Sky’s the Limit!

By Cam Tait

The only thing I really knew about a hot air balloon was that the Fifth Dimension once soared the music charts with a song. You know how it went – “ Up up and away in my beautiful balloon”. And I knew that some guys, who really wanted to impress a gal on their first date, would rent a hot air balloon for an hour and sip champagne as they dodged power poles.

As a person with a disability (I use a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy) I really didn’t think I’d ever climb aboard a hot air balloon. But as a staff writer with the Edmonton Journal, I have had many opportunities to do many different things.

So when the telephone rang one day last July, I knew I had to accept the challenge. The phone call was from Percy Wickman. Wickman, now a liberal MLA, uses a wheelchair because he is a paraplegic.

“I’ve been asked to go up in a hot air balloon designed for people in wheelchairs,” Wickman said. “If you have the guts to go up, so will I.” I said I’d be at the launch. With a journalist and a politician aboard, I thought, there would be no shortage of hot air.

But this balloon business is an early man’s game. I got a phone call at 5:16a.m. the first morning we had scheduled the ride, to say the weather conditions killed the flight. So I turned over. The next morning however, the phone rang at 5:26 to say the clouds and the sun were at the right angle. I hit the shower, because, as they say at Cape Kennedy, we had lift-off!

But when Wickman arrived at Edmonton’s Park, he did nothing for my self confidence. “Laurence Decore (Liberal Leader) went up in a balloon once and the pilot ran out of gas with 10 feet to go, so everyone had to jump,” Wickman said as he wheeled onto the balloon. “We could be in trouble.” Nice going, I thought.

But the balloon we were boarding was safe. Designed in part by Aero Dynamics of Calgary, the basket was completed over a year ago. Its priority: safety.

“When you land a balloon you do it on the side, so the idea for the basket which could hold a wheelchair was on hold for a while,” said Aero Dynamics owner Harold Warner. “But two years ago a vent was installed on the side of the balloon so we could face it down anyway we wanted to, and that’s how we land.”

With that, pilot Dale Ritchie wheeled us onto the basket, which had enough room for two wheelchairs, the pilot and a flight attendant. The torch was lit, and away we went, heading west with 22 other balloons.

Wickman and I enjoyed the view from almost 1,000 feet. “This is so peaceful – there’s nothing to be scared of at all,” he said.

But that was his opinion. As a paraplegic, he doesn’t have any feeling in his legs and those pesky morning mosquitoes didn’t bother him! They were eating me alive. Trying to scratch my legs with my shoulders being restrained by shoulder straps, this could have been a new Olympic event.

But Wickman was right. It was pacific: you and the birds and fresh morning air. There were no bumps in the 45 minute flight. And it was an experience I thought I could never expect. But with the inroads people with disabilities have made, it only seems natural that all leisure activities be made accessible.

Another Albertan, Andy Stone of the Handicapped Freedom Tours Society offers ballooning, along with other outdoor adventure, to people with disabilities at Camp Freedom, located in Southern Alberta.

We completed our flight in true tradition with champagne. So hot air ballooning for people with disabilities is more than a song or a romantic moment. It’s the real thing!