From mowgli@sprawl.com Sat Apr 8 21:30:03 1995 Received: from mail.sprawl.com ([198.30.122.1]) by news.cis.ohio-state.edu (8.6.8.1/8.6.4) with SMTP id VAA22068 for ; Sat, 8 Apr 1995 21:29:58 -0400 Received: by mail.sprawl.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #10) id m0rxlor-0000YbC; Sat, 8 Apr 95 21:29 EDT Message-Id: From: mowgli@sprawl.com (Mowgli C. Assor) Subject: don't make fun of sears products [Forward] To: frank@cis.ohio-state.edu Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 21:29:40 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24alpha3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 3706 Status: R >From The Fingers Of Charlie Smith : >From infinet.com!n8emr!elektro!elektro!charlie Fri Apr 7 18:54:42 1995 Message-Id: From: charlie (Charlie Smith) Subject: don't make fun of sears products To: Mark.Lynch@f5000.n226.z1.fidonet.org (Mark Lynch), MVSX09A@prodigy.com (Daniel B Perry), wilson@eagle.eng.ohio-state.edu (Ralph Wilson), No1cpa@aol.com (Dave Washburn), Bob=Vieth%BioMed%CHI@Aloha.chi.Ohio-State.edu (Bob Vieth), 72662.2763@CompuServe.COM (Steve Currie), rmcgurk@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Dick McGurk), bshonebarger@dsac.dla.mil (Betty Shonebarger), keith_green@central.epa.ohio.gov (Keith Green), arnie@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Arnie Skurow), Bcrosgrove@aol.com (Brian Crosgrove), JJofVA@aol.com (Jim Johnson) Date: Fri, 7 Apr 95 17:14:00 EDT Cc: charlie (Charlie Smith) Origination: elektro - Interactive i386 Version 3.0 Timezone: It's 6 hours east of Nome, Alaska! X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4dev PL62] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 2365 Sender: charlie > >(UPI) LONG BEACH, Calif. -- >Look, up in the sky. Is it a bird, a plane, the space shuttle? No. >It's Larry Walters at 16,000 feet in his lawn chair. > >Walters, 33, a truck driver, spent nearly two hours in the air Friday >in an aluminum lawn chair suspended from a 50-foot cable attached to >45 helium-filled weather balloons. > >Among other things, he threw a scare into a couple of airline pilots >who happened across the path of his weird flying contraption. > >"I know it sounds strange but it's true," said a Long Beach police >officer. "The guy just filled up some balloons with helium, strapped >on a parachute, grabbed a BB gun and took off." > >But everything didn't go as planned and Walters had a few dicey moments >as he started getting numb in the cold atmosphere at 16,000 feet and >decided to descend -- which he accomplished by popping some of the >balloons with the BB gun. As he neared the ground he saw power lines. > >"That's when I got scared," he said. "Those things can fry you." > >He didn't get fried, the balloons draped themselves across the wires, >leaving Walters dangling in his chair a few feet off the ground and he >dropped to earth. The landing knocked out power in the neighborhood >for 20 minutes. > >"I have fulfilled my 20-year dream," said Walters, a truck driver for >a company that makes TV commercials. "I'm staying on the ground. I >proved to myself that the thing works." > >In addition to the BB gun and the parachute, Walter carried several >one-gallon water jugs for ballast, a life vest and a CB radio. > >"But the best piece of equipment was the lawn chair," Walters said. >"It was a Sears. It was extremely comfortable." > >Walters told authorities he was trying to drift to the Mojave Desert, >site of Sunday's scheduled space shuttle Columbia landing, but the >winds didn't cooperate. > >"I wasn't trying to upstage the space shuttle," Walters said. "I >would have landed well away from there. I just wanted to lay back and >enjoy it all, but I had to do something when my toes started getting >numb." > >Police said they probably would not file charges against Walters. But >the Federal Aviation Administration was investigating, mainly because >of the scare Walters gave the airline pilots who came across him at >16,000 feet in his flying lawn chair. > >------- End of Forwarded Message > > -- Address: mowgli@ace.sprawl.com (Mowgli Assor in pseudo-quasi-real life) "Too many lonely hearts in the real world. Too many lonely nights in the real world. Too many fools who don't think twice, too many ways to pay the price. Don't wanna live my life in the real world." - The Alan Parsons Project