Not-so-wild blue yonder

It takes drastic steps to decompress at the Super Bowl

SAN DIEGO -- Sometimes, you know, you just have to get away. Sometimes you have to leave all the nonsense and blather of everyday Super Bowl life behind.

Sometimes, you simply have to rise above it all.

So it was, overloaded by Warren Sapp and Keyshawn Johnson and the NFL's relentless information army -- if I ever see another NFL press release, it'll be too darn soon -- I finally had it. I took off. Or, more accurately, took up.

For an hour or so Thursday afternoon, there was no more talk about Sunday's big game. No defense vs. offense. No perceived lack of respect. No Jon Gruden stories or Al Davis sightings or stupid spiked-up Raiders fans.

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Instead, in the calm skies over beautiful San Diego, I reveled in a peacefully smooth ride on the Saturn blimp -- sorry, the Saturn Lightship -- with a couple of other reporters and our affable pilot, Jeff.

This was getting away from it all, all right. Getting away at 1,000 feet.

You know, there are only about 10 blimps in the United States. You can't buy a trip on one if you wanted. And even if they sold them, you'd still have a pretty hard time getting on. The gondola under our 165-foot long airship holds only seven people and the pilot. That'd be one nasty stand-by list.

The fact is, as nice as a cruise on a blimp can be, there are drawbacks. The thing does about, oh, 47 mph. It took Jeff 2 ½ weeks once to get from New York to San Francisco. And that was making good time.

You get no frequent flier mileage on the Saturn Lightship and no peanuts, either. There are no restrooms up there. It's BYOB, if you know what I mean.

But, then again, there's plenty of legroom. Everybody gets a window and an aisle seat. There are no lines at the airport. Heck, there is no airport.

"I can't imagine having to go to work every day to an airport," Jeff says.

Any blimp who's anybody is at the Super Bowl. AP

We walked across a large field south of San Diego, a mile or so from the Mexico border, and climbed into the gondola for our trip. Two off, then two on, so as not to throw off the balance of the big red-and-white balloon. Three crewmembers held a long rope on one side of the blimp's nose, with three more on the other side. To keep the blimp from wandering.

Hey, if we wanted high tech, we'd do the Concorde.

Here's another drawback: Blimps can be loud. The gondola sits right next to the propellers that steer the 55-foot high, 6,300-pound monster. But, smartly, everyone gets a headset, equipped with a microphone so everyone can talk, which pretty effectively drowns out the noise. In fact, it's probably no louder than a 747.

The airship took off so smoothly we hardly knew we were off, and before long, the sun was setting to the left and the lights of San Diego County lay ahead. It was smooth. It was positively peaceful. Not once did I think about Simeon Rice vs. Barry Sims.

A half an hour or more later -- I'm talking a leisurely trip here -- we approached Qualcomm Stadium, where Sting and singer Gwen Stefani of the band No Doubt were practicing their halftime gig. We did a few laps, saw a lot of glittering things, a lot of big video screens, a ton of people running around and a huge stage. It looked like the typical Super Bowl halftime show to me. I shuddered.

And, really, that's about it. The airship -- lightship, blimp, whatever -- is so easy-going that, at one point, Jeff got out of his seat to turn around and talk to us. The ship spun to its left, barely, but no one panicked. Everyone was cool. We could not be rattled.

Darn near half of the North American fleet of blimps is here at the Super Bowl, which is impressive considering the Federal Aviation Administration has declared a no-fly zone Sunday over the stadium. But the ships are here to spread their advertising word anyway. You can barely look up in the skies over San Diego without seeing one at one time or another.

By the time we landed, and the crewmembers on the ground grabbed the lines to steady the ship, I was as mellow as anyone can be in the middle of one of the craziest sports weeks of the year. There were parties that night, and more talk, and more unchecked hype scheduled for the next couple of days.

But I was still flying. Still, at least for the time being, high above it all.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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