It’s sort of nice today. What to do, what to do. We could walk around the lake. We could get a nice brunch at the Walker. Or, like Joe W. Kittinger Jr. did in 1957, we could hop into a helium filled balloon and ascend 17-plus miles above the Twin Cities. The balloon, by the way, was manufactured by Minneapolis’s Winzen Research, Inc.. A few years later, in 1960, Kittinger would take one of these helium balloons 20 miles above New Mexico and then leap out of it, parachuting to earth, and going fast enough to break the speed of sound.
Cuz now I’m free … Free Falling
Mar 26 2006 — 2:00am
3 Reader Comments
4:13 pm
I should like to push Tom Petty and all of his songs out of a helium baloon, sans parachute.
5:31 pm
Except “Refugee”.
“Refugee” rocked.
8:16 pm
Not a very happy ending:
“No longer looked to for advice and unhappy in a second marriage, depression set in. In 1976 at the age of 58, the great innovator of the plastic balloon revolution committed suicide.”