OfficeForward

FW: Message for America’s most famous athletes

Written by antimethod | Friday, September 28th, 2007 | |
Filed under: Emails

“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 ! ! !

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. 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.

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.”

Written by Rick Reilly of Sports llustrated

Tagged as: f-14 tomcat, rick reilly, sports illustrated |