WOMEN


This is a sport dominated by men. While there are rare instances of
flying couples and a few single female glider pilots, most women who
come to the gliderport do it primarily out of love and/or duty to
spouse. Some even learn to enjoy the gliderport. But every man who
enters the sport is going to have to measure his passion for it against
the trouble it's likely to produce at home, especially among
career-driven spouses who hold weekends sacred as time for "us and
family." And more than once I've seen a young mother put her foot down
-- family comes first. Can you blame her? She knows he's a klutz, and
they have two kids to raise and put through college. Why should she
have to worry about their future every time he heads off to the
gliderport?

Finally! Some words of true wisdom on this overwrought subject. As long
as soaring remains primarily a man's sport, men will have difficulty
convincing their women to give up family time to their husband's
obsession with climbing into the sky. If we can't convince women to
join us, then just maybe we should borrow a page from the hang gliders'
book and create a really interesting environment for the women and
children below. Let's face it, there ain't much of interest to do
around the old gliderport-- most places at least. If I were hanging out
waiting for my spouse to finish riding the waves, I'd be pretty nutty
after thumbing through the 13th dogeared copy of AOPA PILOT.

Better still, let's join with the hang gliders and learn from them. As
this thread makes abundantly clear, they've evolved to the point where
we have a lot in common.