First balloon rides features hidden views, peaceful vistas, exciting landing

LEWISTON — Flying never seemed like a big deal. It’s the landing that I worried about.

So when the Great Balls of Fire balloon lifted five of us Friday morning from Simard-Payne Memorial Park, I was feeling pretty good.

Thrilled, actually. It was my first balloon flight.

As I watched the other balloons in the Great Falls Balloon Festival inflate and rise below me, I thought about all those years I watched this from the ground. I had been the one with the big camera who streamed video of the balloon launches to SunJournal.com.

But this time, someone else was holding the camera, filming my takeoff.

How big was my smile?

Bill Whidden leveled out the balloon, and I thought everything seemed pretty ordinary. The occupants of the balloon — me, Whidden, Sun Journal photographer Russ Dillingham, and a couple from Minot celebrating their 29th wedding anniversary — were moving very smoothly. It felt very still except I could see Auburn rolling underneath me, as we had quickly crossed the Androscoggin River after launch.

It was almost peaceful. Except when the burner roared, blasted us with a heat wave and lifted the balloon a little more.

Yeah, this flying stuff was easy. Nothing to worry about.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t listening to Whidden talk about where to land, however. He was seeing plenty of level, soft possibilities. Trouble was, they were far from the road. Which would have made it tough to get a deflated balloon and equipment back to the chase vehicle. He also wanted to avoid landing on someone’s crops.

So he kept looking, kept firing the burner and kept in touch with his ground crew on the walkie-talkie.

At that point, we were following Route 136 toward Durham. It was a familiar route by car. Commuting by balloon revealed a world of decks, pools, barns and fields hidden from grounded travelers.

We could also see what looked like a sand pit between the road and river, which Whidden said seemed like a good place to land.

But on closer examination, the pit didn’t contain sand but another material that could possibly damage the balloon, so Whidden decided against it.

The burner roared — heating and lifting us, but not too much. There was another pit just on the other side of rocks and trees.

To get there, we scraped some trees and bounced off a pile of rocks. Whidden reassured us it was all part of the strategy.

Remember what I wrote about worrying about the landing?

I certainly did on the second bounce.

Each bounce pitched the basket and tossed the five us around like a handful of dice. But everyone and everything stayed in the basket. So that was a win.

After the second bounce, we stayed on the ground — mostly. The balloon wanted to move, and Whidden couldn’t just let the air out. The basket bottom scraped the ground as Whidden wrestled unseen forces. There was the sense this would keep us from spilling out on to the gravel. Gravel pits kind of look like sand pits from a certain altitude.

But the ground crew was on us and stabilized the basket quickly. Things went according to a well-practiced plan. Passengers disembarked. Crew members wrestled the balloon to the ground. We all packed the fabric into a bag that didn’t seem big enough to hold a balloon that size.

Flying became a big deal to me Friday. The landing? Bouncing was part of the fun.

And it’s going to add to my appreciation as I focus the camera on those soaring balloons this weekend.