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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Patricia Mason <pmason@ee.net
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 07:35:00 -0500
Fwd Date: Mon, 10 Mar 1997 09:22:23 -0500
Subject: Unidentified Floating Object!


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From:	 (ALZN26A) SUSANN MCCLEMENT
Subject:	 FW: Darwin Awards
Date:	 03/08
Time:	 02:30 PM

===============================================

You'll recall a Darwin award from not too long ago where a guy
decided to strap a cargo plane rocket booster to his car to see
how fast it would go, and ended up hitting a cliff several
hundred feet in the air.

Here's one more.....

     This story was clipped from the recent Darwin awards, which
people get for doing something incredibly stupid. These are 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 backyard.  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!"

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