Pace, Not wanting to be funny, be surely you must understand that there is an element of risk flying IFR OCAS? Your glider may have been close but it still proves that the big sky theory works and for you to have seen it then it can't have been completely IMC!
I am off the view that if I want proper separation when IFR then I fly in the airways. Sometimes this can give a more convoluted routing. There are not that many places where you can't fly airways to and certainly the routing you have described is easily done on the airways albeit at the cost of a little extra time.
You cant have both!!