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'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  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.

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.'