vic20owner wrote:
Dumb beginner question follows:

I am just starting out flying gliders.... Here in the USA it seems
nobody wears a parachute unless they are contest flying or doing
aerobatics. However, I generally do like knowing that I have a backup
plan and a parachute seems reasonable. I suppose a history of cave
diving has made me sensitive to accident possibilities. I realize
flying is very safe but gliders tend to fly in circles near each
other.

Would it be premature to buy and wear a parachute while still taking
lessons, or would I quickly become the club's private joke?

thanks
Man - only on the internet could I 'discover' a thread ~24 hours after
it started, and find it was old/over on the same day! Anyhow...

"What everyone else has already said."

'Way back when' when my instructor kicked me out of the 2-33 we'd been
flying to the club's 1-26, he added (in what seemed to me, then, almost
an afterthought), "Go grab a parachute for the flight."

"Why?" asks I. "We haven't been using them on our flights."

"I can't fit in the back of a 2-33 with a 'chute, and you don't get one
if I don't get one. Trust me...wear a 'chute any time you can."

That last bit made sense then. Still does today. A few years later, my
personal 'chute was in for a repack, so I flew my
(supine-piloting-position) HP-14 resting atop 4" of foam. It
simultaneously: was terrifying; felt akin to (I imagine!) being naked
before the Pope; provided much food for contemplation of the U.S. FAA's
'curious wisdom' regarding emergency 'chute accessibility to the PIC vs.
violating then-applicable 'chute FARs.

Of course my view may have been biased by being a 1-time user of the
same 'chute...

Regards,
Bob - likes to listen to those little voices in his head - W.

P.S. As already noted, you'd be rather irked with yourself - for a
while, anyway - if you needed a 'chute and had opted to fly without it.