A service station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from Oregon to Montana in tandem lawn chairs suspended from party balloons made a hard landing after having to abort their flight because of thunderstorms.
Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight when they were forced to descend, coming down near a reservoir about 48km east of their starting point. But after they scrambled out of the contraption, it floated up again, flight organiser Mark Knowles said.
"They came down hard," Knowles said. "The craft went back up. It's sitting up in the sky right above us."
Earlier, about 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch's Shell service station. The duo safely cleared a two-storey motel, a coffee stand and a lamp post.
"The interesting thing is, anybody can do this," Couch, the veteran of several lawn chair balloon flights, said before the flight. "They don't have to sit on the couch thinking, 'I should have done it.' They can do it."
Lafta, a mountain climber and skydiver, said he had shared Couch's childhood dream of floating like a cloud.
"I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists," Lafta said. "We don't need just an army. We need ideology and to just have fun."
Volunteers filled 350 1.5m diameter red, white, blue and black balloons with helium and tied them to Couch's homemade tandem lawn chair rig. The balloons were arranged in bunches to represent the colours of the US and Iraqi flags. An American flag flew from the bottom of the framework supporting the chairs.
Just before lift-off, they had to ask children in the crowd to return four balloons to provide extra lift.
The rig included 360kg of ballast - red Kool-Aid in 150 litre barrels. Besides a GPS, navigation gear, satellite phone, oxygen, two-way radios, eight cameras, and parachutes, they were carrying two Red Ryder BB rifles and a pair of blowguns to shoot out enough balloons to come to earth.
"The landings are very tough," Couch said. "I don't think about the landings until I have to land. That's how I do it."
They had been expecting to float at 4572m to 5485m, where temperatures drop to near zero, and packed sleeping bags to stay warm.
Electronic gear was powered by a solar panel. A flare gun was tied on to the framework for emergencies. They also carried the ashes of a family friend to spread over the high desert.
Lance Schliep, an appliance repairman, helped Couch with the latest design, made from items bought at local hardware stores and junk from Couch's garage.
Couch said their biggest challenge was finding enough helium to fill the balloons. They sent as far as the Midwest for bottles. Each balloon that popped on inflation represented a US$50 ($63) loss, but Couch would not divulge the total cost.
The two men had hoped to fly through the night across the mountains of Idaho and touch down in southwestern Montana.
The flight was a warm-up for plans to fly a tandem lawn chair balloon rig in Baghdad in the future.
"My target is to inspire young people, especially in the Mideast," Lafta said.
"I want to tell them, 'I didn't give up. Keep standing. Smile. This is the way to defeat terrorists'."
Couch's first time up was in 2006, when he got 160km before the balloons started popping and he had to bail out.
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