Lawn chair pilot flies with 105 balloons

BEND, Ore. Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Destination: Idaho.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast, he could turn a spigot, release water and rise, Couch headed into the Oregon sky.

Nearly nine hours later, the 47 year old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer’s field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home.

“When you’re a little kid and you’re holding a helium balloon, it has to cross your mind,” Couch told the Bend Bulletin.

“When you’re laying in the grass on a summer day, and you see the clouds, you wish you could jump on them,” he said. “This is as close as you can come to jumping on them. It’s just like that.”

Couch is the latest American to emulate Larry Walters, who in 1982 rose three miles above Los Angeles in a lawn chair lifted by balloons. Walters had surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.

It was Couch’s second flight.

In September, he got off the ground for six hours. Like Walters, he used a BB gun to pop the balloons, but he went into a rapid descent and eventually parachuted to safety.

This time, he was better prepared. The balloons had a new configuration, so it was easier to reach up and release a bit of helium instead of simply cutting off a balloon.

He took off at 6:06 a.m. Saturday after kissing his wife, Susan, goodbye and petting his Chihuahua, Isabella. As he made about 25 miles an hour, a three-car caravan filled with friends, family and the dog followed him from below.

Couch said he could hear cattle and children, and he said he even passed through clouds.

“It was beautiful, beautiful,” he told KTVZ-TV. He described the flight as mostly peaceful and serene, with occasional turbulence, like a hot air balloon ride sitting down.

Couch decided to stop when he was down to a gallon of water and just eight pounds of ballast. Concerned about the rugged terrain outside La Grande, including Hells Canyon, he decided it was time to land.

He popped enough balloons to set the craft down, although he suffered rope burns. But after he jumped out, the wind grabbed his chair, with his video recorder, and the remaining balloons and swept them away. He’s hoping to get them back some day.

Brandon Wilcox, owner of Professional Air, which charters and maintains planes at the Bend airport, on Thursday confirmed Couch’s flight. Wilcox said he flew a plane nearby while Couch traveled, and a passenger videotaped the flying lawn chair.

Whether Couch will take a third trip is up to his wife, and Susan Couch said she’s thinking about saying no. But she said she was willing to go along with last weekend’s trip.

“I know he’d be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind,” she said. “This way, at least he’s fulfilled his dream.”

DEATH CAT?

His name is Oscar. He’s not the friendliest cat. But he has an uncanny knack for predicting within hours when nursing home patients with whom he lives are about to die.

Oscar lives at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and is the subject of a fascinating essay in this week’s issue of the prestigious medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine.

What makes Oscar special is his ability to sense when one of the hospice’s residents is about to die.

Every day, Oscar makes his rounds among the patients, entering each room and giving each patient a sniff. When he senses that someone is near the end of his or life, he will hop onto their bed and curl up beside them. Within hours, without fail, the patient will die.

Oscar has demonstrated his prognostication skills at least 25 times. He’s considered so accurate that nursing home staff will immediately call family members once Oscar has chosen someone, since it usually means they have less than four hours to live.

Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician from Brown University in Providence, tells Oscar’s story, noting that the feline has never been wrong yet.

“His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death,” Dosa writes.

Raised at the nursing home since he was a kitten, Oscar is described as aloof even, at times, grouchy. But when he is on a death watch, he is as warm as can be. He will nuzzle a dying patient and purr, perhaps trying to offer whatever comfort he can.

“For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves,” Dosa writes.

The staff appreciates Oscar so much, a local hospice agency has even erected a plaque to him that reads: “For his compassionate hospice care, this plaque is awarded to Oscar the Cat.”

Man burns down trailer in online feud

A Navy man who got mad when someone mocked him as a “nerd” over the Internet climbed into his car and drove 1,300 miles from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson.

As he made his way toward Texas, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty Officer Russell Tavares posted photos online showing the welcome signs at several states’ borders, as if to prove to his Internet friends that he meant business.

When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the guy’s trailer down.

This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading no contest to arson and admitting he set the blaze.

“I didn’t think anybody was stupid enough to try to kill anybody over an Internet fight,” said John G. Anderson, 59, who suffered smoke inhalation while trying to put out the 2005 blaze that caused $50,000 in damage to his trailer and computer equipment.

The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said.

Anderson, who went by the screen name “Johnny Darkness,” traded barbs with Tavares, aka “PyroDice.”

Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a “Revenge of the Nerds” sign.

Tavares obtained Anderson’s real name and hometown from Anderson’s Web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House.

Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator at the AEGIS Training and Readiness Center in Dahlgren, Va., and started driving. Investigators say he told them he planned to point a shotgun at Anderson and shoot his computer.

Instead, when he got to Elm Mott, after posting one last photo of a “Welcome to Texas” sign. Tavares threw a piece of gasoline soaked plastic foam into the back of Anderson’s mobile home and lit a flare, authorities say.

Tavares’ attorney, Susan Kelly Johnston, said his trip to the Waco area was a last minute decision during a cross country trip to visit his parents in Arizona. She said he never intended to hurt Anderson and did not think he was in the trailer when he set the fire.

James Pack, an investigator with the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office, caught up with Tavares after talking to people in several states and Spain who had been involved in the online feud. Tavares’ cell phone records showed he was in the Waco area at the time of the fire, Pack said.

Tavares told investigators that Anderson had spread computer viruses and insulted his online friends for too long, Pack said.

“He lost everything, all over an Internet squabble,” the investigator said.

Tavares was discharged last year from the Navy, where he earned several medals, including the pistol expert and rifle expert medals, in his nine year career, said Navy spokesman Mike McLellan.

Tavares would not let the feud go even at his sentencing. According to Pack, Tavares took cell phone photos of Anderson in the courtroom while the judge was hearing another case. Authorities ordered the photos erased.

Anderson, an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, said he continues to be harassed online, has been startled by people knocking on his window late at night and found bullet holes in a door to his business.

He said he is convinced the harassment is related to the Internet feud and plans to spend $30,000 on more fencing topped with barbed wire.

“Before this happened, the rule was: Nobody messes with the haunted house guy,” Anderson said.

REALLY, we needed a study?
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Study finds the 237 reasons to have sex

UT researchers say it’s not so obvious after all

Psychology researchers at the University of Texas say they found four major factors for why their subjects had sex:

• Physical: “It seemed like good exercise” “I was curious about sex” “The person was a good dancer”

• Goal-based: “I wanted to have a baby” “I wanted to be popular” “I wanted to give someone a sexually transmitted disease”

• Emotional: “I wanted to feel connected” “I wanted to say ‘thank you.’”

• Insecurity-based: “I wanted the attention” “My partner kept insisting” “I wanted to keep my partner from straying”

Some said they thought it would be good exercise. Others cited the relief they thought it would provide from boredom. A few admitted they wanted to be more popular, get a promotion or impress friends.

And some confessed they did it for revenge.

Six decades after Alfred Kinsey’s findings on sexuality shocked America, two University of Texas at Austin psychologists have found some surprising answers to a question most people don’t bother to ask: why people have sex.

“I was driven to do this study because of all the different reasons I hear women give for having sex, but I never expected this richness of answers,” said Cindy Meston, an associate professor of psychology and study co-author. “Motivation for sex is not as straightforward as people think.”

For instance, headaches and “not tonight, honey” may go together in most people’s minds, but respondents of both sexes said they’d had sex “to get rid of a headache.” They didn’t say whether it worked.

In all, Meston and colleague David Buss catalogued 237 reasons, the most popular of which predictably involved lust and pleasure. But others ranged from “I wanted to feel closer to God” to “I wanted the attention” to “I wanted to keep my partner from straying.”

A few respondents even said they wanted to give someone a sexually transmitted disease.

Meston said the study, published in the August issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior, is the first of its kind. She speculated that researchers, like everyone else, probably assumed the motivations for sex were pretty obvious.

Forces of attraction
To come up with the list, Meston and Buss asked 444 men and women, age 17 to 52, to list reasons why they, or people they’ve known, have had sex. They then had 1,500 undergraduate students at UT-Austin rank the reasons on a one to five scale of how often they applied to their experiences.

Twenty of the top 25 reasons given were the same for men and women, and the No. 1 for both was “I was attracted to the person.”

“I was surprised there wasn’t a great gender difference,” said Meston. “Women were more likely to say they wanted to express their love for the person, but they were very quick to also cite physical reasons and out-of-control hormones most people associate with men.”

Meston, who is continuing to collect data for follow-up studies, acknowledged that college students’ out of control hormones tilt the results. Future studies will focus on other age groups, ethnic groups and religious people. Metson said she also wants to find out about the outcome of sex for which people gave particular reasons.

Despite youthful answers like “the person was too hot to resist,” Meston said she was struck that the college students gave some reasons that might offer lessons for people of all ages, such as that sex helped them get to sleep.

“For older couples in which the sex drive is mismatched, it might be instructive to learn that not everybody is having sex for pleasure,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong with you, you just might need to find your own reason for having sex.”

This might make for a tense time at home.

An off-duty sheriff’s deputy was pulled over and charged with driving under the influence,— by her husband, a fellow deputy.

Charlotte Moore, 36, a jail deputy and 11 year veteran, was driving her 2004 Pontiac Grand Am when she was pulled over by her husband, Elko County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Moore, a police report said.

She allegedly left before being administered a portable breathalyzer test, the Elko Daily Free Press reported.

Mike Moore pulled her over again and called the Elko Police Department for backup. He left shortly after officer Shane Daz arrived. Elko Police Department Sgt. Mark Butterfield also was on scene.

Charlotte Moore was released at 1:47 a.m. Sunday and placed on paid administrative leave, Elko County Undersheriff Rocky Gonzalez said.

Mike Moore was following procedure when he asked for backup, Gonzalez told the newspaper. The sheriff’s office supports the police department’s actions, he said.

Neither Mike nor Charlotte Moore was available for comment Monday, the Elko Daily Free Press said.

Charlotte Moore reportedly had been drinking approximately two hours earlier at a downtown business group’s wine walk, the newspaper said.