GOODYEAR BLIMP

I have done many things in my life and been many places. 

I spent nine years in the US Navy and was stationed on an Ammunition Depot in southern Indiana. I went to three guided missile schools. The first In Virginia Beach, the second at the General Dynamics plant in Pomona California and the last was the killer Missile Technician B School at Mare Island in Vallejo Calif. I was stationed on a super aircraft carrier USS Constellation CVA-64 at North Island California. I was at new construction at the Todd Shipyard in Seattle for nine months where my beautiful destroyer USS Waddell DDG-64 was built. Waddell was homeported in Long Beach, Ca. for the four years a was aboard her. We did two westpacs to Vietnam and had a lifetime's worth of armed combat.

I attended college at three different schools after my discharge. I had interesting jobs which took me to places like Australia, Japan, Korea Mexico City and the nine Western States. I've been all over the world. Four trips to Europe, one mainly to Germany, one to England and two Italy. I have driven down Baja California from Long Beach to La Paz BCS.

I have fathered two sons and did a fair amount of raising them as a single father while living on my schooner. I have lived aboard a Columbia 28 sloop, a Downeast 38 schooner which I had for thirty five years and now our Choey Lee 40 foot trawler. I also have two marvelous grandchildren and a very pretty daughter in law. Speaking of pretty, I also have a gorgeous significant other.

I have owned two Ducati two Triumph two Honda and two Norton motorcycles plus a  Kawasaki and and Yamaha. I have a pilots license and have flown a Ford trimotor airplane.

The reason I bring all of this up is because on Friday my son David took me for a ride on the Goodyear blimp which isn't really a blimp anymore. It was but the new one is actually a dirigible which unlike a blimp actually has a rigid airframe. Technically it is a Zeppelin being built in Germany by Zeppelin Luftschiffahrt.This was a major event in my life. For a few years I made regular visits to the Goodyear tire plant in LA. I even had my own parking spot and still I couldn't wrangle a ride on that blimp. For the last forty five years I felt sad whenever I drove by the Goodyear airship operations in Carson wishing I could somehow hop a ride. 

It was all I was expecting and more.We cruised above the twin ports of LA and Long Beach at fifteen hundred feet at about forty knots and the view was spectacular. The first officer was at the controls and the captain did a Q & A the whole time we were aloft. It was as good as sex. Well almost as good.