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Up there, Michael Glen moves with the air, moves his hot-air balloon along the currents and the cool of the sky in that free and easy way he cannot move his legs on the ground.

Up there, it doesn't matter that Glen, 32, is paralyzed from the waist down, that he, by all accounts, is the first and only licensed paraplegic balloon pilot in the world.

Down here, it doesn't matter much, either.

"I've always been involved in sports and activities, being outdoors, doing stuff, not sitting around inside," said the former Roswell native-turned-Tucson resident, here for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. "That hasn't really changed. I'm still going. I see every day as an adventure."

Which perhaps is why the sport of ballooning has appealed to him from the start.

He's a child of ballooning, flying before he could walk and taking his first balloon ride when he was 2 weeks old.

His father, retired Roswell educator Bill Glen, has flown balloons since 1974. A year later, dad and a newborn Michael attended their first fiesta.

"I think we figured out my dad's flown at every fiesta but three," he said.

And so they are back, along with brother Chris Glen of Maricopa, Ariz., who also pilots his own balloon.

"Albuquerque is a real special place for us," he said. "I call it my family reunion."

But last year's fiesta - his first as a licensed pilot - began less specially when, on the first morning, the trailer containing his balloon and gear was stolen from the parking lot of the Embassy Suites where he was staying.

He had been scheduled to launch his balloon, Elevation, along with dozens of other balloons at schools across the city as part of the Albuquerque Aloft event.

"They didn't steal the trailer for the balloon," he surmises. "They probably hoped there were tools inside."

The trailer was found about four months later in an Albuquerque chop shop - empty. The balloon, a yellow and green-banded beauty, is still missing.

Insurance covered only $11,000 of the estimated $24,000 loss, he said. But the ebullient Glen wasn't about to stay grounded. Or angry at Albuquerque.

"Every city has bad people," he said. "Thefts happen all over the place. It wasn't the hotel's fault. It wasn't Albuquerque's fault. It just happened."

If he felt bad for anybody then, it was the kids at Eugene Field Elementary School.

"I'm afraid I disappointed them that day having no balloon," he said. "I said someday I would go back if I ever got another balloon."

Eight months and $20,000 later, he did come back, this time with a new balloon, Elevation II.

"It worked out," he said.

Life for Glen has worked out, but maybe not the way he expected.

He had been a soccer and basketball letterman at Roswell High School. After graduation in 1993, he went on to the Roswell campus of Eastern New Mexico University. But the urge to travel both in the air and on the ground cut his college career short.

It was during a trip in March 1996 when a tire blowout caused his truck to flip, ejecting him and snapping his spine. He was 21.

"It was hard," he said. "But I remember a time in rehab thinking I had two choices: Either sit around and be miserable, or get out there again and live life."

You can guess which one he chose.

Today, he spends his time flying, often with wife Shawn, at ballooning events across the country. He pays for the privilege with donations and the fees he earns for speaking engagements, where he talks about the power of the positive and the dream to soar no matter what.

His ballooning, he said, is not encumbered by his paralysis. His only concession is his use of a two-seated open gondola called a duo-chariot, which resembles a ski lift chair that lands him on his backside.

On Friday, he launched once more at Eugene Field as part of this year's Albuquerque Aloft.

"I hadn't even signed up for a specific school," he said. "It was just meant to be."

Just like he was meant to be up there.