I love It!

This caper originated back in 1982, and I saved two newspaper clippings about it in my “Humor” file for years and years. Now it has been repeated, much to my delight.

(I don't know why the caption says 1983!)

Truck driver in California named Larry Walters strapped himself into a lawn chair, to which he had attached 45 helium-filled weather balloons. He had his girlfriend cut the tether, and immediately shot three miles into the air.

Three miles! It’s cold up there, folks! Mighty cold. As in about 2 degrees, Fahrenheit. And the air pressure is getting down toward half of what it is at sea level.

To make things worse, Larry soon found himself in the main approach corridor of the Long Beach Airport. Two different jet planes reported sighting him. (Can you imagine? “Tower, this is Delta One-Seven-Three-Niner. We have a, er, a lawn chair at approximately 1,000 feet off our starboard wing…”)

I’ll let Wikipedia recount the rest of Larry’s tale:

After spending about 45 minutes in the sky, he figured he would have to shoot a few balloons after all; doing so caused him to descend slowly again, until the balloons' dangling cables got caught in a power line, causing blackout in a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes, but also allowing Walters to climb down to the ground again.

He was immediately arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department; when asked by a reporter why he had done it, Walters replied, "A man can't just sit around."

Regional safety inspector Neal Savoy was reported to have said, "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd suspend that. But he doesn't.”

…

Walters commented, "If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk.”

Now this stunt has been repeated, by one Ken Couch, who drew his inspiration from our Larry. Except Ken has refined the art. He uses giant party balloons, 150 of them. He doesn’t ride three miles high, only 30 meters, enough to clear treetops and power lines. He also has some flying experience with glider planes. He has corporate sponsors, even.




Saturday he made his third flight in it, traveling 239 miles in nine hours, from Oregon over the desert (!!!) into Idaho, where he landed gently in a pasture.

"If I had the time and money and people, I'd do this every weekend," Couch said before getting into the chair. "Things just look different from up there. You've moving so slowly. The best thing is the peace, the serenity.

"Originally, I wanted to do it because of boyhood dreams. I don't know about girls, but I think most guys look up in the sky and wish they could ride on a cloud."

Couch's wife, Susan, called him crazy: "It's never been a dull moment since I married him."

--Associated Press

Oh, yes, girls have such dreams, too.

So do grown women. I've been asking, every Christmas of my adult life, for a solar-powered helicopter. But has anybody ever given me one? No.

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