About a half hour after we took off we were back down; the ride of a lifetime now over.Thinking back I see that adventures like this are as much if not more about the anticipation of what will be rather than the event itself.
The idea to do this first came about the previous spring, which meant I had a good four months to contemplate what would be.
At first it seemed so far off but as the day to leave for Russia came nearer so did thoughts about what I would be doing. As you might imagine, a lot of imagining what it would be like including what I hoped would be the very slim chance something would go wrong.
I think about it now and see little correlation between what I thought it would be like relative to how it actually was.
First of all it was probably the fastest half hour of my life. Second there was not as much sensory “drama” as I had assumed there would be.
80,000 feet and 1,700+ MPH notwithstanding, I felt more riding in Kevin Kegin’s open cockpit T6 than I did in the Mig.
But that’s OK. As I said the experience is much more than that half hour. It is everything leading up to it and all the thinking about it since.
All told, an Incredible Adventure.
