In his hot air balloon, Rick Jones gets a ‘better look’ at the world
Published: 07-28-2024 9:00 AM |
The way a hot air balloon floats on the wind isn’t scary at all.
“It’s not like you went up high,” balloon pilot Rick Jones said, several hundred feet in the air. “It’s like they pulled the world away so that you could get a better look at it.”
Balloons have carried Jones into nearly all the corners of Earth — he has flown on six continents, in and over mountain ranges, at the break of dawn and in starry night skies. He has landed in Native American reservations, on water, in rural Tanzania and in countless backyards. He once watched a full solar eclipse as he flew in Argentina and wound up getting arrested in Zanzibar. His best defenses against the wild unpredictability of life as a hot air balloon pilot are preparedness and champagne.
In France in 1783, the feet of two Frenchmen left solid ground for the first time in recorded history in a balloon basket, taking a risk that only a sheep, a duck and a rooster had taken before. When they landed on rural farmland, its residents smelled the sulfuric acid that had pushed them into the sky, assumed they were devils and readied themselves to fight. But the Frenchmen had a peace offering in the form of champagne. Now Jones, and balloon pilots around the world, fly with champagne and almost never make enemies when they land.
“In ballooning, you land in situations you could never expect,” Jones said.
Jones decided he would fly a hot air balloon when he was a 16-year-old living in Enfield. He made it happen when he was 27. Now, at 59, the seasoned pilot can look back at his life and realize he’s been flying for more than half of it.
Jones retired two years ago from his day job and replaced consulting with work as a pilot. It used to be harder to find time for the sky: “Clients always want to talk to you at inconvenient times,” he said. “If you’re landing in rural Tanzania … it gets complicated.” These days, he and his three balloons (he used to have five, but sold two to please his wife) have all the time in the world. He carts them around in a white van with the license plate UPUP&A.
On a recent Saturday morning, before the sun had risen all the way, Jones flew a balloon over Pittsfield in a practice run for the Suncook Valley Rotary Hot Air Balloon Rally that will take place August 2-4. Ultramagic built this particular Polar Dawn balloon — that’s Jones’s team name — in 2017, and Jones has flown it in the Pittsfield festival every year since. His polar bear logo has acquainted itself well with the town.
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It’s up to Jones and a small crew — his wife, Maria Barrios, and one other couple, Phillip and Emily Day — to set up the balloon and put it away after its landing. On the Pittsfield football field, he dragged out more than 50 feet of the deflated balloon and pulled it taut so that it lay like a snakeskin on the dewy grass. While his wife and the Days ran around and spread out the colorful nylon, Jones sent propane-fueled fire into its gaping mouth and transformed the fabric into a magnificent balloon. With a small army of carabiners, he fastened the basket and prepared for takeoff.
Flying a hot air balloon is all about understanding the environment. To be a balloon pilot, according to Jones, one has to be “an amateur meteorologist.” A pilot can adjust the altitude of a balloon, but the wind gets to decide the horizontal direction, making obstacles tricky. A balloon’s worst enemy is a power line, and oak trees aren’t great, though Jones said “maples are friendly.” Knowing the area, like Jones knows Pittsfield, helps significantly, especially in terms of identifying the right place to land.
In order to manage against the challenges of the sky, balloon pilots have to act 10 seconds ahead — that’s how long it takes for the heat from a fuel tank to make a balloon rise. Sometimes, they choose to rest in treetops. If two balloons touch, it’s called “kissing.”
Balloon vernacular is ingrained in Jones’s mind not only because of the years he’s been flying, but also because of who he’s been in the ballooning world. He served as the president of the Balloon Federation of America as well as a United States ambassador for hot air balloons. He regularly teaches balloon “ground school” and features his Polar Dawn balloons at festivals around the world.
Balloon races, however, have never appealed to Jones. To him, flying a balloon revolves around a search for peace and a thirst to see the world from the best possible view. He enjoys the strategy in ballooning but not so much that he wants to show it off in a race; he would rather “land somewhere in Madagascar and make someone’s day.”
Every January, Jones flies over the Alps. He once flew 25,000 feet above Mt. Kilimanjaro. That Saturday, he called his titanium fuel tanks “the sexiest fuel tanks you’ll ever see” and flew over a Rite-Aid to wonder aloud if they had a “fly-through window.” Jones arguably finds equal joy in the simplest form of ballooning as he does the most complex, international escapade. He loved his adventure over Kilimanjaro but he smiled eagerly, too, when Pittsfield residents scampered out of their homes in bathrobes to wave up at his colorful canopy of hot air.
To imagine a balloon flight is a difficult thing; in many ways, it seems old-fashioned. Jones’s basket has barely more than a square meter of space to stand, nothing resembling a seat belt and no indication of emergency passenger procedure. Yet the smoothness of a balloon experience and the feeling of security it provides make those things seem unnecessary, if not unreasonable.
In a balloon, nothing man-made stands in the way of the bird’s-eye view; no windows, no roaring engines, barely anything mechanical. Flying a balloon challenges ego and harnesses curiosity. It unites strangers in childlike excitement.
“It’s the gentlest form of aviation,” said Jones, who meant it literally, though his words apply on an emotional level, as well.
Suncook Valley Rotary Hot Air Balloon Rally
Where: Drake Field, 17 Fayette Street, Pittsfield
When: Multiple events August 2-4
For more information: nhballoonrally.org
Sophie Levenson can be reached at slevenson@cmoni tor.com.