It is easy to explain the allure of hot air ballooning – big, bright, beautiful object floating quietly through the air, no loud engine, just soaring along, getting a bird's eye view of the countryside. What more could a person ask for? A competent pilot. On my first ballooning adventure I am lucky enough to have such a pilot in Loudoun County's own Rob Thomas. He and his wife Cary have owned and operated Balloons Unlimited here for 19 years. As we drive from our meeting point near Purcellville to our launch site in Clark County I ask him about his, ahem, record, as it were.

"Well," he says with a chuckle, "They say you're only as good as your last flight." Cary reports with an understanding eye-roll that indeed, his last flight went as well as all the rest. Smooth sailing. Seeking calm conditions is part of the sport and, since the hours just around dawn and dusk are usually the calmest, this is when launches are scheduled. Unfortunately, launching is not a quickie five-minute process, so being in place and prepared for a dawn launch means getting up and ready long before that. All this is to explain why on a recent Friday morning I found myself in Rob's truck along with his wife, their trusty border terrier Wilbur, a nice couple from Washington DC, and fellow Middleburg Eccentric Jay Hubbard, driving west on Route 50 before dawn.

Coffee would have been nice but the company and the scenery were just right. As the fields and morning fog and wandering deer flew by us, Rob filled us in on his personal ballooning history. His father, Dr. Clayton Thomas, a surgeon, had been a bit of a daredevil and amongst other pursuits had taken up skydiving. Not wanting to end up a widow with four children Rob's mother forbade her husband to jump from planes any longer. "He took up ballooning in retaliation," says Rob. Soon thereafter Rob himself was bitten by the ballooning bug – amongst others. He ran away from home, wandered about, and finally ending up in the Washington, DC area. Wanting to purchase his own hot air balloon, he took a job driving a cab and, after 10 months, had saved enough money for a balloon and an ad in the yellow pages.

A business was born. That business has grown. While fielding calls of interest for his hot air balloon rides, Thomas also found himself receiving requests for regular plain old balloons. Not one to ignore an obvious opportunity Rob and Cary expanded their business to respond to requests for all types of balloons – helium balloons, balloon bouquets, inflatables, and hot air. Fittingly, they named their enterprise Balloons Unlimited.

Our crew this morning is diverse and yet somehow representative of "typical" hot air ballooning clients. Karen Capata and Qi Lee (he encourages us to just call him Lee, and we all oblige) have arisen at 3:30 this morning to make the drive out from Alexandria. It is Karen's birthday and she is fulfilling a long-time dream of a balloon ride.

Jay is the only one of us experienced in the ways of ballooning, so naturally we assault him with questions about landings (questions he carefully deflects). At the field we are joined by our final passenger, Mike Herron. Mr. Herron received his ride as a retirement gift from his sister. After what seems to be an awfully labor intensive set up process (for Rob, we passengers mostly just stand back and marvel at the beautiful silk being rolled out and inflated before us) we take off and float from Boyce, over the countryside, to Berryville - the Blue Ridge serenely and safely sleeping off in the distance.

Along the way Rob points out landmarks as does our fellow passenger Mr. Herron. There is so and so's estate, there is the old apple orchard, there is the growing town of Berryville. Deer move about the fields and cattle amble out to the creek preparing for what appears to be a hot day in the making. For a moment we are all silent – there is no noise at all, and you quickly understand what is so fundamentally appealing about ballooning. Ground-level sounds do bounce up to us but as we float over pastures and woods around seven in the morning the most one can hear is an occasional moo.

We take photographs and video-tape our journey knowing full well that these technologies will never allow us amateurs to capture the beauty of the moment. We talk quietly amongst ourselves and stare out into the horizon. There is nothing about the experience that makes one long even remotely for it to end. Until the conversation turns to talk of our decreasing fuel supply. A hot air balloon pilot can only really control his aircraft's altitude. So when enough time and fuel have been spent, Rob begins to look for a place to land. He spots an empty lot on the outskirts of Berryville and heads toward it. We begin to float lower, at one point cruising just over the top of a soybean field, then back up and over a treeline, then back down close enough over a recent development to wave and shout "Hellos" to residents having their morning coffee. Finally Rob's "empty lot" comes into view and I realize it's an abandoned lot right next to the Food Lion parking lot. "Are we allowed to land here?" I ask cautiously. "Well, says Rob, "An aircraft in distress is allowed to land anywhere. And a hot air balloon running out of fuel is an aircraft in distress." Again, the grin. This time without Cary to guide me (she's down below in the "chase" vehicle) I have to assume he's kidding. Using a treetop for brakes we start to slowly descend when Rob tells us to hold on and brace ourselves (!) and then just like that, in what appears to be a graceful piloting effort, Rob brings the balloon down smack in the middle of the lot.

After another arduous process deflating and packing the balloon our jubilant little crowd heads back to Boyce to drop off Mr. Herron and continue back to Purcellville.

Everyone agrees the trip exceeded even their highest expectations. Champagne is offered (as is the tradition) but we are all quite happy to raise our bottled waters in the air in thanks to our much more than competent pilot.

To schedule your own ballooning adventure contact Balloons Unlimited at 703-281-2300 or visit their website for more details. www.balloonsunlimited.com