My recovery (from a water crash in an amphibian, in which I was the instructor, last summer - for readers who may not know) is progressing, but slowly. I'm presently in a spinal cord rehab hospital in Toronto for a few weeks, while they try to reduce the effects of my injured spinal cord, and resulting paralysis. After four months, I'm walking with the aid of a walker, short distances. But, here, surrounded by people who suffer major paralysis, I feel lucky - I can walk.
Though P84 and I might seem guilty of thread drift, not so much. I was training a pilot in a Lake Amphibian, completely by the book, no goofing around, and it still went really wrong. It was nearly fatal for both of us. Water flying offers incredible freedom, and opportunity to land in places otherwise hardly accessible. But it takes lots of skill and experience, and disciplined judgement, to fly a water plane with a good margin of safety. If a student of mine flew as I saw in that video, we'd be having a sharp talk. In the mean time, I will work hard in recovery for a few months yet, and then determine whether I fly again or not. My three planes are preserved for the winter, and I'm sad they are not flying for at least a half year.
I'm the pilot who rails against the videos of pilots buzzing, flying low skill low altitude aerobatics, and water skiing wheel planes - we must fly safely, and with a margin for error. After all my promoting flying safely, and being a sought after instructor, I'm still in hospital!
Everyone else, please learn from my (and the subject pilot's) sad events, and add just that little extra bit of caution to your flying all the time!