There’s no way that balloon is anywhere near big enough to lift a 6 year old. Not even close. And I would think the father, an experienced weather ballooner would know that quite well. The whole thing seems a little fishy if you ask me.
I think the six-year-old was busy typing up the captions on the newspaper photos:
The most important thing is that it got said. A line like that is a terrile thing to waste.
If he had been in the balloon, survived the trip, and popped out after the landing with a big smile on his face, then yeah, he would go back to being my hero!
But releasing the balloon and then hiding in the garage gets him a major timeout and no Hero badge.
And the maiden flight of the Airship Hiderberg reaches an end. Maybe with any luck the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum will be able to display it.
Though not fully accepted, many historians trace the death of Ann Frank to her fathers woefully inadequate abilities as a balloon designer/maker.
Eh, I’m sure there are kids on farms in Iowa who get up to hijinks with the tractor while Pop is trying to fix the sprinklers. Fortunately, this had a happy ending, so I’ll just leave it that I hope everyone learned a very valuable lesson.
I, uh, work for HQ (I’m a contractor). I’ll try to find out any scuttlebutt tomorrow…
I don’t know anything about weather balloons, but when I first heard the story earlier today, I wondered why the family would make a balloon with a basket that could hold a little kid. Was it meant to be for the equipment?
That’s what the reporter just said on MSNBC, it was to hold equipment for their tracking. It was also reported that the police had gone through the house twice during this whole process to confirm the kid wasn’t there, but that he’d managed to sneak into the attic area of the garage or something like that and hide out very well.
Apparently the “attic” he was in was really just a crawl space with open rafters, above the garage. We have something similar in our house. It’s just insulation up there. Apparently the kid had to shimmy up a pipe to get into it. Good hiding place!
Forty seconds in on this video the kid says, “We did this for a show.”
I see.
An endorsement deal from Jiffy Pop seems inevitable.
Like I said all along, publicity stunt! Yep, that was me. Saying that.
- ahem *
Okay, some days I fear I’m just not cynical enough.
“No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t keep up.”
Creepy. Poor kid.
I don’t. The kid seems confused about the question. I don’t think “we did this for a show” is terribly damning.
Reminds me of a magic show. No one actually saw the kid go up with the balloon, but everyone assumed he had because…how’s that again?
Talk about misdirection. :rolleyes:
So I wake up this morning to discover the end of a non-story, that I didn’t even know had begun, plastered all over the News.
What a waste of everybody’s time and resources.
Has **Scylla **been accounted for?
How about when the interviewer asks for clarification and the father goes into story mode?
Officer Barbrady, I call Shenanigans.