the balloon land the pilot pulls a string and the flap comes undone releasing the heated air.

Being up in a balloon is such a relaxing experience and one day I hope to become a pilot. However ballooning is expensive and you have to have quite a bit of money to start up your ballooning hobby, and even more to maintain the balloon. It maybe expensive, with a new balloon costing around 20,000 and up and used might get as low as 5,000, but if ballooning is truly a passion for you then money won’t be a problem.