For a truly unique view of Wine Country, there’s only one option.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of the Montgolfier boys. They understood the concept that hot air rises. They conceptualized that a bag of warm air might do the same, and that, if they attached some sort of container to a big enough bag of air, they themselves might slip the gravitational bonds of earth—and fly!
Can you imagine the ecstasy of that first flight? It’s a stretch of the imagination, to be sure, in an age when anyone can, for the price of a ticket, be transported across continents and oceans in just hours. But a century and a half ago, it took months to cross the country. Months.
Remember, they sent up some animals for that first experimental flight. A chicken and a duck, if I recall correctly. When they went up themselves, they learned to take a bottle of bubbly with them to compensate the farmers (in whose fields they invariably landed) for a row or two of lost crop. That lovely tradition has morphed into today’s notion that a silken flight of an hour or so—and its ever-so-slightly bumpy landing—ought to be celebrated with a bottle of sparkling wine and maybe even a picnic lunch.
“You’re mostly right on that,” laughs Mike Kijak, owner and chief pilot of Sonoma County’s Up and Away Ballooning. “It was a rooster, a duck and a sheep on that first flight. Benjamin Franklin was there to witness the flight in September 1783. The brothers had been paper makers to the King of France and had noticed that paper bags floated upward when filled with hot air. So, they started making bigger and bigger paper bags until they had one big enough and secure enough to carry some weight.”
Two months later, the first humans took to the air. “They were originally going to use convicts, on the theory that if they died, it was no great loss,” explains Kijak. “But an argument was made that it should be noblemen to make the first flight, for the great honor of the event.” And so it was that, on November 21, 1783, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d’Arlandes took to the skies above Paris. “It was from the former that we derived the word ‘pilot.’ He later died when he tried to mix nitrogen and hot air—went down in flames trying to cross the English Channel.”
No flaming balloon envelopes these days, as ballooning has evolved into the safest form of aviation known to man. Even in times of economic woe, people still want to have fun and come for balloon rides. “Even with the downturn, our revenues are pretty steady,” says Kijak, whose company grossed more than $300,000 last year. “Things are so good that we’re responding to the demand from the wheelchair-bound and have just ordered a special basket that was designed for far greater visibility—from a company called Lindstrand in London. It had received a call from a balloonist in Italy who wanted one, and we saw it on the company website and immediately decided to get one.”
The basket, an $18,000 investment, arrived in May. “We’d tried to take folks in wheelchairs before, but it was pretty awkward—and potentially unsafe—loading and off-loading, and the visibility for the seated person was certainly limited. This basket is beautiful, with a ramp for easily loading the chair. Half the basket and door is ‘lexan,’ which is what NASCAR drivers have in their windshields, so it’s see-through and really strong.”
Getting high
Born in Oceanside, California, Kijak grew up with adopted parents on the southern San Francisco peninsula, graduating from Saint Francis High School in Mountain View in 1975. (His actual blood lineage traces back directly to our two Adams presidents.) He tried several junior colleges before signing on with Hewlett-Packard, initially in its sheet metal shop, later in quality assurance. “That was a great job, the sort of job you thought you had for life. It was a great place to work.” When that ride came to an end, he went back to school and earned a degree in recreation and leisure studies from Fresno State University.
“People do laugh at that major, but if you think about it, it’s a big business that’s only going to get bigger. People like their leisure time. I worked at the YMCA as a camp director for a time. Then, one day, I saw an ad in the paper for a local balloonist who wanted to round up a crew in exchange for instruction or rides. They needed crew members for morning launches. I’m afraid of heights, but my work at the Y was in the afternoons and I thought, ‘What the heck.’ After a while I got my sport pilot license and, when I found a whole package on sale, used, for just $10,000—a balloon with radios, a two-person basket and trailer—I jumped in with both feet!”
Go back to the “afraid of heights” thing. “Yeah, and I hear it a lot from prospective customers, and I tell them the same thing that was told to me: You don’t really have a sense of height in a balloon, because you’re not connected to the earth by a ladder—so you don’t really feel the height.”
Kijak started Up and Away in 2000 and now has four balloons. “When I finally got laid off from my ‘real job’ at the time, I had a pretty good severance package, enough to buy another balloon, one with a six-person basket, and set up a website. When I had just the two balloons, the phone was ringing, so we had to add more capacity—and still the phones kept ringing. In 2003, I added another six-person balloon and—yep, the phones kept ringing, so we had to add a 10-person balloon in 2005. It’s not like I’m ever going to make millions, but it’s a living and I really love getting up in the morning and going to work.”
Mornings are, of course, the time to fly a balloon: The air is crisp, the winds are the mildest of the day, and the air is usually what we pilots call CAVU (clear and visibility unrestricted). I remember my first balloon flight, more than two decades ago: the occasional swooosht of the burner adding hot air to the balloon envelope, the then-stunning silence that accompanied nearly all of the flight, the gentle waft of wind that moved us slowly over an expansive vista of grapevines and wineries. What I remember most, however, was the lesson that sound travels up. We were gliding over a trailer park at about 500 feet above the ground, and the almost whispered conversation between a man and his wife on their doorstep had the same clarity as if they’d been standing next to us!
Bred for flight
Carol Ann Rogers knows that sensation well, having been in the ballooning business for more than three decades. Her partner/husband, Nielsen Rogers, is chief pilot for Napa Valley Aloft (which also operates under the names Above the West Ballooning, Adventures Aloft and Balloon Aviation). “When we bought those other companies, we initially thought to phase their names out,” she says by way of explanation, “but we have a lot of repeat customers whose first flight was with one of them, and they remember the names with a kind of fondness you’d hate to diminish.”
Rogers concedes that she and her husband sort of “got into ballooning by the back door. I’d never even seen a balloon when, in 1978, we bought one with a friend to lease it to a company over in Sonoma County for the friend’s tax benefit! He got a tax credit—can you imagine that today?—for buying the equipment and leasing it out. Usually, you start in something as a hobby and then grow it into a business. It was the reverse for us: It was a business before it really became fun and like a hobby.”
She expands on the theme, noting that Nielsen’s father had flown in the military and then for Eastern Airlines, so he grew up with flying in his blood. “When the lease came up for renewal, the company didn’t need the balloon. Nielsen’s friend had no interest in flying, so we decided to move to Yountville and lease the balloon to a Napa company, for whom Nielsen flew as a contract pilot. At that time, he was still working for Schlage Lock Company in San Francisco, for whom he still consults on occasion, but he really enjoyed the flying, and would go to Albuquerque for its huge balloon fiesta every October. By 1989, we decided to start our own business—and it just kept on growing.”
Rogers contends that her business is akin to farming. “We’re a lot like the grape growers, in that our business is almost entirely guided by the weather and dependent upon tourists. Our season is similar to the growing season for grapes, from mid-March through mid-November. We have to be just as attuned to the weather as they do. There’s nothing like a cool, crisp morning for launching a balloon. Especially after a rain, when the vineyards are so green and the other colors are so brilliant. The quiet of the mornings allows for contemplation. So much of our world is punctuated by beeps and other annoying noises, and a balloon adventure lets you shut off those distractions and get in touch with the real world. …You can tell I grew up in the sixties, can’t you?”
Rogers is a Manhattanite who grew up in south Florida before attending Wellesley College; she then worked in fund-raising and nonprofit management before starting Napa Valley Aloft. Nielsen is a Miami native who played football at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) prior to putting in nearly two decades in the door hardware business.
Napa Valley Aloft prides itself on single flights—some companies do double hops, where your flight might have to wait on the completion of another—and the fact that it only launches in Napa Valley. “We used to start our flights in other places when the weather wasn’t cooperating, but too often, that was a disappointment to customers who’d looked forward to seeing Napa Valley from the air. When you start in Yountville, in the very heart of Napa Valley, the vistas are exquisite. The panoramic views extend over the Oakville appellation, the famed Rutherford Bench, and there’s majestic Mount St. Helena to the north. The Mayacamas range is to the west and the Vaca range to the east. As you know, there are wineries everywhere and, on good days, we can see the skyline of San Francisco, Sonoma Valley and even the Sierras to the east.
“We launch at dawn because that’s when the winds are the calmest and most reliable. We don’t use the very large baskets that some do. An eight-passenger basket is our largest. It’s sort of like a dinner party: more than eight and it’s hard for the host to give everyone the attention they deserve.”
Classic adventure
If you want to get the fullest possible experience of ballooning, there are three main venues in the United States: The Albuquerque Fiesta, the Great Reno Balloon Race, and—cue the trumpet fanfare—The Sonoma County Hot Air Balloon Classic.
“This June is our 21st Classic,” boasts Steve Henricksen, owner of Windsor’s Precision Soundcraft and president of the Classic. “It’s a wonderful introduction to ballooning. The weekend event will draw some 8,000 people to Keiser Park in Windsor, where balloons will begin to be launched each morning at 6:30 a.m. It takes some 200 volunteers to put on the Classic, and all of the monies raised go to local charities: The Sonoma County Literacy Connection, the Windsor Education Foundation and the Town of Windsor Non Profit Fund.”
This year’s Classic was held the weekend of June 18-19 after a one-year layoff due to construction at Keiser Park. About 30 balloons are launched each day, with tethered flights as well, where folks are transported just 50 feet into the air (but remain connected to the earth by sturdy restraints). Pilots come from all across the country—Oregon and Nevada, New Mexico and Georgia, Minnesota and North Carolina—to show off their craft to new and veteran aviation nuts of all stripes.
“The purposes of the Classic are twofold,” says Henricksen, the third-generation Windsorite who studied at the Hollywood Academy of Media Arts and Sciences before making training films and documentaries in the Army. After working for A&M Records, he returned to his hometown to open his own production company, doing live sound for radio, film, concerts and festivals. “The Classic is designed to expand the awareness and appreciation of ballooning—it’s a really cool event—and to raise money for our local nonprofits.”
Henricksen says he’d love to work toward his own balloon pilot’s license, but that the demands of work and everyday living have kept that further down on his bucket list. “It’s on my list; it’s just that there are about 30,000 things ahead of it! You might tell your readers about some of the ‘special shape’ balloons at the Classic. They’re so interesting. This year, balloons will include Sushi the Flying Fish, a giant Party Panda and a brand new one from Albuquerque called Planet Earth. It’s the only balloon of its kind, with a 100 percent digital photo-imaged map of the Earth as seen by astronauts from space.”
A different perspective
The essence of ballooning is the serenity of removing yourself from the linear, contained, earthbound existence and gaining the mind-expanding perspective of height. What looks crowded, dense and busy on land becomes open, expansive and quiet in the air. All of a sudden you think, “Where are all the houses? Look at all that open space!” The vineyards, the forests, the beaches. It’s a whole different world up there, and a balloon ride is an excellent means of exploring it.
The author of nine wine books, Hinkle has been flying airplanes for nearly 40 years, “everything from sailplanes and ultralights to jets!” You can find his work at his website, www.RichardPaulHinkle.com.
