Man takes digital camera on balloon flight
A man in the US settled down on a deck chair with a few snacks and a digital camera - and then travelled around 310 kilometres to the border with the next door state.
Kent Crouch, a 47-year-old from Bend, Oregon, planned to travel to Idaho across the border in a flying deck chair, rendered airborne by 105 large helium balloons. He set off from his home and four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as a ballast.
He came back to earth nine hours after setting off, landing in a farmer’s field 193 miles from home.
When you’re a little kid and you’re holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," he 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 continued. "This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It’s just like that."
He is the latest man to emulate Larry Walters, who rose nearly three miles above Los Angeles in 1982 in a deck chair lifted by balloons - surprising one airline pilot, who radioed the control tower to say that he had just passed someone in a lawn chair with a gun.
The gun was to shoot the balloons so that he could descend.
