North Powder

Decades later, on July seven, two thousand and seven, a forty-seven-year-old gas station owner named Kent Couch from Bend, Oregon, successfully flew an astonishing two hundred and forty miles in his own custom lawn chair.

Couch used a hundred and five large helium balloons and seventy-five liters of water ballast to cruise at an average speed of twenty-two miles per hour, utilizing a BB gun to pop balloons for a controlled landing near North Powder, Oregon.

Couch repeated the feat on July five, two thousand and eight, fulfilling his ultimate dream of interstate flight by landing safely in western Idaho after a nine-hour, twelve-minute journey.

Other cluster ballooning stories ended far more terribly.