As you know, I did fly in one....

Without question my favorite 'ride' of all time... even though I have been on many old planes including acrobatics. But my second favorite is probably a bit of an odd choice...

It was in a Piper Cub... which I got to fly myself. Hard to explain... but the right panel from front seat to rear folds down so it's nearly like flying in an open cockpit, (if you put the panel down)....

It "putt-putts".. the sound of the engine. Mopeds move faster than you fly in a Piper Cub. It's the closest I've ever felt to actually 'flying'... most other planes don't really have that same sense of being airborne free of a plane.

The most 'thrilling' ride I ever had was in a T-6 modified for the Air Races.. (I didn't fly it). We did some loops, rolls, but it wasn't those that impressed me most. I wrote about this before so pardon me repeating myself. I was flying with the owner who flew in the races. He had a 'course' laid out around his landing strip, (about 2 miles from my house). After we did an airshow for a local 'feed' for farmers he took me to his course and then we dropped to the deck and he flew it... just as he would in an air race. The amount of G's you pull in those planes around the 'pylons' is indescribable... I 'grayed out'... which is a real thing... you don't black out, you're aware of what is going on but you can't move, at all. You really believe your seat is going to break thru the bottom of the plane and send you hurtling to your death, (not a bad way to go).

My favorite 'pleasure' ride were those I used to take weekly, solo. I'd take off before dawn, even before the sky began to gray with dawn... and fly north along the western edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The air at that time of the morning is as still as it gets, (usually), and you could probably balance a quarter on its edge inside the plane. When dawn approached I would position myself below Yosemite Natl. Park where the Merced River leaves the mountains and enters the valley... Yosemite quite visible from the air. And there I'd fly in circles watching the sun come up. - JamesJM