A 60-year-old man whose lifelong dream was to take flight in a lawn chair using helium-filled balloons did so on Saturday, though his attempt to set a record didn't go quite as planned.

“I've been thinking about this forever," Joe Barbera, a semiretired engineer from La Center, Wash., told Seattle's KATU-TV on Friday. "Little by little, I've been working on the details.”....