You may recall a Darwin Award winner not long ago -- a former air force sergeant who decided to strap a cargo plane rocket booster to his car to see how fast it would go and ended up killing himself (hence the "Darwin" award . . . in the struggle for survival only the fittest survive . . .) when his car didn't negotiate a curve on the road in northern New Mexico where he had set up this experiment. The car smashed into the side of a cliff several hundred feet above the roadbed.

Here's the 1997 winner so far: Larry Waters of Los Angeles. Larry is one of the few to win the award and still be alive.

Larry's boyhood dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. When he was finally discharged, he had to satisfy himself with watching jets fly over his back yard.

One day, Larry brightened up. He decided to fly. He went to the local Army-Navy surplus store and purchased 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. Each weather balloon, when fully inflated, measured more than four feet across. Back home, Larry securly strapped the balloons to his sturdy lawn chair. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his Jeep and inflated the balloons with the helium. He climbed on for a test ride while it was still only a few feet off the ground.

Satisfied that it would work, Larry packed several sandwiches and a six-pack of Miller lite, loaded his pellet gum -- figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to descend -- and went back to the floating lawnchair where he tied himself in along with his pellet gun and provisions. Larry's plan was to lazily float up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard after severing the anchor and in a few hours come back down.

Things didn't quite work out for Larry. When he cut the cord anchoring the lawn chair to his jeep, he didn't float lazily up to 30 or so feet, instead he streaked into the LA sky as if shot from a cannon. He didn't level off at 30 feet, nor did he level off at 100 feet. After climbing and climbing, he leveled of at 11,000 feet. At that height he couldn't rish shooting any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really find himself in trouble. So he stayed there, drifting, cold and frightened for more than 14 hours when he found himself in the primary approach corridor of LAX.

A Pan Am pilot first spotted Larry. He radioed the tower and described passing a guy in a lawn chair with a gun. Radar confirmed the existence of an object floating 11,000 feet above the airport. LAX emergency procedures swung into full alert and a helicopter was dispatched to investigate. LAX is right on the ocean. Night was falling and the offshort breeze began to flow. It carried Larry out to sea.

Right on Larry's heels was the helicopter. Several miles out, the helicopter caught up with Larry. Once the crew determined that Larry was not dangerous, they attempted to close in for a rescue but the draft from the blades would push Larry away whenever they neared. Finally, the helicopter ascended to a position several hundred feet above Larry and lowered a rescue line. Larry snagged the line, with which he was hauled back to shore, a difficult maneuver, flawlessly executed by the helicopter crew.

As soon as Larry was hauled to earth, he was arrested by waiting members of the LAPD for violating LAX airspace. As he was led away in handcuffs, a reporter dispatched to cover the daring rescue asked him why he had done it.

Larry stopped, turned and replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around."

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