Chip's great stories reminded me of one of my most magnificent experiences in a glider. This was coming back to Crystaire after a long flight decades ago. The sun had set and the gliderport was closed and completely vacated.. I did a long low pass westbound down the length of the runway then pulled up for a right downwind. As I pulled up, right there, were two eagles circling together to the right in a 1 knot end-of-day thermal. I joined the two eagles across that thermal for a few hundred feet of climb before continuing my landing.

Obviously I was quite low when I made those thermalling turns yet I am as sure now as I was then that making those turns was perfectly safe for me and for all other human beings. The air was still -- there was essentially no chance of encountering any degree of sink or turbulence at that particular occasion.

Exactly that will never happen again. But something similar might. I choose liberty please. Pretty please.

I retract all of my previous suggestion about how to do an equivalent of hard deck more simply. I want none of it now after thinking more on the subject. At the same time, I commend BB for bringing forward this thoughtful ideas to keep us safer while I remain skeptical that a hard deck could have more than a miniscule impact on our dismal accident statistics. It's been an interesting discussion.

BB has said: What's the big deal? A hard deck is no different than the 17,500 ceiling that we all have agreed to live with. Well; I, for one, never would have chosen to agree to that. I'm sure I'm not the only racing pilot that routinely gets ****ed off every time I get to 17,400 in a strong thermal and have to break off 500 feet early to accommodate the rules. I don't want another airspace constraint to be ****ed off about. I especially don't want to have to deal with contest airspace issues when I'm at pattern altitude.

There are people here in Arizona that will advocate for red light cameras, for banning cell phone use in cars and for banning citizens from carrying guns. All those safety things get routinely voted down around here. It seems a lot of us humans value liberty over personal safety. It's a DNA thing.