Other Places to Learn

As far as professional shops in the Bay Area, the biggest operation is Mission soaring in Milpitas (mschg@aol.com). They are not cheap, and will try to get you to buy a glider early in lessons, but they are quite competent and have a lot of instructors available, and a good training site. Andy at Chandelle is a great pilot, and a very good instructor, but sometimes flakey and a one-man operation. His training hill is in Marin, which is going to be the most convinient if you live in Berkeley or SF. You can get him at thanktheday@hotmail.com. Tim Shea (tim.shea@bigfoot.com) in Santa Cruz is a good instructor (often teaches at Ed Levin), and also does tandem instruction (where you fly together and he teaches you). As far as I know, that is everyone who is teaching professionally around here right now. All of their numbers should be on the USHGA site. There are also a few options if you want to go somewhere away from the Bay Area (where land is cheap) and spend a couple of weeks in intensive lessons.