I went down to the local store and they were out of the Slow Stick, so I bought an Aerobird instead. It's theoretically a level 2 place though the owner suggested that it was stil quite manageable as compared to some of the other more sexy planes that I was looking at. It's also a lot bigger and less influenced by wind, which I thought was a good thing for this location, and the price was quite reasonable. Turns out now I that I wish that I had bought the slow flyer. A guy at the local field flew the Aerobird for the me the first time and helped me work out some of the bugs. Tried it solo the other day for the first time and flew it successfully. Got a little more aggressive and crashed it, and then flew clean, and crashed it, and crashed it. The following things have come clear to me, some of which were pointed out to me by the old hand that flew the plane for me the first time:

These things don't just fly themselves, and they don't necessarily come out of the boxes ready to fly.

Slow is good. The aerobird is hardly the fastest plane out there, but it flies fast enough that you really want a big field (and no trees nearby) to practice in. Otherwise it's turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, and those turns are where you can get into problems. You can't fly this plane very slow without the controls becoming very mushy.

The combination of a plane that is not way easy to control at slow speeds and the need for a large space is real trouble because it's a fair ways to the nearest really big field. I can see the attraction of the slow flyers: you can go anywhere with them, and they don't go fast enough to crash really big. True, the wind is a problem, but I'ld be happy to have that problem right now. Right now my problem is getting a new wing.

Anyway, if it weren't painful I'ld never learn.