Flying

Anything that flies is magical.

I still believe that.

At one time my greatest ambition was to become a pilot.

I no longer have much desire.

Why?

Because flying represented freedom and there's not much about aviation that's free even when it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Nearly every aspect of any flying machine is regulated.  Many of those regulations are from lessons written in blood.  However many of those regulations were written before the state of the art became antiquated.

It's had a definite chilling effect on innovation.  You may notice that the engine on a typical general aviation plane is no different than it was in the late '60's.  Compare that to your car.

You have to have that engine completely torn down and rebuilt almost as often as a Top Fuel team does.  It's insane.  They can last longer than that, I've seen it.  Lots of air-boats are running engines that came out of airplanes once they fail an inspection and the owner doesn't want to pay to rebuild it (rebuilds cost just a teeny bit less than a new motor).  Those air boats run for hours and hours past that point without problems.  They do things like convert the magnetos to distributors and running an automotive sourced electrical system with normal spark plugs.

And that's just one example.