Talk About Leg Room: The 193-Mile Flight in a Lawn Chair
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 07.11.07 | 3:35 PM ET
Yes, on Saturday, Kent Crouch of Bend, Oregon kissed his wife goodbye, gave his Chihuahua a final pat and took off in a lawn chair attached to 105 helium balloons, according to an AP story. With three cars following him, Crouch flew 193 miles in nearly nine hours, passing through clouds and sailing above, among other things, cows and children. He starting popping balloons when his water supply ran low. He landed safely in a field near Union. “It was serene,” he reportedly told Good Morning America, “just like you’re on top of a cloud laying there.” He was flying in the helium contrails of Larry Walters, a Southern California man who took flight in a lawn chair in 1982. Walters became the subject of a story in George Plimpton’s The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair: And Other Excursions and Observations, excerpted in the New York Times.
Related on World Hum:
* Bring Your Tray Tables to the Upright Position and…Duck!
* It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s…a Flying Cruise Ship?
* The Critics: ‘The Happiest Man in the World’ by Alec Wilkinson
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Jim Benning is the cofounder and coeditor of World Hum.
