New Thing #10 - Up, Up and Away!

My new thing for this week happened on a fluke, but it's probably by far the coolest thing I've done so far. We were supposed to go sky diving again this weekend while I was in Indy, but we ended up not being able to, for a few different reasons. On a whim last week, I suggested to Meredith we should go on a hot air balloon ride instead. We scrambled to call a few balloon places near her house, but of course, being the holiday weekend, they were all booked for months in advance. She left her name and number with one company, but figured we'd have to do it some other time. After church today, Meredith had a message from the balloon company asking if we'd still like to go up. They had had a cancellation at the last minute, and now had an open spot to fill. Of course we jumped on the chance! The ride wasn't going to start until close to sunset, so needless to say, it was a bit difficult getting through the day with all the ants in our pants. I went with Meredith, her husband Ben, her dad Ken and Ken's friend Sophia.

Once it was time, we met our pilot in the parking lot by a Starbucks. That is their "official" meeting place to determine the wind direction and weather conditions. We were the only five in our balloon, but there was going to be another balloon flying with us tonight. The pilots said balloons only fly once or twice a day. Once in the morning at dawn and once in the evening at dusk. That's when the winds are the calmest. They don't do a lot of early morning flights, mainly because no customers want to get up that early, so they mainly go in the evening. However, if they do go in the morning, they have to go that night, to dry off the balloon from all the morning dew. After letting loose a helium balloon and tracking it and checking the local weather conditions, the pilots plotted out our course. They chose our take off spot, as well as a few options for our landing site. The pilot said they like to use churches or schools who have larger grassy areas for take off, and they ask permission beforehand to use it. Most are very accommodating, and since it's in the evenings, they don't have a problem with it. Landing is a different story. Sometimes they know where they want to land, and they know they have permission. Other times it's a farm next to a cornfield. They get permission by yelling down at the owner as they make their approach. :)

After our pilots determined we were taking off from a church, we all piled into our pilot's Suburban and took off. Since we weren't going to be landing near our take off site, we didn't want to take our car that far. The Suburban would be driven by a member of the ground crew, and would chase us along our route. They are there to follow the balloons and "hopefully" make it to the landing site ahead of the balloon to help with the landing. On the trailer behind the car is the basket, along with all the fuel, and the balloon packed into a fairly small bag. Once you see how large the actual balloon inflates to, it's amazing it all fits into the storage bag.


Here's the basket, balloon & fan on the trailer.

We pull up to the church (which by my standards is pretty darn big), and they have a very large grassy hill in front. We stop and the crew again gets out to check the wind speed and direction, which is obviously different than in a parking lot of a strip mall. All is a go, so we pile out while the crew gets the balloon ready. And, I have to say, watching them inflate that enormous balloon was so damn cool. First, they have to get the basket off the trailer, and that's no small feat. I guess I should mention that we got to ride in the largest balloon in the state of Indiana. It's a brand new balloon, and the balloon size is 160,000 cubic feet (most balloons range from 60-80,000 cubic feet). And because of that, our basket was pretty big. (Especially compared to the size of the tiny basket on the other balloon.) We had a partitioned balloon basket, where there are no fuel tanks or equipment in the designated passenger area. Once they muscled the basket off, the balloon came next, which they laid out in a large line. It was tied together at certain points to hold all the material together. They undid those ties, and then spread the balloon out in the grass. It's pretty damn big.


The ground crew getting ready to unload the basket.


The back of the pic is where all the instruments were, and where the pilot stood. Mere, Ben & I were in the left partition. Ken & Sophia were in the right. The canister of fuel you see was just used to get the balloon inflated. It was removed right before take off.


Unraveling the balloon.

Next, they tipped the basket down on it's side, and attached the balloon to it. They had a large fan that they used to start the inflation process. The guys looked like they were fluffing a very large sheet. ;-) This took quite awhile, as you can imagine. One small fan and 160,000 cubic feet to fill. Once it was filled a certain amount, they added some heat to inflate the rest of the way and to get the balloon from being sideways on the ground, to being upright. Like I said, super cool to watch. Eventually it was ready to go, and we were all able to pile in. The basket can hold 6 people, 3 on each side of the partition (not counting the pilot), but there is a weight limit, so of course, those 6 people have to weigh less than that. Fortunately, we only had 5, so we didn't have to worry about it. (Side note...our pilot told us that there is a 400,000 cubic foot balloon in Kenya that will hold 25 people. That's a big damn balloon!) We got in one at a time, so we didn't upset the balance. I should also mention that, while the balloon has a safety rope attached to the Suburban, we still had 4 guys holding the basket down to make sure we didn't take off before we were ready.


Spreading out the balloon...


Timber!!!


Attaching the balloon to the basket.


Starting the inflation process.


A short video of the fan.



Me & Mere


Kickin' butt...takin' names.




Bring the heat!!





Just about full & ready to board.


This poor lady had a few issues climbing into the other balloon. She needed a hand. lol It's hard to tell, but this basket is quite a bit smaller than ours.

After we were all in, the crew took a few pictures of us, they unhooked the safety rope and away we went. Geoff, our pilot, started by adding a lot of heat so we could get off the ground. And just so you know, each one of those bursts had 20 million BTU's of heat coming out. I'm surprised I don't have a tan on my back from it! It was definitely a little warm as we started to ascend, but it wasn't too bad. We eventually got used to those little bursts of heat. Though, you couldn't hear a damn thing when he did it. There are no words to describe how cool it was when we were rising. The ride was actually incredibly smooth, and other than the bursts of fuel, very quiet. Because of the weather conditions, we didn't go as high as we would have liked, but it was pretty cool to float over people's houses and have a conversation with them. We maxed out at 600+ feet at one point, but most of the time we were only around 180-250 feet. That's pretty darn close to the ground. We spent most of the trip waving at people in their backyards having BBQ's, and asking if we could take a dip in their pool. Meredith yelled at one guy who didn't come to a complete stop at an intersection (she's very safety conscious! ;-), and I told a group of kids to stay in school. We were all yelling and waving, but Ken was having a lot of fun with it. He kept yelling "Help!" and "I'm going to jump!" Hopefully no one took him seriously. We did feel bad for people who had dogs, because all the dogs were going NUTS! They were all wildly running around and barking up a storm. We passed over one house that had two dogs. One ran up to the back door and almost went through the screen trying to get inside, and the other dog ran up the deck steps and crashed into their patio furniture trying to get in the house away from us. (After we landed, one lady came to our landing site and asked us if we had seen where her dog ran off to. I guess we scared the dog and he got out of the yard and ran off. We felt really bad about that! I hope she found him.) We were in the air for about 50-60 minutes, but it only felt like 20. I think we traveled about 4 or so miles in the air.


In I go!


Look at this handsome bunch. We're ready to rock n roll.


Cool shadow pic. Look how small the people look and we were only just taking off.


A view of Carmel, IN, a suburb of Indy.


We were definitely digging the ride.


I zoomed my camera in as far as it would go to capture this shot of the skyline of downtown Indy.


A shot of the other balloon flying with us.


Ben & Mere's new vacation home.


Some kids followed us all the way from one end of the middle of that grassy area to the other. They were disappointed when they ran out of space to run and we hadn't landed yet.


20 million BTU's baby!


Ben captured this shot of a reflection in the pond we passed over.


I wonder if Ben was thinking of Mere or how cool it would be to parachute out of the balloon. ;-)


A short video of our view (you can hear the heat burst in the middle).

The pilot nailed the destination he intended, so we were landing in a soccer field next to a school. I should mention that some kids were having practice right as we landed next to them. When it came time to land, we all had to grab onto some hand rails and get into a squat position. The ground crew came up to help keep us on the ground. We only hopped 3 times before coming to a stop, but it really wasn't that rough. After we stopped, we could stand up, and the pilot let out the heat and cooled off the burners. Next, they tipped over the balloon to the side, while we were still upright in the basket. We had quite a following at this point. Lots of local kids had followed us to our spot, so they were "helping" hold the basket on the ground while the crew deflated the balloon. After it was safe to exit, we all got out of the basket and waited until everything was packed back up on the trailer. There was no scientific way of getting the balloon back in the bag, other than the "stuff" method. Good thing the material is pretty resilient! Once everything was packed up, we piled back in the Suburban and headed back to our car.


Our landing site. If you look in the middle of the pic, you can see a bunch of kids practicing soccer. We landed on the left side of the image.


Our final moments in the basket.


Packing the balloon back up...with the help of a few neighborhood kids.



Other than not being able to go up any higher than we did, it was a perfect ride. The sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in the sky. It was a little warm out, but that wasn't that bad either. It was such a great experience, and I can't believe our luck that it worked out in our favor. Our crew was also really great. The pilot, Geoff, celebrated his 32nd anniversary of flying, and he still has a spotless record. Kudos to him! The rest of the crew with Skypoint Balloons were really great, and we thank them for a great ride! And, I'm sure that even though they wouldn't let Ben jump out of the balloon, he still thanks them as well. Maybe he can sweet talk them so they'll let him parachute out one day. ;-)

This was such an awesome experience, and I'm glad we got to go!