A real tall tale

By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer | Thursday, October 13, 2005 10:50 PM PDT ∞

Like the middle-aged man who made the winning touchdown in the last minutes of the high school championship game in Nobodyknowswhere, Oklahoma back in '74, I simply can't stop talking about it.

Just in case you missed Thursday's newspaper article in the North County Times, I am here talking about my ride in a Blue Angels F/A-18 "Hornet" fighter jet on Wednesday afternoon.

Let's play catch-up: About this time every year the Blues come to town, like Santa Claus, bearing gifts of high-sky maneuvers for those attending the annual air show (taking place this weekend) at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

And every year they take three reporters up in the sky to demonstrate their moves. I was one of them. Holy cannoli.

The ride was fast. It was furious. I didn't puke. I didn't pass out. I was so excited that I serenaded the pilot.

But what I did not tell readers of that lovely piece of fine journalism, which I am proud to say contained the lyrics to songs by Diana Ross and The Village People, is that it ran in the newspaper exactly one year late.

I was supposed to sing the blues, so to speak, this time last year.

The jet, sadly, had some issues with the nose steering thingamajig. And there I stood on the Tarmac in my very, very baggy Blue Angels-issued "VIP" flight suit. Think Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Ironically, my get-up was empirically larger than the snug royal blue flight suit worn by my tall, manly man of a pilot, who was first to break the news to myself and two other reporters in waiting: Mechanical problems. We weren't taking off that day.

He, of course, explained to the three of us what was wrong with the aircraft. I listened the same way I listened when I was given turn-by-turn directions to a friend's house in downtown San Diego and ended up in Chula Vista.

My initial thought after given this in-depth explanation of the jet's nose aeronautical navigational capability, something like that, was: "Roger that. But, sir, we were trained on the ejection seat."

Truth is, we were trained on everything, in case of an emergency. We endured hours worth of training that could have been boiled down to a three-second exclamation: Don't touch anything!

And the medical tests, oh the medical tests. Such examinations included a chest X-ray, an eye test, a hearing exam (huh? whatdya say?), a urinalysis, and a brief psychological prod ---- where I needed to remind myself that now is not a good time to crack a joke.

The three of us endured two days of examinations and lengthy explanations on how to not touch anything in the cockpit. All that for a once-in-a-lifetime ride that was cancelled.

The pilot was nice when he told us our trip was canned. He told us that he would do his best to get us a ride in an aircraft called "Fat Albert," which is the Blue Angels chubby cousin, the C-130. This, I was later told, would be something like a Southwest flight out of Lindbergh Field.

Roger that. We went from knockout gravitational forces and supersonic speeds to: Please have your seats in the upright position, we will be bringing the nut and beverage cart by shortly.

Even that didn't happen.

Disappointed is not exactly the right word to express how I felt. Embarrassed is more like it.

Why? Because I had told everyone that I was flying in a Blue Angels jet and few I suspect actually bought my story ---- which to many fell in the same genre as the "my girlfriend lives out of state" and "my Cadillac is in the shop."

I'd show them, I said.

In the end, I had to wait another year. I could hear it already: "There goes Louise, telling stories again. Hey girl, tell us about that time you were gonna go up in a jet."

I'd show them, I said to myself again.

Fastforward to this year's medical examinations that went something like this: Ten fingers, ten toes, good to go. The training was a little condensed too, topped off with a Blue Angels crew chief giving in-flight instructions in the same jumbled manner as a teenage girl talking about the new cute boy in her algebra class. Then came the signing of the release forms, fine print that boiled down to this: If you are harmed or dead, it's not our fault.

I signed and hours later I was off into the wild blue yonder. (They ---- the mighty Blue Angels who are really fighter pilots borrowed from the Navy and Marine Corps ---- are going to kill me for using part of the Air Force anthem to make my point here.)

But I did it. I sho' did.

Sometimes the girlfriend really does live out of state and sometimes the Caddy really is in the shop.

Staff writer Louise Esola covers Oceanside schools. She can be reached at lesola@nctimes.com.