I FLEW A FIGHTER JET!

Did you actually puke? I actually puked. So embarrassing, so embarrassing. Whatever. It was still the best time of my life. So like maybe two weeks ago, I got a text asking if I wanted to fly Jared Isaacman's jets in Montana. And that's not the kind of thing you say no to. So that is the extent of what I know. I've booked a flight to Bozeman and let's go to the airport and just see where this takes us. And the answer to that is the coolest hangar I have ever seen in my life. Not only is it stacked with Alpha Jets, L-39s, MiGs, and an errant Cessna 172, but it has got the craziest Star Wars bar I have ever seen. And I worked at Disney Imaginary. I'm going to show you my favorite thing about MiGs that you might not know. My favorite little fact right here at the nose. Did you know that the entire MiG ran off of five Pepsi cans? Whoa, did they put, it's like Coke and then they put Mentos. Mentos, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they used Pepsi because it was Soviet Union and they had that deal with Michael Jackson and it was off brand Mentos. But yeah, don't touch it. Don't poop the Pepsi. And once I was sufficiently educated on the complicated mechanics of how jets acquire their thrust, it was time for Tim and I to go get fitted in our costume. Sorry, I mean our safety gear, you know, that helmet, mask, flight suit, all the things that make us look as cool as we feel in there. And then we went out to the flight line to watch the flight before us take off and just imagine how great it was going to be. Gus! You ready to fly? You would meet him, dad! That was good, that was good. But before we could fly, we needed to brief the flight. Our takeoffs can be formation go. So we'll be on the left side of the runway, stroke will be on the right side. This is what this guy did for a living as a Thunderbird. He was the number four pilot. So as soon as the diamond took off, he immediately moved into the slot. So he's got no excuses if he doesn't do well. We've got camera people everywhere, so we'll be able to validate. This is a two-ship formation flight with my friend Tim Dodd, aka Everyday Astronaut, flying with the legend Jared Rook Isaacman himself, also the mastermind behind this operation. And then we'll gear, we'll dirty up the airplanes, come in one final pass to land. How's it sound? Awesome! And I had the honor of flying with Stroker, former Thunderbird number four, and, and a surprise to Rook at least, a current CFI, which means that he'd be able to sign my logbook after the flight. Exam day 1025. You really got your... Yeah. Grade A ass. That's shocking. Yeah. Take one. Oh. I did it the first time. You're failing the test. You're supposed to look cool and slow-mo. Yeah, there you go. Way better. That's really good. There we go. Yep. Otherwise it'd give it away. Thank you. The flight we briefed was that we would take off in formation and then our jet would slide into a slot formation behind Rook and 10, which like, man, I have taken off in formation in my Cessna a whole lot of times and it has never felt quite like this. So I am super beyond bummed, but the audio recording device I was using somehow managed to record a file but the file had no data in it and so there was nothing we could do to find like an audio file in there. So the best audio I have of the flight was just from the Insta360 onboard mic, which is pretty much getting drowned out by the engine and quite rough. So I'm really sorry and I'm really, really sad that I don't have the back and forth audio between me and Stroker. Mostly because Stroker was the coolest, most supportive, cheerleading, funny dude I have ever had the honor of flying in a jet with and oh, I wish you guys could hear him. But speaking of Stroker being the absolute coolest, since Tim told him at the end of our brief that I was a pilot, even though I'm just a small, baby, inexperienced Cessna pilot, the second we were off the ground, we were supposed to take off, go into that slot formation and then fly like a bunch of formation work out to the Top Gun Canyon. Instead of doing that, we immediately broke off and he was just like, your controls, have fun. And at this point with what, 15, 20 seconds on the controls, as you've seen, Stroker was just like, you should try an aileron roll. And then he gave me a little bit of feedback and I would like to think on take two, I did a lot better. And once I was done having my fun, Stroker took controls back, pulled a bunch of G's and went over to rejoin formation. So everyone refers to this canyon as the Top Gun Canyon because it looks exactly like the canyon runs that they shot in Top Gun Maverick. And so I spent all the way up until literally 10 minutes ago thinking that it was the actual canyon that they shot Top Gun in, but apparently it's not. Apparently that was shot in Cascades in Washington. Anyway, I still got to fly the Bozeman Montana version of the Top Gun Canyon and that was really freaking cool. What's funny is that before we took off, as we were walking to the plane, I was talking to Stroker and I was like, my two favorite kinds of flying are formation flying and river running because it's like the most fun you can have in an airplane. And he looked at me and he was like, And then we emerged from the canyon into the dogfight, which I've done some aerobatics before, never in a jet, but I have done some aerobatics. I have never come close to dogfighting anything and it is so fun and so cool. It's just like tag for grownups and big jet engines. But the coolest part of it is that Stroker let me fly like a very good amount of the dogfight and I pulled like five and a half G's on the stick while I was flying and it was, I don't have anything intelligent to say in this video. I just really wanted to show you how much fun I had and how cool it was because like, I got to fly a jet in a dogfight against Jared Isaacman and Tim Dodd, like what is my life? Though I will say, there is definitely an art to dogfighting because you always want to make sure you're pulling positive G's whenever possible and not negative G's and I definitely made myself sick by not really knowing what I was doing. So eventually I was like, hey, can we just like fly straight level for a second? I think I got a puke real quick and then we can go right back to it. And the thing I've learned in my many years of being a person who gets motion sick but loves doing things that make me motion sick is that if you just throw up and get it over with, you can get right back at it. But if you fight it, then you'll just be miserable the whole time. Okay, as someone whose entire job is to be on the internet, I've been finding that the browsers that come built into my computer just aren't working for me. It's so hard to keep track of where my tabs are, manage my privacy and multitask within my browser. That's why I'm glad that today's sponsor, Opera, has the perfect solutions to all these issues and more. If the free built-in VPN and ad blocker aren't enough to convince you right off the bat, then I've got two words for you. Tab islands. Tab islands let you group your tabs however makes the most intuitive sense to you. You can make one for shopping, one for travel plans, one for work. You can also expand or collapse the islands when needed. 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Not only the AlphaJet flight but hanging out in Jared's hangar with astronauts and fighter jet pilots and some of the most incredible people and engineers I have ever met. It got me reflecting a lot in the following days about my own childhood dreams. My plan as a little kid, of course, was to be an astronaut and go to space and leave the planet in pursuit of grand adventure and exploration and never come back. Like that was the plan, to leave and never come back. I was the kind of kid that got in a ton of trouble for printing out a million pictures of outer space and the space shuttle to stick all over my bedroom wall on the family inkjet printer when my parents weren't home, running out of ink for the next six months. When my seventh grade math teacher convinced me that I was too stupid to be an astronaut, I changed course and I made my life all about airplanes. I studied Sporty's pilot course after school and I was determined to grow up and join the Air Force and fly fighter jets. But after a couple of really tough years working as a teenage girl ramp rat in high school, 17-year-old me concluded that I would never be treated as an equal as a woman in aviation. And rather than spend my whole life looking over my shoulder, I decided to go to engineering school instead, where I figured that maybe someday I would make enough money to just buy my own small little airplane and never rely on anyone else. But something about living so many of my childhood dreams and meeting so many astronauts all at once who had achieved my one unachievable dream made my love of general aviation so much stronger. It made me realize that my version of leaving the planet in my 1946 Cessna, even if it's not very high or very fast, isn't so different from the jets. Coaxing an 85 horsepower tin can over the continental divide or crossing the continent solo is thrilling and adventurous and a massively grand endeavor in its own way. And it made me appreciate how in the end, aviation is aviation and how all aviators love sharing aviation with each other and with the world, because the root of it all is just so human. We love pushing the boundaries of what we can do and what we've experienced and seen, and we want to share it with each other and with generations to come. So while I'll probably never go to space or get type rated in an AlphaJet, I am so honored to have shared a space with people who have and who will. And I am more in love with the tiny corner of aviation and exploration that I've carved out for myself than ever before. So before we land and debrief, a huge thank you to Stroker for being the coolest and most supportive pilot I could have ever dreamed of getting matched with and making my experience so like literally, I would not shut up about it for weeks. I think all my friends are really annoyed with me. And also a thank you to Jared and the rest of the team for inviting me to one of the best experiences of my life. I truly cannot put into words. Yeah, I don't have words. That's it. Let's land and then let's celebrate and debrief. I threw up, let's be real. Thank you so much. Thank you. Did you actually puke? I actually puked. It's so embarrassing. So embarrassing. Whatever. It was still the best time of my life. Did it black out at all? No. Cool. Thank you so much. This is awesome. Yeah. Very cool. This is the coolest airplane in my life, by a lot. You did awesome. Thank you so much. I love the hype in me out here. You're a rock star. Let me get that for you. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm so great. So this was the last show of the day. It was pretty cool. Thank you for pushing through for us. Yeah, of course. Pretty cool because we got to see the F-5 crane can go out and operate in the same airspace. How was your transition to this spot? It's just so incredible. But you got to fly through a river and do aileron rolls. Life was good, so. Awesome. Came out the other side, planning the fights on and dispatched with you pretty quick. So much fun. So it was good. You mean her. You guys got her. Were you flying? Oh, I was flying the whole thing. Oh, good work. Good work. I'm like, okay, they're over there. Go get them. All of a sudden, they're like, that's good. That's good. She's just like, I was like, wow. Nice. Thank you again. Thank you so much. Our pleasure. Cool. So fun. We're really having a lot of fun doing this. That's what I love about this whole thing. It's like, yeah, I love it. And both you and everyone here, I feel like you can see it in like, in you guys that you enjoy sharing that experience as well. And that's like, it's great. It's so fun. It's so fun to see that even.