Back in the day, I was shooting a local country band who's star was on the rise. We had a video guy who had some connections, and set up an opportunity for three of us to ride along with the 157th Air Refueling Wing and shoot some pics of the day. When I was asked if I wanted to go, it took me about a millisecond to decide to go. It was a day to remember.
We flew out of Pease, aboard a KC 135 Stratotanker, on one fo those picture perfect days that you generally only read about. We flew in cloudless skies across the northern part of the country, over the Great Lakes, before turning south west near Detroit. Once we arrived somewhere over Kansas, we did a U-turn, and the F16c Fighting Falcons were on us.
We refueled them twice on the way back to NH. After the initial refuel, the Thunderbirds performed a flying Delta formation for us. after a couple hours, we refueled them again, before climbing to about 40,000 feet to beat them back to Pease.
It goes without saying it was the experience of a lifetime.