A year ago, Justin revealed his fear of heights and told us about Kent Couch who has a thing for tying helium balloons to a lawn chair so he can float across the sky. Last year, he made it 193 miles before landing in sagebrush in eastern Oregon.

Couch will be at it again tomorrow. This time he wants to fly from Oregon to Boise, Idaho. That's 300 miles. To do this feat, he's attaching 150 latex party balloons to his new lawn chair. This feat is not easy on lawn chairs, so both times Couch has done this, he's had to start fresh.

One thing that's clear about Couch's endeavor is that he must know what he's doing since he hasn't gotten hurt yet. The three times is a charm adage must work. This time he has sponsorship and no one seems to think he's a nut case like the first time he sat in his chair in 2006 and floated up and away.

Still, I don't think this is something most folks should try. He doesn't even wear a seat belt. I think I'm with Justin on this one. [via AP]

Thanks to Shward for this photo posted on Flickr of Kent Couch in a lawn chair in a parade in Eugene, Oregon. It is true that there are many ways to become a celebrity.

Today is my 15th anniversary, but we had the fireworks last night. Wow! A bit racy.

Actually, Columbus's big fireworks display "Red, White and Boom" is on July 3, although there are other fireworks happenings tonight in other locations.

Last night we went down to Goodale Park where we would be able to see the display, but not be overwhelmed by the huge crowds, although Goodale was plenty hopping.

My husband does joke that the reason we got married on the 4th of July was because he wants fireworks on our anniversary. I try to oblige by figuring out where we should go. Here are six highlights for where we've seen fireworks that have made sweet memories.

• Standing on 1st Avenue in Manhattan looking down towards Washington Square Park. The fireworks were framed beautifully by the buildings. I loved the communal feel and hearing the voices of people watching from the roofs of apartment buildings.
• Sitting on the roof of a friend of ours apartment building in West Hollywood, California looking out over the city with our bird's eye view.
• Driving up to the cemetery Philipsburg, Montana to watch people set off their own fireworks. The cemetery is at one of the highest points above town. My son, who was three said, "This is like a fireworks festival."
• Twice we've gone to Crew Stadium in Columbus to watch on the enormous screen while the show is broadcast. You can also see the fireworks in the distance. Crew Stadium is where the professional soccer team plays. We've always had a gang of friends along.
• While visiting my in-laws we've gone to the middle school field in Berea, Ohio to see fireworks there. This year, the fireworks are part of The Grindstone Festival that is happening this weekend.
• The backyard of friends of my best friend from college who lives in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. The one I called from my traffic hell and who I talked into the Superman Ride of Steel roller coaster at Six Flags New England last summer. Her friends set off fireworks and we all had sparklers.

Where have you seen your best fireworks? Keep it clean. I mean the fireworks display kind.

"This button is from the coat of a Confederate soldier--or a Union soldier" is something one might hear at a Civil War relic trade show and sale.

Or perhaps you might hear this at county historical society museum. Civil War relics are often among those items passed down through generations. At a museum, they are displayed in a case for everyone to enjoy instead of being tucked in a box in a bedroom closet.

Guns, cannonballs, swords, bullets, uniforms--if it's from the Civil War, and you have it, someone wants it. Increasingly, that's what the U.S. National Park Service is finding out. Yesterday there was a story on NPR about the looting problem in National Parks. People loot the parks then sell their catch to collectors.

Here's a case in point. At the Fredericksburgh & Spotsylvania National Military Park, a ranger found 467 holes dug in the ground where a battle took place when the Union soldiers led by Grant tried to flank the Confederates.

Here is a bit of low impact tourism that can provide you with some exercise, a history lesson--and a walk similar to one that Jesus might have made.

Instead of hopping on a bus to be taken to certain holy sites to see places where Jesus did his ministry, there is a walking option.

This go-at-you-own-pace trip is along a 40-mile path that brings you to sites like: Nazareth where Jesus grew up as a boy; the Arab village of Kana--where Jesus turned water into wine; the sea of Galilee, Mount of Beatitudes where it is thought Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount; and to the location where it's said that Jesus turned two fish and five loaves of bread into enough food for the multitudes.

There are sites important to Islam as well.

According to Laurie Copans who took the trip, it has appeal, partly because of the interactive quality. Listening to birds, feeling the breeze, and experiencing the topography adds meditative and reflective elements to the travle experience.

As one of the people interviewed for the article said, "The more intimate you become with the land, the more intimate the land becomes to you--the smells, the feel, the hills."

The tricky aspect of this trail is that it's not marked. Here are your options for doing the trip without getting lost.

• Hire a tour guide
• Download a Global Positioning System that coordinates with Jesustrail.com, or
• Pick up a Map--but with the trail not marked, I say hire a tour guide.

For more details and contact information about how to follow the Jesus Trail, read Copan's article. The photo is of Galilee from Mount Beatitudes by hoysameg on Flickr.

The first time I met Besnik Lame, he sat down at my table where I was having a drink and made a few rather awkward confessions.

"You see, I have some overweight," he said. "And so, I sweat a lot. It is a problem."

At that moment, two ribbons of water trundled down the side of his baby face.

"Also, see this?" He ran a hand over some stubble. "I shaved today, so it makes it worse. I hate shaving!"

None of this was an impertinence, or necessarily strange, since I had commented that Lame looked to be working hard, tending to the handful of tables that crowded the first floor of his small restaurant on a Tirana side street. Lame worked hard every day, often keeping his restaurant, not very creatively named the Grill House, open till 2 a.m. and then showing back up at 7 a.m. to start another day.

Lame liked to sit down and talk to his customers. A few more times this evening he approached. "Please, may I sit with you?" He was proud of his place, the meat dishes (which were wonderful), the homemade wine, the homemade raki that went down like hot acid.

"In my restaurant, we have a saying. You drink all you can. If you cannot pay for it all tonight, you come tomorrow."

I could get behind such a policy.

Whenever a bottle or a glass sat on the table empty, he'd come over and say, "So, what do we do about this, my friends?"

I liked the Grill House, and Lame's company, so much that I made it my home base during my time in Tirana, and the convivial nature of the place put me in a good mood and no doubt affected how I responded to Albania's busy capital.

Whoa! Wait a minute. How can that be? Where have I been? I keep thinking I have more freedom of movement about the world than I actually have. Here's one more place I can't go.

I just read that at the Phoenix Country Club women are not allowed in the men's grill room where the serious business deal making and dining occurs. No, the women who want find food to nosh on are pushed off into the women's grill which is smaller and without the buffet, the bar or the lovely view of the golf course. The women's grill has a hotplate.

There's a bit of a fuss going on at the country club since some members want to move on into modern times where a couple can eat eggs together for breakfast, for example. Some of the men are as appalled by living in the days when women weren't allowed in saloons--"respectable" women mind you and are having a time of it for standing up for their wives. This is true. Here's the article that covers the details. The story involves peeing on a pecan tree as well as other juicy grammar school-like tidbits.

But before you go to the article, consider this. Several years ago, and I'm talking many--when I lived in Columbia, South Carolina during middle school, my mom took my brother and me to a roller skating rink. When we found out we had to be members in order to skate, we decided that rink wasn't for us. Why not? Becoming members had to do with religion and skin color. We just happened to be the right religion and and the right skin color, but we didn't like the rules. We thought the rules should change.

Since then, I think, rules have changed. But, I often live in La-La-Land where we all get along, so I can't say if this is 100% so. *Before those of you from the south start sputtering, let me assure you I loved so much about South Carolina. Seventh grade was my Renaissance year and I was sad to move.

But, this story is about men and women and not race and religion--so perhaps, they aren't similar. After all, there are men's clubs and women's clubs--and most people wouldn't argue about that, so what's the difference?

Three summers ago we drove through Regent, North Dakota to see enormous scrap metal sculptures that were built along the Enchanted Highway as a means to get tourists to drive off the main interstate to Regent. The town was dying because making money there had become a dwindling proposition.

Recently, my husband said that he'd like to drive to Regent again to see those sculptures, so perhaps they are bringing people to the town.

According to this New York Times article, in Laviano, Italy population decline is also a problem. It started back in 1980 when there was an earthquake that killed 300 residents and destroyed many buildings.

Noticing that there was a lack of babies being born, the mayor decided to pay women to have babies. If a town is not replenishing its population, the economy goes into the tank. Even people who immigrate here can get paid. How long this will last is to be determined.

Lest you think this is a crazy proposition. Singapore has had a similar campaign for Chinese Singaporeans. When people aren't procreating, they need a little umph sometimes.

Laviano does have a tourist draw. It's in the Province of Salerno that features gorges, historical buildings that date back to the 14th century and a diversity of flora and fauna. Since tourists can create jobs, like Regent, North Dakota is counting on, perhaps Laviano might find some options in that domain if the baby thing doesn't hold.

I've never been to Laviano, but here is my plug for what I've gathered make this a worthy stop.

Here is a link to a holiday rental. It's a start.

Heading south, I passed the town of Orikum and the road soon climbed steeply into the Llogara Pass, one of those places that makes you feel very small and alone.

The road clung to a mountainside so steep that when I craned my neck up I couldn't see it top out. On my left there was a verdant valley far below and another huge wall of gray rock. The valley seemed to pinch farther up ahead, for the views were long enough that I could mark the road's progress as it snaked in and out of sharp bends.

Then, rounding one, I confronted the most dramatic and lovely stretch of road I'd seen on the Adriatic/Ionian coast: In the windshield, a ridge line the color of ash loomed over the road and it descended in a tumbling pitch perhaps 2,000 feet into iris blue water. The narrow road worked its way down the green hillside not in gentle curves but in hairpin switchbacks, like an extended mark of Zoro.

Far below, the town of Dhermi perched in resistance, some how, to the Llogara Pass' plunge to the sea.

A few days later, taking a road out of the southern city of Saranda that soon turned into one of the best in Albania -- despite having been marked in yellow on my map, signifying a track slightly better than cracked concrete -- I was again to pull neck muscles trying to take in the immensity of a light-speckled valley that stretched almost to the hill town of Gjirokaster.

In one frame, a single house sat sentry over groves and green terraces, with the patchwork valley floor running away from it in the distance.

These were scenes that revealed how much Albania, despite all its problems, had that was worth protecting.

When Agim Loci was 23, a good friend of his tried to rape a girl in their hometown of Fruhe Kruje.

The girl's two brothers thwarted the attack at the last moment. But the matter did not stop there: The girl's family wanted revenge. Loci did something surprising: He took his friend, tied him up and made him stand in a field before the girl's entire family.

"I said, 'If you want to kill him, kill him. But then his family will come and kill one of you'," Loci recalled.

"Of course, nobody was going to kill him then."

Loci told me this story in a taxi that inched through choking traffic heading out of Tirana.

We were going to meet with a few families living under the shadow of blood feuds, and I had asked him how he had gotten started as a volunteer peacemaker for the Albania's Committee for Nationwide Reconciliation (CNR), which mediated between feuding families in order to broker peace without violence.

There were at least 1,600 families in Albania today thought to be in hiding because of blood feuds.

That incident in the field had been 14 years ago, but that was the first blood feud he resolved, Loci said. He'd resolved more than a dozen in recent years, and since he was in charge of a roster of CNR volunteers throughout greater Tirana, he'd probably had a hand in many more truces.

He was currently handling seven feuds, three of which were close to reconciling.

Loci was not a tall man, but he was powerful, someone you'd want clearing the way ahead of you on an end zone run. His day job was as a bodyguard and and I would come to see how his profession colored his work with Albanian families.

In the end, he was just protecting people.

Loci received no payment for his work with families, save for a small gift they'd give him when a feud ended.

He said he was setting an example for his three children. "I want my children to have the respect for life my father gave me."

My mother told me this traveler-doesn't-have-a-clue story yesterday morning after I picked her up at the Greyhound bus station in Columbus, Ohio.

I posted about this yesterday, but I'm still shaking my head and wondering where the woman is today and what she has found to eat. Perhaps she's in Missouri?

It has reminded me of other travel stories when there is nothing else to do but keep on keeping on--and hopefully, eventually, you'll get to where you want to go. It's also to make you feel better if you've ever made a travel mistake. I've made mistakes, but not quite like this.

Here is the recap:

"Where are you going?" My mother asked the woman who got on the bus in Newark, New Jersey.

"Los Angeles," the woman said.

"My!" said my mother. "That's far. When will you get there?"

"Tomorrow." The woman, according to my mother, sounded confident.

"Tomorrow?!" my mother exclaimed.

Mind you, they are on the bus on the east coast. The U.S. hasn't shrunk.

The woman nodded, still sure.

In Pittsburgh, the woman discovered the truth. She won't arrive in Los Angeles until Saturday, I think sometime tomorrow night. It is a looooonnnnnng ride.

My mother said that the woman spoke with an accent , so perhaps she misunderstood the details, or she never asked for the details. I wonder if her ticket gave her an inkling that something was amiss? Regardless, she's somewhere the middle of the U.S. by now and by tomorrow night she'll be in L.A.

This reminds me a little bit of the problem when planning international travel that involves crossing the International Date Line. When we lived in Asia I always double checked to make sure I understood exactly what day it would be when I would arrive somewhere. Missing a day can wreck havoc on plans if you're not careful.

Or there are the mistakes where you head east instead of west or the other way around. I know someone who was driving to Washington, D.C., from Columbus, but didn't discover he had gone the wrong way until he hit Indiana or thereabouts. He had recently immigrated to the U.S. which added to his sign reading difficulties and reluctance to ask for directions.