As I said before I had a great summer or at least the month of June definitely rocked.  The week after my Boss Flight to Fort McCoy came my ride with the Blue Angles. 
A friend of mine volunteers his time each summer at the Quad Cities Air Show.  I was telling him about my upcoming Boss Flight and mentioned that I have always wanted to get a ride with the Blue Angles.  He told me the rides on the jets were being given to some area teachers, but they did have a few seats available for members of the press on their C-130 cargo plane known as Fat Albert.  He said I could apply for a press pass to the air show and request a seat on the flight.

My first meeting with the Blue Angles was when I was 12 or 13 years old.  My dad worked for the city and we got to help out during the Burlington Air Show that year.  He drove the jeep with a big white and orange checkered flag and a sign that said Follow Me and I got to tag along.  Our job was to lead airplanes from the runway to where they were to park for the show.  The Blue Angles pilots were relaxing that morning talking with people.  Three of the pilots were tossing a football around a circle.  So I took a poster my dad had gotten for me over to them and asked if they would sign it.  Which they gladly did and then they invited me to toss the football with them.  It is among my fondest memories from my youth.  They seemed so tall and straight they were what heroes were made of.
 
Arriving at the Davenport Airport in Mt. Joy on Saturday I picked up my press pass and checked in with the Blue Angles officials.  From there I was loaded into a minivan with some servicemen who were also going on the ride.  From there it was a short ride to the south end of the airport where Fat Albert was parked alone on the tarmac.
 
I had a little time before the flight to take some pictures and meet some of my co passengers. Since I had the biggest camera there, I was asked to take several of their pictures and e-mail them a copy.  Two of the Marines, Lt. Anthony Bradbury who had received his commissioned 1 week earlier and SSgt Gary Chase, posed for pictures in front of Fat Albert.  An Army Sergeant, who had been to Iraq twice and looked tough as nails warned everybody he was sure he was going to puke his guts out.

As it got close to the time for takeoff, our pilot Maj. Brendan Burke called everyone together and explained that he was going to brief the crew on the flight.  He asked that everyone be quiet but we were welcome to listen in.  The atmosphere went from light hearted excitement to textbook serious as he relayed wind and weather conditions.  As he outlined the entire flight, each maneuver from takeoff to landing, it was obvious he was well trained and in charge.   The entire crew for that matter was confident and well trained.
 
Finally, it was flight time.  We taxied out to the runway and off we went.  When we took off the pilot held to the runway to build extra airspeed.  Then climbed steeply creating positive G forces making it feel as though you were being forced down into your seat.  Next as the aircraft lost airspeed he pushed the nose down creating the opposite effect as we experienced a feeling of weightlessness our bodies pulling against the seat belts.  While this was going on the 3 members of the crew who weren’t strapped in, were floating in the air.  The only thing keeping them down was a ladder secured to the deck with cargo straps that they held onto. 

From that point on the rest of the flight was a series of steep turns, climbs and dives that would have made anyone proud to puke some internal organ out.  But since we were told we had to clean up after ourselves there was no way I was going to.  At one point I looked out a window across from me and saw nothing but corn.  Then in a split second, the rollercoaster rolled and it was nothing but blue sky.  All too soon for me, it was time to land.  The thing is when the Blue Angles land they don’t just land.  They do it with style.  The aircraft slowed to minimum airspeed.  Then as it seemed the plane was just barely hanging there we heard the landing gear come down, and we dove for the runway again creating zero Gs.  This time I put my camera on video so I was able to record the crew as they went airborne inside the cabin.  We were apparently doing one of two things.  Either we were demonstrating how fast the airplane could stop or we were being used as guinea pigs to test the tensile strength of military seat belts.  As soon as the wheels hit the ground they reversed the props and hit the brakes.  You could feel the nose of the airplane dip down as we stopped in about an inch and a half.  If not for the super strength seat belts, we would have looked like bugs on a windshield against the forward bulkhead. 

When we got back to where we started on the tarmac, one of the crew members collected all of the “barf bags”.  None had been used, even the sergeant who knew he would but got on the plane anyway, didn’t.  Maybe that’s what people who are tough as nails do.   The guy was a Hero before he got on, with nothing to prove.  
 
I met a lot of Heroes that day, past, present and future.  The crew of Fat Albert was of the same cut as those of my childhood.  While they didn’t seem as tall as I remembered, they were still giants.