{"id":1603,"date":"2014-03-26T16:16:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T16:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2014-03-26T16:16:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T16:16:02","slug":"hot-air-balloon-rides-for-the-disabled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/hot-air-balloon-rides-for-the-disabled\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot air balloon rides for the disabled"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A stunning sunrise greeted passengers on a unique hot air balloon ride this morning.<\/p>\n<p>In an Australian first, a specially designed basket allowed a group of wheel-chair bound sightseers to experience the thrill of flying high.\u00a0Adrienne Bliss and Jenny Cassidy, who have cerebral palsy, were among the first passengers to board the dawn flight above Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>The high-flying ballooning experience was a first for Adrienne.\u00a0&#8220;I&#8217;ve never been in one before,&#8221; she told 7News reporter Nick McCallum .<\/p>\n<p>The special basket is equipped with a gate, allowing chair access.\u00a0The chair and occupant are then secured safely in seat-belts before take off.\u00a0It was the flight of fancy for pilot Kliff Saunders.<\/p>\n<p>He broke his neck and shattered his leg in a horror motorcycle accident four years ago.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I spent a year learning how to walk,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I got an insight into what it was to lose your mobility.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kliff dedicated himself to designing and hosting balloon rides for the wheelchair bound.\u00a0It took almost a year to get the specially-built basket approved by air regulators, and it is the only one of its kind in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>The delight of his passengers has made the effort worthwhile, said Kliff.<\/p>\n<p>via &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/au.news.yahoo.com\/vic\/a\/22182473\/hot-air-balloon-rides-for-the-disabled\/\">Yahoo!7<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A stunning sunrise greeted passengers on a unique hot air balloon ride this morning. In an Australian first, a specially designed basket allowed a group of wheel-chair bound sightseers to experience the thrill of flying high.\u00a0Adrienne Bliss and Jenny Cassidy, who have cerebral palsy, were among the first passengers to board the dawn flight above [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[31,957,78,956,291,958],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hot-air","tag-balloon","tag-disabled","tag-flight","tag-kliff-saunders","tag-melbourne","tag-passengers","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/1710714.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3RIC2-pR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1606,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}