ASHLAND — Garrett Gerwig built homemade prototypes in his backyard before he ever went up in a hot air balloon.
After attending the Ashland BalloonFest in middle school, Gerwig’s fascination led him to the internet.
“I would look up videos of hot air balloons on YouTube when I was really little and I came across this one video of this guy making solar balloons out of black trash bags,” he recalled.
“Hot air rises, so you get a big bag of air, tie it together and it starts floating.”
Before long, Garrett was crafting balloons in his backyard, using his mother’s hairdryer to send them soaring.
Garrett is one of several local pilots flying hot air balloons at the 35th annual Ashland BalloonFest this weekend at Freer Field. He earned his pilot’s license almost two years ago, not long after his 20th birthday.
He’ll be joined by fellow Ashland residents Steve Strine, Liz McClurg and Zach Burgess.
McClurg has been a licensed pilot for almost three years. She said her favorite part of ballooning is the peace and calm of flight and seeing the joy and wonder her balloon can bring.
McClurg considers herself a fiesta pilot, rather than a competitive one.
Competitive pilots complete challenges, typically aim-based ones that involve flying above a target and then dropping a marker as close as possible. But McClurg said if there’s a target in one direction and a group of spectators in the other, she’ll do her best to steer towards the crowd.
“Everyone loves a balloon, so I love to be an ambassador for the sport,” she said. “For me, it’s about making people smile.”
Zach Burgess is the owner of Ashland Balloon Rides. He caught the bug for ballooning as a kid, attending Ashland BalloonFest with his family.
“One of the balloon crews came over and asked if we all wanted to come help them out. So we went right over, helped inflate the balloon, chase it along, packed it up,” he recalled. “From there I was, I was hooked.”
Burgess got his start working with other pilots on their crews at different festivals before beginning his own training in 2007.
“We do have a license through the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) we’re just in a different category,” he said. “We still have to go through flight training, ground school, written tests, oral exams, check rides — all of the same kind of stuff to get a license and continue to fly.”
Burgess said he hopes to participate in some of the competitions during BalloonFest.
“It’s not a speed race. I always call it precision flying — using the different winds and directions at different altitudes to steer towards predetermined targets,” he said. “It really utilizes your piloting skills to the extreme, to navigate those different wind currents and try to steer where the targets are located.”
Steve Strine said he’ll likely compete some at BalloonFest, but he considers himself half way between a fiesta flyer and a competitive one.
“If I get to a target and I can throw a bean bag at it, great, but I don’t lose a lot of sleep over it,” he said.
Strine, an aircraft mechanic for Pratt & Whitney Canada, said he likes pretty much anything that flies. But a couple hot air balloon rides with his uncle convinced him to get into ballooning.
Local pilots all agreed that the peace, quiet and unparalleled views are some of the best things about riding in a hot air balloon.
“The things you see from a balloon, you’d never see driving down the road,” Burgess said.
“We’re flying over cornfields and wooded areas. You can see animals running through the corn, deer hopping across hayfields. It’s just an experience that’s hard to really explain.”
Ashland Balloonfest begins Thursday, with the first balloon lift off scheduled for 6:30 p.m.
Lift offs will continue each morning from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. and Friday and Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. — weather permitting.
Weather conditions have to be just right for hot air ballooning to be safe. Karen Holt, a Wooster resident and hot air balloon pilot, said wind gusts that make it dangerous to fly can be nearly imperceptible from the ground, where the weather might appear to be just fine.
“I know that people, a lot of times, are unhappy when we don’t fly. We are very weather dependent, and it is truly a safety issue,” Holt said.
“We want to fly. We want to please the crowd, but if it’s not safe, then we just absolutely cannot do it.
