Inspire, Fall/Winter 2008

Mountains flanked the western horizon, waterways threaded a landscape patched with forests and fields, and the sun glazed everything a deep red. Meanwhile, Major Miller talked about G-force, knots, and maneuvers we would try. I attempted to listen but found my attention captured by the scenery all around the jet’s clear canopy. He glided into a couple of wingovers, flipping the plane and then flying upside down so I felt like I was dangling from monkey bars over the prettiest playground I’d ever seen. Then our intrepid pilot started playing around with G-force. One G is the force of gravity, two Gs equal twice the force of gravity, and so on. We were going to start with a couple Gs, he told me, working our way up to seven. That would be seven times my body weight against me. “Flex your legs and take a deep breath,” he said, before yelling “Hit it!” again. On that cue, I was supposed to exhale quickly in what’s called the hook maneuver to stay conscious. I dug my heels into the floorboard, flexed my muscles to keep the blood from rushing to my head, and tried to breathe. But before I could, my head dropped under the force, and the golden world around me blackened at just over two Gs. We pulled out of the maneuver, and the G-forces dropped back to one. “You’re not breathing,” Major Miller said. “Try making the ‘k’ sound.” We hit it again. Once more, my head started falling, but this time I verbalized, “K, k, k.” “That’s right,” he said. “Good.” The gray tunnel closing in on me widened, and I could see out of the cockpit again. A carpet of trees swirled around the canopy as we pulled out of the diamond maneuver. “You just pulled 7.5 Gs,” Major Miller yelled. He didn’t mention that he had just done the same while controlling the aircraft and narrating the entire experience. If he was flying in a show — as he would that weekend — he would also be negotiating the formation with five other pilots just 18 inches apart. Curious, I asked, “How many Gs have you pulled?” “More than eight,” he said. Oh, mercy. Purple shadows were creeping over the mountains, and we broke Mach 1 — the speed of sound — as we turned back. “Want to fly it?” Now, despite lots of practice driving from Maine to Cedarville during my college years, I’m a terrible driver. However, I’ll try anything, so what else could I say but, “Absolutely!” He took his hands off the joystick, holding them above his head to show I had control of the aircraft. Casually, he told me to try to keep it at 4,500 feet. It was like a video game: push forward and the jet tilts down, back and it thrusts up. He didn’t try to recruit me to join the team afterward, but I managed to steer the craft above the coastal peninsulas, fingers of land laced with tidal waterways. Major Miller took the controls back to beat a P-3 Navy cargo plane to the runway. We pulled one more G-force maneuver to decrease our altitude for landing. The jet met the runway effortlessly, and as I stepped out of the plane, the tarmac grabbed my feet from the cockpit ladder well before my mind wanted to follow. Spectators, still wearing wishful looks, were waiting with their questions. But I had a question of my own: “When can I go again?” Rachel Ganong ’05 finds herself owing a daily debt of appreciation to her English studies and the Cedarville professors that prepared her for her job as a senior reporter at The Times Record , a small daily newspaper covering mid-coast Maine. Rachel enjoys living near a cadre of siblings, cousins, and Cedarville friends. You may contact her at rlganong@msn.com. “ I felt like I was da ngli ng from monkey ba rs over the prettiest playgrou nd I’d ever seen.” i Cedarville University 15 Photo credit: Troy Bennett at The Times Record