On Monday, August 11, 2014 8:18:38 AM UTC-4, Kevin Brooker wrote:

What keeps me from flying is the lack of available time to participate in a way which is meaningful and enjoyable.

Maybe people like Kevin will have the opportunity to re-involve themselves in the sport once their kids are in their 20s and the demands of their careers taper. It's good that they got their soaring chops at an early age. Having that expertise under their belts will make it a lot easier to get back into the sport in the future.

Kevin's experience seems typical; I did not have time to learn to soar until I was 56 and that was a bit too old to learn to soaring easily.

If we want to keep soaring alive, we will train young people to soar, expect that most of them will get too busy to participate in the sport, and then make it as easy as possible for them to reenter and stay active in the sport later in life. This is the long game.

With an eye to demographics, there will be fewer and fewer previously trained young-geezers reentering the sport in the next 15 years. What about marketing Ab Initio soaring to the affluent 50+ cohort?

Clubs and CFI-Gs are enthusiastic and successful when teaching young students who learn fast. Are they less successful with older harder-to-teach students? Who is good at teaching older students, what are their secrets, and how can those techniques become widespread?

Sure, we should train lots of young people, but we also need to recruit and train 50+ year old people to replace the people in their 70-80s. Older people will stick around and keep clubs afloat, and that will allow the hopefully steady stream of younger people to come and go.