A Canadian man with a harebrained scheme for flying actually got himself up in the air Sunday using a lawn chair, 120 large balloons and $12,000 (Canadian) worth of helium. He ended up with a broken foot and a pile of legal trouble.
Daniel Boria told the Toronto Star, “I was sitting in a lawn chair looking down through the clouds at 747 airplanes and looking up to a cluster of helium balloons."
You can watch a video of his liftoff here, but the audio track contains a bunch of obscenities from a delighted onlooker.
His plan was to skydive into the Calgary Stampede, the annual rodeo and festival held in Calgary, Alberta, as a marketing stunt for his environmentally friendly cleaning company, All Clean Natural. But he abandoned that idea once he was airborne. As he described it, "I rose to a certain altitude and the winds got pretty intense. I was somersaulting out the chair and it felt like minus 30. I watched below as the Stampede and my dream drifted away.” He crash-landed several miles away.
Calgary police charged Boria with mischief causing danger to life, and federal charges are likely to follow. Boria seemed shocked by the outcome. “I did anticipate they would be a little upset. It’s already worse than I thought it would be.”
Daniel Boria told the Toronto Star, “I was sitting in a lawn chair looking down through the clouds at 747 airplanes and looking up to a cluster of helium balloons."
You can watch a video of his liftoff here, but the audio track contains a bunch of obscenities from a delighted onlooker.
His plan was to skydive into the Calgary Stampede, the annual rodeo and festival held in Calgary, Alberta, as a marketing stunt for his environmentally friendly cleaning company, All Clean Natural. But he abandoned that idea once he was airborne. As he described it, "I rose to a certain altitude and the winds got pretty intense. I was somersaulting out the chair and it felt like minus 30. I watched below as the Stampede and my dream drifted away.” He crash-landed several miles away.
Calgary police charged Boria with mischief causing danger to life, and federal charges are likely to follow. Boria seemed shocked by the outcome. “I did anticipate they would be a little upset. It’s already worse than I thought it would be.”