A Florida man set out on the high seas in his custom bubble (like a hamster wheel) to bubble his way to Bermuda, he became lost and had to be airlifted out by the Coast Guard and now he wants his bubble back dammit!
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: bubble boy bubbles his way across the Atlantic Ocean, nothing bad happens. Shockingly this is not that story, and the man (Reza Baluchi) who tried to bubble his way to Bermuda had to be rescued after the Coast Guard began receiving reports from boaters of a man in a bubble stopping to ask for directions.
The Miami Herald reports:
Reza Baluchi wants his bubble back.
The seagoing cylinder, encased in a metal fame, allowed him to run on water, like a hamster in a wheel.
Baluchi, 42, is an endurance athlete with a dream of spreading peace — and the bubble was his latest attempt at doing that.
But right now, he said Sunday, “My bubble is in the middle of the ocean.”
Crews followed for hours as the man bubbled north, and by Thursday afternoon, had pieced together what he was trying to do: travel more than 1,000 miles from Pompano Beach to the island cluster 640 miles east of North Carolina.
Eventually, the Coast Guard deemed Baluchi to be in “grave danger,” and asked him to end his journey — 185 miles north of his starting point, and 80 miles off the coast of St. Augustine.
Coast Guard Capt. Todd Coggeshall reached Baluchi by phone Thursday and offered to get him back to shore. Officials feared he wouldn’t have enough supplies to survive. They found out he was carrying little more than protein bars, bottled water, a GPS and the satellite telephone where he was reached.
“I’ve been two years practicing for this,” Baluchi responded. “I don’t know what I can do. … I will continue, though.”
And so he did. Until Saturday, when the Coast Guard airlifted him out of his bubble.
Officials say they responded when Baluchi’s positioning beacon went off, and found him “fatigued.”
When he was pulled from the water Saturday morning, he said he was told that a fisherman would haul his bubble back to shore.
Now, Baluchi is being told that the fisherman is nowhere to be found, and neither is his bubble.
“The bubble was left adrift,” Barney said. “Our concern is not the bubble. Our main concern was to get him out of the water.”
Baluchi’s entire saga detailed over on the Miami Herald is all quite fascinating, and you can read it in full HERE.
For now I think it’s important that we all recognize there’s a man out there trying to bubble his way to and fro just, AND there’s footage of it:
This would take place in Florida, and not because of its close proximity to caribbean islands, but because crazy shit like this only happens down in the Sunshine State.
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