John,
Good advice, the first thing Tim (my instructor) taught me was to check all the control surfaces every single time before I fly, it's now a well ingrained habit I have. Your right though as I've seen very experianced flyers crash because they failed to check all the control surfaces, there is a big difference between just throwing the sticks, and really looking at the control surfaces. When I check them I hold the sticks, and take a good hard look at each control surface, I also check the CG before each flight, ya just never know .
Paul