POLISHED APPLE

One of our clients I recall most fondly was an airline captain new to soaring and looking to make up time. Unlike many though, he saw the value of additional instruction beyond the minimum. After his week with us he’d gone back home and flown his first solo cross-country, then wrote to narrate an admittedly modest achievement. Most of his account described being stuck twenty miles from the finish, within sight of home but too low for a final glide. Sound familiar? There he labored for more than half the flight’s elapsed time, above landable farms, determined to not surrender. What enabled him to squeak it in, he claimed, was not so much technique, strategy or even luck, but holding fiercely to something I emphasized during our time together: NEVER GIVE UP.He eventually got the lift he needed because he was still in the air when it finally rose.His success was our motivation, his appreciation my reward.