On the wings of angels
- posted: 12 June 2007
- scrollnews@byui.edu
I never thought that I would risk my life inside something sponsored by Jelly Belly, but last Thursday, that’s exactly what I did at the Rexburg Municipal Airport. I knew that I would come out of it either dead or even more alive than I was before.
It all started with Kent Pietsch, a stunt pilot from Minot, N.D. He is living the dream of every child who has dreamt. He flies for a living, but not in straight lines.
His partner is an 800-pound Interstate Cadet that he bought from his uncle in the early ‘70s. It has a wingspan of 37 feet and a top speed of a whopping 105 miles per hour. And get this: It’s powered by a 90-horsepower engine. (To put that in perspective, a 1992 Honda Civic hatchback has 105 horses under the hood.)
The plane itself is yellow with multi-colored jellybeans decorating each side. It is the perfect plane for Pietsch’s absurd routine, which is anything but routine.
Pietsch and his Jelly Belly wonder are remarkable in the air. They do things that are, by all conventions, stupid. He has a trick where he scrapes one of his wings on the runway, just because he can. He even lands his plane on top of a moving truck. Just tell me that’s not stupid.
I saw him perform last Thursday at a media briefing, and I kept on thinking the same thing: “Stupid. Just absolutely stupid.” I continued to watch—mesmerized and appalled—as he dove and corkscrewed his plane through the air, always coming uncomfortably close to anything he could find.
Despite the stupidity, or perhaps because of it, I had a change of heart. I could then only think, “Boy, I wish I could do that.”
After a few more flirtatious encounters with stationary objects, he started to give members of the media rides. How could I resist?
I crawled into the back seat of what felt like a reinforced cardboard box with wings. The plane had an old-school starter on it: Pietsch recruited one of his crew to come out and turn the prop until the engine fired. It was a lot like being belted into a weedwhacker on whey protein.
And away we went. He took us up far too high far and too fast before bringing us far too close to the ground far too casually. I smiled and laughed.
Once we got up to altitude, Pietsch looked at the ground to eye the landing. I looked at the ground with an almost sinful desire to be back there.
“Are you ready?” he asked me. Once the mystical crosshairs in Pietsch’s mind aligned, he killed the engine. That doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do when you are 3,000 feet in the air. But what do I know about stunt flying?
For a split second, everything stopped. We were literally suspended in the air, not moving forwards, not moving backwards. It was eerily peaceful as we glided, trapped between the sun that we were almost touching and the ground that represented both danger and safety. And then it was over.
He banked right. The plane shot down into a violent corkscrew. The engine was still off, the propeller still static.
If prayers aren’t answered when you are pummeling towards the ground in a glorified hobby plane, I don’t know when they are.
I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I do know that sometime between then and now, I safely found my way back to this lovely, secure place called the ground.
And here I will stay until stupidity strikes yet again, and I heed its tempting call. 
