The trip began at Domaine Chandon winery in Yountville, where the 35-year-old aeronaut strikes a small, silver sparker and sends a quick burst of flame and a whoosh of hot air shooting toward the gaping bag. Until then, spread out across a concrete parking lot, the giant hot air balloon ride looked more like the discarded tent awning from a travelling circus.

But as the hot air rushed inside, heating the lightweight dacron fabric to 200 degree, the balloon swelled to life, lifting off the ground and straining at the ropes holding it back.

First Barbarick, then his crew scramble into the basket that hangs, suspended by heavy braided nylon ropes, beneath the hot air balloon ride. Pulling hard on an overhead throttle, he releases a roar of hot air just as the ground crew lets go its hold and the ship is aloft, airborne, lifting us toward the clouds.

It is the uncertainties of ballooning that lend it an adventurous anticipation -- soaring through the sky at the whim of whatever winds happen to be blowing, and in whatever direction.

The controls on a hot air balloon are limited to up and down. There is no sideways or around. You travel with the wind and go wherever it's going. To go higher, Barbarick releases more of the hot propane gas. To descend, he lets the air escape through a vent in the top.

If he's heading toward a building or, worse, power lines, he jerks down on the throttle and blows a long gush of hot air into the taut dacron. If he does that early enough the balloon will slowly rise to safety.

Barbarick says the flight, silent and beautiful through the early morning skies, is safe providing irritations such as power lines and high buildings and high winds don't get in the way, and providing the burner system doesn't fail, and assuming you don't fall out or try to land on the freeway or in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

But he says none of that ever happens on his trips. There are no risky thermal variations because he flies during the early morning, before the ground warms. And the winds are predictable in the Napa Valley, almost always moving from north to south.

"The trips are usually peaceful jaunts down the valley and everybody has a great time," he said, "The times ballooning gets exciting is when we take them across mountain ranges and on long cross-country trips, but we don't normally do that."