As you might imagine, there is not a whole lot to do in Oklahoma. It’s flat, it’s got oil and it looks like a hand pointing west. Sure, there was a musical about the state, but really Oklahoma is Texas with an inferiority complex. And you thought it couldn’t get any worse than Texas.
But Oklahoma will serve as the backdrop for one of the the greatest feats ever attempted by mankind. Here, in the megalopolis known as Muskogee, Brian Jackson, a mortal man, will try to set a world record for inflating a weather balloon by mouth. Yes, a weather balloon is rather large. It’s 8 feet in diameter, to be exact. The world record currently is 42 minutes. Jackson first made it on the scene as a hotshot in inflating things by breaking the world record for blowing up a water bottle until it burst in 2006.
Why does he try this, you ask? Why does man explore the bottom of the sea? Why did we walk on the moon? Why did Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic Ocean for points unknown? It is in our very being to do what seems impossible to accomplish. It is the search for glory that keeps us moving, and it is the shouts saying it can’t be done that give us the will to prove them wrong.
Godspeed, Brian Jackson.