It wasn’t study of societies that got Lorenz into ballooning. His first brush with the sport was in 1980 when his family owned a hotel in Plymouth. They hired a balloonist to represent the hotel in a local hot air balloon festival.
     The first year of the festival was very successful, Lorenz said, so he decided to get involved in the sport himself.
     Over the next year, Lorenz took all of the classes needed to earn a pilot’s license for a balloon – including map reading, meteorology and aviation classes. He had to pass written, oral and flight tests to get his license.
     Since getting his license, he’s logged nearly 1,000 hours in the air.
    GETTING AIRBORNE
     Hot-air ballooning seems deceptively simple: A big inflated part, called the envelope; a basket, in which passengers ride; the burner over their heads that heats the air in the balloon to make it fly; and a pilot to control the up-and-down movement of the aircraft.
     Sounds simple? Far from it. Ballooning requires a whole team.
     Lorenz’s team includes his son, Joe, and daughter, Katie, plus a whole host of friends who help track the balloon when in flight, inspect it after it lands and fold up the envelope.
     From May through November, the team gets in the air two or three times a week.

     “It’s scary because you don’t know what’s going on,” Katie said. “We spun first, and then we were going up really fast.”
     Sometimes, though, the scariest thing is landing. Balloonists can only control how far up or down they travel, and hope to catch a favorable wind. Their landing zones could be anywhere, and normally are on someone’s private property.
     “Most people are glad to have us land,” said John Hoglen, one of Lorenz’s crew members.

     One tradition makes them particularly welcome in many places. Since the 1780s, balloon crews have always brought along a bottle of champagne to share with the person whose property becomes a landing zone. The tradition was started, Lorenz said, because French peasants weren’t sure that the early balloonists were human. A little champagne quickly convinced them that the aeronauts were OK people!
     During big balloon events, the event staff will talk to local property owners to find out if there are places the teams definitely should not land – such as pastures where cows may be spooked or a field that has a fresh layer of manure!
     The spots where the crews shouldn’t land are marked on big aeronautical maps, and the teams try to make sure they don’t go down in those areas.

     But sometimes, any landing will do.

    TROUBLE IN CHINA

     During a 1996 balloon race at the Great Wall of China, Lorenz got caught in a fast, unpredictable wind that came off the top of a mountain. He made a decision to bring the balloon down in a nearby thicket, rather than risk getting slammed into the side of a mountain.
     The area he picked was a desolate side of a hill. The balloon came down hard, and Lorenz and two friends were the only people in the area. They radioed for help, which came a few hours later. They hiked through the thick brush and left the balloon and basket behind.

     “I saw a spot and took it – we just missed that spot,” Lorenz said. “I knew there was no way I could have gotten over the next ridge.”
     A few months later, he got a bill from the Chinese village near his crash site: The villagers had hacked down the trees to the crash site, built a road and recovered his basket. His insurance didn’t cover the recovery – instead they gave the villagers the balloon while Lorenz bought a new basket.

    CHANGES

     The basic technology of ballooning hasn’t changed that much over the years: A basket, an envelope and a burner are still as important now as they were in the 1780s. But small changes have improved safety and efficiency of balloons.
     Lorenz’s balloon has a GPS receiver onboard, which can pinpoint a person’s position on the Earth, and even fix his or her altitude.
     Communications are a critical part of the operation as well. The balloonist needs to be in touch with the ground crew to make sure he or she doesn’t get stranded somewhere with a basket and a big balloon!
     Up until a few years ago, most communication was done by two-way radios. Now, cell phones are often used to communicate.
     “You wouldn’t think it would be possible to lose a huge balloon,” Lorenz said.
     But it happens. If the balloon passes behind a hill, or the chase vehicle is driving through a bunch of trees, the two parties can quickly get separated.
     Some of the more subtle changes Lorenz has noticed in ballooning have not been on the balloon, but what he can see from the balloon.
     Every year, he said, more and more of the farmland over which he flies becomes developed into subdivisions.