November 25, 2000 - First round-trip
Jean goes nowhere!
[Click on thumbnails to see full size pictures]
Here's Jean, aloft and smiling.
We start a slow climb so we can assess the wind at various altitudes. After an initial drift toward the south, we pick up a predominantly northwest direction. The other balloons have climbed more rapidly and are heading in the opposite direction, so we start up there, too, but still at a moderate rate. Al, still sitting in the car at Spring St., wonders on the radio if we're waiting for him!!! I tell him to sit tight for now. Then Santo comes on the radio and offers me $1 if I land back at Spring St. I start to keep that option in mind while planning the remainder of the flight.
In the first shot, we see the other balloons in the distance, silhouetted against Meriden Mountain.
The other picture is the view toward the northeast, where the city of Hartford can be seen in the distance.
There are lots of smoke stacks visible all over the valley, and it's becoming pretty clear that the smoke below us is drifting south. Al asks if I'm planning to land, and I respond that I've decided to "go for the dollar," so I descend to try to catch that direction. When we get the sharp left turn we're looking for, I send Al back to Spring St.
Interestingly, by now the wind speed lower down has picked up, and the GPS has us doing 5 or 6 mph as we head south. Jean is particularly impressed with the feeling of going a bit faster while closer to the ground, over the trees.
We make our approach to Spring St. a couple of hundred feet to the east of the ball field from which we took off, over the trees, now completely bare of leaves. Our track is directly along the empty gravel parking lot and, as soon as we've cleared the tree line, still traveling at about 5 mph, I vent aggressively to land as close to the upwind side of the lot as possible, while burning to arrest the rate of descent. [When landing on an asphalt or other hard surface while you're moving at more than a couple of miles per hour, it takes longer to stop the horizontal movement of the balloon than it would on a grassy surface.] We bounce and skid a little, while I use the vent to control the balloon. Al drives onto the parking lot and runs to us, helping to stabilize the basket.
We then walk the balloon about 20 yards to the grass, and deflate it, after which we take some pictures to mark the occasion of my first time landing back at my launch site. First, Jean and I pose with the deflated balloon before pack-up, then a couple of shots of Al and myself, pointing out our proximity to your launch point.
Robert and his passengers and crew arrive for their post-flight champagne celebration just as we're getting ready to put the equipment back on the trailer, so we have eye-witnesses!
Incidentally, the subtitle above ("Jean goes nowhere!") is based on our post-flight discussion of an anecdote I read on the Internet. Apparently a commercial balloon ride operator managed to take his passengers on one of those not-so-common flights where they landed after an hour back at the launch site. The passengers apparently refused to pay for the ride on the basis that they hadn't "been brought anywhere!"
