48.4 hours !?

About 15 years ago, Dody and I came across a commercial glider
operation in North Carolina. We decided to take a demo flight in their
2-32, and just to see how they treated their walk-ons, we didn't
mention that we both had over ten years of soaring experience at that
point, nor that I was an active CFI-G.

So we snuggled into the back seat (with no control stick) and took off
with a 20-something commercial (I assume) pilot up front. Take off and
flying were fine. As we got near pattern entry postition, our pilot
suddenly put us into a very steep dive, did a buzz job on the airport
and showed us his contest finish pull-up. We were not amused, to put it
mildly. I had no idea of this pilot's glider experience, but we told
the operation manager what had happened and made it clear he needed to
straighten things out. He seemed to get the message. I believe this
operation is no longer in existance.

Sitting in the back without a stick made this the only glider flight,
out of 2000, where I've seriously wondered if I was going to come out
of it alive. Never again.

Jack Wyman