OK I have one that may be interesting because it is somewhat unusual.
I started glider training December 13th, 1996. I had been wanting to learn to fly for many years after watching gliders take off and land at Fremont glider club in CA. Which was close to the Fremont drag strip. I lived in the area and would go to the glider port just to watch take offs and landings, thinking it was cool how the gliders dumped their water ballast on approach. At the time I did not have the money to take flying lessons, but I always had the interest.

So in December 1996 I decided I could afford to start taking some lessons. I had heard about Minden NV which was about 3 hours from where I lived and made the appointment with Soar Minden, Tony Sabino's soaring center, for my 1st lesson and drove up.

Arriving at Soar Minden they confirmed I wanted to take lessons and not just get a ride, and I was assigned an instructor and we did some ground school then went out to get in one of the Grob 103's they had. I was asked how much time I had and if I'd like to do a regular one hour lesson, or take an extended flight. I said, let's do the extended flight. My instructor Mike, then told me to get in the glider and wait for a few minutes.

A few minutes later, over comes this older gentleman who introduced himself as Hod. He said I was to get an oxygen briefing as conditions were good for wave flying. "Wave?" I thought "what the heck is wave?" He stated he had done wave flights in the area to over 30k feet on a few occasions, and proceeded to give me a very thorough briefing on the use of diluter demand oxygen systems. I was thinking, "wow this is going to be cool".

So to make a long story shorter, we get on tow, instructor lets me fly the tow after we are stabilized, and we pull the release around 3400 ft AGL.

I'm doing OK so he has me fly some turns and gets me headed toward the mountain west of the airport, where we start getting good lift. He takes over and shows me how to turn figure 8's and stay in the lift line after which he lets me take over.

We end up flying to 22,600 feet in the wave that day. My first flight ever. At the time I did not realize what a rare event that was. I do remember calling in to Reno approach to open the wave window, which he had shown me on a sectional during our pre-flight. It was very cool looking down on jet liners on approach to Reno from CA and seeing them divert around our window.
Also I'll always remember how smooth the lift was. It was quite the flight.

We ended the flight getting by descending into the very heavy sink right next to the mountain at Heavenly Valley ski resort. My instructor buzzed the skiers on the slope at what had to be around 500 ft AGL as we pushed east away from the mountain heading towards the airport.

Very cool, and embedded in my memory forever. And I suffer from C.R.S.

Mike