Making up for a scary appearance in the sky

RUCKERSVILLE

Growling like an angry stomach, the bulbous monster hovered, hissed and fell from the sky, coming straight at Cider, who barked warnings until his fight-or-flight instincts ran toward run.

“We have an Invisible Fence and he went right through it and into the woods,” Scott Hiller recalled. “My mother happened to be visiting and she gave me a call and told me Cider had run off as the hot-air balloon landed in the yard.”

Mr. Hiller found his dog more than a mile away while those on the Bonaire Charters balloon that landed in his yard packed up their equipment and helped to search for the lost canine.

Dog, balloon on the loose

“I found him and he wasn’t well. He was really shocked and you could see it in his eyes,” Mr. Hiller recalled. “I called him a couple of times before he came to me and you could tell he didn’t quite recognize me.”

Cider soon recovered, but the dog’s run had an effect on the balloon operator.

“I felt real bad about it because the dog took one look at the balloon and headed straight for the hills,” recalled Scott Cohrs, of Bonaire. “He was really frightened and it took a while to find him. [The Hillers] were so nice in letting us land and helping us that we just offered to take them up for a ride sometime.”

That was last October. On Friday, Mr. Cohrs and crew lifted Mr. Hiller and his 11-year-old son, Zack, into the air on a gratis glide across Greene County.

“I’ve been paragliding, where they pull you behind a boat while you’re attached to a parachute, but I’ve never been in a hot-air balloon,” Mr. Hiller said before take-off. “I’m a little apprehensive. I think it will be awesome, but if you don’t like it when you’re up there, you don’t really have that many options. Still, I’m looking forward to it.”

“You ride with the air current, no doubt about it,” Mr. Cohrs said. “We send up a test balloon and track it so we have a good idea of what the currents are doing and where we’ll be heading.

Ballooning is a big pastime in the Charlottesville area, with several operators offering flights. Mr. Cohrs has been going up for business for nigh on two decades.

“We’ve made some friendships and have places where the landowners don’t mind if we set down. Still, you’re always looking for fields with good access and try not to land near horses or cows,” he said. “The hardest job is following in the chase truck because we’re going straight and the truck has to travel by roads that don’t always follow the same direction.”

What friends you’ll make

When possible, chase crews stop and track down landowners for permission to land the lighter-than-air craft.

“It’s hard to tell how animals are going to react. We’ve had cows and horses come on up and check out the balloon after we’ve landed, and we’ve had them get upset,” Mr. Cohrs said. “Some dogs get really upset and others don’t.”

On Friday’s flight, the sky was right, the take off easy and the landing perfect, despite wind that took them past their intended stop point.

“It was a beautiful, fabulous ride,” Mr. Hiller said. “You’re really at the mercy of the wind and topography, but it was fun. We were as high as 2,000 feet and when you’re up that high you realize that the only thing holding you in is a basket.”

Cider seemed to enjoy it, too, even though he didn’t see the actual take-off and flight.

“When they arrived with the basket and balloon, Cider was up on the back of the truck and so happy to see everyone and it was just like everybody was old friends,” Mr. Hiller said. “When it came to going up, I didn’t want to spook him any more, so we just put him in the basement.”