You need time and if you have to use your brain to analyze and get solution maybe you will not have the time so as more you're prepared technically mean you will have a better chance to survive like massive ground handling and a lot of simulation like SAV or even doing on your own when you're high collapsing the wing on the ground while ground handling in the air doing all this stuff with your glider and then you don't need to think you will be reacting instinctively and that will be really really best friend for you. If you can work if people can work on that I think that will be really really good for everyone. Some
fantastic advice there from the great Veselin Avkarov a Bulgarian acro pilot and cross country pilot Red Bull athlete that's he and I had a great talk you're going to love this show before we get into it just wanted to apologize for the long delay over the Christmas holidays tried to track down a number of different people for for podcasts and have done so now but it was pretty tricky over the holidays so this one was tough to edit got some tough sound with doing it over Skype and he had a big crack on fire going on in the background which sounded lovely actually but anyway that was it was kind of tough to do so apologize for the long delay but we got some great shows now and coming up for you in the next few weeks that you're going to really enjoy it really appreciate all the feedback got some fantastic feedback over the holidays from my sister who's an NPR producer and reporter she gave me a lot of valuable advice so I think we can look forward to these just getting better and better got some great personalities and people lined up just got back from Mexico
heard from a lot of people down there that these are really impacting them in a positive way so that's really inspiring helps me keep going thank you so much thank you also for all of your generous donations they go a long way I'm actually building a sound room here so we're going to take this to the next level here hopefully in the next few weeks that's so fantastic personality great guy we had a really cool talk look forward to doing some projects with him in the future thanks to Igor Maui who put me on to him but he's just got a lot of good stuff to do. one great piece of advice after another in this show uh kind of seeming the bridge between acro and cross country and safety and we get into all kinds of good stuff so without going into it here we're just going to get right into it uh without further ado that's so awkward great
to uh finally get you on the horn here you're a long ways away from me in terms of time zones in bulgaria we've been trying to do this for weeks i'm excited to uh finally get a chance to talk to you
same same really exciting uh regarding the different location and the huge distance between us and i'm very very keen to to have this chat with you because i don't know if you can ask me more interesting questions or maybe i can ask you also tons of super interesting questions because your background is really really uh impressive and adventurous and we're all about this doing this stuff so for me it would be a pleasure to chat about yeah
you know i i was uh totally wrapped up in the last few nights watching your videos uh fly the earth.com i know you use your website and reading your bio on the red bull page um my gosh man you have you have really conquered the earth in terms of paragliding how did you get into all this well
uh actually i never had the interest of traveling even in school i was really bad in geography i didn't know all the countries so all the magic came i think from paragliding that sense of freedom which pushed me to to to far places and to meet new amazing friends i think i think that was the trigger and and later on as you know from your side this is like a disease you you keep searching for a more beautiful and new place and new friends and it's like a never-ending story it's
like that it's you can never scratch isn't it
no yeah it's it's it's strange because sometimes we find a perfect perfect spot that everything is so so sweet and the people and everything the life and you basically should stay there if you have intelligence you should settle but somehow we we leave that comfort and beauty and we we look for another place like that this is kind of crazy that
that is crazy i'm trying more and more and more this this at this time in my life to just stay put more you know because i live in such a special place and um you know i i feel like i could spend my whole life just exploring my own backyard but you you got you started exploring it sounds like quite early your father got you into skiing when you were like three i think and how did how did you go from that uh and it sounds like studying sports to finding paragliding how did you what was the kind of impetus there
um yeah that's true i i was introduced by my father because the the city we're living the capital sofia is right next to a big mountain and i could always go in the weekends and do ski and later on when the snowboarder appear i start snowboarding and then when i was in the mountain i started to see one of the first guys in the country here it was like in the early 90s watching their paragliders but was looking very different as you can remember in the early days they were colorful small harness look very dodgy and stuff you know and i was very very impressed by this picture i was like i was like wow i have to try one day and then and then i i was lucky to to end up with a friend in the university and he was very different we were in the mountain he was looking very weird and different i go to talk to him and he tell me i'm flying i said i'm also flying with my snowboard like 20 meters sometimes more but it's finishing a lot of time with pain and he said no paragliding is very easy to fly and you don't have pain and i was like wow that's my that's my contact and then i make a present to myself
the guy told me that he think that i will never call him back but i i couldn't resist i went to make a present for my birthday on when i was 18 and in that time was no youtube no no real source to see how it looks how it goes and i took some crazy friends from the neighborhood to be like a group to motivate each other and then the rest is history i just start doing that every day since since the introducing
and how old are you at the time i
was 18 and now i'm 33 30 yeah am i'm 33
you're exactly 10 years younger than i am the yeah so you you've been flying about 15 years yeah
exactly like that yeah and
was the was the initial flying um were you did you get into acro right away or uh how what were those first few years what did they look like the
first few years were totally just being amazed by uh easy flying and uh in that time the community was really like close there were just small group of people that were going together on the places so that was a big part of of my addiction into the sport because the the ambient with these nice people all together was a really special part and we had one uh pioneer in the early days his name is dimitri miko mitsu his nickname is mitsu he's a legend he's the first guy in bulgaria who brought distance flying and acrobatic flying before that the people were flying like mosquito in the room they didn't know what to do and he was the first guy who started going to pita back to the to the country so this guy has a big part of inspiring me but still i entered the acro in the
2006 few years later like almost six years later after my first flight i went to nepal to extend my season because in bulgaria had a pretty large season but in the winter it's very hard to fly and no thermals so i say i cannot wait anymore and watch Moyes i'm going to nepal with little money and believe that i'm gonna work and train more there and it was like a joke because we had a i had a friend there who was like pushing me like ah come on you should do that you cannot do that i think you're scared and i was like dude i'm more focused on cross country you know but he was keep joking and i approved my friend and then i started trying some basic acro like helicopter and i find it really like fun and much more easy payback you know because in cross country is like a story sometimes we invest so much and we can be like not really 100 satisfied because the condition and timing and so on and acrobatic is like almost taking a beer like drinking alcohol it's it's for sure it will affect you
most probably positive i
like that so
i was very lucky or unlucky because i was in a you know sharp peak of my motivation to do cross country and i was training actually to go to australia to a world championship in that time i was first in the league so they were supposed to pay me but they didn't pay me to go in the federation so i stood in nepal i trained more and and that's how i became acropilot and
how did so when did the red bull thing happen how did you become a red bull pilot man
the story is long like everyone's but this my one i felt like really like part of a scenario or a movie it was a very very special moment uh i was i was like um a few years before that i was trying to get into professional i wanted to leave the tandem lifestyle i make so much good friends and happy people and it was a good work even better money but i somehow wanted to to do this work on travel not just to visit same places and work same same job i get some sponsors uh quite uh quickly after i left my tandem work and they were actually better sponsors than now i mean they were giving me more money because they were just bigger like italian big company but they were only focused on my idea and project to go to pakistan we we have a common friend with you brad sanders you know brad sure so he told me a big story about pakistan and i was super inspired to visit this place and i was keep trying keep trying but four years in a row four years in a row i was not able to go because of a visa problem here in bulgaria because our two countries pakistan and bulgaria had some internal conflict and was not really definitive and it was not clear and they was always rejecting my visa application always without saying why and i was like really like frustrated because we get like hundreds thousands of emails sometimes even tens of conference call with people all over the world like horatio and other other colleagues we wanted to go together but in the end i couldn't go and that happened so many times that my sponsors say you know we really like you but goodbye so so i i lose my sponsors i i had some other personal issues you know and then my brother almost died in front of me crashed with the with a paraglider in the takeoff in strong wind so i was really down and i was facing a winter to became to stay in the winter as normally i travel in the winter because i had some passport issue it's a very long story because 2006 when i went to nepal i took my brother's passport because i have a twin brother yeah i wanted to go train in the same time if the federation pay me to go to australia my brother go to next country because we don't have embassy here he go to next country issue my visa so i take i come back i take my passport visa and go to australia and that never happened but something else happened when i came back six months later someone told to the police i still don't know who who is this amazing person because it's no crime it's just a motivational thing and they caught me and it's not like in the states in bulgaria they try to try to to cheat you to tell you that tell the truth if it's nothing you just pay a fine and you go and i did that as i didn't do anything criminal by law if you don't harm anyone or if you don't kill anyone this this crime is just like stupid mistake and it's not punishable but they they punished me and i was in a process seven years
seven years seven years i i spent money for my family for 10 competition to australia you know i never went anywhere just coming back to bulgaria and it was my life was pretty nightmarish seven years so all that finish when i lose my sponsorship and my brother was almost killed and this also finished this process and they've punished me with the probation six months to stay in the winter to signature every day and talk with a person so all that happened all that happened and uh i was spending my last note of money like two and a half euro and i was with a colleague and a neighbor who is also having interesting story he he he was a millionaire and really exciting sportsman and he fell it so we were together laughing on irony of life and spending this last money with him and i said to the woman in buying a sandwich keep the
she crossed her face and she said oh today's your day and i said oh we'll see and 10 minutes later they called me from red bull
you're kidding you were down to literally zero yeah i love it that is fantastic okay so we got we got to talk about a couple things here one uh your brother what happened uh
he he was lucky because he could be dead he he just had a bad fracture of the right hand wrist and his right foot all that uh it's healed now it's not like 100 the same but it's already flying and just a bad memory and and
was he on this kind of the same track was he kind of at your level or is he at your level he's in terms of acro and flying
unfortunately not he never really followed me from the beginning which made him so separate he was very dedicated to another crazy sport the pool like billiard he was one of the best in the world so he he decided to fly 10 years later and now he's just catching me he's dropping me with a tandem he's flying some tandem doing some cross country and basic acro but he's far from uh from my enthusiasm and level so far but
clearly it runs in the family that you um you mentioned their training we actually you know several weeks ago when i was supposed to interview you for the first time and have this talk i put out a post on facebook uh that if anybody had any questions for you and i've got a long list but one of them um is how do you approach training because the disciplines uh i'm always really fascinated to talk to pilots that uh you know pardon the term but go both ways you know i know you're you're pretty passionate about cross country as well you just returned from some flying some big flights in brazil which we'll get into here in a little bit but how do you approach your training i know recently you've been doing some towing um but uh you know how how did you get started with your training and how did you get from you know taking those first flights and maybe having a tandem business in bulgaria to becoming i believe you were the first first bulgarian to nail the infinite and uh and you know obviously becoming a red bull pilot which is there's no mean feat in itself uh how did that can you walk me through some of that progression uh
i think the progression with me happened really really uh with baby steps and slow without any intention to go further i was just trying to learn things on my own because in the that moment was not much knowledge shared outside like online and i was i was trying to to to make really simple stuff from from easy to difficult little by little with a very very small baby steps and even nowadays when i propose that concept to friends who want to learn and ask me questions they seem like untrustful and like come on it's too old school and they just go big and learn everything for one month but that was not possible before we couldn't analyze our mistakes we didn't have the small cameras we didn't have the good equipment so my progression was with a lot of flights a lot of repeating a lot of understanding and massive training yeah i don't count but it's been a while i flew every day every day as much as i can to to to get this level and now my training is more about trying to catch up the the the young guys which are which are more more settled they don't travel so much and they they are so motivated and they invent every month every few months some new moves and these twisted twisted moves now so my training now is more trying to catch up things but not really uh doing my own stuff because i i fall a little bit behind with the training uh with the traveling story and and so on is
your are your kind of goals then it sounds like we've got a crackling fire in the background that sounds lovely i wish i had one going myself um are are your uh are your goals then with with paragliding now is it more towards the competition end of things and and you know it on the acro on the world cup or is it more towards the travel and exploration and filmmaking
actually it never been to a competition it's it's it's a strange thing that even this is a major because the first impression and feeling of this sport was the freedom and when we feel free free we don't want to compare with anyone even if that mean progress to to certain extent of the sport i never was excited to compete but of course i tried in cross country i get some success quite from the beginning and then i was more like more like trying to run out of this to to to get back again to the this pure freedom feeling and that's how i get it with acro it was like uh like a new new religion for me i was really like on my own but then i need to get up with the to catch up with the equipment and that's that's the thing which put me back in the competition mode and all the sponsorship so i'm not really interested to to to to do a lot of competition but it's a important part for my sponsors and also for the people who are competing with me so i i assume it's it's good for me to be cutting edge on a technical side and of course safety
but uh from inside i'm more like keen to to do travels and to do new adventure projects with friends and and of course filming is is a really rewarding part because it's not just a blind memory it's something you can see back and share with everyone and
do you see uh you said you're 33 being able to cover you know paragliding and sponsorship do you see it being able to cover your lifestyle do you have a family uh
i don't have kids and wife i have a girlfriend and i have my two brothers one of them live in germany and my mother and my father luckily they're independent and healthy so i don't need to worry too much and my expenses are very low just basically have to feed myself and the biggest support and help it's funny but it's coming not from the sponsors because sponsors pay my tickets and maybe my sandwiches around the world but all the other expenses are coming from the community and the friends like often often i'm a host for free in a friends paragliding friends and they give me transport and logistic support for free so basically i'm super lucky to leave this uh this era because probably in the future will be more commercial and we won't have this uh pure family uh vibe around the world
switching gears just a little bit here you were talking about you know trying to catch up with the younger guys who are coming up with new maneuvers and and that kind of thing all the time are you working on something that uh the the world hasn't seen or how do you how do you become kind of raul rodriguez and and and actually create new moves
um if i understand right i'm i'm currently trying to catch up all the moves which are actually backwards like twisted twisted and i do like let's say a big part of it but not everything and for a first time i have a really small loaded glider which allowed me to to learn that because sometimes if you mistaken the glider is not pressurized it will collapse and disappear more easy so first time i have this right glider to to make this step and the new thing i think the new thing is the choreography like the transition because seems that we have all the movements in all the axes but the transition from one maneuver to another variating and it's like a big door for for us to play and that's what i'm trying to do in different transitions which are not usual like for example if you do sat to heli it's something usual or the opposite as well but if you do like uh let's say uh anti-rhythmic and it's really on the side and do it to heli it's it's a much more uh different transition and um something which we can explore and about raul i think he's uh the inspiration for all this sport and uh i was with him in dubai and he's still in really amazing shape even that he's not flying as much as the young guys and i think he's his success and progression was that he was so passionate about the sport and he spent enough time to understand what's possible yeah
do you have a kind of a scariest maneuver is there is there something you're working on in terms of the things you're working on right now that gives you the kind of heebie-jeebies
sure sure i mean when you're rusty and you didn't fly a long time everything feels scary and i'm uh i'm trying to equalize my sights because i do everything on the right side but not exactly everything on the left side and the left side is kind of more scary but then when i try it feels even easier so it's really funny to to explore that part how
what would you recommend for somebody so i'm somebody who's actually would fall into this category you know i i took an acro course in oludeniz in turkey through a friend of Jocky Sanderson a few years back and it's one of these things where i've just always wanted to explore acro more than i do because i don't live in a very good place for acro i'm i'm much more of a cross country pilot but i understand how valuable acro is so i've been doing some towing down in the desert in salt lake with a good friend of mine who's um he's a master of those things he's a master of acro who's a recently learned the infinite and really enjoying it but how what would you recommend uh for people that are that want to explore acro how should one approach acro how should one get into it
i think it's very nice and important for everyone to do and everyone is capable of doing it there is no secrets and there is no superpower to do that you just need to start from the very basic like first of all whatever glider you fly even if it's comb glider you should store it hundreds of hundreds of time to be really comfortable with the full stall to be able to fall with a full stall
with you know any condition turbulent windy or terrain rough terrain below you should be comfortable with the full stall and then negative maneuvers you should start doing negative spin and of course afterwards is the most important to do wing overs really nice wing overs and then the rest you're gonna learn it for one or two weeks the rest is just you know different difference of this fundamental if you do a really nice solid training a full stall negative spin and wing overs then the rest is super easy how
does how do you stay motivated with acro one of the things that i've always been curious about uh when i was i've gone to st. hilaire a few times for the festival for a coupe car and when you first see acro as a spectator it is just incredible but after about 10 15 minutes it's like okay yeah i've seen all that you know they they even if it's a really beautifully choreographed set of you know from heli to spin to uh you know loop to infinite uh you know but after a while as a spectator you're kind of like okay that's you know i've seen all that stuff how how does that change when you're the pilot how do you stay motivated to um i guess take short flights that's what always baffles me because you know the beauty about cross country is sometimes you're in the air for eight nine ten hours um talk about that a little bit yeah
that's really correct it's totally true that uh first of all like everything if we're watching everything maybe just some sports are exception like football but whatever you watch like a fan or spectator it became very quickly boring and on the other hand for the people who are doing it as well and the difference in the thrill it's gonna come if you do it slightly differently like more closer to the ground uh try new moves you know basically just go beyond your your tolerance and your comfort zone that's gonna bring you the new the new like spices inside but you cannot go too far in the air you cannot go too far in the air you cannot go too far in the air that way because you're gonna kill yourself and probably that's one of the reason why i'm not training all the time and that's why i'm running behind the young boys now because i don't want to do it too much all the time because then you have to do new things you have to take new risk in order to get the same feeling sometimes it's more more like um smart and more more like joyful just to to take a week break do something else and then go back to flying and you're gonna have the same pleasure and of course the new places is gonna change a lot the feeling when you have new landscape and new new background new friends to share with that that also helps do
you have a do you have a favorite place to fly
there are so many my favorite is the one i never been i
love it fantastic fantastic and and have you ever have you ever had any accidents uh
no i i actually i'm so lucky because i was taking care with the slow progression i never really hurt myself from paragliding and don't have even a big scratch my biggest scarves are from dogs once i was attacked by two dogs so but cross country it's it's really much more giving about that you know because we can exactly spend more hours in the sky and and see more of of the of the terrain and my dream and hope for the future is to to find good places like one of the top places which are in my mind is in your country in owens valley and some of the other places are i think i think is in turkey there are a few places which can provide such a strong condition that you can do actually the the two best discipline together like cross country and acro we can do it like acro cross and my dream and i'm working on that project is to make a online subscription for people around the world no no judges nothing everything is online and and totally transparent and we can try to fly some distance with acro glider and do maneuvers on the way that will deliver you the best the best feeling because sometimes in cross country i feel so nice the altitude is great everything is perfect but then i want to push something a little bit more just when you feel on the peak of this moment you want to go a little bit wild and then you don't want to hurt the glider and you cannot do this and that same with that acro when it's so nice that you can stay up and down for hours then you want to move you don't want to stay in the same bush there you want to move and and that's something we can actually do i've done it 2007 i close a 103 kilometer task in turkey without instruments and hundreds of maneuvers on the way with the 17 square meter
ah
that's a riot i love it um speaking of cross country uh you were just down in brazil sounded like you and andre a very good mutual friend of ours he was uh aaron garigati supporter in the ex-alps um you you had uh it sounds like a scary flight or a scary landing or something in brazil but you guys were you guys were pushing for some pretty good distance down there
yeah yeah i i i know andre and he tell me so many good stories about you actually that's how i get to know you a little bit more and uh yeah we we went with him uh with the dream to make something big like maybe four or five hundred or even more i was really like um confused i thought i had the wrong impression i thought quixada and north brazil basically is like paradise and super easy you can take the door from the fridge and fly all day without any problems so i i me and him we didn't get too serious with the preparation about equipment we get some old dodgy equipment which was really not safe people were giving us applauses
we were eating i was eating some big frontos from seven in the morning and uh was really hard to keep the glider in that place and the worst thing was that the glider were not gliding they were so that we were gliding worse than a dhv one two worse than a school glider so that was a bit of a challenge and and the other challenge is that the place is so rough you're actually able to fly from sunrise but till the middle of the day or till the afternoon you're crawling over the terrain and there is almost no landing and everywhere is lee side so it's like a nightmare it's like a mental challenge yeah
this is this i didn't know you know it's i i thought the same thing you know when they when they go down to texas to try for these world records you just think of it as a you know get up in the morning and and you know kind of survive for the first couple hours and then just basically get blown and whoever can get blown the farthest it wins you know but it's a but then when you hear about it you hear about fences and a lot of people with guns and nowhere to land and cactus and snakes and it actually sounds in some ways pretty terrifying in a lot of places where you can't land and i didn't know that about uh quixada and brazil so it's kind of it sounds similar very
very similar and exciting and you need time need time to get used to it and for sure quixada and this place will change you you gotta rather leave early and give
it a go and change your tolerance and you're gonna start flying like a bird trusting hundred percent even more your vision for the conditions because you need to rely on that otherwise there's no landings and it's really tough it was like a military experience we stayed there 50 days waking up every day 4 35 o 'clock and going to bed almost midnight so it's really really tough experience but the reward is just difficult to describe the feeling when you finish with the set after so many hours of flying in kilometers you feel like really like part of the nature wow
that's some serious dedication day after day uh that's that's a hard thing to do especially when you you're going one way so that means you're driving all night to get back and then you're up and at it again the next day
exactly sometimes we had short flights like 100 kilometers you you often bomb out around 100 a little bit more before midday which is funny because normally you take off and you're back and you're back and you're back and you're back and you're back in europe that time and then one day for 120 kilometers straight distance we drove more than a thousand on dirt road so that's difficult and also expensive but uh you know in the end is really worth it and i think i will go back with a better equipment and there is also a new place that they discover you see they issue it in the Cross Country Magazine the new spot is called tasima yeah it's even more tempting to to try because it's a easier beginning and you can fly with stronger winds and then you connect with the kishada route and yeah the only difference that there you're close to the ocean and you need to be patient and kishada you you fly every day
um tell me about your scary moment down there but it sounded like from the blog that you it was uh is it in the trees or how it sounded like you had a kind of a crash yeah
i wanted to to avoid that not to scare people but you remember it and i will never forget for sure that was the first time in my life that i fell like a pier from the tree with the cross country wing normally i never pull rescue or crash with cross country wing but that time it happens because we were very very low with a strong wind like almost 40 kilometers strong wind turbulent unformed thermals broken and tight and i was with a small group which were unfortunately not following my direction of turning as i was first in the thermal then i start to running in my separate course and one of the guys were following me the guy with enzo and turning keep turning in the opposite direction and even shout me in the one of the closest passing to each other and i said okay dude no problem and i just make a quarter of a spin like a gentle comma you know with a with a break just
and then i looked up and my glider had a double cravat one from the left and one from the right boat more than 30 percent and the glider was parachuting and i was like less than uh 80 meters no no really good to pull the reserve and i was like shit like i couldn't believe that's happening and i started instinctively pumping the brakes releasing and pumping and releasing and pumping was with cravat so i couldn't go for the speed bar i was just trying to restart the glider not with a full stall because no no altitude and the glider recovered in the very very last moment uh shoots and turned me with the wind and i was like 90 degrees like wing over with the wind and then swinging into the dry forest luckily everything else was going to kill me but this dry forest like six seven meter high trees and some cactuses which i didn't hit luckily these trees stopped me and i was so lucky just a small injury like pain in the neck pain in the shoulder in the in the knee in the ankle and i couldn't believe that happened the pilot came to help i was really upset with him because i felt like it happened because of him but it was many factors it was more than two three factors what kills people normally you know you're flying a dodgy glider you're doing some bullshit very low
people taking your way so on and so on and and then i i was resting for a week and then i decided to try again this glider i didn't want to be scared from something and i tried the glider and make some flights and then in one of those flights in front the takeoff it happened the same but this time i didn't do any spin any any deep break just the glider from a turbulence make collapse one side the other side like big years i was hands up and then the glider went to the deep stall then i was really like more in a rush because behind me were boulders and stronger wind so i immediately full stall it recover it land and throw the glider i was gonna
say i hope you burned that thing
no i left it to the guys to make a shadow like a tent yeah
exactly that does that doesn't sound good that's a good lesson in using uh good gear a person like yourself understands intimately spins and stalls and all these kind of things i mean if you can't if you're losing a glider then that thing's a piece of it
was strange to analyze why it's happening the material is quite crispy and new but probably because it's 2011 and he's been in the trees from the previous owner and so on something was not nice with the glider and then i borrowed from kevin from a swiss pilot very old totally beat up mantra 6 even in the last flight when we did the record with him i get some collapse and the glider was in the air and the lines broke and i was like oh maybe gonna land but then the glider recovered and i flew with the broken lines and i was feeling like flying a plane even flying a very old beat-up dhv23 but without any serious problem this glider showed me what is flying yeah
that's a nice wing as well i have to admit i'm maybe a guy but that is a beautiful wing
going back to acro just a little bit to me you know when i do uh when i do acro i find it pretty tiring you know even just a quick uh you know a 3 000 foot toe or something and and you know there's so much mental focus uh you know typically three or four runs in a day is is about all my mind can handle i find then after that i get kind of sloppy and slow uh are there are there uh is that the same for when you're a professional acro pilot do you still find it quite tiring and if so how do you how do you train for that yeah
for sure when i'm a little bit rusty i didn't fly a long time i felt i felt the same like very tiring after three four flights for sure if you do it nice the excitement will help you to continue and even if you do bad this is also kind of motivation and it's something you need to go through with totally like a blind push you know you need to keep pushing you know it's sometimes it's not pleasant but then the pleasure will come like they say the appetite is coming with eating if we just keep this uh this uh indicator stop us then we will never really change which is still fine but if we want to learn more and to enjoy more we need to to push more and find a better place like no turbulence good safety level that always helps good altitude you can stop unaccompanied to analyze watch the videos that that can help you to to see that you didn't been in danger nothing really bad happened sometimes we are like excited or stressed a little bit then we watch the video and like come on like nothing really bad happened to analyze you need to be patient you need to push for sure physical condition it's good to to have as you are fit if we're more fit it's even better we need to do some exercise like physical exercise that always helping do
you do you train physically for your sport yes
it's i find out that it's helping me a lot but not every day really from time to time and basic stuff like pull up and push-ups do
what do you um do you recognize uh like oh okay i need to back off here do you have like uh you know times where you really recognize like hey i'm pushing too hard of
course it's happened sometimes i throw rescue like this if you are just pushing because you want to catch up because some schedule you want to be in shape for this or that but you don't have the time that could be a bad bad combination when you're not when you're hungry if you're starving if it's if you're overheated if it's hot you really should know when is this moment and stop that's very very important if
you had times in your career or in the past 15 years where you've uh either have you gotten you know so scared you've had to back away you mentioned you know that was a really scary time in brazil uh and it sounds like you got back into it kind of a week later and that was more uh gear oriented but have you ever had a time where you're really pretty scared of the sport and had to go away uh
i had many scary moments which not supposed to push me back but uh we are normally scared from the unknown if you don't know if we don't know what what really happens but if we can analyze even a fatality of a friend or something if we can analyze this should make us more confident than and safe than than the opposite we just need to analyze what happened and as it happens in my past i fall into a glider really close to the ground a few times one of them i was over the water luckily and i i almost died but nothing happened because the water saved me and in the next day i went to try the same because i knew was not my mistake was a bad glider and so on and uh it's very important to trust yourself to rely on your experience and to be sure that you analyze correct do
you have a coach no
i wish i i had even in almost any other sport as i had had a coach and that's make me a weird feeling about because i feel like now days when everything is promoted like schools even i'm teaching people i feel like there's something wrong because i that was not the way i learned it but i'm pretty sure if you have a coach at least you can learn it faster i'm afraid that sometimes the coaching and the teaching can push people before they have the simple understanding and i believe it's found for uh for this sport because it's not difficult it's not physical it's like pulling left and right there is no such easy sport out there like this one and it's more mental but we need to to have the simple understanding and then we don't really need much coaching but for sure it's nice i recommend if people can use a coach which is professional it will it will save them time yeah
i think you know as as you get you know as you progress and start ticking off you know higher and higher boxes um i think we forget about how important that not really forget but that that how important that progression is uh i think that you know i i've said for a long time that i'm not going to be a coach but i'm going to i can't imagine you know even doing any 5k cross country without having a really solid SIV background um you know talk to me about safety and and how you know what what advice would you give your 50 hour self you know when you look back at your career um and mistakes that we all make um you know what could you have approached differently i
that's something what i would recommend now to my friends and students which is really vital i think and can save you because not every time the lucky will be on your side and there are three type of people from my observation in the sport like two type of them they had panic one of them blockade the other just overreact and even if you're from the third part which is not having time to be scared just watching and analyzing sometimes you need time and if you have to use your brain to analyze and get solution maybe you will not have the time so as more you're prepared technically mean you will have a bit better chance to survive like massive ground handling and a lot of simulation like sav or even doing on your own when you're high collapsing the wing on the ground while ground handling in the air doing all this stuff with your glider will give you reflexes and muscle memory and then you don't need to think you will be reacting instinctively and that will be really really a best friend for you if you can work if people can work on that i think that will be really really good for for everyone i
think that's beautifully said you know it's it seems to me like that's the real tie and connection between acro and cross country you know the the two disciplines are really not so separate are they i mean i think to again and again we see the pilots that do really well if flying cross country are also really good at flying cross country and i think that's the real tie and connection between good acro pilots and i think vice versa do would you would you agree with that
absolutely i always say to a friend especially those who are more cross country orientated when they ask like how to do this and that for example to work in a broken thermal to uh to uh to to make one broken thermal to the cloud and to work in this condition this is more difficult than doing acro that technically like you need more feeling more understanding and also you work with metrology and terrains you basically you can do it in the air you can do it in the air you can do it in the air you can do it in the air you can do it in the air you can do it in the air you can more knowledge than the acro pilot the acro is just like gymnastic is super easy it's more easy but they both fit in the beginning basic acro stuff will give you a really relaxed feeling in turbulent condition but then if you develop this feeling with cross country later you can learn acro very quickly like that helps me so much because i had the massive cross country experience and some basic acro experience when i decide to learn was just easy even on my own without coach what
excites you more now acro or cross country i
think they're both exciting if we do it in a in a new new dimension like if we go to fly in a new place for sure it's super exciting if i have to try some new maneuver is going to be super excited we decide which is the most exciting but for me cross country is the real passion
when when i look at your i was exploring your website last night flytheearth.com which i would encourage our our listeners to check out it's phenomenal and your your films and videos are just amazing very very inspiring um you you've been all over the place uh south america north america all over africa what are your plans this year
um i have a really nice plan to go to venezuela to jump from the waterfall because i started there yeah in jufos i started base jumping a few years ago and now it's like kind of my hobby something which puts me away from all the stress and you know material stuff and so on so that's the first thing i want to do jump from the waterfall and then later hopefully to go to california to finish my education with the wingsuit because i want to be capable for the summer to jump from the mountain with the wingsuit and uh for the summer the plan is pakistan again plus the world cup acro tour and that's more or less about yeah hopefully in the next winter so i mean october november next year hopefully i will visit france in australia and new zealand because i never been there i
i find it hysterical that you you undertake base jumping to get away from the stress i love it that's fantastic um you and i have quite similar personalities um you'll you'll have to if you want to jump from the waterfall you'll have to jump from the if you haven't you'll have to go back and listen to i think it was number three or four uh i did a great uh podcast with uh uh jeff shapiro uh you you may know him he's a very famous hang glider and wingsuit base jumper who's unfortunately lost a lot of friends in the sport so i hope you're taking that on with a lot of care yes
yes yes yes i do it wipes
out a lot of a lot of good folks
yeah it's amazing person i i'm i met him in switzerland and i know for his losses it's it's uh it's strange because this sport by basic is super safe it's more it's taken less less uh victims than paragliding than than cars than anything but because it's so different that we are so focused on the on the fatalities but uh once i watched the statistic list and i found that just one case was registered like a gear malfunction everything else was human error and that's something we can do every day driving our car but uh yeah that's why i want to keep the base jumping really like for for a hobby just like taking a chocolate from time to time because if you start pushing it into a far levels for sure you're gonna mistake and that's what kills you
yeah the mistakes are very unforgiving in that sport with your own approach then to when you have the pressure of sponsorship and filming and that kind of thing with paragliding and with acro how do you uh how do you define that line how do you make sure you don't go over it i
define that line that for a moment in the last years i felt like what was inspiring me and what was my dream is start to turn more like into a job and then i i define that i need to do it less frequent you know i need to put less effort in order to remember what i was doing it because if we push too much we feel like someone is is pushing us to do that but actually we choose to do it we can we can quit there is no contract which you cannot quit so we need to do to do it i think less frequent and then spend more time with the friends to remember again what was our dream
so i've had a lot of people a lot of friends that have gone through you know quite scary times or maybe an accident uh and then suddenly they realize that uh they still want to do it but it's not fun um and it's not safe if it's not fun i believe that firmly but how do um how how can people make it fun again i
think everything has expiration date even such a beautiful passion which we discover and if we squeeze it so far of course we'll receive less and more fun we can do it like seeing it from different perspective make the travels maybe not with professional friends but with beginners to teach them or start new sport like i start with the base jumping that's put me in this pure mode of just being happy with the small things i think this is a common human state that we start to feel like confused from what was giving us direction it's it's a common sense for the human mind i couldn't
agree more that's that's fantastic i think that you know um there's a lot to be said for hunger isn't there i mean i think that uh you know if you mix in other things that you're also passionate about you can come back to it with a lot more i guess appreciation exactly
exactly yeah because everything is beautiful even playing ping pong or tennis with your friend could be joyful and exciting as base jumping is is depend how often we're doing it and what's the state when we're doing it
fantastic um well maybe we'll leave it right there that was it was really fantastic i have uh some questions that came through a very good friend of mine who lives in in innsbruck uh max he he he has these questions that he wanted me to put through to you uh that comes from james lipton the proust questionnaire these are kind of like rapid fire questions so but by no means do you have to answer them quickly or in one word but just a bunch of quick ones uh so uh what is your favorite word favorite
word yeah uh word like uh saying something yeah it's definitely sky sky
okay what is your least favorite word uh
maybe cave and
what turns you on what
turns me on beauty and
what turns you off uh
um
this is probably stress stress
yeah that's good what sound or noise do you love what
sound or noise uh i i really like the sound of of your glider when you're gliding when making this quiet like it's really put me in a piece there's
that film uh the sounds of paragliding that is just terrific i don't know if you've seen that one uh yes
it's from young french boy from tell yeah yeah
it's beautiful really well done uh what sound or noise do you hate uh
i i really don't like uh like uh iron and iron or or when your fork is scratching the plate this basic stuff it's really ah
the fingernails on the chalkboard kind of thing yeah that's that's awful what is your favorite curse word
curse word probably damn it or i don't think on on english i have really a direct one but probably damn it on english hahaha
and what profession other than your own would you like to attempt i
i really like to attempt uh something with the art of creating picture motion picture i feel like i want to be one day part of a team which is working because it's kind of art like having a painting or picture like moving picture like a film that's really interesting and
what profession would you not like to do
i would not like to do to to stay on a desk in the office for sure hahaha
we all we all don't want to do that um and if heaven exists this is great i love this one if heaven exists what would you like to hear god say when you when you arrive at the pearly gates if
heaven exists i would like to hear that all your friends are there and waiting to meet ah fantastic fantastic
i love it um veso let's let's wrap it
up and let's wrap it up and let's wrap it
up there that was just terrific i think our listeners are going to love that um where can people find you uh and and where can people reach out to you at your you obviously have kind of an innate or maybe a practiced ability to teach i think you can offer a lot to our community um where can people find you either online or through facebook or that kind of thing
yeah nowadays i think we're all pretty connected and the website has all the contacts and the facebook is there as well skype mobile you know you have my application as well and i'm looking forward to to spend more time with with newcomers in the sport to teach them to share this beautiful sport for sure it's something i'm looking forward great
fantastic for for those of you who are listening the the website is flytheearth.com it is terrific i promise you'll get lost in that for for hours watching some of the films and videos and pictures and vessels travel so please enjoy vessel thank you very very much uh that was that was terrific and uh happy new year this is uh day three of 2016 happy
new year by the way that was really pleasure and uh i hope we meet personal and fly together it will be a really dream that
would be a dream fantastic thanks vessel talk to you soon well
i hope you enjoyed that i certainly did what a cool personality that was a lot of fun to talk to him over the christmas holidays happy new year to everybody you as always all we ask for is a buck a show if you got something out of this or one of the previous ones uh or if you're just finding this podcast i really implore you to go back and check out some of the earlier ones uh some great advice there really fantastic talk with jeff shapiro and bill belcourt and Matt Beechinor and hysterical one with nate scales so uh go back take a look enjoy enjoy it uh grab it on a car ride or something on your next uh outing or expedition and we'll see you on the next one cheers