May 29, 2025 • 13 mins
On the Thursday May 29, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty One More Thing Podcast features...
- The tale of Lawnchair Larry's epic flight!
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's Chinese for? Oh crap, it's one more thing. I'm
strong and getty. One more thing. Whatever it is, I'm
sure this paragliders said it as he almost equaled the
world record for how high you go in the sky
(00:23):
paragliding or without oxygen or not motorized plane or whatever. Anyway,
he was a paraglider who almost equaled the world record
at twenty eight thousand feet. Jeez, holy cow. Really yeah,
that's really really high. By accident, he was inspecting his
(00:43):
gear on the ground when an updraft took him on
an uncontrollable ascent five miles into the clouds.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's astonishing.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Uh yeah, he could. Well, I'll just read it as
it says it here. He was conducting a routine test
of his paragliding equipment there in China when the draft
hit him on the ground. I had just bought a
second hand paragliding harness and wanted to test it, so
(01:17):
I was conducting ground parachute practices. The wind suddenly picked
up and lifted me into the air. I tried to
land as soon as possible, but I failed. Explaining that
he got carried even higher by a wind from a
cloud system that just happened to come through, and he
ended up more than five miles above the ground, which
(01:39):
is where commercial airlines fly.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Given the reality of life on Earth or probably any
other planet, which is that things fall downward like five
zillion to one, this guy was the one. He got
lifted upward and was thinking. Ah.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
He said. The scariest moment was when his parachute plunged
headfirst toward the Earth. That was the scariest moment. Is said,
that would be a very scary moment. Yes, but he
managed to write himself before emerging from the cloud system,
getting his bearings and then landed the thing. I have
a feeling you know where this is leading, as we
have talked about this many times throughout our radio career.
(02:21):
But I couldn't help but revisit lawn Chair Larry, one
of our favorite stories are one of the most famous
things that's ever happened. There have been movies made about it.
He was on David Letterman.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
He's the guy that in Night Way, I did that
I'd be poopy pants.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Paul soiled himself. Sam Larry Walters in nineteen eighty two
attached forty two helium balloons to a regular lawn chair.
He went to an army surplus store and bought a
bunch of big thick balloons, filled them with helium, attached
(03:00):
him to the lawn chair he purchased at Sears and
similar to this paraglider guy in China, not intending to
at that moment take off, the strap broke and he
went up into the sky very very quickly, like within moments.
He was at sixteen thousand.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Feet, which is going to pass out just thinking, which.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Is three miles up. He was planning to go up
into the air, obviously, he didn't think he would go
that high. He strapped himself into the chair in the
backyard of his home in San Pedro, California. He took
a pellet gun, a Cbee radio, sandwiches, two liters of
(03:42):
Coca Cola, a six pack of beer, and a camera. Wow,
he wasn't sure.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I don't know if I'm in the mood to drink tonight.
I'll bring some beer, but some soft drinks too, something.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
To wash down my sandwiches. His plan was to just
go kind of high and get some pictures of the neighborhood,
and that's sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But sandos and a variety of beverages.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
That's weird. When the cord that tied his lawn chair
to his jeep broke prematurely, his lawn chair shot straight
up almost immediately. He was at sixteen thousand feet three
miles in the air. He was spotted by two commercial airliners.
He slowly drifted over a long beach. The entire flight
lasted about forty five minutes before he started to oh,
(04:29):
this is how it happened. After forty five minutes in
the sky, he came up with the idea. He had
his pellet gun with him, so he shot several balloons
with the pellet gun, taking care not to unbalance the
load so he would tip out point. But then he asked.
But then he accidentally dropped his pellet gun over the side.
No dang its seat of a gun that was working
(04:49):
so good. Despite taking a camera, he did not take
any photos. He was probably distracted by the impending doom.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
He just tell you what, Honestly, I got a fear
of falling or heights or whatever it is to be
able to unclamp my arms from the chair from the
arms of the I'm sorry, unclamp my hands from the
arms of the chair to even grasp the gun to
shoot out, I mean, cause you probably had to cock
it so we had to take both hands off. That's
(05:21):
an amazing act to me right there. Yeah, I don't
have a sphere of heights. It would be damn scary, obviously,
But I wonder forty five minutes that's a long time.
You might acclimate after a certain amount of time, like okay,
here we are, what am I gonna do? Yeah, tentatively
take one hand off, then the other, and you're like, well,
I'm just floating here, so right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Before I get back to the story. The scariest thing
like in that line that I ever did. Do you
remember how high I climbed on that ladder on the
fire truck. Remember they put that ladder straight up in
the air, not up against anything. If it had been
up against a building or something, it had been one thing.
But it was just up in the air, and I
climbed to the top of it. It was really really high.
(06:02):
That was pretty that one was. It was like hard
to make my hands move from rung to rung when
I got a pie.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I'd have rather been shot if they'd forced me
at gunpoint. How to said, shoot me.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So back to lawn chair, Larry and his sears lawn
chair three miles in the air, so he drops his
pellet gun despite having Kiken. Okay, he descended slowly until
the balloons got caught up in some power lines. The
power line broke, causing a twenty minute electricity blackout in
the town there still in California, and then he landed unharmed,
(06:35):
which is just miraculous. I mean, between the you're in
a lawn chair with helium balloons, just plummeting to your death,
then getting caught up in the electric lines, which obviously
all kinds of bad things could have happened, right, he
ends up tumbling a few feet and being fine.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
You'd think I outran a lion, and now essentially I'm
going to well, it's just no, no, you overcame all
the odds and then there you are twenty five feet
in the air and you're gonna die. That No, that's
too much irony.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
The aftermath is kind of interesting also. Walters was immediately
arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department,
which is where he landed. We know one person was
quoted at the time of saying we know he broke
some part of the Federal Aviation Act. As soon as
we decide which part it is, some type of charge
will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd
(07:27):
suspend that, but he doesn't. He was initially fined a
lawn chair pilot stylus. He was initially fined four thousand
dollars for violations under the FAA operating aircraft within an
airport area or something like that. He appealed and the
fine was reduced to fifteen hundred dollars charge of operating
(07:47):
a civil aircraft which there's not currently an effect. An
airworthiness certificate was dropped. Yeah, there's no sea here. Here's
sixty day guarantee. Certainly, I wonder if he returned the
launchair Just after landing, Walter spoke to the press saying
it was something I had to do. I had this
dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it,
(08:07):
I think I would have ended up in the funny farm.
So he just had all his life he'd thought, I
want to attach helium balloons to a lawn chair and
see how I can go. If I hadn't done that,
I would regret it. The rest of my life ten days. Oh.
He was awarded a special Darwin Awards Survival Award that year,
(08:27):
which right, we used to do the Darwin Awards every year.
We should bring that back. They're always good. Ten years
after the flight, he appeared on Late Night with David Letterman.
He was briefly in demand as a motivational speaker and
quit his job as a truck driver. Wow. What is
he with? Motivational speaker? If you believe you could.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Tie the balloons of your aspirations to the lawn chair
of your reality.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
He never made much money in that line of work.
Even though he quit his jump. He was briefly featured
in a Time Exit Watch ad in the early nineties.
The lawn chair used in the flight was reportedly giving
to an admiring boy, but he regrets doing it because
the Smithsonian wanted it. He gave away the lawn chair.
Oh my god, that is funny. He ended up doing
(09:15):
volunteer work for the United States Force Service later in life. Oh,
then he broke up with his girlfriend of fifteen years
and he could only find sporadic security guard work.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, and then a very unhappy ending. Then I won't
mention because it'll bring us down. At age forty four,
he committed suicide.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Wow what a life. Yeah, wow that it did bring
me down, but it uh, I'm glad you threw that in.
It's uh, I think there's a lesson there.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well, the kind of guy that comes up with the
idea does it. When he's interviewed immediately upon landing, says,
I always wanted to do it if I had not
had gone crazy. It's just important to me. That's kind
of odd.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Then you give that guy global fame, even you know,
back in the day, and then the expectations he develops
based on that very brief global fame, it's probably you know,
there is definitely a lesson there.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, and then he probably thought for a while when
he got the motivational speaker gig, that he was, you know,
kind of maybe on a track for a little better
life than he had before. Turned out, there's not much
motivating about. I bought helium balloons at a surplus store
and attached them to my sears lawn chair, and uh,
(10:44):
I put too many on there. So I shot really
eigh in the air and then miraculously, through luck, I
floated to the ground the end. So too, and you
can too. I don't know what his final closing statement
it was, but I.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Wonder what the nature of his speech was because they
say motivational speakers, so we're obviously taking that literally. But
you know, I've been to that sort of event, those
chitfaquas or you know, just speaker marathons or whatever, and
some people are just there because there it's funny and amazing. Yeah,
and you know, if you could help him write it,
(11:22):
or write it for him with jokes and stuff like that,
that would be you know, like the jelly and the
peanut butter and jelly sandwich of your speaker's bureau or sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
I get that. I'd be entertaining. But anyway, holy crap,
you couldn't. You couldn't replicate that. I would think if
you did it exactly the same way a thousand times,
you'd get that one successful result.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I wonder, Oh my god. Yeah. Although I'll tell you what,
for people like me with my phobia, this entire conversation,
a lot of it was like somebody who's got a
rack of I mean, like not I don't like spiders,
but seeing one, you have an overwhelming animal fear wash
(12:07):
over you. That you can't control. I'd like a ten
minute conversation about being covered with spiders. Tough to take.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
The one thing it doesn't mention I wish it did,
since his girlfriend was there in the backyard when the
cable broke and he shot immediately three miles straight up.
But she probably couldn't even see him, right, I wonder
what she was thinking at that point.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, she's just see the balloons for a while.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, I suppose, but three miles is of way up there. Uh,
she had to be thinking. I don't know what she
was thinking.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
My boyfriend's about to be dead, that's what she was thinking.
I didn't think that would happen, or something along those lines.
What a dumb ass she was thinking.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I guess I need another boyfriend.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
To his credit, at least he was legit. Remember balloon Boy.
Yeah that was a hoax, So this guy actually actually
did it.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So well, they were looking for that sort of fame,
true fame whores. We'rese sort of people. Well there's murderers.
Those are bad too.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Well, I guess that's it.
What's Chinese for? Oh crap, it's one more thing. I'm
strong and getty. One more thing. Whatever it is, I'm
sure this paragliders said it as he almost equaled the
world record for how high you go in the sky
(00:23):
paragliding or without oxygen or not motorized plane or whatever. Anyway,
he was a paraglider who almost equaled the world record
at twenty eight thousand feet. Jeez, holy cow. Really yeah,
that's really really high. By accident, he was inspecting his
(00:43):
gear on the ground when an updraft took him on
an uncontrollable ascent five miles into the clouds.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's astonishing.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Uh yeah, he could. Well, I'll just read it as
it says it here. He was conducting a routine test
of his paragliding equipment there in China when the draft
hit him on the ground. I had just bought a
second hand paragliding harness and wanted to test it, so
(01:17):
I was conducting ground parachute practices. The wind suddenly picked
up and lifted me into the air. I tried to
land as soon as possible, but I failed. Explaining that
he got carried even higher by a wind from a
cloud system that just happened to come through, and he
ended up more than five miles above the ground, which
(01:39):
is where commercial airlines fly.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Given the reality of life on Earth or probably any
other planet, which is that things fall downward like five
zillion to one, this guy was the one. He got
lifted upward and was thinking. Ah.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
He said. The scariest moment was when his parachute plunged
headfirst toward the Earth. That was the scariest moment. Is said,
that would be a very scary moment. Yes, but he
managed to write himself before emerging from the cloud system,
getting his bearings and then landed the thing. I have
a feeling you know where this is leading, as we
have talked about this many times throughout our radio career.
(02:21):
But I couldn't help but revisit lawn Chair Larry, one
of our favorite stories are one of the most famous
things that's ever happened. There have been movies made about it.
He was on David Letterman.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
He's the guy that in Night Way, I did that
I'd be poopy pants.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Paul soiled himself. Sam Larry Walters in nineteen eighty two
attached forty two helium balloons to a regular lawn chair.
He went to an army surplus store and bought a
bunch of big thick balloons, filled them with helium, attached
(03:00):
him to the lawn chair he purchased at Sears and
similar to this paraglider guy in China, not intending to
at that moment take off, the strap broke and he
went up into the sky very very quickly, like within moments.
He was at sixteen thousand.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Feet, which is going to pass out just thinking, which.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Is three miles up. He was planning to go up
into the air, obviously, he didn't think he would go
that high. He strapped himself into the chair in the
backyard of his home in San Pedro, California. He took
a pellet gun, a Cbee radio, sandwiches, two liters of
(03:42):
Coca Cola, a six pack of beer, and a camera. Wow,
he wasn't sure.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I don't know if I'm in the mood to drink tonight.
I'll bring some beer, but some soft drinks too, something.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
To wash down my sandwiches. His plan was to just
go kind of high and get some pictures of the neighborhood,
and that's sort of thing.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But sandos and a variety of beverages.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
That's weird. When the cord that tied his lawn chair
to his jeep broke prematurely, his lawn chair shot straight
up almost immediately. He was at sixteen thousand feet three
miles in the air. He was spotted by two commercial airliners.
He slowly drifted over a long beach. The entire flight
lasted about forty five minutes before he started to oh,
(04:29):
this is how it happened. After forty five minutes in
the sky, he came up with the idea. He had
his pellet gun with him, so he shot several balloons
with the pellet gun, taking care not to unbalance the
load so he would tip out point. But then he asked.
But then he accidentally dropped his pellet gun over the side.
No dang its seat of a gun that was working
(04:49):
so good. Despite taking a camera, he did not take
any photos. He was probably distracted by the impending doom.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
He just tell you what, Honestly, I got a fear
of falling or heights or whatever it is to be
able to unclamp my arms from the chair from the
arms of the I'm sorry, unclamp my hands from the
arms of the chair to even grasp the gun to
shoot out, I mean, cause you probably had to cock
it so we had to take both hands off. That's
(05:21):
an amazing act to me right there. Yeah, I don't
have a sphere of heights. It would be damn scary, obviously,
But I wonder forty five minutes that's a long time.
You might acclimate after a certain amount of time, like okay,
here we are, what am I gonna do? Yeah, tentatively
take one hand off, then the other, and you're like, well,
I'm just floating here, so right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Before I get back to the story. The scariest thing
like in that line that I ever did. Do you
remember how high I climbed on that ladder on the
fire truck. Remember they put that ladder straight up in
the air, not up against anything. If it had been
up against a building or something, it had been one thing.
But it was just up in the air, and I
climbed to the top of it. It was really really high.
(06:02):
That was pretty that one was. It was like hard
to make my hands move from rung to rung when
I got a pie.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I'd have rather been shot if they'd forced me
at gunpoint. How to said, shoot me.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So back to lawn chair, Larry and his sears lawn
chair three miles in the air, so he drops his
pellet gun despite having Kiken. Okay, he descended slowly until
the balloons got caught up in some power lines. The
power line broke, causing a twenty minute electricity blackout in
the town there still in California, and then he landed unharmed,
(06:35):
which is just miraculous. I mean, between the you're in
a lawn chair with helium balloons, just plummeting to your death,
then getting caught up in the electric lines, which obviously
all kinds of bad things could have happened, right, he
ends up tumbling a few feet and being fine.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
You'd think I outran a lion, and now essentially I'm
going to well, it's just no, no, you overcame all
the odds and then there you are twenty five feet
in the air and you're gonna die. That No, that's
too much irony.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
The aftermath is kind of interesting also. Walters was immediately
arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department,
which is where he landed. We know one person was
quoted at the time of saying we know he broke
some part of the Federal Aviation Act. As soon as
we decide which part it is, some type of charge
will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd
(07:27):
suspend that, but he doesn't. He was initially fined a
lawn chair pilot stylus. He was initially fined four thousand
dollars for violations under the FAA operating aircraft within an
airport area or something like that. He appealed and the
fine was reduced to fifteen hundred dollars charge of operating
(07:47):
a civil aircraft which there's not currently an effect. An
airworthiness certificate was dropped. Yeah, there's no sea here. Here's
sixty day guarantee. Certainly, I wonder if he returned the
launchair Just after landing, Walter spoke to the press saying
it was something I had to do. I had this
dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it,
(08:07):
I think I would have ended up in the funny farm.
So he just had all his life he'd thought, I
want to attach helium balloons to a lawn chair and
see how I can go. If I hadn't done that,
I would regret it. The rest of my life ten days. Oh.
He was awarded a special Darwin Awards Survival Award that year,
(08:27):
which right, we used to do the Darwin Awards every year.
We should bring that back. They're always good. Ten years
after the flight, he appeared on Late Night with David Letterman.
He was briefly in demand as a motivational speaker and
quit his job as a truck driver. Wow. What is
he with? Motivational speaker? If you believe you could.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Tie the balloons of your aspirations to the lawn chair
of your reality.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
He never made much money in that line of work.
Even though he quit his jump. He was briefly featured
in a Time Exit Watch ad in the early nineties.
The lawn chair used in the flight was reportedly giving
to an admiring boy, but he regrets doing it because
the Smithsonian wanted it. He gave away the lawn chair.
Oh my god, that is funny. He ended up doing
(09:15):
volunteer work for the United States Force Service later in life. Oh,
then he broke up with his girlfriend of fifteen years
and he could only find sporadic security guard work.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Oh, and then a very unhappy ending. Then I won't
mention because it'll bring us down. At age forty four,
he committed suicide.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Wow what a life. Yeah, wow that it did bring
me down, but it uh, I'm glad you threw that in.
It's uh, I think there's a lesson there.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well, the kind of guy that comes up with the
idea does it. When he's interviewed immediately upon landing, says,
I always wanted to do it if I had not
had gone crazy. It's just important to me. That's kind
of odd.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Then you give that guy global fame, even you know,
back in the day, and then the expectations he develops
based on that very brief global fame, it's probably you know,
there is definitely a lesson there.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, and then he probably thought for a while when
he got the motivational speaker gig, that he was, you know,
kind of maybe on a track for a little better
life than he had before. Turned out, there's not much
motivating about. I bought helium balloons at a surplus store
and attached them to my sears lawn chair, and uh,
(10:44):
I put too many on there. So I shot really
eigh in the air and then miraculously, through luck, I
floated to the ground the end. So too, and you
can too. I don't know what his final closing statement
it was, but I.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Wonder what the nature of his speech was because they
say motivational speakers, so we're obviously taking that literally. But
you know, I've been to that sort of event, those
chitfaquas or you know, just speaker marathons or whatever, and
some people are just there because there it's funny and amazing. Yeah,
and you know, if you could help him write it,
(11:22):
or write it for him with jokes and stuff like that,
that would be you know, like the jelly and the
peanut butter and jelly sandwich of your speaker's bureau or sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
I get that. I'd be entertaining. But anyway, holy crap,
you couldn't. You couldn't replicate that. I would think if
you did it exactly the same way a thousand times,
you'd get that one successful result.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
I wonder, Oh my god. Yeah. Although I'll tell you what,
for people like me with my phobia, this entire conversation,
a lot of it was like somebody who's got a
rack of I mean, like not I don't like spiders,
but seeing one, you have an overwhelming animal fear wash
(12:07):
over you. That you can't control. I'd like a ten
minute conversation about being covered with spiders. Tough to take.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
The one thing it doesn't mention I wish it did,
since his girlfriend was there in the backyard when the
cable broke and he shot immediately three miles straight up.
But she probably couldn't even see him, right, I wonder
what she was thinking at that point.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Well, she's just see the balloons for a while.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, I suppose, but three miles is of way up there. Uh,
she had to be thinking. I don't know what she
was thinking.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
My boyfriend's about to be dead, that's what she was thinking.
I didn't think that would happen, or something along those lines.
What a dumb ass she was thinking.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I guess I need another boyfriend.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
You know.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
To his credit, at least he was legit. Remember balloon Boy.
Yeah that was a hoax, So this guy actually actually
did it.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
So well, they were looking for that sort of fame,
true fame whores. We'rese sort of people. Well there's murderers.
Those are bad too.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Well, I guess that's it.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com