Balloon flight grounded by storms

Associated Press

BEND, Ore.

An Oregon gas station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from central Oregon to Montana were forced to abort their flight to Montana on Saturday due to thunderstorms.

Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight when they were forced to descend, coming down about 30 miles east of their starting point.

Flight organizer Mark Knowles says they made a hard landing and got out of the craft, but it took off again.

The pair began their flight Saturday morning from Couch’s gas station in Bend, Ore. It was a warm-up for a future flight over Iraq.

Earlier, volunteers filled 350 5-foot-diameter red, white, blue and black balloons with helium and tied them to Couch’s homemade tandem lawn-chair rig. The balloons were arranged in bunches to represent the colors of the U.S. and Iraqi flags. An American flag flew from the bottom of the framework supporting the chairs.

Just before liftoff, they had to ask children in the crowd to return four balloons to provide extra lift.

About 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as the pair lifted off from Couch’s Shell gas station.

Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he had shared Couch’s childhood dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Couch an email two winters ago after reading accounts of Couch’s earlier flights.

“I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists,” Lafta said. “We don’t need just an army. We need ideology and to just have fun.”