Bananas
& Milk Duds.......great story Lou!
Be sure and read the wording on the last
picture.
BANANAS & MILK
DUDS
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 seriously
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 have
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 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
Colin Montgomerie.
And I egressed
the bananas.
And 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 never thought
would 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.'
God Bless
America
|
This e-mail message has been scanned for Viruses and Content and cleared by
MailMarshal
|
|
