Back in the early nineties I was sitting in the outer office of our local flight examiner while a buddy was inside getting quizzed for his CFII. A nice older couple was sitting with me, speaking French. He appeared to be in his 70s...
After a while I introduced myself and asked why he was there... He told me he was a Canadian pilot renewing his American CFI. I asked a little about his background - he owned an agricultural application company in Canada flying 206s.
At one point I asked him how many hours he had, and he said "oh, I don't really know, I stopped bothering to log them back in the sixties". So of course I asked him how many hours he had back then, and he said he stopped logging when he hit 30,000 hours (30 years prior!).
Was it true? Dunno, never asked the examiner about it, but I can believe it...
I've flown with quite a few high time guys and I've learned lots of tricks that I try to pass onto students, but the one thing I've noticed with the high time guys... They don't rush. They'll fly at Vne for sure, and they can get a lot done in a short amount of time, but they don't rush or cowboy... they fly with an economy of motion that I try hard to emulate but probably will never totally achieve.
I did an IFR flight with one of our local FAA guys, Bill Wicks, quite a few years ago... he was a Chinook pilot in Vietnam and had lots of hours and experience, and was the guy who gave me my first 135 checkride. Anyway, we're going to takeoff into a low overcast and he asks whether he can do the takeoff. Of course! He taxies out onto the runway at a walking pace... sets it down on the centerline, adjusts this, checks that... Meanwhile I'm aware of the guy on approach talking with tower and keep waiting for tower to basically tell us to hurry up but they didn't. And when he was good and ready we lifted off and punched into the overcast.
The lesson I took away was not to be in a rush, take your time, and do it right.
Doesn't look likely that I'll ever hit 20,000 hours but my goal is to try to fly like a 20,000 hour pilot! Congrats dan454!