A Morning Ride...

I reached for the phone in the dark.  It had interrupted a perfectly wonderful dream involving me and a bevy of south sea beauties.  "Hello," I said in a voice completely devoid of warmth.

"It's your morning wake-up call, Mr. Young," said the voice in heavily accented English.

"Is it four thirty in the morning?" asked Claudette drowsily.

"Hurry, I'm not going to shave.  We'll eat breakfast when we get back."

We dressed warmly and met our friends in the lobby of the hotel. Soon the van stopped by to pick us up.  The driver maneuvered the van quickly over the rough road to the launch site after stopping at the business office for us to sign some disclaimers. They had some hot coffee and pastries for us too.

The cloudless sky was filled with stars as first light approached.  There were probably one hundred hot air balloons in the process of being inflated. The sound of the small engines that powered the fans blowing up the giant balloons and murmurs of the crowd broke the silence of dawn. The propane burners spouted six foot flames into the balloons as the giants erected themselves like montrous mushrooms from the rough terrain of the Asia Minor landscape. We waited expectantly as our multicolored flying machine rose from the earth raising its gondola from its reclining position.  Twenty of us clamored into the basket.

"I am Muhammet, your pilot, " he said.  The voice came from the muscular young man with close cropped black hair.  He had a flat nose, bushy eyebrows, deep set very dark eyes, thick lips, and sparkling white teeth. Surrounding him in the center of the basket were a number of propane tanks.

The balloon towering above was filled with over 300,000 cubic feet of hot air. As Muhammet operated the controls the propane burners spit out six foot flames heating the air inside the balloon.

We began to move. We had lift-off. We became a lighter-than-air craft. Soon, the lunar appearing landscape of Goreme, Turkey, was below us as we overcame the bounds of gravity and rose in the chilly morning air.  The jagged peaks of cave dwellings slipped below us as we drifted away. We raised our voices in a chorus of "o-o-oh's" and "a-a-ah's"  as the sun illuminated the multi-colored spheres of the others in the mass ascension. It was quiet except for the occasional roar of the burners. The view below became a patchwork as we reached 2,000 feet.  A twenty-mile-per-hour wind moved us along briskly.

Muhammet watched his instruments, altimeter, rate-of-climb meter, and GPS indicator. The radio chattered in Turkish.  "What are they saying?" I asked Muhammet.

"I don't know," he said.  "I don't speak Turkish.  I'm Egyptian!"

We were higher than any of the other balloons. They flew in silence below us.  After flying an hour it was time to land. Muhammet pulled a control line that allowed hot air to escape from the balloon,  and we slowly descended.  I noticed radio chatter was now in English. Our pilot was told to follow "Number Two'" in landing. Muhammet told us to review the crash position.  A Canadian man asked if the landing would be rough.  Our pilot responded, " I don't know, it's my first landing!"

When we were about fifty feet off the ground I saw a Toyota Landcruiser with a trailer following us.
Our pilot and the ground crew communicated and the trailer was positioned directly beneath us. Our balloon pilot gently landed the balloon on the trailer, and our flight was over.

We disembarked the gondola and joined Muhammet around a small table with campagne flutes. He popped the cork on the champagne, and we ha the traditional celebratory drink for good landing.

This ride in the most primitive of aircraft will remain one of the highlights of our trip to Turkey.

Click Here to see a YouTube video of our ride!