105 balloons put lawn chair pilot in air
BEND, Ore. - Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.
With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise — Couch headed into the Oregon sky.
Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.
"When you're a little kid and you're holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind," Couch 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 said. "This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It's just like that."
Couch is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters — who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.
It was Couch's second flight.
In September, he got off the ground for six hours. Like Walters, he used a BB gun to pop the balloons, but he went into a rapid descent and eventually parachuted to safety.
This time, he was better prepared. The balloons had a new configuration, so it was easier to reach up and release a bit of helium instead of simply cutting off a balloon.
He took off at 6:06 a.m. Saturday after kissing his wife, Susan, goodbye and petting his Chihuahua, Isabella. As he made about 25 miles an hour, a three-car caravan filled with friends, family and the dog followed him from below.
Couch said he could hear cattle and children, and he said he even passed through clouds.
"It was beautiful — beautiful," he told KTVZ-TV. He described the flight as mostly peaceful and serene, with occasional turbulence, like a hot-air balloon ride sitting down.
Couch decided to stop when he was down to a gallon of water and just eight pounds of ballast. Concerned about the rugged terrain outside La Grande, including Hells Canyon, he decided it was time to land.
He popped enough balloons to set the craft down, although he suffered rope burns. But after he jumped out, the wind grabbed his chair, with his video recorder, and the remaining balloons and swept them away. He's hoping to get them back some day.
Brandon Wilcox, owner of Professional Air, which charters and maintains planes at the Bend airport, said Thursday that Couch definitely did it. Wilcox said he flew a plane nearby while Couch traveled, and a passenger videotaped the flying lawn chair.
Whether Couch will take a third trip is up to his wife, and Susan Couch said she's thinking about saying no. But she said she was willing to go along with last weekend's trip.
"I know he'd be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind," she said. "This way, at least he's fulfilled his dream."
Monday, July 16, 2007
true freedom lies in your ability to choose your thoughts and how you feel
Written by Jeannette Maw
The 4th of July annual celebration reminds us not to take our freedom for granted. We're prompted to consciously acknowledge and appreciate the independence won years ago and to support our government's continuing efforts to maintain our citizen rights.
However, with many citizens at odds with our leaders, feeling misrepresented, unheard and deceived, some feel anything but gratitude for our unperceived freedoms. Frustration and disempowerment are sometimes more typical feelings for those who oppose the leadership of our government.
But true freedom isn't dependent on outside conditions; it doesn't require that particular circumstances be in place for us to feel peace. In fact, if we require certain situations to exist before we acknowledge freedom, we are anything but free.
True freedom lies within. Until we tap into that truth, we're at the mercy of the world around us for our peace of mind, joy and any other emotions we attach to liberty.
What is freedom?
The word "freedom" itself invites the idea of being able to do as we please. The dictionary definition includes "being exempt from external control or interference," "at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint," and "the state of political or national independence."
Many Americans - arguably the most privileged citizens to walk the planet - don't feel strongly connected to independence and liberty in their daily lives. We speak as if we're slaves to a job or life responsibilities or even time. We believe that without an abundance of time, money or health, we aren't free to live the lives we really want. And with those thoughts we would be right; we are enslaved. Not by our job or position in life, but by our thoughts of such.
True freedom lies in our ability to deliberately choose our thoughts and feelings. When we exercise that ability, we no longer require things "out there" to be a certain way to feel peace "in here." Our "feel good" comes from within. And it's there waiting for us whenever we choose to entertain it.
Developing the discipline to choose how we think and feel is where we meet true freedom. When we realize we don't have to have a certain amount of money in the bank, a particular brand of government in office, a certain health status, or whatever else we might condition our "feel good" on, we embrace authentic personal liberty.
Who knows it?
How many of us exercise this power of freedom? And how often? Do you regularly experience liberation from thoughts that otherwise hold you trapped, not just in painful feelings but in the reality created by those thoughts?
Whereas many across the globe consider the U.S. to be the epitome of independence and freedom, as long as we are stuck in fearful, angry thoughts directed toward terrorists, Republicans, environmentalists, corporations, Mormons, immigrants, employers, or whomever, we are anything but free.
Author Victor Frankl practiced his freedom of thought under the particularly challenging conditions of a Nazi concentration camp. In his book, "Man's Search For Meaning," Frankl shared his belief that we each have the freedom to discover what has meaning for us.
His death camp experience offers an extreme example of how it is possible to choose what we think and feel despite the conditions surrounding us. As we break that chain of relying on external circumstances to be happy or at peace, we are truly free.
Last week a friend spent a night in jail for destroying public property, after swatting at a street sign in a late night, Cosmopolitan-induced gleeful moment. Although he briefly argued the ridiculousness of not being free to have a happy moment in public or even to question officers without repercussion, he at least realized his ability to choose personal freedom once he was behind bars.
He could either be in jail as an ornery, insulted miscreant, or he could be in jail as a peaceful, go-with-the-flow cooperative citizen. He chose peaceful. And each time he tells the story, he has another opportunity to choose whether to be indignant and angry or to laugh at himself and consider himself better educated about police protocol.
He is always free to choose his perspective and can exercise or abdicate that power any time. As he does, he dramatically alters his experience and satisfaction with life. The same is true for each of us.
How to be free
Since the foundation of freedom lies in our power to choose thoughts and feelings, we can embrace that power by developing a discipline of conscious choice - releasing knee-jerk reactive thoughts that don't feel good and finding our way, one better-feeling thought after another, to more pleasant feelings.
If Dr. Frankl can do it, so can we.
As we practice conscious choice of thought, we no longer need the boss to acknowledge our contribution to feel good about our job. We don't have to get an anniversary present from our spouse to appreciate the relationship. We don't require six months of living expenses saved up in order to sleep well at night.
The additional beauty of this practice is that once we regularly spend time with more pleasant thoughts, we attract a more pleasant life. One where bosses offer generous acknowledgements, spouses treat us like gold, and money flows in abundance - which just turns out to be icing on the cake, since we didn't need any of that to enjoy life beforehand.
So next time you find yourself in a stressful conversation about the importance of patriotism, evils of terrorism, or whatever topic might inspire your negative feelings, remember your true freedom lies in your ability to choose your thoughts and how you feel. Instead of being stuck in anger or resentment, exercise your liberty to find your way to a better-feeling thought. Be picky about the thoughts you entertain.
Similarly, when you recognize you're resisting a situation or circumstance in life, use it as an opportunity to come back to your personal freedom. Remember you are free to choose how you perceive it and how you feel. As you do so, you'll find your sense of freedom increasing dramatically without anything else around you needing to change.
Our thoughts create our world. Until we consciously choose our thoughts, we are slaves to our perceptions of reality and are abandoning the freedom that is our human birthright. This holiday, celebrate your internal liberty to find your way to thoughts that create the world you want. Namaste.
Jeannette Maw is an Attraction Coach and founder of Good Vibe Coaching in Salt Lake City, with more deliberate creation musings on her blog at www.loaplayground.blogspot.com.
The 4th of July annual celebration reminds us not to take our freedom for granted. We're prompted to consciously acknowledge and appreciate the independence won years ago and to support our government's continuing efforts to maintain our citizen rights.
However, with many citizens at odds with our leaders, feeling misrepresented, unheard and deceived, some feel anything but gratitude for our unperceived freedoms. Frustration and disempowerment are sometimes more typical feelings for those who oppose the leadership of our government.
But true freedom isn't dependent on outside conditions; it doesn't require that particular circumstances be in place for us to feel peace. In fact, if we require certain situations to exist before we acknowledge freedom, we are anything but free.
True freedom lies within. Until we tap into that truth, we're at the mercy of the world around us for our peace of mind, joy and any other emotions we attach to liberty.
What is freedom?
The word "freedom" itself invites the idea of being able to do as we please. The dictionary definition includes "being exempt from external control or interference," "at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint," and "the state of political or national independence."
Many Americans - arguably the most privileged citizens to walk the planet - don't feel strongly connected to independence and liberty in their daily lives. We speak as if we're slaves to a job or life responsibilities or even time. We believe that without an abundance of time, money or health, we aren't free to live the lives we really want. And with those thoughts we would be right; we are enslaved. Not by our job or position in life, but by our thoughts of such.
True freedom lies in our ability to deliberately choose our thoughts and feelings. When we exercise that ability, we no longer require things "out there" to be a certain way to feel peace "in here." Our "feel good" comes from within. And it's there waiting for us whenever we choose to entertain it.
Developing the discipline to choose how we think and feel is where we meet true freedom. When we realize we don't have to have a certain amount of money in the bank, a particular brand of government in office, a certain health status, or whatever else we might condition our "feel good" on, we embrace authentic personal liberty.
Who knows it?
How many of us exercise this power of freedom? And how often? Do you regularly experience liberation from thoughts that otherwise hold you trapped, not just in painful feelings but in the reality created by those thoughts?
Whereas many across the globe consider the U.S. to be the epitome of independence and freedom, as long as we are stuck in fearful, angry thoughts directed toward terrorists, Republicans, environmentalists, corporations, Mormons, immigrants, employers, or whomever, we are anything but free.
Author Victor Frankl practiced his freedom of thought under the particularly challenging conditions of a Nazi concentration camp. In his book, "Man's Search For Meaning," Frankl shared his belief that we each have the freedom to discover what has meaning for us.
His death camp experience offers an extreme example of how it is possible to choose what we think and feel despite the conditions surrounding us. As we break that chain of relying on external circumstances to be happy or at peace, we are truly free.
Last week a friend spent a night in jail for destroying public property, after swatting at a street sign in a late night, Cosmopolitan-induced gleeful moment. Although he briefly argued the ridiculousness of not being free to have a happy moment in public or even to question officers without repercussion, he at least realized his ability to choose personal freedom once he was behind bars.
He could either be in jail as an ornery, insulted miscreant, or he could be in jail as a peaceful, go-with-the-flow cooperative citizen. He chose peaceful. And each time he tells the story, he has another opportunity to choose whether to be indignant and angry or to laugh at himself and consider himself better educated about police protocol.
He is always free to choose his perspective and can exercise or abdicate that power any time. As he does, he dramatically alters his experience and satisfaction with life. The same is true for each of us.
How to be free
Since the foundation of freedom lies in our power to choose thoughts and feelings, we can embrace that power by developing a discipline of conscious choice - releasing knee-jerk reactive thoughts that don't feel good and finding our way, one better-feeling thought after another, to more pleasant feelings.
If Dr. Frankl can do it, so can we.
As we practice conscious choice of thought, we no longer need the boss to acknowledge our contribution to feel good about our job. We don't have to get an anniversary present from our spouse to appreciate the relationship. We don't require six months of living expenses saved up in order to sleep well at night.
The additional beauty of this practice is that once we regularly spend time with more pleasant thoughts, we attract a more pleasant life. One where bosses offer generous acknowledgements, spouses treat us like gold, and money flows in abundance - which just turns out to be icing on the cake, since we didn't need any of that to enjoy life beforehand.
So next time you find yourself in a stressful conversation about the importance of patriotism, evils of terrorism, or whatever topic might inspire your negative feelings, remember your true freedom lies in your ability to choose your thoughts and how you feel. Instead of being stuck in anger or resentment, exercise your liberty to find your way to a better-feeling thought. Be picky about the thoughts you entertain.
Similarly, when you recognize you're resisting a situation or circumstance in life, use it as an opportunity to come back to your personal freedom. Remember you are free to choose how you perceive it and how you feel. As you do so, you'll find your sense of freedom increasing dramatically without anything else around you needing to change.
Our thoughts create our world. Until we consciously choose our thoughts, we are slaves to our perceptions of reality and are abandoning the freedom that is our human birthright. This holiday, celebrate your internal liberty to find your way to thoughts that create the world you want. Namaste.
Jeannette Maw is an Attraction Coach and founder of Good Vibe Coaching in Salt Lake City, with more deliberate creation musings on her blog at www.loaplayground.blogspot.com.
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