When Leah and I went to Little River Falls on Wednesday (Dec 2), I saw something in the distance that I thought was a hot air balloon. It turned out to be a blimp.

So, not the Goodyear blimp.

As it happens I actually sat in the pilot’s seat of the Goodyear blimp during a flight over Augusta, Ga, back in 1978. Being a newspaper reporter didn’t pay much, especially in Augusta, but it did have its perks. When the blimp landed at the Augusta airport, they let some local reporters go for a ride. Each of us got a chance to sit in the pilot’s seat and twirl the large wheel that controlled its vertical direction. The wheel was at my right hand, next to the seat, spin it forward to make the nose go down, and backward to make the nose go up.

This is what I got after the flight.

I’m a card-carrying charter member of the Goodyear Blimp Club.

A few days after the blimp left, we got a call in the newsroom that the blimp had crashed at the airport. It turned out that it didn’t crash, it just tore free from its mooring. There is a special line that unzips the blimp’s envelop and deflates the balloon if it comes free from its mooring. That’s what happened, apparently during a thunderstorm. I couldn’t find the article I wrote for the newspaper, but I found the Associated Press story we sent in another newspaper.

Way, way back in the very old days, my family used to go to Akron, Ohio, to visit my mother’s family. Once so long ago that the memory is dim, we drove by the huge blimp hangar at the Goodyear plant, located at Wingfoot Lake outside Akron. During the war (that’s World War II), my grandmother worked at “the Goodyear” as they called it.

Goodyear doesn’t build blimps any more. The current Goodyear blimp is not, in fact, an actual blimp. A blimp has a completely fabric envelope. The only solid parts are the gondola and its engines. When the blimp unzipped itself in Augusta, what you saw was the gondola and a large area that looked like someone had put drop cloths down for a huge painting job.

Today’s “blimp” is actually a semirigid airship, probably more accurately known as a Zeppelin, especially since it is what Goodyear calls a hybrid of a Zeppelin airship with Goodyear modifications. It was constructed at the Wingfoot Lake hangar.

Leah named one of the stray dogs that have passed through here Zeppelin, since we were on an initial-Z naming spree.

You can find more information about Goodyear’s blimp operations at their website.

The Directv blimp is, apparently, a true blimp.

Another perk I got as a newspaper reporter was a ride in a machine that is almost the polar opposite of an airship. I’ll post about that later.