A zany Bendite

There are two people in what are essentially lawn chairs fastened to a fairly elaborate tubular frame floating along right over the top of my property just a little while ago. The contraption is held aloft by helium ballons. The dudes on board have a bunch of water ballast in plastic tanks they can release to lose weight/gain altitude, and they have a daisy BB rifle (and blow guns & darts for backup) to deflate balloons to lose lift/descend. Solar panels, GPS, cell phone...yada yada yada.

The guy in charge is named Ken Couch. I've met him, he owns a really nice Shell station w/minimart about 4 miles from my house, which I patronize regularly (always good prices on beer ). Ken has done this stunt solo a number of times. Once he drifted clear over into Idaho. This is the maiden flight for the tandem craft. He just goes up, goes wherever the wind takes him and stays up there as long as he can. Of course there's a chase crew on the ground trying to follow the thing. I'm not standing in line for a ticket to ride with him. Rick

Oh, I don't think we can blame it on either our water or our air out here.

Well, let's hope some other crazy bendite doesn't take out a bendetta on him and start popping balloons.

That's redundant.

They wanted to float overnight to Montana. They never made it out of Oregon...and it was, in fact, a thunderstorm that brought them down way before they reached their goal.