WhatFinger

. . . "he was at cloud level,' in a freaking lawn chair.

Someone's seen the movie 'Up' a few too many times, but holy crap . . .

By Dan Calabrese ——--July 7, 2015

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Dude, come on. You do know that Up was a movie, right? An animated movie, dude. You can't tie a hundred helium balloons together and use them to go flying. This is real life. It doesn't work that way, dude. You're not getting up in the air sitting in a lawn chair you bought for $20 at the corner store, and you're not going flying, so just forget about this whole thing and . . . holy crap! And sure enough, up went 26-year-old Daniel Boria of Calgary, all the way to what was described as "cloud level" at one point. And he did all this as a publicity stunt to promote his cleaning products company. I kid you not.
Of course, this is Canada, where they'll prosecute you if you preach the Gospel, so you have to know that if you do something like this they're going to find a reason to arrest you. The reason? Hey! That chair was going to come down eventually and it might fall on someone's head!
"I don't think any publicity stunt is worth your life, nor obviously the life or property of somebody else," said Insp. Kyle Grant. The charge of mischief is related to the lawn chair, which could cause damage or hurt someone when the balloons pop and it falls to the ground, said Grant. He expects more charges will be laid under the federal Aeronautics Act. "I think he will end up out-of-pocket quite a bit. It probably would have been cheaper to get a billboard," he said. "I know that the courts won't look upon this with any sort of jocularity. When you are taking people's safety into account, especially when you are talking about the Stampede — hundreds of thousands of people who are on the grounds in a given day — that's not something that any justice will take lightly at all." Lots of things could have gone wrong, he said. "I don't want other people to try and emulate this because somebody is going to get hurt."
The thing about the chair falling out of the sky is silly, but I do think the cops have a bit more of a point when it comes to the aeronautics concern. There's a reason air traffic control is so meticulous about making sure air spaces are clear, and a guy floating with 110 brightly colored balloons is going to freak out any incoming airline pilots if nothing else. He's a folk hero now. He's the villain of the century if he causes a plane to crash. When I first saw the story, it didn't occur to me that he would have brought a parachute up there with him. I wondered how he thought he was going to get down. Strategically pop selected balloons until you're gently floating to the ground? It turns out there were balloons popping all right, and it scared the crap out of him:
"At one point I was looking up at the balloons, they were popping, the chair was shaking and I was looking down at my feet dangling through the clouds at a 747 flight taking off and a few landing," he said. "It was incredible. It was the most surreal experience you can ever imagine. I was just by myself on a $20 lawn chair up in the sky above the clouds."
I seriously hope this isn't another one of those Steve Fausset types who gets it in his head that his main role in life is to be an "adventurer" heading on these wild excursions just because he can (and because it gets him attention). As much as I admire a guy who thumbs his nose at convention and does what he wants to do, there has to be a point to it somewhere. Then again, if it was to get himself attention, I guess I'm giving it to him, aren't I?

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Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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