Making It Here; Friends in High Places

Oh. Tonight on making it here we're going to visit with people in high places a man who makes rope bridges a man who works fixing clocks in towers and people that fly hot air balloons and it's all coming up next on making it here making it here is brought to you by the members of WG Y and by a United Bank. Our customers love us. Just listen. I enjoy walking into the bank because I'm with friends. United makes me feel like part of the family. The friendly atmosphere of the service and United cares about the community I live in. United is just a really good like one. They're nice people. I trust them. I love the space. I love banking with United. United Bank. Outstanding banking values in the heart of Western Massachusetts. Oh. Hi

everybody I'm George Murphy and welcome to making it here tonight we are going to visit with people in high places and we're starting out in the North Hampton airport North Hampton Massachusetts. And the owner of the airport Lisa fuse goes right now in the process of getting a hot air balloon basket ready and she's up here what exactly are you doing up here now Lisa George we're hooking the burners that this burner has a dual burner system. No we're just getting them hooked up and we're checking everything checking it twice making traveling is all set to do a burner test in a minute and we're going to put you to work. Well listen and that's what we're here for and were alerted to here to find out how long you've been flying. Boy I'm in my sixth year now commercially. You know and it never gets old. You know why did you pick this is this a hobby or is this a career. It started out as a business venture. I owned a balloon before I'd ever been in one so I had to get over my fear of heights and that actually happened fairly quickly. But I've always loved making people's dreams come true.

So how long does it take you to get this whole apparatus ready and raring to go in the sky. Obviously about 20 25 minutes and this is our larger bill and it's one hundred twenty thousand cubic feet. It holds six passengers plus a pilot at some time. Valid point. Well tonight you're going to have about a couple hundred thousand people going up with you so you keep doing that. OK. Then he said the gang are getting ready now to get us up in the air what we're going to do is introduce you to a man from Amherst Massachusetts. He builds rope bridges and the rain forest. This is an amazing thing to watch take a look. I'm a partner. I build a canopy walkway for a living in the canopy walkways are usually a series of bridges and platforms in the tops of the trees the canopy itself is the top section of the trees it's not something that you build it's not like the canopy on the front of the store or something.

Usually you build a maybe 80 to 100 30 feet up in up in the trees sometimes for biologists to doing research and sometimes for eco tourism. The first one was in Peru and it was fairly remote so we had to bring all this equipment there. We got started and got up there finally with the boat and it was getting dark and we were having to go to rock over streams where you'd be walking over a monologue and you couldn't see how deep it was you know down to the down to the stream bed in your you're carrying you know a 60 pound spools of cable and things like this across this across the logs. So we were there and after a couple of days the boat was supposed to supply us with food periodical and they couldn't make it up because the river was a little low. So we had to go to a

village of indigenous people to live nearby to sort of trades and T-shirts for some and various other food. Food supplies I guess I lost about 15 pounds on that project. But it was very exciting being up there and being able to watch for example a troop of Saddleback tamarins type of monkey and I'd be up in the top working and I would see the troop moving from one tree to the next. That way you couldn't see from the ground troops. One time came to the fig tree next to me and was relieving the figs there. And when I got up in the tree they were they were pretty upset that surprisingly they hadn't just taken off immediately. Instead they were posturing and the large male was you know throwing things at me and and it was and that was pretty dramatic it's also very exciting that birds will land right near you which which they would never do if you were on the ground. So you see a lot of wildlife and

it feels almost like you're going back in time. I have been running the service off and on for about 20 years. I had also been working. I had organized a group called the Massachusetts Rainforest Action Group to help preserve tropical forests and so I talked to a friend of mine Paul Beaver. He used to be the curator of this Franco Science Museum and he would take groups of people down to the Amazon and he had a friend of his who ran a business bringing groups of tourists up and down the Amazon and its tributaries. And the friend was always interested in building a something to get the tourists up in the trees. And so that was I basically volunteered to do that at cost. So

that was the beginning. What we'll do is first we'll go and do a site inspection and when we're doing that we'll just eyeball the trees see what we can see from the ground and we'll select trees that look good. Then we'll take a slingshot shoot up a fishing line with a wave and then we'll tie a parachute cord to the fishing line and pull that up. Then we'll tie or climbing rope to that and pull that up and then we can get up in here and get rigged up to to bring up equipment and tools and materials that we might be using to to build the platform or the bridge as usual build the platform first and then we'll hang the bridges so that defeating in the platforms there's a lot more to it than that but I I think that would be boring detail.

For me the reason is important buildings walkways is. It gives people a chance to see a bit of a different world. I was going to point out that in Billie's we surveyed the number of plants in one tree and we found over 200 species of plants living in the top of one tree. It gives you some idea why it's different. The bigger picture is you know this can help maybe with conservation of tropical forests. But the real big picture is that human beings are just arrogant with the idea that things that have taken two or three billion years to produce can be just destroyed at on a whim. So having a sense of that sense of respect for the

natural environment that it is significant is fantastic. You know maybe it can provide just a piece of that for some people. How they may grow bridges in those forests that's amazing what you're going to see now is amazing because you and I and Lisa and a few other folks are going up up and away Lisa headed your and I'm ready. We'll I'm feeling we'll boil. We'll see you guys. We're leaving Northampton airport and we're going to points unknown and when we get there we'll let you know but we're going to be bringing it up here in just a moment. We're going to let you fly with us

too. After a fantastic takeoff we're airborne here now and you get the absolute sense of serenity being in a basket but it it's worries me that you're not flying. I'm not flying we have our student Kelly with us he's doing a great job I don't think you should be flying as much this flight but she has how long has Kelly been taking lessons from Kelly. Probably about three or four weeks. She's got about six hours because she's very enthusiastic when I call or pay it flyable Let's go. Six hours and she's flying above the line of baloney. How long does it take to get a license to do this.

Well depending on how dedicated you are with your time a person can solo after about 12 to 14 hours then you can do an unsupervised solo so you can build a few hours on the ramp 20 or 25 you could take a practical test after you take your reading for your private license for a commercial license which means that you can take a fee for passengers and instruct. You need 35 hours in the air but 100 hours to be in shore in which you want to be just to cover yourself. So I would say it takes a lot of dedication but to get this feeling up here obviously you can't feel it on television and the site just looking out over the valley is absolutely incredible. When you're flying over the river and up there with the mountains it's fabulous and is never boring. Could you give me a general idea how high we are how high are we do YOU know about that is going to say about that. There were about 50 and I was going to beautiful view of the valley here there's UMass over there. Now I understand the process of getting up with the heat less heat it gets down but how do you go north south east or west How do you direct a building.

We're at the mercy of Mother Nature and it's just one of those things you have to just let go of the thought that you want to go and just go wherever the bone takes you. Now a different altitude say at fifteen hundred feet it might pull to the right and then lower it might pull to the left. But that's the only thing you really have to go on and sometimes is just sort of zigzag you know how high can you go in a balloon like this. What are passengers without a twin you know from the ground a tree tops up to about 3000 feet. I've been up to about 40 500 feet and you can go up to just under 10000 feet but that's awfully high and it gets kind of chilly up there. Now how long could you stay up here. Our rides usually last about an hour. I'm going to give it a little shot of that is that we're going to. We plan on staying up about an hour. It's really based on the direction that we're going to how hot the

day is because we burn more fuel if it's hotter because a balloon rises by the inside temperature being hotter than the outside air temperature. And basically if we if we happen to drift off in not so great of the direction of the wind changes and we're limited land and you know the next field that's available but we try to stay up just about an hour or more. It's gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. Now how do you land somewhere. How does anybody know where you are. While were in radio contact with our ground crew and they have a sense our experience people kind of know what side of the river they're going to fly it's own right now across the river twice and we may cross again south sometimes I'll just drive him crazy and something I have to ask you. I've heard that after every flight somebody has some champagne or a reason for that as

well. In the late seventeen hundreds when I did the first manned flight they landed in a big field in France they don't know where they were and the farmer didn't know who they were I thought they were demons from the skies so he's got his pitchfork and I pulled out their champagne and they said no no we're Frenchmen say. And they share their bread in their cheese in their champagne so the tradition and we're very kind of vigilant about it is you give the landowner where you land a bottle of champagne and it works out great. I could stay at your own light when you look out over the river there in the valley is just amazing. Yeah really something. Rich in real time we've been up here about 30 minutes now and I know you're getting ready to look for a landing spot but

is there any of a good time of the day to fly or can you find a champion. Well there are days where you could fly in the middle of the day. But really the time for fire first in the morning at sunrise in about two to two and a half hours before sunset that's when the earth is cooling down or in the morning it's at its coolest because it's been dark out as the sun goes up at an evenly surface which creates thermal activity which creates when you are now getting ready to land and while this is going on we're going to let your land with us you've flown this far. We're going to visit with a man who works in clock towers and he fixes those clocks you see all over the place. Very unique individual. Take a peek. One time I was at an auction a pretty little clock came up that wouldn't work and I took it home and took it apart and put it back together again. Clean didn't oiled it and

off it went and someone wanted to buy it the next day. I said there's something going on here that at that time would help support my family. It became more than just a job it became an interest and I ended up finding that the whole history of American clock making was very very interesting and many of the people in it were very interesting and it followed the great boom and bust cycles and the American economy. You know I think that in some ways a tower clock is a bit larger than life in that it. It says that this is a community that is well. This is a community which is war going to rise. It keeps its things maintained and a good clock that's running right is a kind of symbol. One of the things about Tower clocks is they're not just time pieces they don't keep time the

true clocks which means that they China as well as tell the time. And so people who lived sometimes miles away with could tell what time it was borrowed by listening for the bell. So I'm trying to make a simple expedient here by wrapping up layers of duct tape to get to approximate the thickness that this would have been in 99 when this hammer comes down and when it hits it will leave enough space here. So the bell is muffled and before the hammer had been riding very slightly on the bell after it struck. Now we'll get something like this. Not mumbled at all it's striking only and will do a little routine maintenance here. I use three different oils and will be heading home clock installation and

putting the right ones on the oils themselves. You use drops of them and you use more in the. In the hands of the gear adoptions but it's mostly delivering the right oil the right lubricant to the spot and then they run amazingly well. One of the rewarding things about working on tower clock movements is that they are made so well they were generally made in the great era of Castile in America which happened after the Civil War about World War 1. And so the castings and things are beautiful and they were very proud of the castings they put in blazon. Seth Thomas on the boys and the patent number in the cast iron and these movements were not made with the idea of a planned obsolescence. They were really made with the idea to turn very slowly. They use very high quality materials but there's no reason why they wouldn't run for hundreds and hundreds or years. So long as they're kept serviced and lubricated.

We're now in Belgium town Massachusetts. Right on the town common. And this is the Congregational Church and Belcher town and we're looking at one of the most remarkable clock movements certainly in the whole of western Massachusetts. If not in the state. Well the challenge of tower clock is no two are the same. I've never worked on two that had the same problems or the same history and that you know it's a big piece of machinery and one that often has a real history in a town a history and a committee. And to get the stain that's been silent for a long time up and going again is a challenge. And this is the this is the strike side which requires many many more revolutions

in running and also unwinding. It's a it's a good long slug through wind up seven days worth of striking. A good tower clock will keep time to within 30 seconds a week sometimes closer than going by and seeing the thing on time and listening to it strike and having people notice. You know that's on the good side. The tricky part of working on physically working on a tower clock involves getting out of the phases and many times you're on your hands and knees going across a piece of two by six going across the rafters and you don't want to fall. And you take that part slowly usually taking a lighter a flashlight with you. That's my least favorite part I think is being up and getting to the faces. Sometimes a steeple is fairly narrow sometimes they're quite wide and you have to

get across to the darned face and sometimes open the dial port to reach out and get the hands. And you know you do not want to slip. The best thing about working on a clock is. Perhaps having gone by in one or six months it hasn't been running. Maybe it's been much longer than that. And through the application of really pretty. Straightforward machine work and analysis getting thing up and running. Sometimes people have tried to get a movement going and of have damaged it because they really have no idea what they're doing. And sometimes there's a there's a matter of undoing some things before you can get them absolutely right again. I like doing that kind of analytical work but also taking a piece of machinery which is in and of

itself beautiful and connection to history. Sometimes connection to a church in a community and getting it up and going again that's fun to eat. All right anybody that has a clock on a church steeple now you know how to get it fixed in real time we've been up here about 55 minutes right now and Lisa is in full control with Kelly and that's the burn you know we have to do and we're about to set down how long have we got. Five minutes now and I want to just float over the field we might take the time but we're coming in for a landing. And folks can see that we're just a tree top level and then just a couple moments after the burn. We're going to touchdown right. We're getting very very close right now to touchdown and Lisas just kind of a dangerous part of

the not or not no not at all we're under total control we're just going to gradually we're about 15 feet off the ground going to float right to that spot there and pull the valve to the ground basically just knowing how the balloon handle Yes after about 10 feet away now. And this would be the first landing and I've had one of these in a long long time. If you've ever wanted to ride in a hot air balloon at some time in the future you can contact the people at the North Hansen airport and find out exactly how you can get involved with doing so. All right we're getting very very close. The feeling is a lot better it is

probably watching the television but here we are aiming for that role. Looks like we're just about right on top of it. And I don't think we're in Kansas anymore and you know I'm not ok with that. Too little and we're still want right now. Well we took off to North Hampton and we want up on Common Street in North Hadley is this typical. Yeah that's a typical track when we fly from the airport and we've got a few family planning faces around here so that's going on. I see a lot of the people coming out of the woodwork and there's cars that have stopped along the road here and this must happen all the time when you land. Now how long is it going to take you to take this whole thing down and get it all lit up in the van again. About 20 25 minutes it packs up really fast that's it now what about the wine and cheese dealers and you know we had a little something for you back at the airport a little something well this and we don't want to hold you up so we're going

to stay here we're going to help you take down the balloon. And I want to thank you so much Matthew. And Kelly you're doing a terrific job if you need any more information about flying in one of these you can contact Lisa at the North Hampton airport and I want to thank all of our guests tonight and we hope you join us again next time around as we visit with a lot more interesting people like Kelly like Lisa and this boy who are making it here. Making it here is brought to you by the members of the Y and by a United Bank. Our customers love us. Just listen. I enjoy walking into the bank because I'm with friends. United makes me feel like part of the family. The friendly atmosphere of the service and United cares about the community I live in. United is just a really good local one. They're nice people. I trust them. I love this but I love banking with United. United Bank. Outstanding banking values in the heart of Western Massachusetts.

If you know of someone who is making it here drop us a line we'd love to hear about it. You can reach us on our website at w g b y dot org or send a letter to making it here. Pair of W TV white TV 44 Hampton Street Springfield Mass 0 1 1 0 3. Who knows maybe you or someone you know will be featured in an upcoming episode of making it here.