At Lookout Eugene-Springfield, we first learned on Tuesday, Sept. 2, that the Goodyear Blimp would be landing in Eugene. I originally planned to write just a short news story on it. I called the Goodyear representative to a few questions: “How can you see it? Where do you park?”
The Goodyear contact got back to me, answered my questions and then asked: “Want to ride along?”
The answer was “yes” — but I hesitated. An hour and forty minutes? Floating? Why? I have to confess, I was hating on the blimp. My newsroom colleagues encouraged me to go.
So there we were, me, usually a data reporter, and Isaac Wasserman, our photographer, who admits to being afraid of heights, taking a passenger van to the blimp over a rocky dirt road on the Eugene Airport grounds. We saw a family parked along the road, peering through holes in a chain-link fence for a glimpse of the blimp coming in to land…