The lorry driver who took to the skies in a lawn chair suspended from 42 helium ... trends now
It was probably just as well that lorry driver Larry Walters didn't tell the authorities about his travel plans. After all, aviation officials tend to take a dim view of unlicensed pilots soaring thousands of feet upwards into the path of passenger jets while sitting in a garden chair suspended from 42 helium balloons.
And so, having taken off from his fiancee's tiny back garden in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro one morning in July 1982, he rapidly disappeared from sight.
Lawnchair Larry, as he became known, was next spotted by airline pilots at 16,500 ft (more than three miles up) preparing to shoot his weather balloons with an air pistol so he could descend gradually to the ground. Or at least that was the plan.
The 33-year-old Vietnam War veteran had longed to become an air force pilot but could not because of his poor eyesight. However, after seeing a weather balloon hanging from a military surplus store when he was 13, he got an idea of how he could find another way to fly.
The enterprising or — depending on your point of view — utterly insane Walters had hoped to reach the Mojave Desert 250 miles to the north-east of LA but 'only' travelled 20 miles before landing in Long Beach, hitting power lines and causing a blackout.
Lorry driver Larry Walters, who became known as Lawnchair Larry, was spotted by airline pilots at 16,500 ft while sitting in a garden chair suspended from 42 helium balloons in 1982
Larry walks past a police car as he carries his lawn chair after crash landing from his balloon escapade in the sky
Now, the magnificent pilot and his terrifying flying machine are being celebrated in a new musical, 42 Balloons, that has opened at The Lowry theatre in Salford, Greater Manchester. Producer Andy Barnes calls the musical 'a very human story about dreams'.
He adds: 'It has elements that we have all experienced at one time, coupled with the most extraordinary ideas that, we as humans, come up with.' Or as Walters rather more succinctly put it at the time: 'A man can't just sit around.'
His mother, he admitted, was less charitable and 'thought maybe I was possessed by the devil, or perhaps post-Vietnam stress syndrome. She wanted me to see a psychiatrist.'
His unorthodox vessel consisted of an aluminium outdoor chair purchased from a department store for $109, 13 plastic gallon jugs of water for ballast, a parachute, a lifejacket, an altimeter, a Timex watch, a two-way radio, two litres of Coke, two torches as headlights, an air pistol, sandwiches, a road map of California, a compass and the 42 weather balloons, each 7 ft in diameter and with a volume of 33 cubic feet.
He didn't bother with a safety belt as the chair was tilted back 10 degrees so he didn't think he'd be tipped out of it.
His fiancee, Carol Van Deusen, financed most of the operation and suggested he launch from her back garden, as there was a hospital just down the road.
The pair, helped by a few friends — the other members of what Walters grandly called his 'ground crew' — inflated the balloons overnight and told suspicious police officers who inquired about the contraption that grew to 150ft in height that they were making a TV advert.
The chair, which Walters named Inspiration, was tethered by a nylon guy rope to the bumper of a friend's car outside the house. The balloons, attached to the chair by four ropes, were arranged in four tiers above the chair. Walters thought he would majestically ascend to just 100 ft, eat a leisurely sandwich and, all being well, keep going.
Apart from featuring in the 2009 animated Pixar film Up, cluster ballooning is now an extreme sport
Larry and his terrifying flying machine are being celebrated in a new musical, 42 Balloons, that has opened at The Lowry theatre in Salford, Greater Manchester
However, he had miscalculated — his craft was over-ballooned. When his ground crew released it, it shot up at a rate of 800 ft a minute, the force snapping the tethering rope and knocking off his glasses. His
