Book day! Plus, the closest I've ever come to barfing on assignment

In my defense, we were pulling 4Gs high over Charlotte Motorspeedway

I’m excited to share that “Notes From Dad,” an anthology to which I contributed an essay, is now available on Amazon for just $1.99.

The book is full of challenging and powerful and hilarious ruminations on what it means to be a dad. My contribution is about passing down a passion for adventure to my kids … and living to regret it because it’s terrifying watching them hang from the side of rock walls, scamper across ropes courses, hurtle across icy mountains, be teenagers, etc. Buy it right here.

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The time I almost hurled pulling 4 Gs high over Charlotte Motorspeedway

In pursuit of stories I have torn my hamstring, cut myself in innumerable places, been left with welts and bruises on every limb, crashed my bike in front of an oncoming semi and all in all treated my body as if it was disposable.

Somehow, I’ve never thrown up on assignment. That feels like a miss on my part—like what am I even doing if I haven’t done that? Though it’s not for lack of trying, whether that’s been riding shotgun in a racecar, pushing myself physically or bouncing around in little airplanes.

The closest I’ve ever come is worth telling. It happened almost exactly 11 years ago …

I have wanted to write a story about the flyover before a NASCAR race for forever. I find it fascinating that just as someone sings, “… brave” a jet or six flies over that exact spot.

Finally, 11 years ago this month, I talked my way into a backseat of a T6 for rehearsals at Charlotte Motorspeedway and found a magazine willing to pay me to write about it. IIRC, to get me in the plane for the actual event and not the rehearsal required FAA approval which nobody, including me, cared enough to ask for.

I showed up at Concord Regional Airport near the track while it was still dark. I was nervous, excited, jittery. I’m not the world’s greatest flyer, and the pilot of the T6 failed to tell me two very important things.

1. Our plane would be the one that releases a huge trail of smoke as we flew over the track. That smoke that must have looked so cool down below filled the cockpit. It freaked me out when I was suddenly engulfed in smoke because cockpits aren’t supposed to fill with smoke. Where there’s smoke there’s—I FINALLY GET TO WRITE ABOUT THE FLYOVER AND THE ONLY DOWNSIDE IS I BURN TO DEATH IN THIS PLANE—fire, right?

Trying not to panic, I looked down at my feet, which could not have been a worse idea, because soon the pilot’s second key omitted detail emerged …

2. The plane suddenly turned … not left, not right, but straight up, and with it my heart rate. It would have been nice to know we were going to pull 4Gs. Out of habit I looked at my feet again, and the motion I was feeling did not have any relationship to the motion I was seeing.

I think my stomach is still hovering somewhere over the racetrack.

The plane landed, and I could barely walk. You’ve heard of 50 Shades of Grey? I was 50 shades of green. Thankfully all of the badass pilots who were part of the flyover showered me with loving kindness and empathy and grace and HA HA HA HA HA they mocked me mercilessly.

We went to lunch, and I ordered applesauce, and only applesauce, but didn’t eat it. The guy at the counter joined in the mocking. So did the woman who brought us our food, and she offered to bring me animal crackers.

I felt no better when we returned to the airport.

This went on for hours and hours and hours.

And hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.

After all that – the near-barfing, the endless motion sickness, the relentless teasing of pilots, waiters, waitresses, small children who saw me walking by and just pointed and laughed like Nelson on The Simpsons, etc. – the story never ran.

The publication who said yes to it probably shouldn’t have. We couldn’t figure out a way to tell it that they would publish. Same goes for every other magazine I tried to sell it to. Everybody kept saying something about readers not wanting to read about barfing, near or otherwise.

Thankfully, my newsletter has no such standards.