My impulse, when this thread was first started, was to simply say "I'm immortal.', and let it go at that.

I've been in zero visibility without an instrument rating several times during my life, a couple of those times literally, when I was flying a small bush plane in Alaska. And then there were other near misses like the parties we had on Guadalcanal with live fire crackers. And not more than a couple of years ago I spent a whole day packed in ice while enough surgeons to fill a VW bus, and other like riffraff, stood around my inert body conjecturing on the imminence of my escape from earthly concerns.

I could leave all of Mudcat Land with fond wishes for remembrances of times past, if and when there have been enough times past to warrant that. Rather than that, I am satisfied to have the opportunity to speak to you now, about the past, when opportunity provides, and simply enjoy the presence of your company.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR DEPARTMENT: Long before I became a research project for the University of California, San Diego, Medical Center, I executed a living will that clearly stated I was NEVER to be hooked up to any life support system to sustain life when it was not capable of sustaining itself. After the operation I was in ICU for four months, mostly unconscious, unable to even breathe without a ventilator or take nourishment from anything but a tube. I am sure glad nobody ever bothered to check the instructions in that bloody living will. (I guess I forgot to stick it on the fridge.) Understandably, the last two years have been the best years of my life.

Spud