I am not at my most comfortable when exposed to great heights and it was kind of weird being in a basket so far above the ground (I think we went up to around 1500ft). I do recall thinking I should have checked out the floor of the basket more carefully before take off, because that is all there is between you and a very nasty surprise. But I suppose that doesn't happen very often and the real risk is power lines or high winds and the like, not basket floor failures.
The only controls you have in a balloon are up (more heat) and down (allowing the balloon to cool, or in more extreme cases, opening a flap on the top of the balloon) and rotation (by opening flaps on the side of the balloon). Of course there is a lot of lag built into all these controls so it is a case of making small adjustments, and waiting to see the result before making the next adjustment. The pilot of the balloon (yes, that's what they call them) likened the process to 3-dimensional sailing. You are always looking for subtle changes in wind at different heights in order to guide you where you want to go.
All in all it was a lot of fun. It was great to help out in the rigging up of the balloon and the repackaging when we were done. It is actually quite a lot of work - almost an hour to rig up and an hour to rig down, and the flight was only about 1 1/2 hours. So that's a lot of work for a relatively short trip, and with a support vehicle following you along on the ground you need a lot of help to make it all work. Anyway, I highly recommend it, at least once anyway.
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