HOT AIR BALLOONS

By Trey Rusk

 

I recently read a story about a Hot Air Balloon crash in new Mexico.  Let me begin by saying I'm not a big fan of heights.  Even commercial flight bothers me.  I say this because there is no way you can fight gravity and win.  I have fallen off a ladder and on the way down began to roll in an effort to ease the sudden stop.  It still hurt but luckily I didn't break anything.  

When I headed a LE task force in Northeast Texas I was contacted by a local Sheriff who asked if I could supply a few Agents for crowd control at the annual Hot Air Balloon Festival.  That request was really out of the TABC's role, but the Sheriff had a Deputy assigned to the task force so I complied with the request.  I didn't know much about Hot Air Balloons but I quickly learned that they couldn't be steered and that most of the time ground assistance was needed to land.  

While watching several of the beautiful Balloons, I was asked if I wanted to ride on one that was tethered to the ground.  Simply going up and back down.  I know I hurt the local business owners feeling when I refused.  

Sometime before the festival, a Hot Air Balloon ride had crashed in Texas the after it hit a 40,000 volt power lines.  Several people died and a few were maimed for life.  It turned out the pilot was legally impaired.  

Many of my friends know that I don't hang out where I'm not the top of the food chain.  I used to wade fish in the Gulf of Mexico but people began to get skin infections and died.  So I stopped.  I used to hunt deer, hogs and doves.  I stopped because after I figured the cost of the trip and processing of the meat, I was paying a hefty sum.  I also stepped on a Cotton Mouthed Moccasin on a trip that came very close to biting me.  I was high stepping with a chambered shotgun and I thought about shooting the snake but decided I was in the snake's territory.   So I quit walking across fields where I couldn't see what was around my feet.  I also stopped going to high crime cities such as New York City and L.A.   

So, while standing in the middle of a Hot Air Balloon field someone started screaming for help.  I turns out that the tethered balloon had come loose and was sailing away with a woman and two teenagers aboard.  People were shouting instructions on how to release the hot air and one of the teenagers pulled a rope and the balloon descended but not before the basket hit a barbed wire fence and spilled the occupants in a cow pasture.  No one was badly hurt.  However, I made a mental note about the power of gravity as they were dumped to the ground from about 5 feet.  I thought It could have easily been a power line at 50 feet.  

I don't ride on Zip Lines or Bungee Jump from bridges either.  I will ride on a cable car but I may stop that after reading about cable car mishaps.   

I write this because on a recent flight on a commercial aircraft I knew something was wrong.  We were on our approach to Hobby Airport and looking from the window I could see the runway directly below us.  In my estimation we were coming in too fast.  I was right.  The pilot pulled up and circled for another try.  It was pilot error or was it?  It turns out we were on board a new 737-Max 800.  You know.  The plane that has so far crashed twice killing nearly 400 people in Asia.  You may hate gravity but gravity doesn't care.