I received my commercial ballooning pilot’s license from the FAA in 1989. Since then I have flown well over a thousand hours and have taken over three thousand passengers aloft and have flown in fifteen states throughout the U.S.

My most exciting flight occurred during the Balloon Federation of America’s United States National Hot Air Balloon Championships in Columbia Missouri. In these competitions we are usually navigating the balloon to throw a marker at a target. On this particular task after flying for almost three miles I found myself pinned on both sides by two of the highest ranked pilots in the world. I mean literally pinned. We flew the last several hundred yards toward the target actually touching and spinning around each other with none of us willing to concede to the other. I was proud of the fact that these other pilots trusted my flying enough to remain in this proximity. We all had great scores and were the top three in the task.