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Man uses balloons and lawn chair to travel 193 miles

kbm8795

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Hmm. . .maybe you shouldn't try this at home during the barbecue party:

From AP:

BEND, Ore. - Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks ??? and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Destination: Idaho.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast ??? he could turn a spigot, release water and rise ??? Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer???s field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.

???When you???re a little kid and you???re holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind,??? Couch told the Bend Bulletin.

???When you???re laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them,??? he said. ???This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It???s just like that.???

Couch is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters ??? who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.


Man floats 193 miles using balloons - Vehicular Peculiarity - MSNBC.com
 
That's freakin' awesome!
 
We better hope the wetbacks at the border don't catch hold of this idea.
 
so...you'er an all in kind of gu...er...ga...er...mino!
 
We better hope the wetbacks at the border don't catch hold of this idea.

Then instead of installing a border fence, the US should install industrial-strength fans pointed towards Mexico.
 
This really was a true story. . .:



Lawnchair Larry, the Man Who Soared to 16,000 Feet Attached to Weather Balloons-Truth!


Summary of the eRumor
The eRumor is mostly circulated with pictures of Larry in his high-flying chair and what appears to be a newspaper article:

The Truth
This story has been widely disbelieved by skeptics, but it really happened. TruthOrFiction.com's Rich Buhler was hosting a radio talk show from Los Angeles in 1982 when Larry Walters' historic flight took place in from nearby San Pedro and he covered the story for his audience. It was widely reported by the news media at the time and Larry Walters became something of a folk hero for his daredevil solo flight.

According to published reports, Walters was employed as a truck driver in Southern California. On July 2, 1982, he fastened 42 surplus balloons to a lawn chair and launched from his girlfriend's San Pedro home. He carried various supplies with him as well as a CB radio and a BB gun to shoot balloons one at a time to descend. He didn't realize how powerful the buoyancy of the balloons was. When he cut a rope holding him to terra firma, he took off with such a jolt that another anchor rope broke under the stress and he shot upward so quickly that his eyeglasses flew to the ground. He floated around the L.A. basin for several hours and reached altitudes of up to 16,000 feet. According to an article in the New York Times the next day, Walters was spotted by pilots from both TWA and Delta Airlines. It was cold at 16,000 feet and he started shooting some of his balloons to descend, but dropped his BB gun and had to wait for his rig to come down on its own. He landed in a residential neighborhood in Long Beach where got tangled in some power lines, causing a power blackout. He told reporters that his weather balloon flight had been a dream of more than 20 years. Larry Walters died eleven years after his flight from what the Los Angeles Times described as a self-inflected gunshot wound.


Lawnchair Larry, the man who soared to 16,000 Feet attached to weather balloons-Truth!


Pretty sad ending, though. . .
 
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