Da Blimp, Da Blimp

This story should have been posted a week or so ago, but what the hell - better late than never. It was a dark and dreary Tuesday in Seligman, Missouri. The 29th day of May, 2007 to be exact. I was at my brother Chuck's house playing with Jessica and Charlie. My sister-in-law, Ruthie, was in the kitchen working on making some food for us and Chuck was outside in the backyard doing some sort of psuedo-manly redneck thing that he enjoys doing, when suddenly he starts bellowing at us all to run outside. I instantly pictured him making a scene over something stupid, like "hey look how I taught the pigs to sit up and beg". But, I was mistaken.

He had heard a weird noise and looked up to see that the Goodyear blimp was making a beeline for the house at a considerably low altitude. Now, let me assure you, the blimp may not be super exciting, but to see it in Seligman, Missouri of all places and to witness it flying so very low to the ground was really quite neat. The kids, of course, thought it was the best thing ever. And because they fly fairly slow (blimps, not kids) we got to watch it for a good 10 minutes or so. Plus, it really did fly directly over Chuck's yard, so the kids kinda felt like it had dropped by for a personal visit or something.

The only thing we can figure is that it was trying to head towards Wal-Mart country in northwest Arkansas because their annual stockholders meeting was in full swing that particular week in Fayetteville. And the impending doom of the storm was causing it some minor flight problems. You could definitely tell the pilots kept trying to turn towards the south but the wind was simply not allowing them to do so. And I'm sure the wind and clouds were responsible for the low altitude. These theories were mostly confirmed the next day when I made a trip to Rogers, AR and saw the aforementioned blimp parked at the airport there. Right next to the Wal-Mart hanger.

So thank you, Wal-Mart. Because of you the kids got a visit from the Goodyear blimp and they were thrilled. The first picture is of the back of Chuck's balding head (he's going to kill me for that one) so that you can sorta get a perspective of how close to the ground the thing was really flying. And then the second picture is when it was directly over the yard in front of us. I actually took several stupid pictures of the stupid thing, but amazingly enough it looks the same in every picture. So I will only post these two.