I went flying with the Blue Angels and remained conscious

DULUTH – This could have gone one of two ways. I get sick and pass out, or I have the ride of my life.

Let's check in with Lt. Julius Bratton: "You crushed it."

The Blue Angels pilot took me over Lake Superior in his F/A-18 Super Hornet on Wednesday to demonstrate a few of the maneuvers Duluth Airshow attendees can expect to see this weekend. And am I ever happy to report I remained conscious and the contents of my stomach remained there the whole time.

If a Blue Angels show looks incredible from the ground — and it does — just imagine floating upside down above the big lake, the Apostle Islands out the window above you. Or waving to the crew of an ore boat only to be thousands of feet away from it seconds later.

Bratton, who flies the Number 7 jet, was a fantastic guide and explained every maneuver before the "reeeeaa-dy" that let me know we were about to do something cool, and I should expect some G-forces.

At one point, I lost vision as we hit 7.5 Gs — that is, the force on our bodies was 7.5 times greater than the usual pull of Earth's gravity — but I came out of every roll, sharp turn and flip laughing, happy to be alive and giddy with an adrenaline rush I haven't felt since I was a kid on my first roller coaster at Valleyfair in Shakopee.

This may go without saying, but if you get the chance to fly with the Blue Angels, take it.

Now this comes after I was clearly the most nervous of the three guests who took turns riding with Bratton on Wednesday, yet I was the only one who kept their breakfast down. (Apologies to Minnesota Wild defenseman Ian Cole for putting that out there, but he can still take me out on the ice.)

I'm not sure how I kept my stomach in check, but the trick to staying conscious was to keep gravity from pulling all the blood, and oxygen, out of our brains by tensing up our legs and abs and keeping air in our lungs. Doing that repeatedly through a 45-minute flight was enough exercise for a week. But going through that multiple times a day, with other jets 18 inches away on either side? I'll leave that to the pros.

I tried to tell Bratton he is among the world's best pilots before we took off — and by "take off" I mean we flew just above the runway before going completely vertical — but he demurred, saying, "I don't think any pilot in my position ... would or should ever say that. Once you get too comfortable in this game you can wreck it all, lose it all."

"We work hard to perfect what we do," he said, and Wednesday's flight was evidence of that.

I used to get pretty nervous on airplanes, despite an understanding of lift and thrust and the science of aviation. Even after smiling my way through a Blue Angels flight, I'm still a little cautious. Because something about flying is just magic.