Bend balloonists have rough landing; craft takes off

A Bend gas station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from Oregon to Montana in tandem lawn chairs suspended from party balloons made a hard landing Saturday after aborting their flight due to thunderstorms – but their craft kept flying.

Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight when they descended, coming down near the community of Post, about 30 miles east of their starting point. But after they scrambled out of the contraption, it floated away, flight organizer Mark Knowles said.

“They came down hard,” Knowles said by cellphone. “The craft went back up. It’s sitting up in the sky right above us.”

A flight website tracker showed it continuing east across Oregon.

Knowles said the balloonists were pelted by hail and snow and buffeted by turbulence before reaching the ground, but they were not injured.

“Everybody is walking around,” he said.

Knowles said he did not know yet how they would recover the craft, or whether they might try again. “I think they need a little time to relax,” he said. “The landing was very intense.”

But NewsChannel 21 heard Saturday night from a rancher 8 miles out of the small town of Post who said he’d found the lawn chairs and wanted to return them.

Earlier Saturday, about 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch’s Shell gas station in Bend.

Volunteers had filled 350 5-foot diameter red, white, blue and black balloons with helium and tied them to Couch’s homemade tandem lawn chair rig.

“There’s no purer way of floating that I know of in mankind yet, then to sit up there in the elements at 15,000 to 18,000 feet,” Couch told NewsChannel 21. “And just float right along with the clouds.

“It’s an incredible experience. You can set a Kleenex on your lap — it doesn’t blow off. You can hear a dog bark at 15,000 (feet), it just bounces off the earth. It’s a beautiful feeling. It just feels like you would imagine if you were floating through the sky on a little puff cloud — that’s the experience we get. It’s an addictive experience.”

The balloons were arranged in bunches to represent the colors of the U.S. and Iraqi flags. An American flag flew from the bottom of the framework supporting the chairs.

The duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a coffee stand and a light post, then floated about 30 miles north. Winds pushed them south before sending them east, the direction they wanted to go.

But thunderstorms in the region forced them to abort the flight, descending from an altitude of about 10,000 feet, Knowles said.

Before the flight, Couch said landing was the scariest part of his several lawn chair balloon flights. He descends by shooting out balloons with his BB rifle. His rig got away from him once, but finally came down.

“It takes six months after you land for your brain to get over the fear and just the emotions,” he said.

The two men had hoped to fly through the night across the mountains of Idaho and touch down Sunday morning in southwestern Montana. Because they expected to float at an altitude of 15,000-18,000 feet, where temperatures drop to near zero, they packed sleeping bags.

Their rig included 800 pounds of ballast – red Kool-Aid in 40-gallon barrels. Other than a GPS, navigation gear, satellite phone, oxygen, two-way radios, eight cameras, and parachutes, they were carrying two Red Ryder BB rifles and a pair of blowguns to shoot out enough balloons to land when the time is right.

Electronic gear was powered by a solar panel. A flare gun was tied to the framework for emergencies. They also carried the ashes of a family friend to spread over the high desert.

Lance Schliep, an appliance repairman, helped Couch with the latest design, made entirely from items bought at hardware stores and junk from Couch’s garage.

“It’s about as redneck as you can get,” Couch said.

Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he shared Couch’s childhood dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Couch an email two winters ago after reading about Couch’s earlier flights.

The flight was a warm-up for plans to fly a tandem lawn chair balloon rig in Baghdad sometime in the future.

“My target is to inspire young people, especially in the Mideast,” Lafta said. “I want to tell them, `I didn’t give up. Keep standing. Smile. This is the way to defeat terrorists.'”

Couch said receiving Lafta’s email during the winter, at a time he was bored, inspired him to go aloft again.

“I never really thought I would do it again,” Couch said. “I thought I had had enough excitement.

“I started thinking, it sounds fun.”

They planned to fly over Iraq last year, but ran into problems getting permission from the government.

Couch has said he was inspired by a TV show about the 1982 lawn chair flight over Los Angeles by truck driver Larry Walters, who gained urban myth immortality.

Couch’s first time up was in 2006, when he flew a distance of 99 miles before the balloons started popping. In 2007, he flew 193 miles before running low on helium and landing in the sagebrush of Eastern Oregon.

In 2008, things went more smoothly. After lifting off at dawn July 5 with the help of volunteers, he floated at 35 mph across the high desert, reaching his goal of crossing the Idaho border. That’s when he pulled out his trusty BB rifle and shot out enough balloons to land in a pasture outside the farming community of Cambridge, Idaho.

Couch was at it again in 2010, racing another lawn chair balloonist in a flight that went about 70 miles.

To see Saturday’s flight path or learn more, visit http://www.couchballoons.com/