Reflections on a year of aircraft ownership

In article
,
Mark wrote:

Sounds like everything's going according
to plan. You're a better man than me if you
can share ownership. Incidental damage would
really tick me off.

It helps that, of my two partners, one never flies it, and the other is
so vastly and incredibly more experienced than I am that I can only look
up to him.

I remember very clearly when he landed gear up, as I was the club's duty
officer that day and watched it happen. I even argued with him on the
radio while he was on final about it, because he was absolutely
convinced it was down until he had ground out a long white stripe on the
runway.

I was shocked, and a little angry, and worried about his mental state.
But my main reaction was, if it can happen to him, it can *definitely*
happen to me.... And thus I enthusiastically helped out with the
installation of our gear warning system after we got it back from the
shop.

Don't lose your ability to enjoy passing time
doing something for fun. I'm getting to where it
seems necessary to quickly "get there" and then
achieve something.

Well, a push to "get there" is hard to maintain in a glider. On the
other hand, I have noticed that, like a drug, I seem to need more and
more achievement as time goes buy. I remember back when soaring for
30-40 minutes was fantastic. Now a 3-hour flight is just kind of ho-hum,
especially if I only stay local. Still, I try to keep in mind relative
achievement, that if I stay up for 30 minutes on an otherwise dead day,
that's a major accomplishment too. So far, so good....

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon