Men fly in balloon chair 10,000 feet over Oregon

Iraqi adventurer Fareed Lafta, right, and Bend, Ore., gas station owner Kent Couch lift off Saturday, July 14, 2012, from Couch’s gas station in Bend, Ore. (AP)

Two men who took a short ride over Oregon in a pair of
lawn chairs tied to 350 balloons say the sensation of
floating near 10,000 feet is pretty fabulous.

“It’s got to be as close to floating on a cloud as one
could ever experience,” says Kent Couch, who flew with
friend Fareed Lafta in a 30 mile flight that was cut short
for thunderstorms.

Couch and Lafta were about seven hours into their flight
Saturday when they were forced to descend.

“I made it up and down safely, and that was a success,”
Couch tells 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross and Burbank Show.

After takeoff, the duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a
coffee stand and a light post, then floated about 30 miles
north.

Watch lawn chair balloon craft takeoff:

Winds pushed them south before sending them east, the
direction they wanted to go. But thunderstorms in the
region forced them to abort the flight.

“We ran into the worst turbulence ever on this trip,” says
Couch. “There was some kind of turbulence that was just
putting the squeeze on the balloons. We lost a bunch of
balloons within seconds.”

The pair was outfitted with parachutes, in case they had
to bail. Lafta, an avid skydiver with over 5,000 jumps,
was apparently ready to abandon ship as things got
bumpier, but Couch, an inexperienced jumper, asked his
friend to hold tight a little bit longer.

The duo eventually came to a hard landing in the aircraft
in central Oregon.
The unmanned balloon chairs returned to flight after the
pilots scrambled out. A flight website tracker showed the
balloons continuing east across Oregon.

The pair was attempting to fly from Oregon to Montana,
managing their flight by moderating lift versus weight on
the craft.

“I think we ended up with 1540 lbs of lift and right at
1480 lbs of weight. We put ourselves on there, and then we
put a bunch of water on there in jugs, that we drained
slowly that we could use to pull us back up every time we
drop down. All you do is let out water if you want to go
up and pop balloons if you want to come down,” says Couch.
“That’s how you steer.”

Saturday’s flight wasn’t the first for Couch, who seems to
be a pretty big fan of the unique ride.

“It’s just like sitting out on your back porch. You hardly
get any feelings of wind or anything, because you’re
moving with the wind…There’s no noise. You’re just
sitting there,” says Couch. “It’s a fabulous feeling.”

This won’t be the last flight for the two friends. Couch
and Lafta have plans to fly a balloon rig over Baghdad
sometime in the future.

“It’s a great opportunity to kind of bring the countries
together,” says Couch.

Lafta, who is from Iraq, hopes their planned flight will
send a message.

“How to defeat the terrorists is sometimes by force maybe,
but sometimes by ideology because then we are not
stopping. We will not give up. We will survive.”

Listen to Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta discuss trip:

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
The
Associated Press contributed to this report.