www.cyberslayer.co.uk

 


This story was clipped from the recent Darwin awards, which people get for
doing something incredibly stupid.True stories.

Here's the winner:  Larry Walters is among the relatively few who have
actually turned their dreams into reality.  His story is true, as hard as
you may find it to believe . . .

Larry was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly.  When he
graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a
pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him.  So when he finally
left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly the
fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard.  As he sat
there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, Larry had an idea.  He went down to the local Army-Navy
surplus store and bought forty-five weather balloons, and several tanks of
helium. These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these were
heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fully
inflated.  Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to
his lawn chair, the kind you might have in your back yard.  He anchored
the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and inflated the balloons with
helium.

Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring
he could pop a few balloons when it was time to return to earth.  His
preparations complete, Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord.
His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to terra
firma.

But things didn't quite work out that way.  When Larry cut the cord, he
didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if fired from a cannon!  Nor did he
go up a couple hundred feet.  He climbed and climbed until he finally
leveled off at eleven thousand feet!  At that height, he could hardly risk
deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really
experience flying.  So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen
hours, totally at a loss about how to get down.

Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles
International Airport.  A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a
guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap .. now
there's a conversation I would have given anything to have heard!  LAX is
right on the ocean, and you may know that at nightfall, the winds on the
coast begin to change.  So, as dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea.

At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him, but the
rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the draft from their
propeller kept pushing his home-made contraption farther and farther away.
Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line, with
which they gradually hauled him back to safety.

As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was arrested.  But as he was led away
in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do it?"
Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just
sit around!"