特别广播英语第 246 课：Larry's Lawn Chair Ride 梦想起飞，别一飞冲天-1

Larry Walters' boyhood dream was not an unusual one: He wanted to fly. 拉里·沃尔特少年时期的梦想并不很平常：他想飞。

What was unusual, though, was the way he fulfilled it. 然而不寻常的是他实现的方式。

After finishing school, Larry joined the U.S. Air Force, but was rejected from pilot-training school because of poor eyesight. However, his dream remained. 从学校毕业后，拉里就加入美国空军，但由于视力不佳而被飞行训练学校拒之门外。尽管如此，他的梦想依然没变。

Larry, aged 33, was not a pilot, but a truck driver in Los Angeles. 33岁的拉里不是一名飞行员，而是洛杉矶的一名卡车司机。

One day, while sitting outside in his lawn chair, Larry had his eureka moment. 一天，当拉里坐在屋外的折椅上时，突然灵机一动。

As he watched jets fly overhead, an idea came to him to use weather balloons to fly. 他看到喷气机从头顶飞过，就想到可以用气象探测气球来飞行。

A few weeks later, Larry bought 42 one-meter diameter weather balloons. 几个星期后，拉里买了42个直径为1米的气象探测气球。

He tied them to a lawn chair and filled them with helium. 他将气球绑在折椅上并注入氦气。

Then he sat down in the chair with some beer, sandwiches, and a BB gun. 接着他坐上椅子，带了一些啤酒，三明治和一支BB枪。

Larry's plan was to float about 10 meters above his backyard, enjoy a few hours in the air, and then pop some balloons with his gun to get back down. 拉里计划在他家后院飘起10米高左右，好好在空中享受几小时，然后用枪击破一些气球以回到地面。