01-- Zero One wrote:
I am confused about the responses to this message so far.

Perhaps if you are simply wafting around the sky to make your 5 hour or
are "leisurely" goin' somewhere there will be time for nourishment.

No, but my recreational and record attempt flights generally require
less concentration than a contest flight.

But
most of my significant cross country is in a contest setting. And I can
tell you the there are precious few times in a 5-6 hour contest flight
when the concentration on the clouds, other gliders, speed maximization
tasks, thermal optimization, evaluating lift streets, etc. allow for a
break in concentration to open a package and eat something.

In your situation, it makes sense, but that is not the case for me, even
in contests. Clearly, you are flying in different contests than I do.
It's been a long time since I flew in a contest that had a 5 or 6 hour
task; generally, the regionals are about 3 hours, and the Nationals
(some years ago) were more like 4 hours. In the olden days, 5 or 6 hours
was more common.

My non-contest flights are significantly longer than my contest tasks,
so I do take food along: a handful of mixed nuts, some dried fruit
(raisins, cranberries, cherries), a few strips of beef jerky, and a
high-fiber muffin).

I even, at
times, feel the concentration load is such that I will defer peeing or
drinking from the water tube until I get to the next flight regime.

Same here, but there are times during almost all my flights where I am
just cruising for 5-15 minutes towards the only good choice, which is
plenty of time eat something. Perhaps you are so busy because of where
you fly, perhaps you are better at seeing things that need to be
analyzed, or perhaps you need to relax a little .

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA