Oregon man prepares to pilot lawn chair over Baghdad [View All]

Source: LA Times

Some men see lawn chairs in the sky and ask, "Why?" Some, though, imagine attaching the chairs to hundreds of balloons, strapping themselves in the seat, donning oxygen masks and flying straight over Baghdad.

Kent Couch, who runs a gas station in Bend, Ore., is such a man. Couch boarded a flight to the Middle East on Thursday, setting out on an adventure that involves becoming the first lawn chair balloonist to traverse the now-more-or-less peaceful skies over Iraq -- and raise money for Iraqi children.

"Americans and Iraqi civilians working together to accomplish a goal, to do a dream," Couch told the Associated Pressbefore his rather traditional passenger jet liftoff from Medford, Ore.

Couch plans to join Iraqi extreme sport enthusiast Fareed Lafta, who has said he hopes (later) to become Iraq's first man in space. The two men are scheduled to lift off in tandem Nov. 15 from Baghdad's Green Zone on lawn chairs fitted with some 300 balloons and soar over Iraq at 25,000 feet for 24 hours -- enough to set a new world record in the arcane field of cluster ballooning.


Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/11/lawn-chair-balloon-baghdad-iraq.html

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