When my boys were growing up in elementary school I would periodically point out to them that one or the other of them needed to become a blimp pilot so that I could get a ride on the Goodyear blimp. They approached this with all the seriousness it deserved and walked away saying something like “sure Dad” and rolling their eyes.
Tempus fugit and in the blink of an eye, it was 2007 and I found myself in a later life career working with my older son in the auto repair business. He had established a business relationship with our Goodyear tire rep and we sold a fair number of Goodyear tires in our business. One day he came to me and asked me if I still wanted that ride on the Goodyear blimp and there was no hesitation on my part, so he set it up and a couple of weeks later we were at the airport looking across a field at my holy grail – the airship Spirit of America.
THEY FOLLOW THE SHIP AROUND THE COUNTRY IN TRACTOR TRAILERS FULL OF SUPPORT EQUIPMENT
Back in the day the Goodyear fleet used to fly around the country and offer excursions to Goodyear retailers and other folks that they were trying to schmooze.
We hiked across the field and got in the gondola. I assumed there would be some sort of orientation, safety rules, whatever, but no. We just got in and sat down. I did not know what to expect but it was like sitting in a very noisy city bus with the windows down. The engines are mounted right at the back of the gondola and they make a lot of noise. Normally, the trips are about 30 minutes long, but as it turned out, our spot in the schedule was in the ground crew’s lunch break, so we ended up flying for a little over an hour which, trust me, is plenty.
While we flew, the pilot provided some history of the blimps and explained some of the controls that were in front of him. There were strange strings hanging in front of him that he would occasionally pull in an effort to control the airships desire to wander aimlessly. I asked him what the big wooden wheel next to his seat did and he gave it a spin and the blimp pointed down at about a 45° angle. I promised not to ask anymore questions. As we flew down the Chesapeake Bay Beach we flew past my service station and I told the pilot that my house was only about a mile away and asked if we could fly over. We quickly found it and he flew a couple of circles around the house while my wife stood in the driveway waving like a maniac.
Soon after that he asked if any of us were interested in flying the blimp and I was like a blur running up to the front of the cabin waiting for him to get out of my seat. In spite of his coaching, I was unable to keep the airship in a straight line. Nothing happens quickly in a blimp so it was just kind of frustrating, like a big lazy elephant, trying to get it to do what you want it to do.
My son and a couple of the other passengers got a chance at the wheel and were a bunch of show offs, doing a much better job of controlling the beast than I did.
As it turns out, even if riding in the Goodyear blimp is one of your life goals, an hour in the blimp is all I really needed. The noise, the snail pace and the wind blowing through the open windows make a short trip seem long. If I were offered a blimp ride today, my reaction would be “been there done that,” but it was exactly what I wanted and I’ll forever be grateful to my son for setting it up and to Goodyear for letting us go.
The old soft Goodyear blimps are gone like the dinosaurs, replaced by rigid high tech carbon fiber vehicles that just don’t inspire the same reaction in me and I doubt seriously that they’re going around the country giving people rides.