It looked like the ground. Lots and lots of ground. Sliding sideways past the nose in a big circle. He’d heard about spins before, but he’d never flown one. Well, technically, one doesn’t fly a spin, one falls a spin. The thing about a spin is that it’s stable. A glider will stay in the spin until the pilot recovers or it screws itself into the ground. At eighty miles per hour.

Behind him, his instructor booted the rudder hard over and pushed the stick forwards. Forwards? You push forwards to see more ground, not less.

“That’s it, I’m going to die,” he thought as the world stopped whirling in front of him.
“Mffff” A hundred donkeys kicked him in the rear and his hair was suddenly very heavy. In front of him, the ground was suddenly replaced by the sky. “Ooof!” The blood rushed to his head and all the mud by his feet popped up to say hello.

From behind him, the instructor said calmly, “You have control.”