In nineteen eighty two, Larry Waters, who had always wanted to fly but couldn’t afford the lessons, decided to achieve his dream by purchasing forty five surplus weather balloons, filling them with helium and attaching them to an aluminium deck chair. Then, with a CB radio in his lap, a paper bag full of peanut butter sandwiches tied to his leg, and an air-rifle over his shoulder to pop the balloons when he wanted to come down, he lifted off, expecting to climb a couple of hundred feet over his neighbourhood. But instead he shot up eleven thousand feet, right through the approach corridor to the Los Angeles International Airport. It gave him one heck of a scare and got him arrested, but his story went round the world as an example of the truth that you never know how high your dreams will take you.