Ben Preiss
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After making the trip in nine hours athveraging an attitude of 11,000 ft., Kent Couch the owner of the Stop and Go Mini-Mart in Bend, Oregon, was in good spirits and uninjured. He did however loose his lawn chair and the gear that was attached to it (including a video camera) because the four helium balloons still attached as he landed pulled the chair out of his grasp. A $200 reward is being offered for its return. The aerial photo was taken at 11,500 ft by a pilot dropping fire jumpers that happened to be in the neighborhood. It’s been 25 years since the man’s first known lawn chair balloon flight, the mind boggles at what one man and a piece of garden furniture can do with enough helium and balloons. The skies the limit! The video isn’t of this guy, its of other loonies minus lawn chairs, but what the heck.
 In preparing for his second long-distance lawn-chair balloon flight, Kent Couch said he didn't even bother to put a seat belt on the contraption this time, "because I didn't think I'd need one." But when he encountered unexpected turbulence over Anthony Lakes Saturday afternoon, out of radio contact with his family at the time, "hanging onto the the ropes and everything I've got ... probably at that point in my mind I said, ‘Do you really know what you're doing here? Should you be here?'" "For some reason, I thought these accept turbulence, go with the wind," Couch said, but learned otherwise. Couch did have a parachute once again, however - and while he didn't need one when he came down late Saturday afternoon in a Northeast Oregon field, he jumped from the chair as it briefly set down, then took off again, heading off to the east with much of his gear, including a digital video camera, still aboard, flying high.
(ktvz)References: clusterballoon.org, ktvz Filed In: |
