Every year I await the announcement of the Darwin Award winners with baited-breath. It is the one time each year that I can say with assurance “there are people who do stupid things that far surpass those committed by yours truly.” The winners are announced via the internet under such headings as “Dumb Buddy,” “Drunk gets Dunked,” and the like.
This year however, I want to alert you to “Lawn Chair Larry,” who was highlighted again this year for his stupid stunt a few years ago. Larry Walters was then, as you might have guessed, a resident of CaliforniaLos Angeles to be more accurate.
Here goes:
Larry’s boyhood dream was to fly. But fate conspired to keep him from his dream. He joined the Air Force, but his poor eyesight disqualified him from the job of pilot. After his discharge he sat in his backyard watching jets fly overhead.
He hatched a weather balloon scheme while sitting outside in his “extremely comfortable” lawn chair. He purchased 45 weather balloons from an Army-Navy surplus store, tied them to his tethered lawn chair dubbed it Inspiration I, and filled the 4-foot balloons with helium. Then he strapped himself into his lawn chair with some sandwiches, beer and a pellet gun. He figured he would pop a few of the many balloons when it was time to descend.
Larry’s plan was to sever the anchor and lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his yard, where he would enjoy a few hours of flight before coming back down. It didn’t work quite that way.
When his friends cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his Jeep, he did not float lazily up to 30 feet. Instead, he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon, pulled by the lift of 42 helium balloons holding 33 cubic feet of helium each. He didn’t level off at 100 feet, nor did he level off at 1,000 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled off at 16,000 feet.
At that height he felt he couldn’t risk shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting cold and frightened with his beer and sandwiches, for more than 14 hours. He crossed the primary approach corridor of LAX, where Trans World Airlines and Delta Airlines pilots radioed in reports of the strange sight.
Eventually he gathered the nerve to shoot a few balloons and slowly descended. The hanging tethers tangled and caught in a power line, blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood for 20 minutes. He climbed to safety and was promptly arrested by LAPD.
His efforts won him a $1,500 fine, a prize from the Bonehead Club of Dallas, the altitude record for gas-filled clustered balloons, and a Darwin Awards Honorable Mention. Can you imagine what first place must have been?
Please tell me, if your one of my readers, you have never done anything that stupid?
