“It’s good to see a few grey heads here.” I smiled at them.

The wind swooshed up and over the escarpment, rocking the gliders as they were prepared for us.

They chuckled, “why do you say that?”

“It means you’ve jumped off and landed a few times! You’re experienced”

A little apprehensive, the last thing we wanted was a young kamikaze pilot intent on showing us a few of their fancy tricks more than a hundred metres in the air.

Hitched into my harness and clipped into the glider, I needed to fold my 6 foot frame into position under the glider canopy and lay flat out to check the settings.

I regained my feet, somewhat ungainly.

“It’s ok, we know it’s not as easy to get up as it used to be.” Trevy, my pilot, laughed.

Last instructions on what to do, he re-assured me to follow him and it would be fine.

“Hold my harness, here and here – just follow me, don’t fight it, I’ll steer us around.”

We inched towards the dirt patch at the edge of the jump off point, the wind slammed up and over the hill trying to lift us off before we were ready. Chris and Dan, the only one without a head of grey but who had a few wrinkles instead, gripped the edges of the glider. The chilly wind swept over my face, the material shook, the rattle made it a little hard to hear. Trevy waited for the right wind, as the frame shook hard, he coached me 1, 2 steps and we were in the air – “lock your legs into the strap- it’s more comfortable.” He shouted over the wind, reminding me of the procedure.

Swooping and hovering over the trees and beach below, it was magic.

Trevy was busy reading the wind and checking for other gliders, he talked through his pilot’s mental check list, till we settled into a comfortable rhythm.

We yelled a conversation about work, moving and our families, as we swept back over the escarpment, turned and ran with the wind stream up the coast. Over the water, we glimpsed breeching whales and swept back to climb again. The wind was freezing, our noses running freely. Circling below, Carol was out gliding with Dan. Thirty minutes passed in a flash and it was time to land, gently like landing on a pillow.

What an experience!

Carol and I sat in a café, to finally regain some warmth. The flight provoked a conversation about experience. Here we’d put ourselves in some else’s hands – experienced hands. People we’d never met, we just trusted them. Carol said she’d felt better that there was no young daredevil but still she had quizzed Dan –  how many times had he flown -many he re-assured her.

Here was a situation where we left ourselves to people we’d only just met, our lives in their hands. We were reliant on their experience to launch and land safely – the ultimate KPI. “Must safely land 100% of the times you take off.”

It turned our thoughts to the feeling we’d both been experiencing. We’d felt undervalued in our work. Our experience seemed to mean little. Hard won experience was simply untapped.

For us, it was the realisation that until you have experience and seen situations many times, it’s hard to define – perhaps that was the problem. It was the little and big things of knowing what to look for and where the traps lay.

Like when Trevy and I hit a small shudder in the air. Trevy pointed out that it was the turbulence off Dan’s wing.  “On a still day that could be a big problem, you needed to keep your distance.”

Why was there the reluctance we mused? Had we approached the situations the wrong way; after all, no-one wants to hear “I told you so”? But that’s never been our motivation.

Perhaps others needed to prove themselves, was it their insecurities? We shouldn’t take the shunning personally.

Conscious not to be perceived as being stuck in our ways we don’t say – “we’ve tried that it didn’t work!” We had both sat back and in our own ways, let it all swim around us. Letting annoyance build to varying degrees.

Instead of sitting back to avoid stirring turbulence, we resolved that we’d prove our experience was valuable. Otherwise it was doing ourselves and our work a disservice.

We know we’ve both been here before. We needed to rely on our experience and take the time to explain our opinion.

We were not being difficult or stuck in a position but like Trevy and Dan we’d need to use our experience to work out how to get lift off, read the winds and manage the turbulence. All the while reassuring ourselves and others our hard-won experience were worth something, to avoid the traps and safely glide into a landing for us all.