Fw: [SA] A little OT, but worth the reading!

[dwaynenancy]

Grin.  Dwayne
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pete Castine" <pcastine at comcast.net>
To: <mini-iac at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 8:42 PM
Subject: [SA] A little OT, but worth the reading!


>
> -----Below is an article written by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated.
> He details his experiences when given the opportunity to fly in a F-14
> Tomcat. If you aren't laughing out loud by the time you get to "Milk
> Duds," your sense of humor is broken.
>
> "Now this message is for America's most famous athletes:
>
> Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your
> country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have ... John
> Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few.  If you get this
> opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity...
>
> Move to Guam.
> Change your name.
> Fake your own death!
> Whatever you do .
> Do Not Go!!!
>
>
> I know.  The U.S. Navy invited me to try it.  I was thrilled. I was
> pumped.  I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would
> be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana
> in Virginia Beach.
>
> Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like,
> triple it.  He's about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair,
> finger-crippling handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic
> alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way.
> Fast.
>
> Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the
> voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ..."
> Remember?)  Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear
> his dad.  Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds
> waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff."
>
> Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60
> million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin
> Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before
> the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next
> morning.
>
> "Bananas," he said.
>
> "For the potassium?"  I asked.
>
> "No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do
> going down."
>
> The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my
> name sewn over the left breast.  (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky
> or Leadfoot ... but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook
> of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to
> nail Nicole Kidman, this was it.
>
> A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened
> me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of
> the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked
> unconscious.
>
> Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over
> me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up.  In minutes we were
> firing nose up at 600 mph.  We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over
> another F-14.
>
> Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride
> lasted 80.  It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over
> Hell.  Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, snap rolls, loops, yanks
> and banks.  We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical
> velocity of 10,000 feet per minute.  We chased another F-14, and it
> chased us.
>
> We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200
> feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5, which
> is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me,
> thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.
>
> And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before.
>
> And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth
> grade.  I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was
> egressing stuff that did not even want to be egressed.  I went through
> not one airsick bag, but two.
>
> Biff said I passed out. Twice.  I was coated in sweat. At one point, as
> we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target
> and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of
> consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw
> down.
>
> I used to know cool.  Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or
> Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool.  Cool is
> guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves.  I
> wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad
> Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in
> a home stand.
>
> A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called.  He said he
> and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on
> a patch for my flight suit.
>
> What is it?  I asked.
>
> "Two Bags."
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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