View from above provides best seat for game

ONE THOUSAND FEET ABOVE SAN DIEGO -- I've had seats that are so high up you need a Jumbotron to identify who's singing, but never quite like this.

As we circled Qualcomm Stadium on Thursday night, watching as Sting and No Doubt practiced their halftime show amid a glittering sea of extras, three friends and I had the same thought: How'd we pull this off?

For a few minutes, I had the opportunity to see something that 130-million television viewers won't Sunday night: the home of the Super Bowl from high above in the Saturn Lightship, a 6,335-pound blimp.

Escalated security measures mandate a no-fly zone for a 7-mile radius immediately before, during and after Super Bowl XXXVII. That was bad news for the four blimps that had slowly floated across America and parked on a tiny airstrip south of San Diego.

Landing the seat in the blimp was a matter of luck. A friend from my days at CNNSI.com is now the producer of Mitch Albom's radio show in Detroit, and the Saturn folks had called him, hoping to get the Detroit Free Press columnist and Tuesdays with Morrie author in the air. He couldn't make it, so four less-acclaimed but no-less-excited journalists took his place.

We drove south from San Diego to Otay Mesa's Brown Air Field, a tiny strip less than a mile from Tijuana, Mexico. A yellow blimp adorned with a sports betting site's logo was the first we saw, and two more are there with the Saturn logo, impressive because there are only 10 in the United States.

Missing out on hovering above a Super Bowl will cost a blimp the equivalent of about $1.5-million in on-air TV footage and mentions. Nonetheless, the blimp is carrying on its hospitality function, providing about five 90-minute flights a day to media members and community VIPs in the days leading up to the Super Bowl.

The ride was as smooth as it was breathtaking -- a crew of 16 is required to land the ship, a careful process that was even more impressive when we landed at night.

Before we could board, passengers from the previous flight had to trade off with us two at a time so as not to shift the blimp's weight too much. The cabin is the size of a large van, with small seats two-wide and curved windows with small vents. The only distraction is the sound from two large propellers, and that is eliminated with earphones and microphones that allow everyone on board to speak and listen with ease.

We lifted off as the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean, casting the sky in a beautiful red hue. We flew north to San Diego, cruising at about 30 knots, or about 35 mph, and learned that blimp travel is always dependent on weather conditions.

Our pilot, Jeff Capek, calls Tampa home when he isn't floating all over the country, and boasts quite a rare profession. There are more astronauts in this country than blimp pilots. The Saturn Lightship has a 148-gallon fuel capacity and can cruise at about 40 knots, getting about 3.5 miles to the gallon, comparable to the 1977 Chevy Malibu station wagon I drove in high school.

Capek gets lots of dumb questions from his passengers, the most common being whether his crew packs the blimp into the Saturn truck and takes it to its next destination. The airship won't be deflated as long as it has a contract, so it has been inflated since it was launched in August 2001.

Travel is a bit like island hopping, going from one airstrip to another, typically paying $50-$100 in mooring fees to keep the blimp docked for a night. Everything rides on winds and weather -- Capek once made it from New York to San Francisco in 21/2 weeks, but he once spent a month getting from Kansas City to Las Vegas.

He answers our dumb questions -- no, he doesn't necessarily prefer Blimpie's to Subway, and yes, he has flown blimps together in formation, like the Blue Angels but slower, even though air regulations dictate a 2,000-foot buffer between airships. Capek would much rather have his job than be an airline pilot -- no airports to hurry through, and even if the blimp lacks a bathroom and can travel more than 400 miles in one day, he answers our obvious question by smiling and pulling a wide-mouth Aquafina bottle from under his seat.

The highlight is circling Qualcomm, where the surrounding staircases make us hungry for curly fries and the halftime show's dress rehearsal is so exact as to include the stadium clocks counting down the 20-minute time limit. When the extras hurry on and off the field en masse, it is similar to an anthill roused into a frenzy by an intruding sneaker.

Our trip back from Qualcomm was much faster, with a 15-knot wind now blowing with us instead of against us. The landing strip is easy to spot, thanks to a white Sanyo blimp illuminated a few hundred yards away. The Saturn crew forms a V on the ground in the direction of the wind, and the ends and point of the arrow are marked with red, white and green lights.

At our request, Capek gives us a thrill by taking our descent at a 35-degree angle, the closest thing a blimp with 150,000 cubic feet of helium can get to a barrel roll. The landing, like the rest of the flight, would be barely enough to wake a sleeping passenger, as we roll to a stop on small wheels as the crew grabs hold of the blimp's mooring lines and, two by two, we walk down three stairs to the ground.

By the time we get to our car, the blimp is up and off again with a new crew, and when we return to the media center in downtown San Diego, the red Saturn logo is peeking out from behind the city's big downtown hotels. There won't be any shots of the Bucs and Raiders from above on Sunday night, but believe me: There's no better way to see the Super Bowl.