Certain things we know to be true.
“Avoid clichés like the plague,” we are warned, “they’re a dime a dozen.”
Or, what about, “Life sure has its ups and downs, eh?”
True enough, right?
Take the case of 26-year-old Dan Boria of Calgary, who learned this particular truth the hard way.
A while back, Boria decided the cleaning company he owns, All Clean Natural, needed a new advertising wrinkle.
On paper, the plan seemed pretty straight forward. Float into position in a $20 plastic lawn chair being held aloft by 100 helium-filled balloons, then skydive down into the chuckwagon races at the Calgary Stampede while his company logo sailed overhead on an airplane banner.
So there was Boria last Sunday floating above the Calgary clouds. Game On.
But, and it was a big but.
Thirty minutes in, the balloons began blowing up. Then, the wind picked up, blowing him off course.
Boria improvised.
Wearing his parachute, he summersaulted out of his lawn chair and plunged hundreds of metres to the ground, forced to make an emergency landing into some bushes a couple a miles away, and breaking his foot (he thinks) in the process.
Worse. Calgary police were waiting for him. He was promptly arrested and charged with mischief causing danger to life. He now faces a stiff fine.
“It was eerie because it didn’t feel the way you thought it would,” said Boria in retrospect, refusing to divulge how high he had risen.
“It wasn’t as bumpy as you’d expect, but when the balloons started blowing up the whole chair would shake like crazy. It was like a gun going off.”
Would he do it again?
“If I were to do it again, the police wouldn’t be as easy on me,” he mused.
“If I had the opportunity to do it again legally, I would do it again.”
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