Fandom High School

"Welcome to the last class I'm teaching here in Fandom," Dick said when the class had entered the shop. They were standing at the bank of a river, and there seemed to be an especially loud sound off in the distance. Dick was standing in front of several barrels for some reason. "I've had a great time this summer, and I hope you have, too."

"To finish things off here, I figured we could pay tribute to a truly impressive daredevil. In 1901, a 63 year old school teacher named Annie Edson Taylor found herself in a bit of a financial dilemma. So she went ahead and did something nobody had ever done before: successfully go over Niagra Falls in a barrel." Dick patted the nearest barrel for emphasis. "She figured she could become famous from a stunt like that and turn that fame into money. And all she needed was a padded barrel and a cat to try it on first."

"By the way, 1901 was a much different time. Today we really understand that it's wrong to throw your cat in a barrel and heave it over a waterfall. Amazing that people didn't know it then. Anyway, Taylor survived, but the fame she was seeking didn't really work out for her. She gave some speeches and sold plenty of souvenir photos, but she never really got away from her financial difficulties."

"The thing to take away from this?" Dick asked. "You don't do stupid things like this for a hypothetical payday. You either get the money guaranteed, or you just do it for fun. With that in mind, hop in a barrel and let's take a ride down river. And then down river in a vertical sense."

If any students arrived at the Danger Shop today, they would find a note on the door and a box on the ground. The note said "GO BACK TO THE DORMS. TAKE SOMETHING FROM THE BOX TO HELP YOU GET THERE. THAT'S ENOUGH DEFYING DEATH THIS WEEK. -DG"

The box had expandable steel batons with rubber grips. That way students could hit something a few feet away if they needed to get away.

"The thing about being a daredevil is that there's not always a safe, professionally sanctioned way of experiencing a thrill," Dick said. The Danger Shop was set up to look like a normal suburban back yard. Dick was currently sitting in an ordinary lawn chair that just happened to be tied to a few dozen high quality weather balloons, lifting the chair a few feet off the ground. There were also some plastic milk jugs filled with water tied to the legs of the chair, and the chair was secured to the ground with another rope.

It was a sight that kind of seemed reasonable in the Danger Shop, but surely there was no way this was a model of something that happened in the real world.

"Case in point, I'm sitting in a model of a homemade airship called the Inspiration I. It was created in 1982 by a California man named Larry Walters, who really just wanted to see the world," Dick explained. "He called in some favors with some friends, got some nice weather balloons, tied them to a chair, and accidentally launched early. That's the run you risk when you do something like this in your back yard, of course."

"Walters ended up reaching a height of 16,000 feet before using a pellet gun to shoot some of the balloons to make him descend. When he started picking up too much speed on his descent, he slashed the water jugs he was using as ballast to help the remaining balloons counter gravity a little. After a 45 minute flight, Walters got caught up in some power lines, caused a massive blackout, climbed down to the ground, and was immediately arrested," Dick said. "Of course, nobody had ever built a flying lawnchair and taken it to 16,000 feet before, so it was acase of arresting him first and then figuring out what specific law he broke as soon as they could work it out."

"For the record, he was fined $4,000 for violating various parts of U. S. Federal Aviation Regulations. The best charge was operating an aircraft within an airport traffic area 'without establishing and maintaining two-way communications with the control tower,'" Dick said.

"But truly the greatest thing about Walters' story is when reporters asked why he did this, he answered, 'A man just can’t sit around,'" Dick said. "And as it turns out, neither can the students in my class." He gestured behind him. "There are plenty of lawn chairs, balloons, water bottles, rope, and pellet guns back there, and we don't have to worry about any aviation regulations in the Danger Shop. So get to building. I want everyone to be airborne before the end of class."