During my formative years I was incredibly fortunate to work at WLOL in the Twin Cities. The station was a monster and the talent in the halls was ridiculous. And not just on-air but just across the board from Traffic and Production to the Business Office and Engineering.

The General Manager was a bright and charismatic man named Doyle Rose who one day thought, “I wonder if there’s a market for inflatable boomboxes.”

There was. He sold a bunch and was richer than Captain Kangaroo.

Doyle and a boombox

One of the people who was in the mix on that project was a former Navy tailhook pilot who was legendary in the hot air balloon community. (Apparently there’s a hot air balloon community)

So it came to be that Dan Seeman, now the Legendary Market Manager(™) for Hubbard Broadcasting in the Twin Cities was with me, our boombox and Matt at a veterans event we’d been invited to have some presence at.

Paige and Dan feeding listeners

Matt suddenly perks up and says, “I have this great idea for a publicity photo. What if I got two balloons? We’d launch from Wirth Park, fly over downtown and with one balloon ahead and above of the other, we’d take a photo of the second balloon with the IDS Building below you. You’d be on top of the second balloon holding up a banner and looking up at the first balloon.”

Artist rendering of Matt’s idea

Me: “You can stand on top of a hot air balloon?”

Matt: “It’s easy. You’d lay on your back and as the balloon inflates it would pop you to your feet.”

Me: “But wouldn’t I slide off?”

Matt: “Nah. Your weight would create a little indented oval on top. It would be like standing in a kiddie pool. Just don’t stand close to the vent. It’ll blow you right off the balloon. (chuckling)”

Me:

Matt: “Honestly, you have the easiest part. I’d be in the basket and needing to maintain a perfect center line balance using ballast and weight or we risk the balloon turning on it’s side.”

Me:

Now, Dan has an innate ability to tune out stupid talk. It’s probably while he’s still sane. Dan had checked out and was probably enjoying bullfights in Spain when he popped in for a second, said, “Nope. Not going to happen.” and then went international again.

So it didn’t. And would I have done it? Probably. Because I wasn’t too bright and it sounded like cool bragging rights.

I have had the occasion over the years to think back and realized that a 4 ½ foot logoed piece of foamcore, held at an altitude of about 800-900 feet would, in fact, be a sail.

Me and Dan, alive and happy about it.