BEND, Ore. - An Oregon gas station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from Central Oregon to Montana in tandem lawn chairs suspended from party balloons made a hard landing Saturday after having to abort their flight due to thunderstorms - but their craft kept flying.
Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight when they were forced to descend, coming down near a reservoir about 30 miles east of their starting point. But after they scrambled out of the contraption, it floated up again, flight organizer Mark Knowles said.
"They came down hard," Knowles said by cellphone. "The craft went back up. It's sitting up in the sky right above us."
Earlier Saturday, about 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch's Shell gas station in Bend.
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Volunteers had filled 350 5-foot 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 colors of the U.S. and Iraqi flags. An American flag flew from the bottom of the framework supporting the chairs.
The duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a coffee stand and a light post, then floated about 30 miles north. Winds pushed them back to the south before sending them to the east, the direction they wanted to go.
But thunderstorms gathering in the region forced them to abort the flight, descending from an altitude of about 10,000 feet, Knowles said.
Before the flight, Couch said landing was the scariest part of his several lawn chair balloon flights.
"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."
The two men had hoped to fly through the night across the mountains of Idaho and touch down Sunday morning somewhere in southwestern Montana.
Expecting to float at 15,000-18,000 feet, where temperatures drop to near zero, they packed sleeping bags to stay warm.
