I waited until most of you commented to see what was said, and was
enlightened by some and somewhat disappointed by others. Enlightened by
reading posts by Brent and Hamid and others - disappointed that no one
mentioned something I think is poorly appreciated - and sorely lacking in
most of the training available to the "average GA pilot".

That is the undeniable fact that when an anomaly occurs, decisions made
early on will very likely decide the outcome. In other words, a decision
made10 minutes ago (or in some cases,10 days ago) will become irrevocable
with the passage of time - good decision: reasonable chance of good outcome,
bad decision: pretty good chance of a bad outcome. When the altitude
(engine, gas, luck - whatever) runs out, there's no going back and
reconsidering. Waiting a while to figure out what to do is a form of
decision too and the clock starts ticking when things go to hell in a
handbasket - not necessarily when you make a concious decision on a course
of action.

IMHO, we often spend a lot of time and effort during recurrent training to
get numbers, procedures, airspeeds, etc., etc. down pat, and that's
important. However, good recurrent training (in my opinion) has as it's
fundamental goal the ability for you, The Decision Maker (i.e. PIC), to know
what to do in an emergency to make a good decision, and then to do it
QUICKLY without eating into your critical decision time. I don't know how
much, if ever, this thinking enters into our training.

You don't get a "Do over" when your engine swallows a valve and you decide
to fly past a useable runway and then change your mind too long after your
initial decision.

Dan Schaefer