Walters is the 33-year-old North Hollywood truck driver who went for an aerial journey two months ago from San Pedro seated in a lawn chair. He was able to rise to a height of 16,000 feet because he had 42 helium-filled balloons attached to the chair. The wind sent him to Long Beach and to a landing – safe, it turned out – in some power lines.
Walter’s method of reducing altitude involved plunking, and breaking, balloons with a pellet gun.
One thing the expedition lacked was a publicist.
Walters’ exploit might never have gotten nationwide, even worldwide, publicity had not an editorial employee of the San Pedro News Pilot newspaper been looking out the window of the newspaper office and spotted him as he drifted by.
I like to think this may have been a columnist. We columnists spend a lot of time gazing out windows while chewing on pencils.
I’m sure that if a lawn chair drifted across my field of vision, I would immediately alert the city desk.
The FAA has been pondering what, if anything, to do with Walters for impinging on air lanes reserved for airplanes. One thing they can’t do is revoke his license to fly. He has none.
Although he has said that he will not try the flight again, “even for a million dollars,” it now turns out that he might.
Walters claims a group of San Diego businessmen have offered him a “substantial sum” to repeat the performance. One of their stipulations relates to the name he is to give to the lawn chair.
“He named the first “Inspiration I.” The San Diego businessmen want the second called “The Spirit of San Diego.”
You wonder if this is in retaliation for the name of Charles Lindbergh’s plane. It was built at Ryan Aircraft Co. in San Diego but named the “Spirit of St. Louis.”
Surveying my own lawn chairs, I realized that none have names, or deserve them. They are, in fact, a fairly sorry lot. The metal is corroding in places on some, and others have their webbing frayed.
I undertook to make repairs, but the only webbing in the patio section of my market was brown. Alternating green and brown stripes is not a color scheme with much eye appeal.
Affixing the webbing to the chair has caused me some problems. I have thought of buying one of those pop rivet tools for the purpose, but am unsure what size is required.
One of my chairs has the reputation of folding up at inopportune moments, depositing the occupant on the lawn. If I were to go aloft, I would remember not to use that one.
And if I were to ascend in one of my chairs, I wouldn’t want to rise to any 16,000 feet. The limit of my ambition is to gain an altitude approximately the level of the top of the garage. High enough to impress the neighbors, low enough for a relatively safe tumble if anything went wrong.
This mode of flight may well be the ultimate in what old-time aviators refer to as ‘flying by the seat of one’s pants.’
