Sky's the limit

Did you see that movie Up? Where the old man takes off in a trip with scores of balloons attached to his house?
Apparently, "cluster ballooning" is a real-life version of that Pixar movie. People literally attach themselves to bunches of balloons--not quite everyday party balloons, but relatively small weather balloons--and take off. It's a lot harder than traditional hot-air ballooning, being that a cluster of balloons doesn't have a vent for altitude control, but rather they rise uncontrollably. Cluster balloonists often use bottled water as a ballast and have to frequently cut balloons to maintain their altitude.
A man named Lawrence Richard Walters, nicknamed "Lawnchair Larry" or the "Lawn Chair Pilot" took flight in such a manner in the summer of 1982 from San Pedro, California to controlled airspace near Los Angeles International Airport. Without any prior ballooning experience he attached 42 helium-filled weather balloons to an ordinary patio chair and launched into the sky.
In November 1992, Yoshikazu Suzuki left from Lake Biwa, northeast of Kyoto, Japan via cluster ballooning, was sighted in the sky once and never seen again.
The Guinness Book of World Records credits Mike Howard of England and Steve Davis of the United States as the balloonists to have, in August 2001, reached the highest altitude by cluster ballooning--a height of 18,300 feet.
In April 2008 a Roman Catholic priest by the name of Adelir Antonio de Carli used 1000 balloons to make a flight as a fundraiser, but was lost and found dead in the ocean near Rio de Janeiro three months later.
Licensed pilot Jonathon Trappe in June of 2008 reportedly attached a cluster of balloons to his office chair, flew 4 hours and 50 miles, then returning to the ground and apparently going about his life.
FUN