| There are still a couple manufacturers out there, and a vibrant niche community. Hot air balloon rides are absolutely peaceful and so refreshing! Growing up, I helped out on a hot air balloon crew in Iowa and have gone on ~8-10 rides in that time, and helped setup/teardown probably a couple hundred times. From when the pickup arrived at the launch site, over the years I did every setup/teardown task. Some thoughts and highlights included: * You don't feel any wind in a balloon, because you're going exactly as fast as the wind is. Since there's a big flame and volume of hot air immediately above you, you need marginally less warm clothing than being on the ground. Riding is always peaceful, but landing isn't. Sometimes it's the romanticized perfect soft landing in some longer grasses, other times it is less than graceful. One time while running across a soybean field, I dropped ~8 feet into a manure release area. My dad reached all the way down, I reached all the way up, and we were just able to link hands. Smelled awful the rest of the night. * One time I was selected for a ride (the pilot only took crew). We flew for an hour or so and were coming to a property with a vineyard followed by a nice, big mowed lawn. We were aiming for the lawn, but were losing altitude faster than we should have. The basket landed on a post in the last row, then tipped to the side abruptly and fell to the ground. The pilot and I got thrown around, but stayed in the basket. Turns out the pilot picked me because I was the lightest person on the crew. She thought the balloon wasn't acting right and was losing heat way faster than it should have, but wasn't positive since the last passenger was pretty heavy. The fact that we couldn't stop the descent while trying to land confirmed it - that was the last time that balloon flew. |