By Natalie De La Garza
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Cluster balloonist Jonathan R. Trappe set out for an adventure across the Atlantic Ocean when he launched his unique aircraft out of Caribou last week and though he didn’t make it across the ocean, he absolutely found adventure.
Trappe had hoped to become the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean using 370 helium balloons affixed to a lifeboat, and lived in Caribou for months preparing for the historic flight before launching around 6:30 in the morning on Sept. 12 from the baseball field on Sincock Street. Traveling through the sky in a lifeboat, held aloft by 370 helium balloons, he did cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence before landing on Blow Me Down Mountain in Newfoundland later that evening.
“This doesn’t look like France,” Trappe posted on his Facebook page around 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 12.
After spending the night in a remote Newfoundland bog, he was picked up by a CBC news crew that had chartered a helicopter.
Trappe reportedly told CBC video journalist Lindsay Bird that he was burning through ballast too quickly to make it across the Atlantic and was forced to choose between landing in the isolated woods Thursday night or ditching over the ocean sometime Friday.
While some journalists have been labeling the attempted Atlantic crossing a “failure,” Caribou’s City Manager Austin Bleess is adamant that the adventure is anything but.
“It didn’t’ end as he had hoped by any means, but it’s certainly not a failure,” Bleess said Friday.
The city manager himself had volunteered at Sincock Street field on Sept. 11 at 9 p.m. to help inflate the balloons and gather them into the cluster flown by Trappe.
“The fact that he was able to do it at all … and the fact that he had 100-150 volunteers from the surrounding communities, from downstate, from out of state who all came to inflate the balloons and help assemble [the balloon cluster] — that, to me, is a success,” Bleess said.
As city manager, Bleess said leaders did what they could to bring Trappe to Caribou, “and then the residents came together to actually get him off the ground,” he said.
An expert member of Trappe’s team was Col. Joseph Kittinger, who famously piloted a gas balloon out of Caribou in 1984 and traveled across the Atlantic himself.
“It’s only in Caribou, Maine that half the citizenry would show up at 9 p.m. and work all night for a balloon launch,” said Col. Kittinger on Thursday evening. “We were so grateful of the citizens of Caribou for helping us launch that balloon because we could not have gotten it done without the city helping us.”
It’s been 29 years almost to date since Col. Kittinger flew the Rosy O’Grady Balloon of Peace out of Caribou, and Kittinger says that the city hasn’t changed a bit.
“The people in Caribou are just special people, “ Kittinger said, explaining how that’s the reason he recommended that Trappe fly out of the most northeastern city in the U.S. for the historic cluster balloon launch.
Of course not every volunteer on the field during the pre-launch endeavors was from Caribou.
Wayne Kilcollins of Presque Isle is a pilot and an aviation enthusiast, who first met Trappe back around May when the cluster balloonist visited members of the Civil Air Patrol at the Caribou Airport; since then, Civil Air Patrol members have kept in touch with Trappe to help wherever they were needed.
As Kilcollins grabbed a cup of coffee around 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, he said the current efforts of inflating the balloons were about what he’d expected.
“You’re hand gets a little fatigued from holding on to the balloon, but it isn’t bad,” he said.
Like many other volunteers, he’d risen at 4 a.m. that morning to help with the previously scheduled launch time of 6 a.m. before storms pushed back the launch time.
“I tried to get a two-hour nap, because I figured this thing was going to be an all-nighter, but it didn’t work,” he said as he filled his coffee cup. “I can’t imagine [Trappe] said he’s been going for two days now without sleep,” Kilcollins added, speculating that the cluster balloonist would probably be able to get some rest once he hit daylight aloft.
Tiredness aside, Kilcollins wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to volunteer.
“I’m going to be here until we’re done,” he said.
Volunteers put in long hours supporting Trappe’s dream, but some spectators logged long hours at the launch site as well.
Mark Bouchard, of Limestone, stood outside the gate of the Sincock Street field for all but a few of the pre-launch hours. Bouchard’s history with the region’s historic balloon launches is one that many remember — even Col. Kittinger. Bouchard’s wife, Sandra, went into labor with their son during Col. Kittinger’s launch, but the couple didn’t depart for the hospital until after the balloon was aloft.
Bouchard admits that he’s a fan of aviation. Having witnessed the 1978 Double Eagle II lift off from Presque Isle, he knew that he’d be at the launch of Jonathan Trappe.
One thing from this launch that Bouchard will never forget – and he’s had some pretty memorable launches — was that he got to meet Trappe and speak with him.
“It was brief, but he had come out of the field to see what it looked like from on top of the hill,” Bouchard described. “On his way back in I got to talk with him, shook his hand and wished him luck,” he described with a smile, as he hadn’t had the opportunity to speak with the pilots during the previous launches he’d attended — though Col. Kittinger and Bouchard have spoken many times since the 1984 launch, given the timely birth of Bouchard’s son.
The fact that Trappe was so conversational, and so available to speak with during his pre-launch preparations, is something that Bouchard will never forget.
“He was like my best friend, and that’s what I found was really nice about him. He was very patient, took the time to talk to you, and that really blew me away,” Bouchard said. “He had a launch going on, and yet he had time to spend with citizens, the common folk.”
Trappe’s personality and accessibility aside, Bouchard also won’t be forgetting the extraordinary aircraft any time soon.
“The balloons were just amazing to see,” he said. 쇓
