Who is Larry Walters? The Man Who Tied 42 Balloons to a Lawn Chair

Karry Walters, The Man Who Tied 42 Balloons to a Lawn Chair

I’ve had a lot of goals in my life.

Some of them worked out exactly the way I hoped; others didn’t.

But for me, whether I succeeded or not was only part of the story.

What mattered just as much was that I went for it.

That I took a chance on something that mattered to me.

Because the truth is, dreams rarely come with guarantees.

There’s no promise they’ll work out.

There’s no certainty they’ll lead where you think they will.

And maybe that’s just the point. 

At some point, you have to trust yourself enough to go for it. 

You have to be courageous enough to chase your dream, despite fear, or to take the first step before you have all the answers.

You have to be willing to pursue something not because success is guaranteed, but because it matters to you.

Because deep down, there are some dreams that are worth chasing simply because they’re yours.

Well…

That brings me to one of my favorite stories.

A story I believe gives one of the wildest lessons about pursuing a dream, no matter how “crazy” it sounds.

This is the story of a man named Larry Walters.

A man who tied 42 balloons to a lawn chair unexpectedly flew over 16,000 feet into the air and somehow managed to navigate his way safely back to Earth.

It was July 2, 1982, when a 33-year-old Los Angeles truck driver named Larry Walters strapped himself into an aluminum garden chair, attached 42 helium-filled weather balloons to it, and floated off into the California sky.

Larry’s idea was simple:

He planned to drift around his neighborhood at about 100 feet, enjoy the view, and then come back down.

Instead, the moment Larry sat down in his lawn chair, he shot up to 16,000 feet and drifted 20 miles from his backyard into the controlled airspace near LAX, one of the busiest airports in the United States. 

The Dream

Larry Walters was born in Los Angeles and grew up with one consuming passion: he wanted to fly.

When Larry was thirteen years old, he was in a military surplus store when he noticed several large weather balloons hanging from the ceiling. 

Looking up at those balloons, he found himself wondering whether enough of them could lift a person into the air, an idea that stayed with him for the next twenty years.

After graduating from Hollywood High School, he joined the military, hoping to train as a pilot. But the Air Force rejected him because of his poor eyesight. He was devastated.

Larry spent several years serving as a cook during the Vietnam War before returning home to work as a truck driver for a television production company in Los Angeles.

Every day, as Larry drove through the L.A. freeways, he would glance up at the planes flying across the sky, planes that reminded him of his dream.

Then one day, while sitting in an aluminum lawn chair in his girlfriend’s backyard, he decided he was finally going to do the thing he had dreamed about since he was thirteen years old.

He was going to fly! 

Larry spent considerable time preparing for what he called “Inspiration I” the name he gave to his lawn-chair aircraft.

The planning, it turns out, was far more thorough than the resulting chaos might suggest.

Together with his girlfriend, Carol, he purchased 45 large weather balloons from a military surplus store. 

Obtaining the helium, however, presented its own challenge.

To obtain enough helium, Larry and Carol drafted a fake letter stating that the balloons were needed for a television commercial, allowing them to purchase the helium from the California Toy Time Balloon Company.

His equipment list for the flight was surprisingly methodical.

He assembled a two-way radio, an altimeter, a hand compass, a flashlight with spare batteries, a medical kit, a pocketknife, eight plastic bottles of water to act as ballast, a package of beef jerky, a road map of California, a camera, two liters of Coca-Cola, and a BB gun for popping balloons when it was time to descend. He also brought a six-pack of beer and wore both a parachute and a life jacket.

The chair itself was a Sears lawn chair.

He attached the water jugs to the sides for stability and connected 42 of the 45 balloons in four grouped clusters, keeping three balloons as spares.

The plan was to ascend gradually while still tied to his Jeep by a rope, check the conditions, and only then release himself for a short, controlled flight.

The night before launch, curious police officers noticed them inflating an unusually large number of giant helium balloons, but Larry calmly waved them off, explaining they were filming a television commercial.

On the morning of July 2, 1982, in the backyard of his girlfriend Carol’s home, Larry strapped himself in, and the flight began.

The plan was to ascend slowly while tied to his Jeep by a rope, hover a few hundred feet above the ground, assess the situation, and then cut the rope before drifting away.

But things didn’t go according to plan.

Larry rose at nearly 800 feet per minute, a speed which instantly snapped the rope, shooting Larry into the sky.

What followed was not the serene flight he had imagined for twenty years.

Within minutes, Walters was above the clouds.

As he crossed into the airport’s airspace, commercial pilots flying out of LAX spotted him floating beneath his cluster of balloons.

One commercial pilot reportedly radioed air traffic control:

“This is TWA 231, level at 16,000 feet. We have a man in a chair attached to balloons, in our ten o’clock position, range five miles.”

At 15,000 feet, temperatures dropped sharply. Larry was now facing freezing conditions and dangerously reduced oxygen levels.

As planned, he began using his pellet gun to pop balloons and start a controlled descent. He successfully shot several before a gust of wind rocked the chair, sending the gun tumbling from his lap.

The pellet gun fell three miles toward the houses below.

Without it, Larry had no reliable way to descend.

He drifted upward to a peak of around 16,000 feet, entirely at the mercy of the wind, before eventually beginning to drift back down.

But now he faced a different problem.

He was descending too fast.

Realizing this, Walters dumped water from the water bottles strapped to the chair, reducing weight and slowing his descent.

Eventually, he came down over Long Beach, where the cables hanging beneath the chair became tangled in a power line.

The line broke, causing a 20-minute blackout in the surrounding neighborhood.

Remarkably, Larry was unharmed.

Still hanging from the cables, Larry climbed out of his lawn chair, down a stepladder, and back onto solid ground.

The entire flight had lasted roughly 45 minutes.

As for the chair…

After landing, Larry gave the chair away to a young boy who had watched the entire adventure unfold. Years later, the chair resurfaced and eventually found its way to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where it remains on permanent display today.

Now, as amusing as this story is, it contains an important message. 

Because Larry’s story reminds us of something we all need to hear from time to time:

You don’t have to be extraordinary to pursue an extraordinary dream.

You don’t need permission.

You don’t need to have everything figured out.

And you certainly don’t need everyone else to understand what you’re doing.

You simply need the courage to begin.

Now, before anyone starts attaching weather balloons to lawn chairs, let me be clear: I’m not encouraging anyone to repeat what Larry did.

But I am encouraging you to learn from it.

Because every one of us has something we’ve thought about doing.

Something we’ve wanted to pursue.

A goal.

A dream.

An idea.

A business.

A project.

A new chapter in life.

And often the thing that stops us isn’t a lack of ability.

It’s a lack of action.

We wait.

We overthink.

We tell ourselves we’ll start next year.

Or when conditions are better.

Or when we feel more ready.

Meanwhile, the dream quietly waits.

Larry carried his dream for twenty years.

Then one day, he decided he was done wondering.

He was going to find out.

And whether his flight was brilliant, crazy, reckless, or inspiring depends on who you ask.

But one thing is undeniable:

He went for it.

And maybe that’s the real lesson.

Not that every dream will work out perfectly.

Not that every dream will succeed.

But there is something deeply fulfilling about having the courage to pursue the things that matter to you.

Because one day, many years from now, you’ll probably care a lot less about the things that didn’t work out.

But you’ll always remember the dreams you were brave enough to chase.

So if there’s something you’ve been thinking about…

Something you’ve been putting off…

Something you’ve been telling yourself you’ll do “someday”…

Maybe this is your reminder.

Take the first step.

Because dreams rarely come true sitting on the runway.

They come alive when we finally decide to take off.

Love,