The movie Up inspired a lot of people, thankfully it didn’t inspire too many people to attach balloons to themselves and adventure on a suicide mission across the sky. Obviously, you just can’t help some people because 27-year-old Candian Daniel Boria decided it would be a grand idea to attach over 100 helium balloons to a lawn chair so that he could float 5 KILOMETERS over Calgary.
In 2015, Daniel invested $13,000 in weather balloons and tied them to a run of the mill lawn chair. He then took his contraption to the skies to promote his cleaning company, with the plan to parachute down into the Calgary Stampede chuckwagon races. I’m still trying to figure out how those two are connected.
Bad weather forced him to bail early and strong winds pushed his landing onto a main road, where he was quickly arrested by police who had been monitoring Daniel since he was spotted floating above the suburbs earlier in the day.
When handing down the sentence, provincial court Judge Bruce Fraser called Boria’s stunt “dumb and dangerous” and “unconscionably stupid.” he went on to say there was “nothing fantastic, fun or exhilarating about it,” but let’s be honest, this dude flew 4 km in the air on a lawn chair. That’s pretty fucking cool.
Daniel was forced to pay $26,500 in fines for his little adventure, $5,000 to the court and $20,000 donation to the charity of his choice. Daniel chose the veteran’s food bank and the Royal Canadian Legion’s Poppy Fund as the worthy recipients for his moolah.
Old mate doesn’t seem down about the incident, he even appears to view himself as a champion of the people.
“Why climb the highest mountain?” said Boria outside court. “Why 85 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why do the Oilers play the Flames? I chose to fly a chair; not because it is easy but because it is hard. Because that goal served to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
He might have copped an absurdly expensive fine and risked certain death, but at least he took this pretty cool pic. At the end of the day, isn’t that worth more than $26k? Well, not really but enjoy it anyway.
Source and image: CBC News Calgary
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