What It’s Like to Ride A Hot Air Balloon (Part 2)

Claire would not look over the edge. I had no problem with it, which is surprising, since I’m not a terribly brave person.

When I was 14, I was playing tennis with my dad at the Scripps Ranch Swim & Racket Club when a hot air balloon flew over our court. Seemed low, a little lost. We paused and watched the thing fly over until, eventually, the basket smashed into the side of a two-story tract home. The balloon collapsed over the roof like a giant house condom. I’m not sure if the people lived. We figured the residents of the house had that information covered, so we resumed our match.

I thought about this and whether or not my dad and I were terrible humans when me, Claire, her brother, and his fiancé went hot air ballooning a couple weeks back.

I couldn’t remember how big the basket was, though I remember it looked pretty large smooshed against that house. As a kid growing up surfing in Del Mar, we’d see a whole armada of the balloons every sunset. Looked like DayGlo lures in the sky, fishing for god. I’d heard the baskets were big, but from the ground below, it was hard to tell if they were like apartments, or just plus-sized picnic baskets. Could you walk around in them, pace through the flop sweats at 3,500 feet if need be?

Turns out not. Our basket is about 9 feet by 6 feet (this is a guess, but I’d imagine a decent one). It’s separated into three compartments like a TV dinner tray, two long ones for passengers where the frozen turkey and mashed potatoes would go (we have four people on our side, there are five on the other, separated by a middle riser) and one small pilot’s section where the frozen brownie should be. The basket is padded with a sort of felt or suede, like a pool table or a fancy jacket from the 80s. It feels soft and nice, and prevents us from seeing tiny holes in the wicker below our feet as we rise—which prevents nervous breakdowns by giving off the illusion we’re standing on something solid. Our pilot has three keg-sized cans of propane in his compartment (enough, he assures me), no different than a Weber Grill, just a lot more ambitious.

If one of us needed to panic—and a few of our group did—they could lower themselves and squat in the corner by our legs. It’s close-quarters, but since there’s nothing but clouds and air and serenity and wide-openness around you, it doesn’t feel claustrophobic. If you get the big fear, which Claire did, it’s from the opposite of being cramped. It’s a terror of expanse, of how much fallable space is between you the earth you came from. It’s from the hard truth that you’re hanging by ropes, and gravity is a thing. 

Before flight, the crew drives us in a van to an open field near Rancho Santa Fe. They park and release a small white helium balloon. They all stand there and monitor how this balloon flies. It tells them how temperamental the pilot is today. The wind is the real pilot of a hot air balloon. “I can’t steer,” explains our human co-pilot. “All I can do is go up and down and find different winds to ride.” Our test balloon makes an immediate beeline east, riding a strong gust away from the ocean. If we took off here, looks like we may get stuck in the trees. The day had threatened to storm earlier, and many balloon operators had canceled their rides. Our balloon operator either thought the other guys were overreacting, or they needed the money, so our flight was happening as planned. A separate group standing in the field decides to abort this take-off spot, and we do the same. 

At our next location—one of the few undeveloped plots of land in this part of San Diego, just lots of weeds behind a school—the crew unfurls the balloon (made of nylon, and coated with a non-flammable material, our pilot explains). They’re running a little late and moving fast, like a pit crew. I feel pretty strongly this shouldn’t be rushed, but my apprehension regarding death doesn’t take into account that they’re professionals and this is probably normal. 

They pull out a few giant fans that run on generators. A man stands at the opening, dilating it with his arms, like a cervix during birth. The fans inflate the balloon. When inflated enough, we all climb in. There are no stairs and there’s no dignity to this. We all look like 30- and 40-somethings trying to climb a fence for the first time in a couple decades, just flopping ourselves over the edge like sacks of root vegetables. The basket begins to tilt at a 45 degree angle, which alarms a few passengers. The pilot pulls on a handle that shoots a 20-foot flame up into the balloon, the ropes are released, and we start to rise. They said there would be champagne in the basket, but it’s been forgotten and the pilot is either fresh out of Xanax or unwilling to share.

The flamethrower that lifts you. If you die in a balloon, it seems this is how it happens.

We Googled “hot air balloon deaths.” It turns out there aren’t many, which is nice. The ones we find involve burning alive, which isn’t.

There is no bathroom aboard a hot air balloon. If nature calls, you will have to forward that call to voicemail.

The basket never tips or feels unstable during our ride. It hangs there solid as ground. And since the balloon is riding the wind currents, going in the same direction, you don’t feel much wind. You’ve never been so naked among such weather—above the cloud line, in thin air where the planes go—and yet you don’t feel the weather except a slight chill of altitude. 

Claire avoids the edge of the balloon. A few people do. I hang over it, look down at the tiny schools and miniature housing developments a mile below. We’ve all seen this mile-up view from a plane window, but it’s very different when you’re leaning over the edge of a wicker basket in the open air. There is no metal door sealed shut to prevent you from jumping. That dark impulse I have screams “jump.” I don’t listen to it. After all, they’ve promised us Champagne and cheese if and when we land. 

(final notes, including one aborted landing attempt and my FaceTime call to a friend that broke many human decency laws… in the next piece).

Why Dads Desperately Need to Teach You How To Ride A Bike

The first time she almost fell set us both back a couple years of potty training. She was 5, but the accusatory glance she threw my way was at least 12, maybe 13, before she announced the experiment was over. 

A year later, she agreed to let me try to teach her again at a local park. She was making progress (a brave yet hesitant pedal here, a wait-WTF-are-you-doing over-correction with the handlebars there) when her bike started to tip in the direction of a perfectly safe, legally parked SUV eight feet away. I caught her easily. But she was done. Two years later she still tells everyone, “We almost hit a car!” 

Every few months, I’d beg for another chance. I tried bribes. Each time, she politely told me to kick rocks. 

Not sure why it’s so important that I teach my daughter how to ride a bike. I felt, in my marrow, that the world required this of me. There are uppercase Dads, and there are lowercase dads. I was convinced that if my child could not ride a bike by age 10, I’d be a lowercase dad for life. 

Truthfully, there are a lot more important skills for surviving the world she’ll grow up in. I could teach her how to design websites, code apps, or defect to Canada. In my generation, riding bikes was what we did. It was our first freedom vehicle, our antidote for boredom, our kid-powered rocket that helped us explore this brave new world. 

Bikes aren’t that anymore. The “world” they truly want to explore is here, on this screen, among these videos and photos and games and baroque ones and zeros. Teaching her to ride a bike is a little bit like my dad teaching me how to make candles out of beef tallow. Thanks, Dad, but in my century we buy them at Target. 

I just figured she’d get a little of that sense of freedom that I felt when I learned. As a child you’re sequestered to the 100-foot radius around your parent. A scooter increases that a bit. But scooters are slower and not designed for long-distance. A bike goes faster and farther, with less effort. Teaching your kid to ride one is telling them, “I trust you, be free-ish.” 

Plus, being able to ride a bike is being able to not participate in the digital world for stretches at a time. That’s important.

I’m no tiger dad. I’ll force my daughter to do certain things—be respectful to others, brush her teeth, do homework, tell me I’m pretty. But I won’t force her to participate in life-enriching activities. I won’t make her piano. I won’t demand she paint or sing. I’ll help her discover them, facilitate a safe and desperately enthusiastic learning environment. But forcing them seems like an arranged marriage. Forcing humans to love something just makes them love the idea of setting fire to that thing. 

I’ve bought her three bicycles now. The first two were ridden a maximum of 20 minutes each. They became expensive housing developments for spiders. The Jeff Bezos of spiders built an impressive web in the middle of the bike’s frame, while less ambitious spiders were relegated to tenements in the spokes and under the seats. Eventually, they were passed on to children who loved their parents more. 

Finally, last week she told me that her last day of summer camp wouldn’t be any fun for her. “Why not?” I asked. “It’s bike day,” she pouted. This was my in, and I struck. She agreed to let me teach her, and I had a feeling this was my last chance.

So I bought her a cheap bike, an orange one that would make a beautiful home for a spider some day soon, and we all headed back to the park full of excitement and fear and my lording sense of past failure. 

[to be continued… which means I’m done writing for the morning… check back later this week and I’ll tell you how my panic attack turned out]

Confessions of an Accidental “Big-Truck Guy”

Today I set Norman free. I adopted him at birth from his parents, Dodge and Dakota. He is 16 years old—the age when trucks are supposed to start driving themselves and become terrified of getting other trucks pregnant. 

I named him Norman because, early on, he made a repetitive shrieking noise that sounded like the shower stabbing scene in Psycho. We got through that together. It was a learning moment, though I resented him a little bit for it. The best nicknames have at least a little shame. 

I remember the day I first saw Norman, beheld his glory. A family friend managed a car dealership and agreed to shepherd me through the process. He’d make sure I bought a sensible car and didn’t get taken advantage of in the financing process. I met him on the lot, pointed at Norman and said, “I’ll take that one.”

“The display truck?” he laughed. “Oh buddy. We tricked it out to it to lure people in. Wayyyyy overpriced. No one buys the display truck.” 

“Great,” I said, “I’ll take it.” 

And so they backed Norman off the display riser and the family friend called my father to apologize and ask if there had been any red flags in my test scores. 

I didn’t want a big truck. I’d rather politely apologize for my small manhood than finance it at 5% over six years. The dealership was full of battleship-sized trucks built for construction professionals. Next to those giants, Norman had looked sensible, smallish, urban. As soon as I got him off the lot among the Priuses and Hondas, I realized this was not the case. For the next 16 years, I would pilot a penis pump on wheels. 

Norman drank a full tank of gas like a tequila popper. Every time I turned on the engine, Saudi Arabians sought shelter from all the money falling from the sky. 

Norman had four-wheel drive. That’s important in San Diego, where all the flat roads are paved with sunlight. All those wheels driving together gave me the same sense of security as a bulletproof vest at a water balloon fight. I reasoned I’d need his off-roading capabilities for my many trips surfing in Baja, Mexico. For all the adventuring and beard-growing he would inspire me to do. 

In 16 years, Norman and I made approximately three trips into Baja. The only time I put his big tires to the test was when I couldn’t make a full U-turn—on account of Norman’s turning radius being about three miles—and casually went up the curb. Off roading is fun you should try it. 

If I invest in Norman, he could run another 100,000 miles. But it’s time to set him free. It’s time to sell him to someone with a ranch, someone with a beard, someone who knows what a transmission is and can rehab him into the dirt-roaming, free-range animal he was always destined to be. 

Goodbye, Norman.