On Sunday, Berck took Nathan and me flying. We did stalls and negative G’s and all sorts of manner of stuff that made me throw up.

Nathan enjoyed flying so much that he wanted to go again today. I wasn’t sure I should tag along again in the back seat. But Max’s advice is to eat a box of gingersnaps while you’re flying, and never try to conquer air sickness with an empty stomach. He should know; he flies KC-135’s.

So this morning I ate a full breakfast (pumpkin pie and eggnog–hey, it goes down smooth … shouldn’t it come back up the same way?), and we stopped by the store to buy a box of gingersnaps and a bottle of gingerale.

Nathan and Berck had decided to get their first “hundred-dollar hamburger” by heading down to Pueblo. This was Berck’s first cross-country flight for fun. We stuck with straight and level flight the whole time down. I munched on gingersnaps the whole time.

Berck demonstrated a beautiful short approach landing in front of another plane that was coming in (apparently, I was the only person who could spot the traffic from way far out … thanks to my laser vision). Cessnas fall out of the sky amazingly well. We parked where we were told to and headed into the terminal.

Three tasty burgers (and some onion rings) later, we climbed back into the plane flew back home. I munched on more gingersnaps and continued to feel just fine. Berck asked Nathan if it were time to make me sick and pitched the nose high up into the sky. Soon we were free falling, and everything in the back seat pockets (window cleaner bottle, check list, fuel testers) flew up onto the ceiling and then into the front seat. Berck’s pen came out of his pocket and hovered in front of him; he used it as a plumb to see how much to push to keep us at 0 G’s.

But that was enough excitement, and Berck let Nathan fly most of the rest of the way home. He even made the approach, all the way up to actually landing.

And I was just fine. I still have half a box of gingersnaps left.

Now Nathan wants to go flying again on Sunday.

There are pictures up in the gallery.