Learning to fly

"Come on," Capt. Rick Birt shouted across the runway. Three women walked toward the plane, apologizing. "We squeezed in this flight - it wasn't originally on the schedule," Birt said. Six passengers stood next to the twin-engine plane. In the next hour all of us would fly this plane. We boarded the plane, with Birt in the pilot's seat and a passenger as copilot. The propellers started to turn, slowly at first and then so fast they hummed. With headphones on, we could hear the control tower operator talking to pilots on the ground and in the air. Birt grimaced and looked at his watch. "Let's get the hell out of here," he said.

The engines pulsed and suddenly we were all pushed back in our seats as the plane surged forward. "This runway's a little bumpy," Birt said. The plane left the ground with no fanfare other than the excited faces of the passengers, and Birt. His broad grin showed his love for flying, and for introducing it to others. "We're going to level off at 6,500 feet," he said to the student sitting next to him. "I'll get it stable here and then I'll give it over to you."

The student cradled the yoke as though she was afraid to hurt it. At Birt's direction, she turned the yoke gently. The plane turned with it and she smiled, relieved. "Give it a little more," Birt said. "That's good."

The students in the cabin looked out the window at the familiar roads and buildings beneath us. The whirr of the propellers prevented conversation except in shouts. Some snapped photos in the cabin and through the windows. Birt called back, "Everyone feeling OK? Y'all want to do a barrel roll?" The shouts of "Yes" convinced him, and suddenly the horizon shifted. We were upside down and screaming. He was laughing. The horizon flipped again and the world was right side up. We were flattened in our seats, exhilarated and out of breath. We shouted for another one, and he obliged. The world spun beneath us, and nothing had ever been so exciting.

Then it was time to return to Earth. We were 1,500 feet over the A&M campus, and the view was striking. Birt counted off, "Three, two, one - here we go," and the plane turned. We were flying sideways over the Bush Library and feeling some serious G-force. The runway appeared, and that was our landing.

Capt. Tomas Cantu greeted us on the runway. "You feeling OK?" he said. We were. He runs the Marine Corps Flight Orientation Program, the program that put us in the air. He's mainly interested in finding people who want to be Marines. "It's a calling," he said. Cantu has been in the Marines for 14 years, and he said he still loves it. "It was the best decision I ever made in my life," Cantu said. He gestured toward the clipped black hair on his head. "The hair, well, you can't do nothing about it." "It was unbelievable," Elizabeth Mitts, a sophomore general studies major said. "It was just such an adrenaline rush." Mitts said she's keeping her options open about being a Marine, but the experience of being in the cockpit was "beyond words."

Cantu said he has heard that from students before. He brings the program to A&M every semester. "People that come to this program don't have to be in the Corps," he said. Only 15 percent of the officers in the Marines were ever in an ROTC program, he said, and a person's major doesn't matter. "We've got pilots who are music majors. We've got pilots who are history majors," Cantu said. "We've got Marines from all walks of life."

Cantu was a kinesiology major in college. "I train snipers. I do intelligence with the Marine Corps," Cantu said. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be doing what I'm doing now."

Wildest dreams seemed to be a theme of the day. We were all strangely quiet as we left the airfield. There really isn't anything like flying, we said. Elizabeth was right: it's beyond words.

Julie Rambin is a junior philosophy major.