DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat Justin Kattau, a business junior and UA flight club member, gives his two-seater airplane a pre-flight check before taking off from Tucson International Airport yesterday afternoon. The UA flight club has fly-out days, when members donate their planes to take other members through the Arizona skies.

I've always thought of myself as a pretty good flier. In general, I don't get airsick, don't bother the stewardesses too much and try to keep my baby from disturbing the other passengers.

Of course that's on your average Boeing 747. Flying in a two-seater Cessna 150, I'm a shaking, sweaty mess. Maybe it's because there's nobody to serve me Cokes.

At approximately 3 a.m. yesterday, I remembered I was supposed to meet UA's Flight Club at 9 that same morning. I quickly downed the rest of my beer and stumbled home for a short, anxiety-ridden nap. By the time I actually made it to campus to meet the club, I was late. The club promptly introduced themselves and we were off to Tucson International Airport.

I hitched a ride with Lucy Blaney, a first-year master's student in Latin American Studies. Blaney knew what to expect on this flight. I didn't.

"You ate something this morning, right?" she asked.

Uh, no, I didn't.

DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat Lucy Blaney, a Latin American studies graduate student and UA flight club member, exits a four-seat aircraft yesterday at Tucson International Airport after a fly-out with the club. The club flew to Eloy and back in small aircraft owned by club members.

"Oh. It's better for motion sickness if you have something in your stomach. But you didn't drink last night, did you?" she asked hopefully.

Uh, yeah, I did. Memories of literally turning green on a boat ride to Catalina Island in sixth grade came rushing back.

By her own admission, Blaney was the most inexperienced of the group. Afraid of flying her entire life, she received flight lessons this past Christmas as a gift from her father. Now she loves being in the air.

I had my reservations. Blaney understood.

"You know, flying in a plane is much safer than driving a car," she said.

"Even a small two-seater?" I asked.

"Sure. There are car crashes every day and you don't hear about the vast majority of them. But one small plane crashes and everybody freaks out!" she said.

Yeah. Seriously. What's with people?

Around that time, we passed a billboard that read "Pray for Tucson." You know, I thought, I don't believe in God, but maybe it's a good idea anyway. A minute later we passed another billboard that read "'We need to talk.' - God." Though I'm not what you'd call a God-fearing man, the signs gave me pause.

DAVID HARDEN/Arizona Daily Wildcat Kattau has been a flight instructor for about three months and volunteered to fly his plane yesterday as part of the club's fly-out. The money he makes from the job helps him pay for the plane he flies at least once a week.

We arrived on the tarmac, and I was placed in a Cessna 185 four-seater with physics professor Charles Curtis at the controls. Blaney and Flying Club president Lisa Dashiell came with me.

The take-off was surprisingly smooth. Curtis quelled my fears by giving a play-by-play of take-off procedures and we were up and in the air, cruising at around 2,500 feet, above Tucson and bound for Eloy.

I was always struck by commercial flights, how the cities and geography below the planes never looked real. I could never connect the idea of a "living, breathing" city with the splotches of lights and dots visible from a 747. At that height, perspective is distorted to the point where the reality of the situation, that you are suspended thousands of feet in the air in a hulking chunk of metal, is lost.

In a Cessna, though, everything is laid bare. The pilot and controls are right in front of you, and every variation in wind speed and air density sends shudders throughout the plane. The buildings and streets below look like miniatures rather than ultra-detailed maps.

Oh, and Curtis kept turning around to elucidate the finer points of air travel, which was a little quirk you don't really get exposed to on a commercial flight. Generally, the rule is "Keep your eyes on the road," but seeing as there isn't much traffic at 4,500 above sea level, the danger was fairly minimal. Still, the knee-jerk stab of panic was multiplied by the occasional jolt of turbulence and my stomach's subsequent somersault.

Traveling at around 150 mph, we reached Eloy. The ride was pretty smooth overall, but I felt grateful to be on the ground. I looked up as a dozen sky divers drifted.

Eloy is an odd place. As far as I can tell, its economy is based almost entirely on skydiving, lending it an odd "stunt man" macho vibe. The experienced sky divers land and then shout and yowl as elderly tourists look on. We watched the sky divers, ate some lunch and then took off again.

I decided to go back with a student pilot, Justin Kattau, a business junior.

"You should go with Justin," Blaney said.

"Yeah, he and I are going to do some formation flying," said Kyle Leahy, a creative writing junior and experienced pilot.

I decided I hadn't tested my stomach's limits yet, so I got onboard with Kattau in his archaic Cessna 150. The inside looked like a relic from WWII. There were knobs, ashtrays and draw-bars that looked like they were salvaged from old cigarette machines. But everything was fine until Kattau picked up a little laminated instruction sheet and shot a slightly vexed look at the control panel.

Oh God.

Once in the air, I realized exactly how small the plane was. The air was turbulent and I got a bit apprehensive as Kattua maneuvered about, at times tipping the plane, forming a 45-degree angle with the ground. Eventually, Leahy's plane sidled up parallel to ours and he snapped a picture of me, teeth clenched, eyes closed in an attempt to suppress the vomit.

An attempt that was, might I add, successful.

The choppy flight wasn't really Kattau's fault. There's nothing a pilot can do to avoid turbulence. Even so, there were moments when I was ready to throttle Kattau just to allay the discomfort. So I prefer the ground, even if it is more dangerous. And even though I don't believe in God, I still have faith. And now it's in the hands of Tucson drivers.