I'd actually forgotten the thrill and rewards that come from the
challenge of learning something so absolutely new. The only thing I can
compare it to were the first half a dozen hours of leaning to ride a
motorbike, or perhaps, before that and to a lesser extent, drive a car.
I live a fairly interesting life, so most days I have something 'new' to
grapple with. But it strikes me that in the majority of cases, the
'learning something new' is actually just the transfer and
re-application of already existing skills and knowledge.

It's probably a bit more complex than you make it sound.

A few decades ago I sailed a small sailboat from New Orleans to the
West Coast of Africa with my family & spent a year meandering down the
coast. I'd never done anything like that before, and those 18 months
included some of the most intensive studying I'd ever done (including
university). When it was all over & we were hitch hiking back to the
US on a British freighter, I discovered to my great surprise that I'd
learned pretty much everything the guys on the bridge knew. That led
eventually to my becoming a bridge officer on two of the Greenpeace
anti-whaling voyages.

Now I'm about two years into soaring and the learning curve feels
about the same. Sure, the basic skills of handing a glider might
compare in some way to learning an automobile or motorcycle, but
that's only the beginning. Judging what's safe and what's dangerous &
what to do about it is a whole nother chapter (you might read "Gliding
Accidents That Almost Happened" from SSA), and then there's Xcountry
-- a whole graduate course in itself. I can't even begin to see the
end of it, and that's just fine as far as I'm concerned. Sailing got a
bit boring after I'd spent a couple of decades doing it; soaring holds
at least as many challenges, maybe a whole lot more!