1, there where a total of 15 custom road going vehicles made for the chase team !!!
the helicopter was chartered ( not a part of the team ) from ford in Daytona to pick up karl after landing the balloon in jacksonville and bring him to Daytona for a race that was held there that weekend !!!
( i ask karl if it was the 500 ! )
2, the balloon race:
a lil first about Karl !!
Karl Thomas of Troy, Mich. made his solo effort last June. His nine-story-high, helium-filled aerostat, named The Spirit of '76 in honor of the Bicentennial, lifted off from the Lakehurst, N.J. Naval Air Station on a calm summer evening. For the first 31 hours the balloon drifted eastward. But 400 miles south of Newfoundland Thomas ran into violent thunderstorms.
Lightning exploded all around him, and 50-mph winds kicked up monstrous waves below. Suddenly, Thomas recalls, a "ferocious downdraft" sent his craft plunging toward the dark Atlantic. Working to separate the gondola from the helium envelope before crashing, Thomas began to hit the emergency releases, but two of them popped prematurely, tilting the gondola on its side and dumping out 1,000 pounds of equipment, including Thomas' parachute and raft. With all that weight unintentionally jettisoned, the lightened balloon shot upward.
"In dangerous situations I've always acted aggressively and gotten myself out of trouble," says Thomas. He did so again, jumping about 220 feet into the sea, arms flailing to stay upright. He hit the water feet first, and the impact fractured three ribs and broke a blood vessel in his lung. Despite "astounding pain," he recounts, he somehow found his raft bobbing in the waves and clambered aboard. "I thought, god-dammit, I will survive! Somebody has lasted 37 days out here. Let's try for more." Mercifully, it was not that long. After four days and nights Thomas was plucked from the sea by a Europe-bound Russian freighter, which took him to Rotterdam.
... after all that and only few months later i think anyone would want a chase team !!!
