In 1982, a truck driver named Larry Walters tied 42 helium weather balloons to a lawn chair in his backyard in Los Angeles. His plan was to float up a few hundred feet and enjoy the view, then shoot balloons with a pellet gun to come back down. Instead, he shot up to 16,000 feet and was spotted by two commercial airline pilots who radioed the tower to report a man in a lawn chair. He eventually descended, tangling his balloons in power lines and blacking out a Long Beach neighborhood. When asked why he did it, he said: "I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm."