Two men flying matching lawn chairs suspended by helium-filled party balloons over Central Oregon last weekend said Tuesday they were floating along peacefully at 14,000 feet when thunderstorms grabbed control of their homemade craft like a giant hand.
Glad they’re OK, but I don’t get the whole Lawn-chair Aviation thing. You hear about it from time to time, but I just don’t get it…
Why not? It sounds like fun. Ballooning plus guns! You have to shoot the balloons with an air rifle to come back down.
What I don’t get is, why is the ballast RED Kool-Aid? Why not just clear water?
I dunno, I remember vividly as a kid seeing them launch balloons from the Mall parking lot. I asked my mom where they were going….and she told me they just followed the wind and somebody chased them with a truck.
I didn’t like the idea of that then, I don’t now. I’ll just take a ride in a fixed-wing or a helicopter if I feel like getting off the ground.
Tho frankly I’m overall pretty pleased with being a terrestrial critter.
To aid in visibility, perhaps? So that you’ll know if it’s leaking?
I get why they do it. It’s flight. It’s taking something that they can assemble at home and using it to challenge the sky. O.K., it’s probably the result of a lot of beer and a bet, but the point remains.
I’m happier on the ground myself, but when I think about hiking across Alaska, for example, it must be the same kind of feeling–let’s see what we can do.
What I don’t get is the animistic thinking or writing – thunderstorms grabbed control
Really? Maybe they have the same people writing those stories as they do the ones about the ‘gun killed someone’ stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Couch