Flying for the Roses

It’s a silly job, but someone’s gotta do it, and on Friday that someone will be Joel Chamberlain, a 30-year Goodyear veteran and pilot of the blimp.

Each New Year’s Day, Los Angeles is honored with not one but two of these lumbering gray blobs, which have been winning Angelenos’ affections since 1962, when they first started flying over the Rose Bowl.

Pushing off from an airfield in Carson, one will be dispatched to the parade. The other, which Chamberlain pilots, will head for the football field. Each travels at a maximum speed of 54 mph.

Isn’t the slow speed frustrating?

“Nah,” balks Chamberlain, who is also an airplane pilot. “The only frustrating thing is if the wind blows to the point where I can’t move. If they kick up to more than 23 mph, the [blimps] won’t fly. Then we’ve gotta come up with a plan.”

Which means finding a large enough place to land. Preferably not the football field.

Wind isn’t the only potential problem. If it rains, the airships, as most of the blimp’s pilots prefer to call them, can gain 1,200 pounds in two minutes, slowing them down considerably. Now that’s a figure that should make any woman feel better about herself.