OUT AND ABOUT

View from Above

Ever feel like you’re being buried? By work, by obligations, by your own thoughts? You know what can help? Rising above it all. And I mean that in a literal sense. Because getting up, up, and away from it all can make quite a difference.

BY JEANETTE TROMPETER, KSBY NEWS

here’s a certain magic that happens by simply getting out in nature at sunrise. Add a big beautiful balloon to the mix, the soft light of early morning, and well... it takes you to a whole new level. John Warren loves sharing the beauty of the Paso Robles landscape from a vantage point few ever experience. A pilot for more than 40 years, he took his first balloon ride a decade or so ago and was hooked. Now he owns Let’s Go Ballooning and shares the experience with people like John Riley and Tera Yeo, who came down from Folsom to get up, up, and away for Riley’s birthday. “He’s hard to buy gifts for, so I figured an experience is better than a gift,” said Yeo. Fortunately, I got to tag along on their birthday adventure. “Alright, I’m going to warm this up slowly and we’re going to go for a ride,” says Warren as he starts heating the air already fanned into the balloon. As a bit of a recovering adrenaline junkie, I’ve done my share of airborne adventures, but this is unlike any of them. It is as peaceful as it gets because we are floating more than flying as we rise above the ground below. “All we control is altitude,” says Warren as we float over trees, down near vineyards, and up high over it all for a nice panoramic view of the Paso Robles landscape. “The lateral movement all depends on what direction the breezes are coming from,” he adds. Direction is determined largely by Mother Nature. We simply catch a ride on the wind currents by rising or drifting and descending into those that are heading the direction we want to go. It’s like catching a wave of wind. “The control we have is infinite,” explains Warren. “If the movement’s not there, you can literally just sit in the top of a tree. You know we’ve picked walnuts out of the top of a tree before, and that’s pretty wild if you think about it.” There’s an amazing calm to the experience. The only sounds come from the occasional flames

Tthat keep us airborne and those from the waking world below. “The fact there’s no breeze, no sense of motion, and you can get so close to everything, and you can hear everything,” Warren reflects on the magic of ballooning. “You know the idea—you can hear the birds chirping or the frogs croaking...” If the wind is right, you can even get close enough to see where the sounds are coming from. We never saw them, but we kept hearing the coyotes that clearly saw and heard us every time Warren fired up the flames to keep us airborne. Warren flies primarily around the Templeton Gap and is up almost daily when the weather is right. But every day is different, he says, depending on the way the winds are moving, where the sun is rising, and how the scenery’s changing. One thing remains certain: it is always spectacular when you can rise above and simply go with the flow.

SLO LIFE