Hot-air high

Reporter's notebook

By Christina Cooke

The Times, Jun 18, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Jaime Valdez / The Times

INFLATION —Tigard balloonist Jim Smith gets his balloon ready for a quick May 22 flight.

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(In preparation for this week’s Allstate Festival of Balloons in Tigard, The Times’ Tigard reporter Christina Cooke took her first ride in a hot-air balloon, hosted by the festival’s Balloonmeister Jim Smith — and passes on her experience here. For a complete listing of events and details of the festival see the special insert in this issue of The Times.)

I’m not always great with heights. I try not to look over my shoulder too much when I’m rock climbing, and I once burst into tears on a high ropes course when asked to jump from one small platform to another 50 feet from the ground.

So I’m not sure how well I’ll fare in a hot air balloon, where I’ll be suspended hundreds of feet in the air by wicker, parachute material and the principle of heat rising.

But it’s 5:15 a.m., May 22, and I’m about to find out.

Balloonist Jim Smith and the four members of his crew are assembling in the middle of a soccer field at Cook Park in Tigard, where the annual Festival of Balloons will take place this weekend — June 19 through 21.

It’s a warm, windless morning — perfect for flying, Smith says. Dew still covers the grass beneath our feet, and clouds of steam rise from the wetlands across the road.

As the sun begins to crest the horizon, the crew members unload the gear from the trailer, attach the basket to the balloon and lay the whole system on its side in the grass.

Then they turn on a fan at the mouth of the balloon and partially inflate it with cold air before firing up the two propane burners. Almost immediately after two plumes of flame blast into its base, the balloon rises from the ground and orients itself vertically above the basket.

Smith climbs in, and I hoist myself up over the edge of the basket after him.

We’re ready.

Or he is, at least.

Smith’s balloon is mostly black with long, thin blocks of yellow, green, purple, pink and blue running down its sides. When fully inflated, it measures 85 feet tall by 65 feet wide, holds 105,500 cubic feet of air and weighs about 18,000 pounds.

“We call it the gentle giant,” he says.

A 66-year-old war veteran and former bank employee, Smith first became enamored with hot-air ballooning in the late ’90s, after he befriended a balloon pilot from Bishop, Calif., at the Tigard Balloon Festival and started helping out on the man’s crew.

“I always had it in the back of my head I wanted to fly,” he said, “I just didn’t know what.”

Smith earned his commercial balloon pilot license in 1999, opened Tigard’s Pacific Peaks Balloon Company in 2000 and now runs 70 to 80 flights a year for families and couples looking to see the Willamette Valley from above. He’s been within 5 feet of more than a dozen marriage proposals, he says.

(“After she says yes, you could turn the balloon upside down for the rest of the flight,” he says, “because they don’t have a clue what’s happening.”)

This is Smith’s fifth year as the “balloonmeister” overseeing the balloon pilots at Tigard’s Festival of Balloons.

“OK,” he says to me, reaching up to send another blast of flame into the balloon. “Let’s go.”

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