Elsewhere, sadly, on this forum, the decline and morbid state of a flying club near Glasgow. Followed by comments on the structure of a flying club that enables it to survive an economic downturn; namely, if your club hasn't got a social side so people enjoy coming to it and just yakking with their mates, well perhaps it deserves to decline.
What we are yakking about of course is flying, so we do have to practice it at every opportunity to have the adventures worth telling...Last Sunday an instructor invited me to come along for a test flight, he let me do the airtow to 2,000'. After that, the acceleration to near VNE, the spin to the left followed by an incorrect recovery demo, which results in a spin to the right, but what really cleared out my sinus passages was the 3.5 g steep turn.....arrg! And then he let me play with it again, here it was first week in March, and 3 knot thermals in streets! We didn't have to come down, but other people were waiting to use the K13, so this time I spun it down, more gently.
After a flight like that, you don't really mind helping out on the ground for a while.