Flying Cars and Chairs

Many years ago, on Art Bell’s late night radio show, I heard a story about a man living in the Los Angeles area who wanted to fly. Only he wasn’t a pilot and had no plans to be an airplane or helicopter passenger, either! No, instead he got a lawn chair and a bb gun. Then he tied several helium balloons to the chair and strapped himself into it with a belt. This individual then released his contraption with him in it. And it rose. And rose. And rose. And rose. Before too long, he was several thousand feet up in the air, drifting downwind for miles! I’m not sure how long this odyssey lasted, but this man finally began to use his bb gun to gradually bring the chair down by carefully shooting one balloon at a time. And from what I heard, he did successfully land! Have any of you heard of this incident? Or is it just an urban legend?

I don’t see why one would necessarily have to sit in a chair to perform this feat. It seems to me that one could rig up an apparatus on their back and attach the balloons to it, instead. Then, the experience would be more like parachute riding in reverse!

Sometimes I wonder why we aren’t living in that futuristic society predicted in the not-so-distant past, where, instead of being bound to the ground, people would be driving airborne cars instead. But then I look around me and see how people drive “on the ground” and am instantly shaken back into reality. The only way I see this “flying cars” system happening in the future is if the second-to-second control of the car is handled through computers, with the passengers more-or-less just sitting back and enjoying the ride. And I understand this technology is already available on the ground!