So, as I'm standing on the pier in Jersey City, waiting for my ferry and satisfying my Seafaring Heritage yesterday morning, I looked to the south and saw two clusters of dots in the sky over the Verrazano Bridge. They were moving really slow, whatever they were, and I soon figured out the cluster to the left was made up of little planes with signage. The cluster to the right was more rounded, and I thought "Hot air balloons over Staten Island?" but as they slowly came closer, I realized it was blimps. Four of them, to be exact. At this point, the planes have gotten closer to the pier, and even though their signs are facing toward Manhattan, the lead plane says "Parade of Blimps," while the plane in the middle has a giant-ass American flag, and the one on the end says "LOOKUP". Like so:
Everyone standing on the pier at this point is staring up, curiously, and it was pretty amazing to see everyone's faces soften (and I'm talking people from tourists to business men here. No one was immune to the charms of a random blimp parade) then look just a bit delighted as they pulled out their camera phones and started taking pictures. The blimps were a little too slow for us, though, because the ferry came and we had to get on before they got in really good photo range. Still, if you were seated on the right starboard side of the boat, you got to see them on the ride. Some people actually got up from their seats to move to the open door and take pictures.
Blimps aren't rare in this area - especially with god knows how many outdoor sporting events that go on in the summer - but to see this many together, and to have it trumpeted in pretty cute fashion with their airplane cousins, was enough to win me over.
Probably because anytime I see a blimp, I remember when I was like six or seven years old, playing at the end of my driveway with my friend Brian. It was a Saturday in the summer, and we were making "coconut soup," which was basically us just throwing black walnuts (from the tree in my backyard) into a water-filled cement bucket and stirring it up like it was something we'd actually eat (given I wouldn't even eat most vegetables at the time, this goes to show you what kind of imagination I had, that I fancied myself some kind of pretend-food foodie or something). All of a sudden, we heard this low, rumbling/whirring sound. I think it was the previous summer that we'd been playing outside and two military helicopters came flying really low and loud over the neighborhood and simultaneously awed and scared the bejesus out of us. So we were like "IS IT THE ARMY HELICOPTERS AGAIN?"
But when we looked up, suddenly this big gray thing that was most certainly not a helicopter floated into view, seemingly right above the houses across the street: The Goodyear Blimp. Friends, when I tell you this was one of the craziest things to ever happen in good old River Plaza, NJ, it was one of the craziest things. The Goodyear freaking Blimp, right there in black-boldfaced type on its side. I have no idea what it was doing in my neighborhood, at least 50 miles from the nearest major sporting event, but we both just stood, jaws on the ground, coconut soup ignored, as it floated on by. I remember it being enormous, and recently asked my dad "Was it flying that low or did I imagine that?" and he confirmed that it really was as low as I thought. At that age, this was simply incredible, so I thank the pilot for taking that route that day, for whatever reason, and for flying as low as he did. I don't remember if we were too stunned to wave, but I certainly hope we did.
So for that alone, I'll always associate blimps with something sort of like childlike whimsy, which is why seeing four of them together, for no other reason except to have a blimp parade, was a true and utter delight. I Tweeted about it, and the people who ran it, Van Wagner Airships, Tweeted back, so I'm glad I showed my appreciation (as did many others, which was nice to see).
See, this is why we CAN have nice things.
