NavList:

A great article Frank.

Yep, there is nothing like flying an ILS instrument approach down to 250 feet above the ground using the flight controls to keep the two needles centered (up-down, right-left) with nothing to be seen through the windshield, wholly dependent on the instruments and your own skill to keep you from making an airplane shaped hole in the ground. You're "playing for keeps" (an old marble playing expression) your life actually is riding on doing it correctly. It is an exhilarating feeling to see those runway end identifier lights flashing barely half a mile in front of you when you finally break out of the clouds. 

Skydiving too is the same kind of exhilaration. Falling through the air at 120 miles an hour on a collision course with the earth (it's very hard to miss, it's pretty big.) When you reach for your ripcord at twenty-five hundred feet you are only ten seconds away from making a skydiver shaped hole in the ground. It's all up to you, do it right and you live, screw up and you don't. Nobody is there to help you, nobody to talk to on the radio or call on the cell phone. Nobody can save you.

In moments like those you are truly  alive.

gl