105 Balloons Put Man In Lawn Chair In The Air

On the weekend, Kent Couch in Oregon settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks and a parachute.

He attached 105 large helium balloons to his lawn chair and was ready to fly. With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, Couch headed into the sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came down in a farmer's field about 193 miles from home.

"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch tells a paper of his journey. "When you're laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them," he said. "This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It's just like that." Couch said he could hear cattle and children and even passed through clouds. "It was beautiful � beautiful."

He is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters � who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair.

Concerned about the rugged terrain coming up, including Hells Canyon, he decided it was time to land. And like Walters, Couch used a BB gun to pop the balloons to come back down.

"I know he'd be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind," the wife said of her husband's feat. "This way, at least he's fulfilled his dream."

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