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Robb Report, January 2003

Racing a helium-filled balloon cross-country can be a real gas.

It's late afternoon on an October day in Albuquerque, N.M., and the din on this grassy field is deafening. Helium gas, whooshing and whining, is squeezing its way from a tank truck, through hoses and valves and connectors, into the inflation ports of a dozen balloons. The noise is very loud and very alarming, and it's nonstop. But pilot Richard Abruzzo is used to it. He calmly checks his supplies, loads his sandbags, hangs an American flag from the rigging, and waits. Soon the noise dies down, the sun sets, and it's time for launch.

"Every flight in a gas balloon is an incredible adventure," he says. "You never know where you're going to go. Not many things are like that, anymore." That sweet uncertainty adds zest to the arcane sport of gas-balloon racing.

Gas balloons are among the rarest aircraft in the world, with only a couple dozen actively flying in the United States. They get their lift from a lighter-than-air gas, such as helium or hydrogen, so they don't require the bulky fuel tanks and noisy flamethrowers used by common everyday hot-air balloons. Getting them inflated and rigged takes a couple of hours at least, and the gas is expensive. But once they launch, they can stay aloft for days, and drift with the wind in beatific silence. Flight duration is limited mainly by how judiciously the pilots manage their supply of ballast, and how much dry land remains stretching ahead of them.

In this America's Challenge Race, launching from that Albuquerque field at the foot of the Sandia Mountains, the supply of dry land became an issue.

Abruzzo and his co-pilot, Gary Johnson -- whose day job is being the governor of New Mexico -- launch into the night amid much pomp and circumstance, with bright lights glaring, the National Anthem playing over loudspeakers, and a cheering crowd to see them off. Abruzzo opens a bag of red, white and blue glitter to scatter into the wind as they drift away. Now the race begins.

The goal is simple: The team that flies farthest, wins. These pilots make it clear that the race is not just an excuse to go out and fly for fun -- this is fierce competition. Gas balloons always float downwind and can't be steered, but the pilot can climb or descend by dumping sand overboard or valving off gas. Since winds at different altitudes often vary in direction, a skillful pilot can make choices about which way to go. During every hour of the race, each pilot assesses the variables and devises a strategy.

"Right from the start, we could see lightning not far away, off our right shoulder," Abruzzo recalled after the race. Balloons can tolerate a bit of turbulence and even rain, but have no defense against lightning. A few of the racers, seeing those flashes hitting the ground, decide to land overnight or early the next morning. Abruzzo and Johnson just climb, looking for a fast wind, and keep going. "We really never considered coming down," Abruzzo said. "We were always comfortable with the way things were going. The weather wasn't converging with our track." But it was always there, just to the south, as the balloons drifted off toward the east.

How comfortable each of the pilots is with risk -- such as lightning flashes just over your shoulder -- is one of the key factors in their decisionmaking. Both Abruzzo and Johnson seem unflappable. Governor Johnson, an experienced pilot, flies his own Bonanza single-engine airplane. A Republican, he's known for his renegade stand on drugs (he thinks legalizing them would be a good idea), his dedication to sports and fitness (he's an actively competing triathlete), and his cavalier approach to politics. He owned a construction company before he won the governor's job in 1994, and he says that after he completes this term -- his second and last, under term limits -- he has no further political aspirations. It's been reported that the Libertarian party asked him to run for president, an offer he politely declined.

"I love competition. I love adventure, " says Johnson. "What's more important in life than having fun and being challenged?" Once he's out of office, he says, he'd like to climb Mount Everest and race in the Iditarod.

Abruzzo grew up around balloons and aircraft. His father, Ben, flew his own airplanes, and made history as the first to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in balloons. Richard and his siblings were always part of the effort. "My father taught us to fly," he said. "The whole family has been involved in flying since the '70s." In 1992, Richard flew a balloon across the Atlantic, landing in Morocco and setting a record for hours aloft. He seems to be naturally fearless, under just about any conditions.

Once they are under way, floating free in the windstream, there is plenty to keep them busy. "People always ask how we pass the time," Abruzzo says, "but there's a lot of work to do. We're navigating, flying the balloon, talking to air traffic control, checking the weather, making plans, eating, trying to get some sleep. I brought a book along, but only read about 10 pages." They are also keeping tabs on how the competition is doing in the race. By the afternoon of the second day, only four teams remain aloft. Abruzzo's balloon is zipping along at speeds up to 70 mph over the ground, very fast for a small sport balloon. Their top altitude is only about 15,000 feet.

Back at the fiesta field, in a small trailer crammed full of computers and telephones, the Command Center staff keeps an eye on the flyers. "We've got a real horse race going here, " says Tom Goettsche, a veteran of many such duels. Each of the balloons carries a tracking device, and a computer monitor displays their speed readouts and flight path, superimposed on a map of the United States. But the system does not reveal the altitude of each team. "That's competitive data," says Goettsche. If a pilot finds a fast wind in a good direction, he doesn't want the other flyers to know how to get there.

"Our strategy was to go high and get fast winds," Abruzzo said. "We stayed up there and stuck with it." A couple of the other teams stay low, and the next day are still wandering around not far from the launch site. "Staying low is a strategy to conserve ballast and maximize duration," says Goettsche, but once the leaders have climbed into the higher altitudes and picked up winds of 50 mph and more, that strategy seems an unlikely one to win this time around.

The second day of flying, the frontrunner lands near Charlestown, W.V., having covered almost 1,400 miles. Soon Abruzzo and Johnson pass his landing spot, to take the lead. But now an ominous obstacle looms ahead: the restricted airspace over Washington, D.C., put in place after September 11. The restricted area extends from the surface to 18,000 feet, and air traffic controllers are adamant that if the team cannot find a way to fly around it, they will have to land. Going higher is not an option, because balloons are not allowed at those altitudes. Abruzzo and Johnson descend and search for winds to steer them around the airspace, and they barely manage to do it. They're in contact the whole time with the controllers, and squeak past.

Now they face another challenge: they are rapidly approaching the coast, they're running out of ballast, and they're just about out of daylight, too.

"To go so far so fast was really remarkable," Abruzzo said. "We were chewing up some real estate." They stayed high as they approached the coast, trying to accumulate as much distance as possible before descending. The lower winds were tracking to the south, Abruzzo says, which could nip a few miles off their total. So they stayed up high, then came down fast, to land very firmly, with conviction, just before sunset, in a Delaware field. "We used all the ballast we had, to arrest the descent," says Abruzzo. "Every last bag of sand, all of our water, and our Gatorade too." About five miles ahead was Rehoboth Bay, and just beyond that, the Atlantic Ocean. Abruzzo and Johnson had traveled 1,738 miles in 43 hours aloft.

"We could have flown a little longer if we hadn't run out of land," Abruzzo says. "But not much longer.... we ran out of land, out of ballast, and out of daylight all about the same time. It worked out nice. It was a tremendous adventure." Once they landed, they packed up all their gear, and headed back to Albuquerque. A few of the balloons keep flying for another 24 hours or so, but once everyone lands and the results are verified, Abruzzo and Johnson officially take first place.

What prize do the pilots win, for all that time and effort and risk and expense? The right to compete in this year's prestigious Gordon Bennett Race, in France, and do it all again.