On Jul 10, 2:57 pm, Stewart Kissel
wrote:
That last thing you want is to have your kids witness
a 60-year-old self-made, self-important, 21st Century
renaissance man in the throes of a flight-line tantrum
because his crew did something wrong with/to/on his
$130K glider.

Although 94.5% of glider pilots don't fit this profile,
it is unfortunately true that the 5.5% who do that
probably drive people away from the sport. Not sure
if there is much of a solution other then warning the
unwary of this possibility. To bad John Shelton was
not still writing 'Pez'....he would have a lot of material
to work with on this topic.

As a dad with two kids who have attended a few contests (first
retrieve by my son was at age 5 months), I share the concern from
parents.

On the other hand, let's be fair, it's not just soaring. Any
activity like soaring where high-intensity people gather for a high-
intensity sport will lead to some amount of friction. I grew up
around tennis, and, though 95% of the people were wonderful, there
were 5% grumpy old men who always had a complaint about the kids.
It was worse when I started crewing for a friend of family in
sailboats at age 12 at the "yacht club" (which was, admittedly, pretty
low down on the spectrum of yacht clubs and the boats were only
Lightnings, but still...).

Those of us with kids have to go even more overboard to try to make it
fun for our families. Unfortunately, places like Parowan make that
really, really difficult. An airport in the middle of the dessert is
probably a tough sell. I've decided that there are some places
where I just can't bring the family. Instead, they come to places
like Harris Hill or New Castle where there is lots for the kids to
do.

BTW, no criticism whatsoever implied regarding the Parowan operation.

P3