Not sure if anbody has already seen this....but enjoy again. 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-feet, 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."
That's funny. I read his book where he caddied for just about everybody even Donald Trump. His best was an old golf named Tommy Armour who didn't like it when Reilly made comments like...cut, cut or other such things golfers say when the shot is not going as you envisioned.
Funny stuff.....we spent 8 years in Va Beach back in the 80's and used to live 2 miles as the crow flies from the Master Jet Base at Oceana Naval Air Station. The husband of my wife's best buddy was a Tomcat pilot and made arrangements to take us on a "dependents" day cruise aboard CVN 71, the Nimitz-class carrier Theodore Roosevelt. HIghlight of the trip was standing on the flight deck while they were conducting air operations.......just an awesome experience. But I digress....near the base was an Irish pub frequented by the flyboys that was one of my favorites as well.....in the bathroom, each of the urinals was adorned with a target for everyone to take aim - a pic of Jane Fonda. :lol:
whoa whoa whoa.. in a world comprised of bad ass people with ice in their veins what in the hell did this guy do to get this call sign?
My closest friend's son has been flying F 15's for about 10 years. He told me that the rule is, if you take someone up and they blow lunch, the guest has to clean up the plane. He's finishing up a deployment somewhere in the world the location of which he wasn't permitted to disclose. He's going to be assigned to Nellis AFB in Nevada. That's apparently where they train the fighter pilots to dogfight. He'll play the opponent for the trainees.
I can't stop laughing about these lines... I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite.