re: Have you ever ridden in a hot air balloon? (Video, 2nd angle p2)

Yes, I have and it’s pretty scary.

The company I worked for sponsored the balloon festival festival at Pennington one year. I was selected to ride in a balloon as part of our sponsorship.

We launched with several other balloons and the wind started taking us towards the river immediately. We came within 10 feet of hitting a tree but he was able to fire the burner and get us above it. The wind really concerned our pilot and he was immediately looking to land. We tried to land in the field on Burbank where those sand volleyball courts are now but we couldn’t get down in time.

He fired the burner again to gain altitude but then the concern was the River. The pilot was not going to allow us to cross over the river and lose our ground crew that was following us. He was very stressed about this and it kind of freaked us out. He said we had to land no matter what before that so we quickly dropped altitude to about 150 feet. There is a neighborhood there and we landed very hard in the middle of a street where there was a crowd of people watching. We immediately jumped out the balloon to secure it by ropes but it bounced and a few times and scooted down the street before we could secure it. The crowd watching us did absolutely nothing to assist.

We got it secured and deflated safely but I’d say the event was more stressful than fun. I don’t think I’d do it again.