David Byrne Journal: 09.28.2008: Balloonatics

Lily organized an early morning trip for a group of us in a hot air balloon. Six a.m. is a little early for us, but 6 of us got up and were met by Jeff Hooten. He drove us to a field behind a pre-fab church on the northern outskirts of town where we could see others in neighboring fields also dragging large wicker baskets, propane burners, and balloons out of small trailers. A fan blew regular air into the unfurled balloon, which inflated it, but didn’t make it rise. It was a weird whale lying beached.

The basket, now attached, lay on its side. We were enlisted to hold towropes and keep the opening open for the fan. When it was well engorged, like a strange cave-shaped tent in a vacant lot, the propane blowers were directed away from the fabric and the thing began to rise. Jeff’s assistants held more cables and as the basket righted itself, the balloon rose above it and we clambered in.

[Link to video of balloon launch]

Barely a few minutes after, with another blast of the flame, we rose into the air, silently above the church and towards the trees and brush of the Rio Grande floodplain. We could see suburban sprawl and early morning traffic and the sun was just rising over the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the distance.

It was strangely not terrifying — even though we could have easily leaned out over the waist high wicker basket and tumbled out. We could now see the river and the levee that we’d biked on, and not too far away we could see other balloons rising.

The balloon would rise and fall in a delayed reaction as Jeff blasted the flame from time to time. When he didn’t blast, there was a beautiful silence as the light breeze caught us and carried us downstream following the floodplain. The balloon seemed, at times, perilously close to going into the trees — and Jeff intentionally let the basket touch the uppermost branches a couple of times. Then we’d silently rise up again. On one stretch, he let the basket drop low enough that it dipped into the river; the river water flooded the bottom of the basket.

Up we went again, about 3000 feet above the land. We could see beyond the suburban sprawl to the desert surrounding Albuquerque, including some small volcanoes and mesas in the distance.

As the propane level in the tank began to shrink, it was time to think about where to “land.” Jeff’s assistants had been trailing us on the ground in their SUV, and I suspect that the wind currents and therefore the balloon trajectories are fairly similar day to day. Jeff radioed them that the St. Pius X High School ball fields in the near distance looked like a likely spot. He prepared us for a balloon landing, which depending might mean the basket hits the ground, bounces, and then tips over.

We landed in a baseball field, after a couple of bounces and slowly, as the balloon gradually cooled, we could get out of the basket. But we still had to hang on to keep our weight holding the thing down. Jeff’s assistant’s SUV was in a parking lot on the other side of the 12-foot ball field fence and the balloon guys said it sure would be better to have the balloon and the basket on that side…so…Jeff reblasted the balloon one more time and we all hung onto the outside (the outside!) as the balloon rose just enough to drift over the fence and into the parking lot on the other side.