I stopped and just watched, marveling at the apparition. When I turned my head, a pair of aviator sunglasses and a smile startled me.

"Hello, sir, I'm your flight crew chief," said the sunglasses and smile, bringing me back to reality.

A last-minute phone call had changed my plans on Friday. The primary had canceled, and I was the alternate journalist for a flight in an F-16.

PHOTO COURTESY BFE REMOTE MEDIA   A post-flight Zawicki climbs from the cockpit. That they spelled his name wrong on the canopy had little bearing on the fact he'd just pulled nine Gs.

An F-16 is not the type of plane you just climb into and go for a spin. These supersonic fighters cost $20 million each - a bargain by military aircraft standards. Powered by a massive Pratt & Whitney jet engine, they can travel at mach 2.1, or around 1,400 mph, depending on altitude.

The jet was the first fly-by-wire aircraft, meaning the controls are all electronic. When it was introduced in 1979, the interface was so subtle that pilots didn't like it. The designers had to go back and put some movement in the stick, just so the pilots could feel and know they were controlling the aircraft.

The maximum ceiling for the F-16 is around 47,000 feet, and it can bank so hard you'll feel nine times heavier than you are.

A flight surgeon briefed me on how to perform special muscle and breathing exercises to avoid blacking out in such conditions - known as pulling nine Gs.

Earlier, a Thunderbird Life Support crewmember took an hour to explain all the gear I would need. There's the G suit - a device worn over the flight suit and plugged into an on-board computer that fills it with air as gravitational forces increase to constrict the blood in the legs and abdomen, basically to keep it all from rushing to my feet, which would cause me to pass out and likely wake up hours later at the Base Hospital with a tray of ice chips next to my bed.

He schooled me on the oxygen mask and helmet, all the while talking with the clip of an auctioneer.

"Now, this is the top buckle on the flight harness," he said rapidly. "You click it in here, and to release it, you push where it says, 'push here.' It's reporter friendly, OK?"

The pilot, Maj. Dann Carlson, like all Thunderbird pilots, flew combat missions before hitting the air show circuit. He wears a Royal Blue flight suit.

Carlson was calm as he briefed me, explaining that we would climb vertically to 15,000 feet in about nine seconds. We would pull nine Gs, he said, then casually went over the procedure for ejecting.

"If something happens and I'm unconscious," he said, "we have an equal vote to pull the ejection handle. Whoever pulls it, we're both going. So, if it comes to that, I'm sure you'll pull it, so we can both talk about it later, OK?"

When we took off, we went vertical, powering through the clouds, the G suit squeezing my legs like a boa constrictor. When we rolled left, I had to figure out which way was up. After a series of stratospheric loops and aileron rolls, we dropped down to 1,700 feet.

"I'll show you what we do when we fight," Carlson said. "Lets say there's some bad guys over this ridge..."

We flew with the contour of a hill, popping up on the other side. The display screen presented a small cabin by a lake, and a green ring of light zeroed in on it. Carlson flared the craft, and for about a second we were weightless, as a hypothetical AMRAM missile launched at the target. Then we pulled up and twisted into the sky, pulling six Gs.

"In combat, we'd be a lot lower and going a lot faster," Carlson said, leveling out at 10,000 feet.

We pulled the nine Gs somewhere over Talkeetna. Growling under the strain, I could feel my spine compacting.

"That was it, 9.1 Gs," Carlson said over the helmet radio. "You made it. Outstanding."

"That was nine plus?" I asked casually, stuffing the almost-used vomit bag back into its paper shealth and - smiling - taking long, woozy breaths.

Reach the reporter at nzawicki@alaskastar.com