1982: Balloon crashes, ego smashes.

Last night, all of us involved in the Green my Apple cam­paign had a vic­to­ry din­ner feast at the love­ly Zeina’s house. Zeina is Lebane­se, and put togeth­er an out­stand­ing culi­nary adven­ture for us. There was baked Feta with chili pep­per — my mouth waters as I type those words — tabouli on let­tuce leaves, fava beans in lemon, cau­li­flow­er with sesame, savory veg­eta­bles rolled in a flat bread: out­ra­geous, scrump­tious, delicious.The com­pa­ny was as good as the food. Take eight sto­ry tellers and put them around a table and throw out a ques­tion like “What was your most embarass­ing moment” and you know you’re going to get good stuff.

Giona sug­gest­ed I blog mine, a tale of pride tak­ing a fall, from my first days as a Green­peace activist.

In those days, if you were a door to door can­vasser, as I was, you went out into your turf every night dream­ing of being a cam­paign­er. In the­se dreams, you were not in a mini-van head­ing into a sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood with a clip­board. No, you were an eco-war­rior in a sur­vival suit, gun­ning the engine of your zodi­ac to cross the wake of a whal­ing ship. To make that dream hap­pen in those days, you pret­ty much had to dis­tin­guish your­self as a vol­un­teer.

Through a series of home-grown direct actions in Boston, I’d done that local­ly — and with one, a ban­ner hang­ing off the roof of the Cana­di­an Embassy in protest of the harp seal hunt, I’d man­aged to gen­er­ate an image that got car­ried nation­wide on Reuters. That caught the eye of Peter Dyk­stra and Mark Roberts at our nation­al head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, who asked me to come down to DC to talk about a secret mis­sion. Holy Hot­cakes, Bat­man, a secret mis­sion! My day­dreams of hero­ism shot up, as did my cachet with the oth­er can­vassers.

The mis­sion was this:

we were going to fly a hot air bal­loon into the Nevada nuclear weapons test site. No com­mer­cial pilot we could find would risk his license for such a flight, so two of us were to be trained. The count­down to the under­ground nuclear weapons test det­o­na­tion would be enter­ing the sin­gle dig­its when our bal­loon, sport­ing a giant peace dove and the Green­peace logo, with myself and Gene Stilp at the burn­ers, would cruise majes­ti­cal­ly across Yuc­ca flat, direct­ly over ground zero, forc­ing the Test Site per­son­nel in the con­trol tow­er to shout “Stop the test, it’s too risky, those damn Green­peace activists have foiled our evil plans…”

So I was hand­ed an air­plane tick­et to San Fran­cis­co. I had nev­er been to the US west coast, nev­er been on a plane that some­one else had paid for, nev­er been closer to my dream of hero­ism. I’d been sent off by the oth­er can­vassers with a mix­ture of envy and expec­ta­tion, I’d called my mom to let her know that she might be see­ing me in the news soon, and that I couldn’t talk about what I would be doing for the next cou­ple months, or where I was going. I think her respon­se was “Make sure you have a clean hand­ker­chief.” It was her all-pur­pose advice. So, with friends and peers pre­pared to stay tuned for the sto­ry of a bold adven­ture to end the arms race, I set out to get trained.

Now what on Earth could be a bet­ter assign­ment for a twen­ty year old kid than to have to prac­tice fly­ing a hot air bal­loon at dawn over the hills of south­ern Cal­i­for­nia? We soared over hawks in flight, prac­ticed pop­ping out of ther­mals, star­tled rab­bits from their lairs, learned to nav­i­gate the wind sheers that pushed us in dif­fer­ent direc­tions at dif­fer­ent alti­tudes, kicked up the scent of sage­brush as we tried to mas­ter fly­ing as low to the
Earth as pos­si­ble, fir­ing the propane burn­ers in tiny, roar­ing cor­rec­tive blasts until we could hug the rolling hills at a con­stant ten foot ele­va­tion.

It was an unbe­liev­ably great gig.

Until the day that our instruc­tor, Frank, decid­ed it was time to enter the Gor­don Ben­nett Bal­loon race. This is a major annu­al event for bal­loon­ists, held in Foun­tain Val­ley. The wind that morn­ing was high­er than any­thing we’d flown in pre­vi­ous­ly, but Frank fig­ured if we were going to brave a nuclear blast, we bet­ter learn how to han­dle a lit­tle wind. Frank would han­dle the take-off.

Sketch from my note­book of the quick-deploy plan for the Green­peace hot air bal­loon. Out of the van and into the air over the Nevada test site in 7 min­utes was our goal.

The way you launch a bal­loon is this. You get a ground crew of six or so folks to lay out the envelope on the ground with the bal­loon bas­ket on its side. You use a giant fan to par­tial­ly inflate the envelope. Then, squat­ting in the bas­ket, you slow­ly blast hot air into the bal­loon. It expands, then ris­es, tip­ping the bas­ket upright as it goes ver­ti­cal. Your ground crew moves away from hold­ing out the envelope to hold­ing the bas­ket down hard, so you can heat the bal­loon up enough that it POPS up into the air when every­one lets go. That way you clear any low-lying obsta­cles quick­ly.

Now at the Gor­don Ben­nett Bal­loon race, we had a whole heap of vol­un­teers from the crowd to help with this process. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, one of them didn’t get the mes­sage that only the pilot issues com­mands, and the rest of them didn’t get the mes­sage that you only lis­ten to the pilot. When the bal­loon was ver­ti­cal but only half-heat­ed, with the wind push­ing hard, some­body in the crowd shout­ed “Let go.” It wasn’t Frank.

We took off, but only just. We were careen­ing through the crowd of spec­ta­tors, who were part­ing before the balloon’s path like the wake from a ship. The image that sticks in my mind is an absurd car­toon of a guy hav­ing a pic­nic with his fam­i­ly, just rais­ing a chick­en drum­stick to his mouth and star­ing, wide-eyed and frozen in dis­be­lief, as our wick­er bas­ket head­ed straight for him. We bare­ly cleared his head. Frank was furi­ous­ly hit­ting the burn­ers full blast to get alti­tude, but I was reach­ing for the emer­gen­cy deflate. This is a line that descends from the top of the bal­loon through the envelope, which you yank on to pull a vel­cro cap down from the balloon’s crown to let all the hot air out. But it was dan­gling out­side the bas­ket, and as I reached for it, the last thing I remem­ber was fol­low­ing my arm out of the bas­ket and pin­wheel­ing through space. We’d hit a tow truck. Then the band­stand. And the bal­loon sailed off with­out me — though I didn’t know that, because I was uncon­scious and some­where way down the yel­low brick road sur­round­ed by munchkins.
Gene stayed in the bas­ket, but broke a rib. Frank flew the bal­loon to a safe land­ing and man­aged, despite get­ting down as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, to cross the fin­ish line. We would have won sec­ond place if we weren’t dis­qual­i­fied — for ille­gal­ly dis­charg­ing a pas­sen­ger.

I messed up my back for a while, but the only seri­ous dam­age was to my pride. This was the pic­ture that my mom, my friends, and my fel­low can­vassers saw the next day in the news­pa­per:

It wasn’t until a decade lat­er that I saw this footage of my fall. I was chan­nel surf­ing with my moth­er-in-law back in the US, look­ing for a Yan­kees game, when there was the bal­loon cruis­ing across the crowd and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly eject­ing me. I had no idea any­one had caught it on film, but they had, and sold it to some home video chan­nel. “That’s me” I told Mom Mul­doon. “That’s YOU? Now why would you go and do a thing like that?”

Anoth­er ten years lat­er, a tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny tracked me down for an inter­view about the inci­dent for Real­i­ty TV, which has made the rounds now in a vari­ety of repack­aged for­mats world­wide with hum­bling titles like “Dumb and Dumb­er” “America’s fun­ni­est home videos” and “Lived to Tell.” I saw it first at my brother’s house. He’s went to some trou­ble to get a copy, and had a mis­chevi­ous glint in his eye as he put the DVD into the tray that remind­ed me of when we were 10.
It was, ha ha, a deflat­ing expe­ri­ence.

We nev­er would get the bal­loon into the test site that year, though we were back next year and four of us did, final­ly, make it to ground zero.

We walked.