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Suitcase Divas: Travel Agent Tips, Tricks & Travel Tales
Join co-hosts Denise and Cheryl as they chat about the journey of life and how travel plays an intricate role in navigating its twists and turns. Whether it's sharing travel tips, swapping stories over a glass of wine or mimosa, or welcoming special guests, there's always something new to explore! Grab your suitcase, pour a drink, and let’s dive into the adventure of life together—because travel makes everything better!
Suitcase Divas: Travel Agent Tips, Tricks & Travel Tales
Up, Up, and Amazed: The Magic Behind Hot Air Ballooning with Get Loft
You’ve seen them floating gracefully across the sky—those dreamy hot air balloons that look like they belong in a storybook. A big puff of color, a little basket, and poof! You’re flying. Easy, right? Not so fast, Diva. Behind that peaceful ride is a whole world of serious science, sky-high strategy, and major skill.
This week, we’re pulling back the curtain with Damian from Get Loft Hot Air Balloons, and trust us—this is not your cousin’s DIY backyard balloon. “People think we build these in our garages and just go barnstorming for fun,” Damian laughs. But no ma’am. These balloons are real-deal aircraft, regulated by the FAA, professionally manufactured, and flown by trained, certified pilots who know their altitudes from their attitude.
From weather stalking a week before launch to choreographing the whole inflation-to-landing process like a Broadway show, ballooning is an art and a science. And steering? Let’s just say balloons don’t exactly come with a steering wheel. Instead, pilots ride the layers of wind at different altitudes, catching the currents like an airbending boss. (Ever heard of "boxing the field"? You will.)
Oh, and get this—Damian’s background? Skydiving. Yep, he made the leap from jumping out of planes to flying the thing people jump out of. Turns out, ballooning is a skydiver’s dream, but it also comes with some wild logistics. Like planning for sudden weight shifts when the jumpers go whoosh out of the basket. It's all about timing and precision.
And let’s not forget our favorite part: the post-flight champagne toast. It’s not just for the ‘Gram. This bubbly tradition started back in 18th-century France to keep angry farmers from stabbing balloons with pitchforks (true story). Nothing says “please don’t destroy my balloon” like a bottle of good wine.
So whether you're dreaming of your first balloon ride or just here for the fun facts, this episode will have you floating with fascination. These gentle giants are more than just eye candy—they're a full-on adventure in the sky.
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Hey guys, so welcome, welcome. We have a special guest today, damian from Get Loft Hot Air Balloons. Welcome, damian, how are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Excellent, excellent. Well, I just want to just jump right into it. How did you get into this business and what does it take to become a balloon operator? Like this is kind of stuff that we're not used to, but it seems very cool, so we want you to give us the lowdown.
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Most people think we build these aircraft in our garages and we're just barnstorming. People think we build these aircraft in our garages and we're just barnstorming. There are manufacturers, there is training involved, FAA oversight and that kind of thing. But to get involved you would typically find a pilot in your area and become a crew member. It does take a team to set up and break down the aircraft and to conduct the flight operation, so that's the perfect way to start getting involved For me.
Speaker 1:There was a factory locally in Statesville, North Carolina called Firefly used to be called the Balloon Works and they make the aircraft from basket fuel tanks. The envelope is what we call the balloon portion of that. All of that has oversight through the FAA. There's material controls, material approval, engineering and all that, Of course, years and years ago in the 60s, all that was done when that company started by Tracy Barnes and now that it's called Firefly, all of those continue and occasionally they file for changes when there's new materials or updated equipment and parts and things like that. Or also discontinuation of parts, like if materials aren't made anymore and they have to move to a different material, then they do that.
Speaker 1:So as a result, there were lots of pilots in the area and my father, when I was in high school, actually bought one. It was part of a Pantera's pizza chain and it was a logoed balloon for the advertisement. So he ended up with that and learned how to fly them, and I was a crew as a teenager years and years ago, of course, and then about 11 years ago I decided to try to learn how to fly instead. I started my early aviation career as a skydiver and didn't want to have anything to do with flying aircraft, but leaving them was the passion instead. But we can't do that forever and, of course, as you get older, that takes a toll. So you find something else to do to maintain your love of the sky, and that's even though I still jump, it's not as often, so balloon flying is taking over more and more.
Speaker 2:That seems like a cool transition.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so what does the overall process look like of a hot air, hot air balloon flight from like beginning to end on your process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the process starts about a week before the decision to fly. So if somebody wants to book a flight and they've picked a weekend starting sunday night, monday morning, possibly Monday evening, I start looking at the weather. That is like the number one thing, of course, because it's so sensitive to the wind, especially speeds, gusts. There's also some FAA minimum flight requirements that we have to adhere to as well, and that's strictly because balloons are flown with what's called visual flight rules and a lot of aircraft are capable of instrument flight rules, which means the pilots of those aircraft are not looking out their windshield, they're watching their instruments, which means they're never going to see you All right. So if you've ever heard of um, uh, what is it recently?
Speaker 1:The helicopter that ran into the airplane near right up North Um yeah they're supposed to be what's called an ADS B uh piece of equipment in those aircraft that tell each other where they are so they can fly instrument and avoid other aircraft. The balloon doesn't have that capability so their instruments aren't there for that. So we are limited to what's called visual flight rules only and we must maintain cloud clearances in certain airspaces. We must avoid where it's dedicated instrument flight only.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's got to be trickier.
Speaker 1:Right, for instance, over Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Most of that is what's called Class B airspace and that's dedicated instrument flight rules, so we're not allowed to venture into that. So we have to be careful about wind direction, wind speed. So if I leave Monroe, north Carolina, and it's going south, southwest the wind, and it's going at a very fast rate, I may end up in class B airspace, and so I have to watch that and avoid it and plan accordingly, so that weather phenomenon has to be paid attention to very strictly, just just for those small reasons. Then there's some safety involved too.
Speaker 1:Balloons are gentle giants and they harness the wind. It can be very dangerous if not handled appropriately. So the team has to be educated and it's up to the pilot to educate the crew on what to do in certain events. But it's also up to us to make the go-no-go decision based on that weather criteria. That is, you shouldn't just even bring it out of the van and put it on the ground, let alone break it out and start to try to inflate it if the wind conditions aren't proper. So you have to be very careful. We respect it. They're pretty, they're beautiful and it's very hard to be unhappy around one, but that can very quickly go south if you're not making good decisions.
Speaker 1:And all of this training happens when you're a student learning how to fly, and it also happens when you're a crew member, because you start to learn. The pilots go and no go decisions and everybody has their own personal risk acceptance threshold and as you get experience you can push that a little bit more. But in my opinion it's just not that wise. You should probably be as conservative as possible. You know, it is like I said, they're gentle giants and it is possible to hurt someone and destroy things with them, even though they look like they can't harm a thing. They absolutely will. So that process again, it starts from, say, sunday evening, monday morning, possibly Monday, looking at the weather trend that goes every day, twice a day, and we're looking for accuracy in the general weather report. The more accurate that is day after day, the more we can rely on that being the case. Around Thursday evening, friday morning, we start looking at details and there's a lot of weather tools that your local news channel won't give you. That'll tell you what the winds are going to be at about every hundred feet, which is what we need in order to have a successful flight. It'll also tell you what the cloud ceilings are going to be, because we have to avoid that, whether or not it's going to be a foggy morning and it may be possible to fly in the afternoon instead, so that whole process starts at least a week before Afterwards when it's time to make the decision to actually bring the balloon to the field. We pick a time based on sunrise because, again, it's a visual flight rules, we're not supposed to be flying at night, and we brief the crew, brief the passengers, on what the setup process looks like, so they stay in a safe area away from the setup process.
Speaker 1:The inflation fan, which is a tool that's used to pack the envelope with air before it's heated, is kind of a dangerous tool. You could consider it a vertical lawnmower or a horizontal lawnmower and if you're, if it breaks free, the cage is supposed to keep all that debris, fan bits and whatever went through it away from everybody, but that may not always be the case. So we have to make sure that they're sitting in a safe zone so they don't accidentally bend over with their scarf and have that get wrapped in the fan and take them right, try to pull them into it or have something else fly through. No smoking, of course. We have to brief them on that Vaping is okay, but the spark of the cigarette lighter around propane systems is not a good idea. Fair enough.
Speaker 2:It makes sense to me yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So we've got to brief the passengers on where safe zones are and what to do and what not to do, and then the crew gets their um instructions, um reminders and things like that, and then we move on. The rest of that process takes about 20 minutes before the balloon can be ready to launch, and then the passengers get another briefing after entering the basket on what they're allowed to touch and what they're not allowed to touch. All right, because there's some operations on controls, like ropes and things like that, that if you pull on certain ones it can send you to the ground and pretty much kill everybody.
Speaker 2:So we have to make sure that keep your hands to yourself.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, but there are certain places you can hold on to. And then there's a third briefing after the flight for the landing. And the reason why we don't get that ahead of time is because people forget after about 45 minutes what to do. They're in such awe of the views and the quiet, the peacefulness and everything like that that to expect them to remember everything up front isn't realistic. So there's a third briefing we prep them for the landing, have a small discussion before doing so, warn the crew we're making an approach to land and then we do our landing. Then, about 20 or 30 minutes after that, depending on how long it takes the crew to show up we do the pack up and then we head back to the start, get everybody back to their vehicles and do whatever champagne, toast and things like that.
Speaker 3:How do you control the balloon once it's up in the air?
Speaker 1:So back to the weather, the weather reports. I mentioned that we get them about every 100 feet. So in most aviation they give it every 3,000 feet, so 3,000, 6,000, 9,000, and 12,000 and beyond, depending on the aircraft and where it's going to fly. So for us we need every 100 feet. The balloon stands about 100 feet tall as it is, so we need every 100 feet, and every 100 feet the wind direction can change and if we remember that forecast, then we can pick our elevation, which may give us a direction to go In some rare cases, considering the balloon festivals like Albuquerque, new Mexico not Mexico, but New Mexico they the festival there in November, no October, excuse me, that one's in October and there's a weather phenomenon that exists, called boxing, where there's a 180 degree wind shear.
Speaker 1:So at one altitude the wind direction is going 180 degrees differently than it is at a different altitude. So you can basically circle the field by flying in the lower elevation and going one direction, going higher and coming back the opposite way, then dropping back down to the lower elevation and crossing again and just continually making this racetrack circle in the sky until you're ready to land. So you can get that anywhere in the country. It doesn't exist all the time, but when you do, it's really awesome to be able to fly over the same piece of land over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:In the eastern mountains of Tennessee, in the valleys, there's another festival that happens in late October and we get what's called a drainage effect, where up high the wind can be going away from the lake that's nearby that park that we use and in the valley the wind drains, coming back the other direction. So if you go up high you can go, let's say, west, and if you drop below into the valley you can take the drainage wind and come back east and completely make that circle over and over again over the same piece of land. That's really cool. This is what's typical and this is why we have to have the support vehicle and the crew to follow along and meet you wherever you land, because typically you're not going to come back, but you can make steerage left and right depending on what that weather forecast gave you and how many degrees of separation those winds are giving you at the time.
Speaker 1:And that plans our flight. So if we have the choice, we can plan to pick a spot upwind. So thinking of a river upstream, right, and you would follow the water downstream where we follow the wind downwind. So we would pick a spot upwind based on where we want to land downwind. So we start with the landing, reverse planet, pick a field upwind and then that can give us all the safety we need to avoid certain airspace and congestion over cities and towns and things like that.
Speaker 2:But are you guys at any time in touch with each other via walkie-talkie or cell phone, or you guys are just kind of figuring it out as you're getting closer to the point of where you're going to land?
Speaker 1:we use both, so, okay, we have a walkie talkie so I can communicate. Um, the roadmap is. I can see that from the air, so if it looks like the crew's going someplace that they shouldn't, I can tell them to turn around and go back. I can also tell them what the winds are doing and what I plan to do, and to stay put and not go anywhere because I might be coming back to them. But there's also a tracking app we use in the cell phone so I can share my location and they can track on their phones on a map where my location is, to make it a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, kind of like a life 360 or whatever. They can just see where you are but it's not as similar.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting, that was one of my questions that I how you coordinated where you landed, cause you said so many factors when we were talking about before the pre-interview determine, like, how the trajectory you go. I was always curious afterwards thinking about it, like how you, the two you know you're up in the hot air balloon, you've got your support vehicle, like you said, it's very, it seems to be very visual. And now we do have a little bit more technology with the life through 60 things tracking. How was it before stuff like that? Like, I'm guessing the technology has progressed, so how was that?
Speaker 1:A lot more a lot more speaking over the radio. Um, and some of the older pilots still use those techniques. Um, at festivals, if you happen to be on the same frequency as somebody else, you can hear another pilot talking to the crew and giving them road directions. Um, I don't tend to do that. I try to stay quiet and not talk that much and let the technology do the work. I kind of need to focus on what's going on in the air and not give direction to the crew. So it's just, I'm a younger pilot compared to most and I just prefer to use the newer techniques rather than try to split my focus and tell the crew what to do.
Speaker 1:You know they're trained. They should know how to drive and how to do that safely and watch. It takes two to do that, Somebody to watch the air and somebody to watch the road, you know, and I don't need to watch the road when they're on it to do that for themselves.
Speaker 2:So so when you say you have a crew, what, what would you say Like how many people? But you said two in the in the support vehicle. You're in the basket. Is there anybody else in the basket that's on your crew with you.
Speaker 1:No, um, that would be passengers only, Okay, unless we're doing a fun flight and then we'll split the crew and you know, kind of give them joy rides and stuff, okay. But the crew is two at a minimum, just because of the safety factor of driving. But it does take more of a team really to set that up and sometimes we'll use passengers for simple tasks to help with the setup. You can do two people. I've done it with one other person and myself and set the whole aircraft up with just two of us. It's a little bit more difficult to do it, but four is preferred, okay. So you really need three down at the basket one to operate the fan and to protect the fan from foreign objects and debris in the field and from your passengers in case they want to get close and take pictures and do weird things and get their scarf tangled in it, you know, or whatever there's a scarf story somewhere along the way.
Speaker 1:I'm picking up what you're putting down yeah, so, and then there's two people to hold it, the, what do we call the throat or the skirt open so the fan can actually get the air inside. And then there's someone at the other end, at the top of the balloon, while it's horizontal, to handle what's called the crown handling line to keep it stable during setup. Okay, so that's preferred is to have a crew of four to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:Nice, cool. So how many trips would you say that you do every year, like what's your average number of trips that you do every year?
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, without looking at the logbook, let's see, I just applied to a festival a couple of weeks ago and I think that they wanted like the number of hours that you fly. So typically a balloon flight would be about an hour and I think I told them in the last 12 months that I did 20 to 25 hours over the last 12 months. Nice.
Speaker 2:So about 25 flights or so.
Speaker 3:Sweet. So how many people usually fit in the? Or, ideally, the number of people you'd have in a basket?
Speaker 1:Well, that varies from aircraft to aircraft. Mine in particular will handle three plus myself. Mine in particular will handle three plus myself. That's about as comfortable or as tight as I like to make it, you know, of course. One, there's just a lot of room. Two you've got a friend and there's still plenty of room. Three is about the max you can put five in it, you know, but I'm not going to put four passengers in myself. It just makes things more comfortable.
Speaker 2:Well, and does it go by weight too, so like if you've got a big six foot five person versus, you know, a five foot petite girl. That's probably going to factor into how many people can have in that basket.
Speaker 1:Yes, weight does matter. Um for sure, the aircraft is almost a thousand pounds. Um, one of them will have, I remember specifically being about 850 pounds. That is a smaller balloon than the one that's pictured in my background right now. So the lift power there is not as much right, it's measured in cubic square feet. That balloon in the background is measured at 105,000 cubic feet. Picture a basketball being one cubic foot and 105,000 basketballs is supposed to fit inside that balloon. The other one is 90, so 90,000 basketballs inside. Right, the lift power is a little bit different there.
Speaker 1:So, yes, we do have to pay attention to weight. So we're not only lifting the weight of the aircraft but we're trying to overcome the atmospheric temperature in order to do so. And then you throw on another 600 pounds of people, considering that the average guy is about 200 pounds, all right. So you have to be careful. You can. You do have to limit physical capability, as kind of a thing, to the basket's not wheelchair accessible, all right. So that's sort of a problem, right?
Speaker 1:Somebody who may have cerebral palsy and it affects their legs. They may not be able to climb in and out without having step stools and things like that. So we do have to kind of consider the athletic ability of the passenger Landings. We do pay attention to the weather, of course. Again, that's the most critical thing, but it can change while in flight. The landing may be a little bit more brisk than just stepping off the bottom stair of your front porch like we usually try to make it. So, uh, you have someone who's a little more elderly and may have a problem and for the landing, and they break their hip, you know. So we do have to kind of consider who's flying with us, their physical ability, um, for getting in and out, taking the landing, in case it changes, uh, to be a little bit more tough, and things like that. Also, walking out of a field I mean, not everything has road access and we might have to walk out of some rough terrain too. So that's another factor.
Speaker 2:So like don't wear my cute heels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Clothing has everything to do with it. Yeah for sure. Yeah, Heels, you're going to aerate the farmer's lawn. You know, wearing your six inch.
Speaker 2:That was a joke. I don't wear big heels anymore, so okay. So here's the thing we know that so much goes into it and we know that it takes you so much time to learn to fly it and a lot of preparation goes into it. And the unit, the, aircraft.
Speaker 3:That still blows my mind.
Speaker 2:I'm always picturing, yeah or I'm thinking like an either an alien pod or or an aircraft, but so for me that takes a hot minute to think of an aircraft as a hot air balloon, but it makes sense, it absolutely does. Um, so I think what everybody the elephant in the room that everybody's wanting to know is how much does a trip cost on a hot air balloon?
Speaker 1:so what I charge is five hundred dollars and that's up to three passengers. So if you have three people and you want to split to 500, and that's good, you know that's actually way more affordable than I thought you were gonna say I agree, yeah right sure we might be cleaning this trip yeah
Speaker 1:no, and it depends. There are other companies that have bigger balloons, bigger baskets, more crew. Sometimes they're paying their crew. It just depends on their specific business plan and things like that. So not just because that's what I charge doesn't mean that's what you're going to get.
Speaker 2:If you go to, say, iredell County, closer to Statesville, where some of the other pilots are, and things like that, um, but well, that's why we're gonna give all your information at the end, because you seem like a very good, very good price point to start with and you had mentioned that you also like to exit the vehicle or aircraft.
Speaker 3:Sorry, um, so you work with skydivers, correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah, quite frequently. Actually, that's because I was a skydiver before a hot air balloon pilot. And the minute that everybody knew that I was training to do this, that's the first thing that they wanted me to do was to fly them so they could jump out of it. It's not skydivers are a unique breed, I'll say.
Speaker 2:We've met a little bit of slow-mo, so we know.
Speaker 1:Just for the sake of pushing yourself out of what most call a perfectly good airplane. That by itself already people think you're crazy and all that. All that stuff aside and the risk involved and all that. They're just a unique bunch. And it's one thing to jump out of a Cessna 182 like they used to do in the 60s and early 80s, all the way through that point. But now there's big aircraft with tailgates that can hold 20, 30 people and they do bigger formations and they actually now fly formation aircraft in formation so they can have even more people in the air together and things like that.
Speaker 1:But the specialty aircraft because it's so rare the airplane is commonplace. You can go to any what they call drop zone that's United States Parachute Association member. Get your training, do a tandem jump where somebody else is involved and you can pretty much go along for the ride and enjoy yourself and get out of an airplane almost any good weather weekend. It's so commonplace anymore. All right. So what they look for are specially aircraft the biplane that has an open cockpit, the the uh biplane that has an open cockpit. They want the hotter balloon. They want weird looking aircraft that you're just never going to see again.
Speaker 1:Helicopters. Right, it was another one. Um, so the minute they all knew that I was getting trained to do this, the first thing they wanted me to do was fly them all. And so, uh, I did, and I continue to do that to this day, to a point now where that's most of the flights I even do anymore. I used to half the year used to be festivals on in other passengers locally, and then that kind of changed because so many skydivers were asking that now I mostly do that.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Well, so, like when you have to, when you have a regular passenger, you probably are safe at a certain elevation. With skydivers, do you have to go now at a higher elevation so they can therefore jump out as safe elevation in order to land? Or would you say it's the same whether it's regular passengers versus skydivers?
Speaker 1:No, they definitely need a higher altitude. So most of the time when we fly passengers, we very rarely go over a thousand feet. If we need the steerage because we're trying to look for a certain place to land, we may go higher, but skydivers need the altitude. Time is your friend when you're a meat missile toward the planet, so you have to. You have to be able to have time yeah, well, that's essentially what it is.
Speaker 1:I mean, they're moving at about 120 miles an hour at terminal velocity after they've exited. So, um, you know, with a balloon it starts dead and it's very slow and it builds up speed as gravity takes over. But they need that time. They need the time for the equipment to work, they need time to set up for their landing, they need time to make decisions in case that first parachute doesn't open very well and they have to do what's called a cutaway, use the reserve, the second one. So time is your friend and we try to target them to have enough time to do it.
Speaker 2:So what elevation would you say skydivers have to be at before they can exit the balloon?
Speaker 1:the aircraft. At a minimum we try to go to 3,000 feet.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:That's a lot more.
Speaker 1:That is, opening directly off the basket. I mean right away they're initiating their parachute opening and they can still have time for a decision if the parachute doesn't open properly. But the target is 5,000 feet, because they like to enjoy the jump and not just the parachute ride. So we try to go a little bit higher, but the manipulation of the aircraft sometimes takes them a little lower. So we start at five and because we have to allow for the loss of weight when somebody leaves, we must start the balloon into a descent. And about the third person that leaves they'll be out probably around 4 000 feet instead of five. But the first one to go is typically around, uh, 4 800 feet or so so the newbie gets to go first.
Speaker 2:You get out you need the most time fun so I'm just imagining, and I guess I can't.
Speaker 3:At first, when we first started talking about it, I, when they jump out, I'm assuming there's some shifting. That's what I was thinking. There would be some shifting in the basket, but I didn't even think about. As the weight changes you're, you're also then having to navigate the balloon. Does the balloon automatically want to go up once the weight starts to get lighter, or are you controlling that so that it continues to descend?
Speaker 1:We are controlling the loss of weight. So one person at a time. And if we did nothing, just stayed at what's called equilibrium, and no, we're not ascending and we're not descending either. And we lose 200 pounds, we're going to ascend.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, right, and probably at a semi rapid rate, right. It's not desirable. It puts stresses on the envelope that we don't like that's additional wear and tear, all right. Envelope that we don't like, that's additional wear and tear, all right. Which means the life of the envelope doesn't last as long as you want it to for the cost it takes to even have one.
Speaker 1:So we put it into an intentional descent to compensate for that loss of weight. So when the person does jump, we hope that the balloon comes to equilibrium rather than going to an ascension that we, that we're not in control of so in that scenario there would be no tandem jumping off of a hot air balloon you, can you still, but the descent rate must be higher right, because you're losing for you're losing 400 450 pounds all at once.
Speaker 1:So so, rather than having it. Well, most people aren't going to understand this because they're not pilots. But the descent rate goes in feet per second, all right. So if I want to lose one sports skydiver, which their rig is about 30 pounds or so, they may weigh 170 to 200 pounds themselves. So they're about 200 pounds, 210 pounds total. I can. I really need the balloon to be in the descent at about 600 feet per minute. So if you double that number, right, that kind of needs to be at about 800 to 1000 feet per minute, right to lose a tandem pair if that's have you done that a tandem pair, because that sounds really tricky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have not. Um, I was gonna be like it will be it will be tricky.
Speaker 1:Um, the parachute equipment is very large all right it's. It has to accommodate the weight of two people. Um, there's some extra safety features and things on it. Uh, that adds more weight and stuff like that. So instead of having three people in the basket, I've basically got a parachute and two people. It's about the same weight. It's about the parachute rig is almost about the size of a small child. So it's, you know, it just takes up room in the basket and then for the tandem pair hooked up together, because the student or the passenger on the parachute tandem has their own harness. That harness gets hooked up to the parachute, what they call instructor's harness, which is the also the container. It has both the reserve and the main parachute in it. Um, for those two to leave together it's very tricky and that basket doesn't have a door, so it isn't like they can just open a door and walk off.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that would be tricky, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it would take a little bit of extra coordination there to be able to deal with that. Well, don't worry.
Speaker 2:Cheryl and I aren't like ready. We're not asking you, we're just wondering the scenario. Our alley is you mentioned something about a champagne toast oh, yes, yeah, yeah, champagne, uh, all that.
Speaker 1:So that has a long, long history with it. Um, but that's supposed to be, for we've had a great flight and, uh, and we're just gonna have a good time in the in the landing field afterwards.
Speaker 1:And toast to such a great weather day and the privilege of being able to do this, and you're back down on ground, so let's toast to that starts in the 1700s France with a couple of guys called the Montgapier brothers who thought that the smoke from a fire was the power and not the hot air. What they did was built a wooden frame with canvas. They coated it in animal fat, which is basically wax, right To seal it, stoked the smokiest fire they could make because they thought the smoke was the power, and sent that off into the smokiest fire they could make because they thought the smoke was the power, and sent that off into the air anytime it had landed someplace. In 1700s france, of course, this is when the king took orders from the pope, so everything was very religious then and they would pitchfork it, thinking it was the devil, because what else would send that right, big smoky you know, contraption, you know to land into their fields or whatever.
Speaker 1:So the king gets an idea and says I want to showcase this in my festival. And they told him about the problem. Right, the, the research in, in engineering wasn't there, because they have, they keep having to repair, rebuild their, their device. So he says here's champagne with my wax seal. Give this to the farmers. They will leave it alone, thinking it belongs to me. And so now we have champagne toast uh based on that, that story. Uh for a good, successful flight that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I it, I'll take it.
Speaker 3:This is so this has been so interesting to learn about. Where can our listeners find out more information on where you'll be, cause I know you had mentioned some festivals upcoming and if they were interested in a in a flight?
Speaker 1:Well, they can always message me on on Facebook through the business page which is get Loft Balloons, hot Air Adventures of the Carolina. So go in there, search for that stuff. It'll pop right up. So Hot Air Adventures of the Carolinas or Hot Air Balloon Adventures of the Carolinas, get Loft L-O-F-T. Is the front part of that business name. Is the front part of that business name. I usually respond within 24 hours, if not sooner, on those messages, so that's the easiest way to find me there.
Speaker 2:And we'll put that in all of our links.
Speaker 3:We'll share the links to it.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much, Damian, for joining us and giving this has been such a very eye-opening yeah and learning experience, because I've only ever seen, um, a hot air balloon, like at a festival or a carnival of some sort where they just take you up and down. I had no idea, I think I what you had mentioned before. We all think it's super easy to get People just order it on Amazon and go up. I had no idea the FAA was involved, the licensing and all that certifications that you get. So this has been very interesting and exciting to learn about.
Speaker 2:So thank you for coming and telling us that. We appreciate you taking the time out of your day to tell us a little bit more about what you do, or day to tell us a little bit more about what you do, and we'll definitely get the information out. If anybody is interested in a hot air balloon ride in the Carolinas, local to us, then reach out to Damien and we're excited to have you here and we hope you guys have a good rest of the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me, guys you.
