Do you know what it’s like to go the speed of sound? Or experience multiple G forces? Well on Wednesday August 8th, Sammy Carlson became the youngest person ever to fly in a Blue Angel F-18, and experience the aforementioned. I nabbed Pasty C for a few minutes to talk to him about his fighter jet experience.

How did you get hooked up with the Blue Angels? It’s not like you just call the Navy…

Every year Hillsboro has a local air show and they get local celebrities to promote it. You know, go on the news and whatnot and talk it up. The navy called my agent and explained that the lady who organized it, her son is into the X Games. So she called me up and it happened to work with my schedule. So because of my skiing and the X Games, I got to fly with the Blue Angels.

What was it like when you arrived at the air field?

I rode over there to meet everyone with my agent. Everyone was super cool… I met all the Blue Angels people and pilots; they were super respectful and pumped to have me there, which was cool.

The first thing we did was have a briefing about the plane. Those planes are so insane, I was thinking, ‘holy shit, it’s gonna be gnarly.’ For the most part though, my stomach held up alright. Then they told me about the jet. What to touch and what not to touch. How to stay calm and withstand crazy G-forces [he reached 6.8 Gs].

How was the flight then?

The flying was unreal. It was crazy fast. We had little headsets so the pilot could tell me what he was about to do. “You’re gonna feel this… 3, 2, 1..” then took off, straight up almost. We went from 10 feet off the ground to like, 5000 or whatever, in 10 seconds. Sooo fast. Flying in the clouds was so sick. We were like a million feet in the air [F-18s can go 50,000 ft up]… then we flew upside down for about 10 seconds, that was my favorite part. We also did a bunchof rolls which was sick. We went the speed of sound during the flight which lasted about 45 minutes. That was what did it for my stomach.

So it all ended up good, no passing out or anything?

When I came down I was so sweaty. I was pretty good in the air, but on the descent I started to get a sick stomach. I started feeling sick and kind of dizzy. The pilot said that it was normal though, everyone is like that. I kind of booted a few times, nothing too major, just some spit ups.

I’m assuming you’ve seen them before. Are you stoked to be the youngest person ever to fly with them?

I’m really stoked for sure. It’s crazy, they have six planes at once. Like within 18 inches of each other. Everyone should go look at the YouTube videos of them. They are crazy.