Why is it that these stories fascinate us so much? Or maybe it’s just me. I’m pretty easily entertained.
In the tradition of Larry Walters (one of my favorite subjects for sermon illustrations), another guy has taken to the skies in a lawnchair:
Last weekend, Bend gas station owner Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some drinks and snacks – and a parachute.Attached to the lawn chair were 105 balloons of various colors, each 4 feet around. Bundled together, the balloons rise three stories high.
Couch carried a global positioning system device, a two-way radio, a digital camcorder and a cell phone. He also had instruments to measure his altitude and speed and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as a ballast – he could turn a spigot, release water and rise.
Destination: Idaho.
He didn’t make it to Idaho, but he did make it 11,000 feet into the air, and almost 200 miles from home. So why did he do it?
“When you’re a little kid and you’re holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind,” he told the Bend Bulletin.
“When you’re laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them,” he told the Bulletin. “This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It’s just like that.”