In Search of "Perfect Bliss"

A father and son cross North America by balloon

"Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement," wrote Jacques Charles after making man's first ascent by hydrogen balloon in 1783. "It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss."

Seeking that same kind of excitement, Maxie Anderson, 45, a mining millionaire from Albuquerque, tried airplanes, then hang gliders and finally helium balloons. He organized the historic voyage of the Double Eagle II, which in 1978 carried him and two companions on the first balloon crossing of the Atlantic.

Anderson and his son Kristian, 23, laid claim to another major record last week: the first balloon crossing of North America. Their craft was the Kitty Hawk, a 75-ft. teardrop of fragile polyethylene filled with 200,000 cu. ft. of helium. Dangling from the balloon was an 11-ft. by 5-ft. red, white and blue gondola. It carried the Andersons and 5,000 lbs. of ballast and supplies, including ten radios, a folding cot, a backgammon board and a week's worth of fried chicken, peanut butter and chocolate-chip cookies.

The trip was even more eventful than the voyage across the Atlantic. Said Maxie: "We went from ecstasy to despair at least once a day." After they lifted off from Fort Baker on San Francisco Bay at 12:33 a.m. on May 8, Maxie and Kris threw overboard 1,000 lbs. of sand and water ballast and rose to 23,000 ft. There they had to don cumbersome oxygen masks and heavy parkas, but caught a breeze that sent them northeast.

As they crossed Wyoming, they encountered dangerous thunderstorms. Said Maxie: "I said to Kris, 'We could land and do this another day.' " The reply: "We'd better go for it." For six hours, they drifted in the center of the storms. Finally, over Rapid City, S. Dak., they broke into the clear, propelled eastward by winds that drove them up to 90 m.p.h. Then, as they crossed the Great Lakes, Maxie fell ill from lack of oxygen and too many cookies. Bundled in two sleeping bags against the subzero cold, Maxie switched to pure oxygen and recovered. As they neared the East Coast, they began to descend, too fast at first. Said Maxie: "The irony was that despite the danger, this was the nicest part of the flight. At about 3,000 ft., you can hear all the sounds of earth--people talking, car and truck motors. It was very romantic."

At daybreak on May 12, as the Andersons tried to land near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, the Kitty Hawk was pushed by strong gusts toward high-power lines. The Royal Canadian Mounties, aboard a helicopter, came to the rescue. Using the backwash from the rotors, the chopper pilot pushed the balloon toward a clearing in Ste. Felicite, Quebec, where the gondola finally dropped to the ground, 99 hrs. and 54 min. after leaving San Francisco Bay. For once Maxie's mind was not on the next challenge, which he had previously suggested might be a balloon flight around the world. Said he: "I'll leave that for another day."

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