The Goodyear Blog.

Spring is coming. How do I know? At about 4 p.m., the sun reflected off the glass skin of the One North Wacker building, which is across from the building where I work, and then came into my office and onto my computer screen — washing it out for a few minutes. As sure a sign of spring as the early setting of the constellation Orion.

Of course, it was +2 degrees F in Chicago this morning, so I can’t get too worked up about spring just yet.

To recap (see yesterday’s blog first): in September 1986, I finagled a ride on the Goodyear Blimp. All I had to do was drive out to the Smyrna, Tennessee, airport, and present myself. The Blimp was operating out of that airport, perhaps 30 miles away from the city, because the metro Nashville airport was far too busy.

My coworker Stephanie and I drove out to Smyrna that morning, getting lost on the way, and then getting a speeding ticket once we got to Smyrna. (I was driving. Of the policeman, Stephanie said, “That was the nicest cop I’ve ever met.” He was very polite in fining me for speeding, calling me “sir” and using “please” a lot.)

The blue-and-white Goodyear van took us from the hanger area of the airport to the Blimp staging area — a spot on the tarmac where a number of Goodyear employees, dressing in blue and white, were standing by. It took nine people to land the Blimp: three to grab rope hanging from the red nipple that marked the very front of the airship, the other six to hold other ropes attached to other parts of the structure.

We were guided closer, and got a look at the Blimp up close and at the bottom. Its bottom half was covered with row upon row of what looked like bicycle reflectors, blue, green, red and yellow. Each reflector was attached to a grid of wires lacing the airship’s belly. It was the very mechanism that had spelled letters for me years before (or like it; there's more than one Blimp; this was the "Columbia.") The captain popped out of the gondola to greet us. With his silver hair and tanned face, he looked like a commercial airline pilot, and probably had been one until he got this gig.

He was good enough to warn us: “She moves around a lot, depending on the wind,” That meant getting on and off as fast a possible — up a short ladder and into the gondola, which seats six, two up front, two middle, two back. Inside the gondola, the blue and white theme continued, with a sort of industrial blue being the predominant color.

There were a lot of dials on the control panel, but it didn’t seem as complicated as that of an airplane. Two dials indicated helium temperature and, I think, pressure. The captain sat in the seat to the front and to the left, and rolled a wooden wheel with his right hand. This made the nose go up and down. His foot pedals made the Blimp go right or left, and the knobs at his left-hand side controlled the engine’s speed.

Up we went. It was something like going up in an elevator — an elevator that pitched a little in the wind, and had a lawn mower engine attached to it. We tooled around the greater Smyrna area at altitudes of 150 to 500 feet. Visibility was five miles or so, meaning we couldn’t see the Nashville skyline. Still, I saw an eyeful everywhere: dirt and paved roads, electric transformers, a scummy pond, apartments finished and under construction, enormous patches of green betraying only a hint of fall coloration.

We buzzed over the Nissan plant, a vast gray structure nested in a huge parking lot, which was stocked mostly with the trucks that Nissan builds there. We flew over some of the lakes (mostly manmade) that stretch across the southwest part of Davidson County — from the air, you can see how twisty and irregular they are, and at one point it looked like the whole Earth was water broken only by curlicues of land covered with trees and occasionally punctuated by boat docks.

“Usually they wave back,” said the captain as we passed some people down on one of the boat docks. He was waving to them. He seemed like he was enjoying flying the Blimp. I know I enjoyed riding it, and Stephaine did too, especially the view from up front.

But I have to wonder — is it still possible to do what I did 17 years ago? Or is Goodyear too concerned with liability to allow it any more? Or the FAA too concerned that some fool might highjack it and use it to distribute sarin gas? I don’t think I want to find out.