Giant flying cucumber descending on DuPage Airport
A large, green cylindrical object that can hold 6 million garden-variety cucumbers has been making small-town headlines this summer while flying across the country.
And now the Hendrick's Air Flying Cucumber - the world's first and only flying cucumber, at least according to the company that sponsors it - is coming to DuPage Airport in West Chicago.
Take a look skyward Friday morning and there it's scheduled to be, a 130-foot-long, 44-foot-tall flying ... vegetable.
The blimp is being brought to town by Hendrick's Gin, which touts itself as an unusually flavored beverage infused with cucumber essence and rose.
"The cucumber is in our DNA," said Jim Ryan, Hendrick's national brand ambassador, and the lucky guy who gets to travel the country with the flying cucumber, its eight-person road crew and its two pilots. "It has been since the first drop was made about 2000."
And since Ryan began working for the company seven years ago, he's been pitching the idea of flying a giant cucumber in major cities to increase brand awareness.
Company higher-ups always shot him down with a pitying tone and a "maybe next year ..." type of response, he said, until the stars aligned when blimp company Van Wagner Aerial Media contacted Hendrick's with the offer of an airship.
"This is a dream come true for me," Ryan said about the flying cucumber's voyage to a dozen cities across the country, a trip that began in April and is coming to a finale after the flights in DuPage.
Hendrick's Gin invites fans, bartenders, journalists and alcohol distributors to join the company for a half-hour spin in the jolly green airship, complete with a Hendrick's and tonic in a departure lounge pre-voyage, a flask cocktail during the flight and a collection of knickknacks.
"It's a fine mix," Ryan said about the fortunate few blimp riders, whose numbers usually total 25 in each city.
Those who join the fun on social media by tagging #CucumberChallenge and #FlyingCucumber to @HendricksGin on Twitter or Instragram will be entered in a contest to win a trip on the blimp. And select Instragram users already have been invited to take a three-hour flight over the entire metropolitan area.
"That's truly a dream for a photographer since you're going low and slow," Ryan said.
The flying cucumber's visit is all for show and the DuPage Airport knows it, Executive Director David Bird said.
"It's obviously a marketing ploy by this manufacturer or gin distiller," he said.
Still, the airport is happy to welcome a blimp or two each summer for a festive diversion from the typical assortment of small planes taking off and landing.
"We really didn't know what it was until we Googled it and saw that it was a blimp, or an airship, as they call them, in the shape of a cucumber," Bird said about the latest odd aircraft to make an appearance at the airport. "They generate a lot of interest because they don't move very fast and they're large."
Indeed the flying cucumber does cruise slowly, at roughly 35 mph and only 1,000 feet above ground, Ryan said.
But it's all in homage to the green-skinned vegetable that gives Hendrick's Gin its flavor, the humble cucumber.
"We say there's no better way to champion the cucumber," Ryan said, "than to let it fly."