Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Man Who Flew And Then Got Arrested - The Lawnchair Larry story

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Lawnchair Larry tied a bunch of balloons to a lawn chair, so he could fly.

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Well, this guy is about to find out. Now his name's Larry, and Larry's 33 and he's a little nutty. But he has a big dream. He really wants to fly. And one day he gets an idea of just how to do it. He's going to tie a bunch of balloons to a lawn chair and he'll fly that way. And he becomes obsessed with this idea, and he's willing to do whatever it takes to make his dream come true. So he gets help from his girlfriend, this woman, Carol. And so Carol purchases

45, 8 foot weather balloons, helium tanks, and other things that he needs to make his launch air into an aircraft. And she lets Larry use her backyard for launch. So she's all in. And so Larry, he goes and he attaches the balloons to his lawn chair and he packs up a few things he'll need like a pellet gun, a bottle of soda, a two-way radio and some milk jugs full of water. And his girlfriend Carol is and Larry's friend Ron plans to film the whole thing. So here's Larry's full plan. First, he's going to tether his chair to the bumper of a car. Then, before he takes off, he'll notify the FAA and local airports so that he doesn't get hit by an airplane.

And once his chair rises to 100 feet, his friends will then untether him and the winds will, in theory, carry him about 250 miles, flying from the San Pedro neighborhood all the way to the Mojave desert. And once he gets to the Mojave, he'll shoot some of the balloons with his pellet gun, and this will slowly lower his chair until he can land safely in the desert. And after he does all that, he will not only have achieved his dream, but he'll be renowned for his ingenuity, being the first person to ever fly with balloons attached to a lawn chair, and everyone will celebrate him as a hero, and he'll be so famous. Perfect plan. What could possibly go wrong? And so Larry gets in his chair, and he's ready for liftoff. Now,

Larry doesn't strap himself in. Oh no, I guess he doesn't believe he could possibly fall. But anyway, suddenly, pow, a strong gust of wind blows in, and it hits him, and the tether attached to his chair snaps like a gunshot. And Larry flies straight up into the air, and his chair keeps rising higher and higher and higher, way faster than any of them had anticipated, rising around 1,000 feet per minute. A thousand feet per minute. Now, to put that into perspective, the top floor of the Empire State,

building is about 1,250 feet tall. So his chair is rising almost an entire Empire State building per minute. Meanwhile, down on the ground, Carol and Ron are in panic mode. None of them expected his chair to go that high that quickly. Not to mention, Larry didn't notify the local airports. His chair took off before he got the opportunity to, so he's very much in danger of getting hit by a plane. Regardless, he isn't ready to give up. He's determined to achieve his job. He's determined to achieve his dream. And that is when two commercial airliners fly near, and the pilots can't believe what they see. And at least one of them radios to air traffic control, and they're like, there's some weirdo out here flying in a chair holding a pew-poo. And so a helicopter is dispatched to go

investigate. While Carol is still down on the ground, and she's freaking out, she's talking to Larry through his two-way radio, and she's like, that's enough. It's time to come down. But no, Larry keeps rising higher and higher. And now he's up around 16,000 feet high, which is roughly half as high as your commercial airliner would fly. So he's way up there. It's also really fucking cold at that altitude, about two degrees Fahrenheit. So his feet start to become numb from the cold, and he's struggling to breathe because the

air is so thin. And if Larry goes any higher, he'll probably run out of oxygen and die. Here's the thing though. As I said, he was never supposed to go this high. And if he pops any balloons at this height, it could throw his chair off balance and he could fall overboard. But he's got no other options. He has to take the risk before he passes out from lack of oxygen. So he grabs his pellet gun and he aims it and pop, pop, he starts shooting the balloons one by one.

When suddenly, oops, his chair tips and the pellet gun slips out of his hand and it falls overboard down to the ground. So now what's he going to do? Well, luckily, he shot enough balloons that the chair slowly starts to sink, and his altitude gets lower and lower and lower. And when his chair sinks low enough, he looks up and he notices he's now headed straight for some power lines. Man, this guy can't catch a break. And then, pow, he and his chair slam into the power lines breaking them, and this causes a whole ass blackout for the neighborhood below. But luckily, he doesn't get electrocuted. he actually survives and he finally drops down to the ground.

And in total, he only made it about 10 miles from where he started. And there, on the ground, he isn't renowned for his ingenuity or celebrated as a hero. Instead, he's treated as a guy who just committed a bunch of airspace violations. And so, bam, police arrest him. And they eventually do drop the charges against him. But it's not over. Because Larry's story is so absurd that it blows up. Everyone is talking about it. It's all over the news. People start calling him lawn chair Larry.

And he even gets invited on the David Letterman show. Please welcome Larry Walters. And Larry's flight later inspires a whole ass movie called Danny Deckchair. But anyway, ultimately Larry does make history as his lawn chair gets donated to the Smithsonian Museum, where to this day it is still on display. And to be fair, even though he almost died, he did achieve his dream. How does that feel having succeeded in achieving what you always want to do? I achieve inner peace.

I've achieved inner peace. I'm a happy person today. And 10 years later, Larry unfortunately shot himself and he died. And a huge shout out to leonardo.a.i for sponsoring this video. If you want to make really cool art for your videos or just for your life like this or like this, then sign up for Leonardo.a.i.