Larry Walters was a lorry driver, but he had always wanted to fly. After leaving school, he wanted to become an Air Force pilot, but unfortunately, he was turned down because of his poor eyesight. So he had to make do with watching others fly the fighter jets that criss-crossed the skies over his backyard. As he sat there in his garden chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.
Then one day, Larry came across an advertisement in the local paper and realized there was a way of making his dreams come true. He went to a specialist store and bought forty-five weather balloons and several tanks of helium. These were not brightly-coloured party balloons, but large spheres measuring more than one metre when fully inflated. His plan was to float lazily into the sky, and spend the afternoon sunning himself 10 m above his girlfriend's garden before eventually coming back down to earth.
When he returned home, he attached the balloons to his garden chair, tied the chair to his car, and filled the balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks and took his air gun so that he could burst a few balloons when it was time to return to earth.
When his preparations were complete, Larry sat in his chair and cut the cord. But he made a mistake in his calculations and things did not turn out quite as he had planned. He did not float up as gently as he had expected: within seconds, he passed the 10 m altitude that he had hoped to reach, rising quickly to 30 m and then 300 m. He climbed and went on climbing until he finally levelled off at 3,000 m.
At that height, he did not want to risk shooting any of the balloons because he was afraid it might unbalance his aircraft and send him crashing to the ground. So he stayed up there among the clouds, sailing around for fourteen hours, desperately trying to come up with a solution to the problem of how to get back to earth.
Eventually, many hours later, he drifted into the main approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport. Fortunately, a Pan Am flight passed him and air traffic control was alerted. The pilot explained that he had just seen an armed man floating in a garden chair at 3,000 m just outside the plane. Understandably, the air traffic controller found this difficult to believe, but a few minutes later a Delta Airlines pilot called with the same message. Radar confirmed the existence of an unidentified flying object above the airport and the authorities sent for a Navy helicopter to investigate.
As night began to fall, offshore breezes began to blow Larry out to sea, and when the helicopter arrived, the wind from the propeller kept pushing his home-made aircraft further and further away. Eventually, they hovered several hundred metres above him and managed to drop down a line, with which they were able to pull him gradually back to safety.
As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was taken away by the police and charged with invading Los Angeles' International Airport airspace. But as he was being led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, 'Why did you do it?' Larry stopped, looked at the man and explained. 'I've been dreaming of flying for years. I just got tired of waiting'.
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