Idiots Write About Sports

From my front porch right now, I can see the Goodyear Blimp, circling over the East Bay sky in preparation for tomorrow’s Raiders-Chargers lid-lifter. I am not sure which blimp it is — I would guess it’s the Spirit of America, based as it is out of Carson, California. But that’s not what’s troubling me.

No, what I’m chewing over right now is that it’s approximately 28 hours before kickoff… which is an awful lot of time for that blimp to fly around in circles. I mean, I assume the blimp lands somewhere between now and game time… but I’m not sure where. The Oakland Airport? Perhaps… but then I used to drive by the airstrip in Carson where The Spirit of America makes its home — blimps require a not inconsiderable amount of real estate, perhaps more than a busy airport has to offer.

So I’ll throw this one out there to the more educated masses: Where does the Goodyear Blimp make its home between now and game time? Or, as I fear, are the poor devils piloting that dirigible stuck up there until the final whistle of tomorrow night’s game?

Even more troubling, I made the ten-minute drive over to the Oakland Coliseum yesterday to pick up some extra tickets for the September 22nd game against Anaheim. (I’ll be goddamned if you charge me a handling fee, Tickets.com.) And as I pulled out of the Coliseum parking lot, I noticed a crowd of Raider fans tailgating on a side street off 66th Avenue — I would estimate at least a dozen people were there at 4 p.m. on Saturday, with their ranks growing by the minute.

Gathering for a game more than 48 hours before kickoff. That takes… dedication? Insanity? A fairly lax attitude toward hygiene? Probably some combination of all three with a decided lack of emphasis on that last one.

Now, where do those guys sleep for the next couple of nights? Hopefully not in the same place as the Blimp people.

My girlfriend is something of an airship fancier and reports that blimps usually touch down at a smaller airport in the general area.

She also works across the street from Qwest Field here in Seattle and says that preseason tailgaters frequently showed up a couple of days early. However, since Seahawks fans are often rich, they were usually in huge RVs, wrapped to look like Seahawks billboards.

Posted by Montykins at September 11, 2006 03:42 PM

For a moment, I read that as "airship financier," which conjured up images of your girlfriend smoking cigars and firing off telegrams to Ferdinand von Zeppelin demanding to know when she was going to receive a return on her investment. Which isn't to say that she _doesn't_ do that...

I should have pointed out that the Raider fans staking out 66th Avenue did not have an RV among them -- a few had vans, which strikes me as getting a little bit too familiar with your fellow pigskin enthusiasts for a couple days at a time.

Phil; when I flew into the construction site also known as the Oakland Intl Airport this afternoon, I noted that the dirigible containing advertising regarding a certain tire company was parked at Oakland's north field. I've seen it parked at Hayward and Livermore airports as well.
My own Raider reflection: Speeds of motorists on east bay freeways on Raider gamedays increase exponentially. Everyone's either going to the game (and don't want to miss a killer tailgate bash), or headed to the supermarket in another town for enough suds to drown their own neighborhood.

Yeah, the blimps tend to park behind the hangars off of Earhart Rd., here. My dad used to work in one of those hangars, and when I'd visit his work, I'd see blimps take off and land there quite often.

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