"My one experience of gliding was that I got ten minutes in the air for an entire evening spent hanging around the gliding club."
"Sounds like you had the mispleasure of being at a rubbish ripoff club."
In the late 50s - early 60s I frequently spent a whole day at a gliding club for 3 non-cablebreak launches, and not much more time in the air than you got. Everyone was doing their best. Instructors were not payed. Winch driving, jeep driving to haul the cables, bat signalling, ground handling the gliders. £0.2 in today's money per launch in a Swallow, with no soarable hill.