Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Before we get into this one, just wanted to remind you all that we are taking questions. I've gotten a bunch of really good ones for Bill Belcourt. He's going to be hosting a show here off in the very near future, dedicated to just answering your questions. So if you've got a question for the Yoda of the sky, shoot it over either via the website, cloudbasemayhem.com, or my Facebook page, Gavin McClurg, or Instagram, or wherever you want to reach out to me, please do so. This episode, I don't think, I mean, you know, it's dangerous to compare one to the next with all the incredible guests we've been so fortunate to have on the show, but I don't think I've smiled this much in any of them.
We are rewinding the clock here to 1973, when these guys used to fly hang gliders sitting in a swing seat. On gliders that maybe had two and a half or three to one glide ratio, and going to bring you all the way up through to current day. An amazing talk with a complete legend, the prince of hang gliding. They used to call Larry Tudor. I've been requested to get Larry on the show now for a while, and I got to say, this was a real treat. Some of these stories, I promise, are going to totally blow your mind. Larry gets sucked up in that, well, not sucked up... He has to deal with flying in a tornado, trying to break the distance record down in Hobbs. We go back to when, you know, thermals weren't even understood.
The advent, truly, of cross country flying started with these guys. Larry was considered, along with Tom Supinchek, I think I'm saying that right, as one of the highest regarded hang glider pilots in the world in the mid-80s. Larry was the first person to fly over 200 miles. Incredibly, in 1983, if you can imagine that, on those wings back then. He was the first person to fly over 300 miles in 1994. And when he went 308 miles across a great swath of the southwest, that wasn't repeated for more than 10 years. This is just, strap yourself in. This is a long one, but it is a goodie. I promise you're going to laugh, you're going to shake your head, you're going to wonder at the absurdity of it all.
So, without further ado, please. Enjoy this terrific conversation with my friend, Larry Tudor.
Larry Tudor, it is awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much. We've been trying to track this down for a few weeks now, but I'm actually glad it took a little bit of time, because I was able to do some reading about you. Why don't you tell me about where you are, and then I'd love to hear about how you got into this sport. Over, I think, my additions right over 40 years ago.
Oh, yeah, sure. Hi, Kevin, thanks for having me. Well, basically, I started flying in my senior year of high school. I had gone to a party in the Springs, Colorado Springs, and the next morning I was looking through the Sunday supplement of the Rocky Mountain News and saw these guys who had been flying off Pikes Peak and landing on the Broadmoor Golf Course. I looked out the window at Pikes Peak and thought, wow, that's pretty cool. But it was something so far out of what I thought I could do, I didn't even think about it again until a group of us were at another party, and I was in kind of a weak frame of mind. One of my other friends had already started taking lessons at Shondell up in Golden.
He said, you know, it's $45 for a five-lesson package, and it's pretty fun, it's pretty easy to do. So I went up there and took a couple lessons. I took a five-lesson package, but I started flying prone because my glider got delivered rigged for prone, and they didn't have any instructors yet that flew prone. They said, well, if you wait around two or three months, I think one of our instructors is going to be flying prone by then. So
this was all swing suit days.
Yeah, it was. We had these really stripped-down harnesses and no reserve chute, a little climbing helmet maybe if you felt like it. It was really, really primitive.
It's $45 for a five-lesson package. That is just a bit. I mean, when I look at it, so give me a year. Is this 77?
I think it was 73.
73. Oh, my goodness. I mean, when I look back at footage of that,
it's like footage of the early paragliders. It's just terrifying. I mean, these wings you guys were flying,
they don't even look like wings. I mean, it's just, you know, what was the, what was the glide ratio on these things you
guys were flying? They were claiming four, but I think it was closer to three or three and a half to one. So like a really bad speed wing, basically. Yeah, you know, but even so, getting your feet off the ground for the first time and the time I, my first flight was on a day where it had just snowed like six or eight inches. And so only myself and a girl showed up for lessons and a student from Boulder CU had hitchhiked down to Golden to give me a lesson. And they were going to cancel the lesson, but I was there, the instructor was there. And because the girl didn't really like to fly in the snow so much, I got just a ton of takeoff and landings. But I remember the very first time my feet left the ground and I could look back up the hill and see where my last step was and see where I was when I landed.
That was just such a thrill, you know, to know that I actually flew from point A to point B.
And when did, when did it kind of, so you, was it just purely sledders? I mean, was, was there, was there ridge soaring? Was it, was it, was it on anybody's radar that you could use these things to go places back then?
Oh, absolutely not. No, basically if you flew in a small hurricane or, you know, pretty stiff breeze, like 25, 30 miles an hour, you could, you could make passes. For instance, one time I was coming home from work out in Aurora and I was driving across Cherry Creek Reservoir and I looked to my right and there was a guy in a paraglider. Follow me, you know, right next to my car. And so I turned around and went back to the turnout so I could watch him. And that was a local pilot named Bill Ferrari who was pretty much a bird and a really special pilot. He was, he was an absolute natural when it came to flying. He's the one that loaned me his glider and harness and taught me how to fly prone.
But unless you had a really good ridge soaring site and it was blowing, you know, small gale, you really couldn't stay up. And so sometimes people would be flying the west side of Green Mountain on the lee side of the Rockies and you could just see the turbulence flowing right through the wing because they didn't have battens. And when they, when they'd hit turbulence, the wing would just transfer the turbulence right through the sail. So yeah, it was pretty scary. I was pretty happy just to be able to take off and glide down. That was, that was good enough for me. And we kept trying to find higher spots to jump from. With, with me, I'd always try to find places that had nowhere, nothing I could hit out in front.
So I could just jump off and wherever I glided to, that's where I landed. What
was the, you guys are such pioneers. I've just got the biggest grin on my face right now imagining this. Was it, was it like, what was the accident to flight ratio? Were people just dropping out of the sky left and right? Or did you guys kind of have it figured out in a semblance of safety? Or, you know, was it just, was it just one man for himself, just yahoo?
No, it was, it was, it was pretty much cowboy yahoo flying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was one of the worst yahoos. I, I didn't know it at the time and kind of sort of discovered it well after the fact, after I had gotten much better at flying. But my first glider was delivered to me with the CG, probably about six or eight inches aft of where it should have been. And they also had it rigged for, for seated instead of prone. So in order to keep the thing flying, I had to fly around with the control bar almost down to my knees. And people would look at me and say, no, no, no, you need to let the bar out to your chest. You know, that's where you should be flying. And every time I do that, I'd just go right into a spin and spin into the ground.
So, so it's like, okay, but I don't think I'm going to like this.
Did you just have an uncanny ability? Cause I understand you're, you're not a big guy, right? I mean, did you, you, did, did you just have an uncanny ability to bounce back then? Or did you just take some visits to the hospital? I
think I was just really lucky. Right. I was really lucky. Yeah. There was one time I was flying from Cherry Creek Reservoir and the glider turned to the right. And before I could recover from the turn, it was near the bottom where the outlet is, the spillway for the reservoir. And there's a lot of power lines and things at the bottom. And I, rather than hitting the power lines, I parachuted the glider by pumping. It from about 35, 40 feet and hit flat on my face. And I think the reason that my voice is so unique right now is because I, I hit my larynx pretty hard. My doctor was telling me that this new sport of hang glider was probably too dangerous and I should think about quitting, but I, here I am.
So you were asking about the, the whole progression of, of hang gliding. Well, at the time I bought my first hang glider, there was this new hang glider coming out called, the Shondell Comp. And their first glider was just a Shondell and then there was the Shondell Comp. Well, they had this bright idea of telescoping crossbars. So you wouldn't have to pin anything. And by the time I, the glider was delivered, I think there was like 40 fatalities already. And I wasn't smart enough to ask for my money back, but I had this brand new glider that I never flew even once. Wait a minute. There
was, there was 40 fatalities on that glider or in hang gliding?
Yeah. Wow, okay. That put Shondell out of business. It, the, the shop became Golden Skysails right at 6th Avenue and Interstate 70 in Golden, right at the base of Green Mountain. But that, that one glider pretty much put Shondell Skysails out of business. By the time it was delivered to me, I had already picked up another glider from SunSail, who had, it was a, it was a company that started up at Stapleton Airport.
And because I was really fascinated with hang gliders, they, they let me hang around and cut tubes and drill tubes and assemble gliders. And I, I got their very first 17 foot standard. And because that was their first standard and they weren't test flying gliders back then, they were just delivering them. My glider had just one foot chopped off of, of each tube, you know, shorter keel, shorter wing. And that's why the, the CG was a little bit shorter. It was about six or eight inches farther aft than it should have been. Because the hang gliders were so easy to, to produce, there was hundreds, literally hundreds of, of people making hang gliders. It was just an 18 foot long leading edge, 18 foot long keel, and a crossbar, and three, three degrees of billow to the sail.
So it was quite easy to make a hang glider.
And then, you know, at some point, hang gliding goes through this, I mean, I know it just like paragliding, it's gone through all kinds of revelations. And was that with the advent of like Wills Wing? And when, when did you guys start figuring it out that you could use them to go places? For
me, I think that the biggest transformation in hang gliding came when the Dragonfly was created by Roy Haggard at Ultralight Products. He, he opened up the nose angle and cut off the tips. And those were called truncated wing tips back then. They were squared off tips so that they weren't pointy tips, which would cause stalls. They were called some spins. So that went from about, I don't know, four to one to eight and a half to one. And the first person in Colorado to get a Dragonfly was Charlie Boffman, aka Hawkman. And Charlie, Charlie was a bird. He was, he was definitely a bird. And he would take off Lookout Mountain in Golden.
And while everybody else was making passes at the top, he'd just wander out away from the mountain. And start circling and just get insanely high. And everybody just thought it was magic. And so that was definitely the first person who really started climbing out high in thermals. At that point in time, I had kind of given up on the glider that I was flying. Because I'd gone out to Lookout Mountain and watched Charlie and watched him for hours. And I could see what he was doing. And I knew that I could do that if I just had the right equipment.
And another thing that I learned, I think, is that, you know, when I was a regular pilot in Colorado, Gary Folkers took me under his wing and sold me a Cal Glider's Wind Gypsy, which was another truncated glider out of the Bay Area. And he said it was on one condition that, you know, until he was completely satisfied with my technique, that, you know, I couldn't go anywhere else and fly it. And he was under a lot of pressure from the local pilots who pretty much didn't want me around. They wanted me to go somewhere else and kill myself.
Seriously, that's what they were saying. It's like, go somewhere else and kill yourself. We don't want you, don't come back here. And so just about then I had some vacation saved up and I wanted to go to California because back then, you know, California's somewhat the Mecca because that's where all the magazines were being published. And they were the ones saying they were the best pilots ever anywhere. So it's like more or less the birthplace of hang gliding with all the ridge soaring they were doing up and down the coast. And Gary said, well, you know, if you're gonna go to California, you might wanna go through Salt Lake City because, you know, there's some pretty good pilots there and some pretty good flying there and you might like it. And I remember in June of 1976, throwing this Cal Glider's Wind Gypsy on top of my Mazda RX2 and heading west and came down Parley's Canyon on a beautiful spring day.
Everything was green, everything was beautiful. And I popped out at the bottom and looked out over Salt Lake Valley and looked to the left down the Wasatch and looked up at Mount Olympus and went, wow, that's gotta be where they flew. So I went driving up into Olympus Cove trying to find the road up to launch because it was blown straight into Mount Olympus. And I was asking some of the locals there like, where's the launch, where's the launch? And they said, oh, no, hang gliders don't fly here. They fly down there at that little hill. You know, and they pointed me toward the point of the mountain. I was thinking, you gotta be kidding. You've got all these giant, beautiful mountains and that's where they fly, so. Next, they invited me in to spend the night. It turned out it was, I think the president or vice president of Smith's or Skaggs.
I can't remember exactly which one, but it was one of the big drugstore food chains. Okay, yeah. And they're, you know, totally LDS. We were saying prayers over dinner and super nice people.
So I had a really good first impression. And the next day I headed down to the point of the mountain with my glider.
Waited around by the south side and waited around for some pilots. And finally, a pilot in a Jeep showed up, Mike Tingey, and asked me if I wanted to go up to the top with him. And I said, yeah, sure. And we loaded up on his Jeep and went up to the top of the north side. And it was blowing straight in about 25 or 30, which was like 25 or 30 more than I'd ever flown in. And I was a little bit nervous, to say the least. And finally, after like an hour and 45 minutes, kind of like a long time of him standing there on launch, you know, trying to launch me, he said, hey, look, you know, if you don't launch, you're gonna have to walk down. So I launched and I had been reading in all the books that that much wind, the turbulence is like a factor of eight or 10 times more turbulent than smaller winds.
So my first several passes, I was holding on the control bar so hard because I was just waiting for this turbulence that never came. And I just floated up, like 2000 or 2000, 2500 feet above the north side and uh since i was in a high performance glider and back then a lot of the pilots at the point were still flying standards everyone was looking up this colorado pilot thinking oh this guy's pretty good and so i went along with it you know so i didn't tell him i didn't know what the heck i was doing and my very first flight was an hour and a half which was you know about an hour and 25 minutes longer than i'd ever flown before i was just in love with the place went out to dinner with the pilots afterward there's like eight or ten pilots we all went out to this uh sleazy chinese restaurant on state street called the south seas we called the south disease because usually we get sick eating there but uh you know for like two dollars and fifty cents we could get the special with some jasmine tea and uh patricia johnson who was a another pilot was waitressing there so we usually didn't tip and uh she'd bring us just basket after basket of saltines and uh it was uh it was all good yeah
that does sound all good so you you you ride into town and you're like you're all you're the local hero little did they know you didn't even know how to launch i love it the
point back then was absolutely pristine there was there was nothing out in front of the north side nothing on the bench it was just all sagebrush on the bench actually and on the south side it was it was just beautiful and on the south side uh out in front there was nothing out in front i don't think there was even a building until you got to the lehigh exit and the the grass uh was like a foot and a half two feet high on this on the south side there were no weeds yet it wasn't all eroded off there was no uh geneva geneva hadn't uh destroyed the mountain yet so yeah it was just a beautiful place to fly absolutely yeah the point of the mountain is just beautiful it really is
wow that would be that would have been an awesome time to be there god that thing just gets munched and munched and munched every year it's it's it's quite sad still amazing it's still great training but yeah that would have been incredible well fast forward a little bit for me larry to like we're still kind of in the mid 70s um when did it all start kind of clicking and i'm assuming a big part of that's getting on a different wing but take me up to when you guys started uh flying you know when you when it was more and not just ridge soaring but when you guys were figuring it out kind of the thermal scene and give me some also give me so i'd love to hear some perspective of kind of who who were who were your mentors back then and who was who was around who was doing it who was pushing hard yeah
that's good uh because there were a lot of really exceptional pilots back then in salt lake just because of the amount of air time they were getting and the fact that they were inland and uh flying in thermals too and flying in thermals in wind is is uh probably one of the harder things to do. So, yeah. So when, uh, when I went out to dinner with those guys, I met JC Brown, who was, uh, out there from New York cities and he had convinced his dad, he was going to school at the university of Utah. And, but he was taking his money from his dad and, you know, spending it on, on hang gliding. And so he had an apartment down there in the avenues and I had a car transportation. He used to hitchhike, get this, he used to hitchhike from downtown with his hang glider to the point of the mountain.
Uh, yeah. So JC, uh, and I hooked up and we were both about the same size, five, 10, 130 pounds. Uh, and we were both air junkies. He was still flying a Jim Lynn standard. Jim Lynn was a manufacturer in Kaysville, Utah. He made standard hang gliders and, uh,
JC would, uh, would have a lot of trouble once it started to get really windy. He, he, he, uh, I remember he got ground looped a couple of times on the South side and each time that would happen, he'd break his King post. So he went down to the hardware store and got some schedule 40 steel and made himself a steel King post and solve that problem.
You guys are awesome. I just, we, we've gotten so soft now, haven't we? I mean, just the gear that we have. And I mean, hitchhiking with a hang glider. That's awesome. Yeah, I
know. And now everything packs up in a little bag and you can call Uber and you've got spot and in reach and you name it. It's, uh, you know, it's still just as fun. Uh, well, so, so anyhow, uh, yeah, JC and I start flying together a lot and we were, we were pretty competitive. We, we both try to get the most amount of hours and airtime and, and keep trying to break our personal best for how high we got or how long we stayed up or how much we were flying. How many hours we got each week. And, uh, then there was also Lance Merrill was, he was very active. He's a hard as nails, uh, LDS, uh, concrete, uh, construction worker. He was just absolutely hard as nails. Usually had a tan that made him look like a native American.
He was so dark from spending all his days out in the sun and had this giant Cheshire grin, you know, white, use these brilliant white teeth. And, uh, so, there was this one time that, uh, JC and Lance and Mike Tingey and I went down to camel's pass and it was blown. It was, it was already blown like 30, 35. And I still had my wind gypsy. So it was out of the question for me to fly because that thing didn't penetrate so well. And, uh, then, uh, JC was a little bit conservative and so was Mike Tingey. And, but Lance was all for it. He was going, Hey, you know, we fly this all the time on South side. So, you know, I'm going to go for it. And so we helped Lance, set up and launch and Lance just went straight up like 3000, 4000 feet.
And we were wondering if he was doing that on purpose. And then he like disappears to the right on a standard down, you know, down toward, uh, Salt Lake city and he just disappeared. And we're like, well, that doesn't tell us a lot, does it? So after an hour or so, apparently Lance flew down to Provo Canyon and before crossing Provo Canyon over toward Timpanogos, he, he was wondering where we were. So he flew back. So we spotted him and he's just in orbit. And we see him doing all these aerobatics and spirals and he's, he's coming down and we're going, huh, this is, this is interesting. What's going on with Lance. And, uh, Lance starts, uh, flying by us yelling, uh, move the Jeep, move the Jeep. And we're like,
what's he saying? And then he goes, move the fucking Jeep. Oh shit. So, Mike gets in the Jeep and backs it down the last little four wheel drive trail to the top of camel's pass. And then Lance, uh, started trying to set up to land on top of camel's pass, just like we used to do on the top of the North side. But, uh, he got, he got caught by the rotor and dove into this Oak tree on the backside of the mountain and just, just exploded the glider. And we went running down there and there was nothing moving. And I was like, Oh no, my friend Lance, he's dead. He's, he's, he's dead. And I was like, Oh no, my friend Lance, he's dead. He's gone. And I didn't really want to see it. And then, you know, there's this rustling and Lance looks up from underneath the trailing edge with that giant big smile of his.
He's gone. That was the best flight I've ever had. And I was thinking, this guy's crazy. He hit his head too hard. You know, he just crashed and destroyed his glider. And he's saying it's the best fight he ever had. So, uh, you know, we, we untangled Lance, get him out of the bush. You know, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, we get him out of there and pack up his wing. It's all broken. And he's all bummed out. Cause you know, now he's on the ground on maybe the best day ever in history. And, uh, he talks JC into letting him fly his glider. So he goes, Hey JC, you know, can I fly your glider? JC's yeah. Okay. Lance. Yeah. You can fly mine. So we set up JC's standard Regalo. Wait, the same day? Yeah. Same day. And by, but by then it, by then it was like two 33 o 'clock.
So it was really ripping. So about the time the glider set up, JC's thinking, well, you know, the glider set up, I'd rather fly than let Lance fly my glider. So, uh, JC launches and JC starts climbing out just like Lance did. And then went into like three or 400 foot straight down dive, you know, full left dive. The glider's just flapping. He's pointed down like a lawn dart and he pulls out and he flies out again. And next thing you know, there goes JC into another, you know, you know, 500, 600 foot dive straight down toward the ground. And I thought he was doing aerobatics. I was going, all right, JC, ring it out. And I'm looking at the other guys and they're going, uh, I don't think he's doing that on purpose.
And apparently JC got so freaked out by those two full left dives, you know, getting pitched over and just going into these, these vertical dives that he just flew straight out. So he, he flew straight out over the top of Springville and just out, out into the farmland. And he just landed where he, he, you know, he happened to touch down cause he didn't make a single turn. And that was like, that was the last time JC flew that Jim Lynn standard. He sold that. And then he got, um, he got another glider and that's when JC and I started, uh, really starting to fly competitively with each other because, uh, our gliders were, were, uh, were pretty high performance for the time. I think they're about the best gliders around. I think he had a Cirrus three from Electra flyer in Albuquerque and I had a Mark two B dragon fly from,
from ultralight products. And
when did, so go ahead. I'll just say, when did the, when did the kind of comp scene begin there and how did that all start going?
Oh, okay. So competition, well, basically leading up to competition, I never intended to compete in hang gliding because, uh, when I was younger and in high school, I used to play lots of chess and then I started flying or I'm sorry, I started competing in chess. And when I started, to compete in chess, it kind of ruined it for me. So I didn't want that to happen with hang glider. I just wanted to hang glide for fun. I didn't care about competitions. Didn't want to go to competitions. But, uh, anyhow, JC and I were getting to like, uh, 35, 40 hours a week. We'd fly the South side in the morning and then usually the mountains in the afternoon. And that winter we had to get out of Salt Lake city cause it was too cold.
And we wandered down to Southern, uh, Arizona and then Southern California. So over the course of the very first year, uh, we honed our thermaling skills and discovered that our thermaling skills were already, you know, pretty much better than anyone in Southern California. We were thermaling at Torrey Pines and getting several hundred feet over and all the locals were telling us we're out of our minds. There's no thermals at Torrey Pines. It's, it must be concentrated bridge lift. But, uh, so when I was, I, I stayed at Torrey Pines and became a Torrey rat, just, uh, putting a pillow over the break of my, across RX two and sleeping across the two front seats. And JC hitchhiked up to Van Nuys to work for Bill Bennett and Bill Bennett Delta wings working with Dick Boone, the designer there.
And so was
there, was there money in it back then for these designers or was everybody just doing it out of love?
You've gotten me, I think, no, JC was making, he was making a salary. He was making an income. Okay. Okay. It was a real job. Yeah. And, uh, being at Torrey Pines though, everybody kind of came through Torrey Pines at some time or another during the winter months. And so, uh, the UP van showed up from Temecula with all the UP pilots. And, you know, that was my, my favorite glider at the time. I'd never met any of these guys I'd read about. And Pete Brock was there with Roy Haggard and Mike Quinn and all of his competition pilots. And they'd brought down the new spider. It was a, was another truncated glider like the dragon fly. And I had pretty much, uh, thought that the pilot was going to be a there would never be another glider as good as the dragon fly. So I was content just to fly my dragon fly, but it was bothering Pete Brock that I was sitting up there above all his comp pilots on the, on their next generation wing.
So he said, Hey, you know, I'd like you to fly this guy. And, uh, you know, go up and fly this guy. I said, no, no, no. I like the dragon fly. I love the dragon fly. That's, that's my glider. He says, so then he tricked me. He said, Oh, Oh, could you do me a favor then? And fly the glider. Just tell me what you think of it. You know, tell me what we can do to make it better. And I said, well, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'll do that. And I went up there and as soon as my feet left the ground, I was like, Oh man, I can't fly my glider ever again. This glider is so much better. Nice. Yeah. So Pete said, okay, Hey, take this glider back with you to Utah. And you know, if you want to sell our gliders in Utah, that'd be great. And, uh, so I went back to Utah and started being the UP dealer in Utah. And so that summer, which would have been 77, uh, we were flying a lot in, in Salt Lake city, JC, uh,
JC was flying the point of the mountain every day while I was trying to work, uh, construction doing framing and some other stuff with another hang glider pilot, trying to get, get some money for the summer. And then, uh, that summer, a pilot from Montana asked me if I wanted to join him at a competition in infamia, British Columbia called Mount Mount Swansea. And on the way up there, we flew some places in Idaho. And then we went to the big Southern Butte
and that was actually the first time that I ever got crazy high in a hang glider. I, I found a thermal and just locked into it. And it was so concentrated on the thermal. I didn't realize how high I was and didn't have an altimeter. And by the time the thermals topped out, I couldn't find the Butte anymore because everything is sort of flattened out beneath me. I had to trace my way in from Arco and, uh, see the switchbacks up to where the mountain was. It was like, Oh my God, I'm really high. How
high do you think you were?
Yeah. I don't know. 16, 17,000 feet for sure. It was pre hypoxic. Probably. Yeah. It was probably hypoxic. Where am I?
That's a good, that's a
good sign. You're hypoxic. Yeah. And I was frozen too. But, uh, at any rate, uh, that was the first time I ever really, really got high because in Salt Lake, there was usually an inversion or something that would hold the thermals down a lot lower. And so then from there, we went up to Mount Swansea and back then the rules for the competition were, it was kind of free form. Every competition had its own sort of rules that were made up for that competition. And the first round, uh, the meet director said, okay, here's today's format. What we're going to do is fly off of the mountain out toward these pylons. And so you're going to get points for how fast you get to the pylons. And then from there, it's how many pylons, how many figure eights you can do.
And then there's a spot landing. Okay.
Was raced, was raced a goal, even a thing yet, No, it was – Okay. That's still way off in the future.
Okay. So basically, the meet director talked everybody into flying really fast out to the figure eights and then seeing how many figure eights you could get. Well, I was watching people take off and going through all this lift, and they were flying fast. And I was thinking, wow, if they would have just fly slower, they'd get out there a lot higher. I took off, and I'd push out and climb as fast as I could in the thermals. You couldn't make any circles in the thermals. That wasn't allowed. But by the time I got out to the landing area, I was a couple thousand over the takeoff and managed to do some ridiculous number of figure eights. And I could even extend my figure eights to where I'd hit the next thermal coming through and work that back to the launch. So I had a pretty good lead going into the competition,
managed to win that. And that was pretty exciting because at that moment, it was just after the world championships where – another pilot in that competition, Dean Kupchenko, had gotten second place. So there's nothing as dangerous as a young pilot that comes to the realization that he can beat the people that he's competing against.
When you say world championships, what were they doing for the world – like these figure eight things? Or were they more like stunts? Because they weren't cross country, right? Were you racing? Or what were you doing for world championships?
That's a good question. I didn't go to the world championships, but I think they were.
Who knows? Yeah. From what I can recall, I think what they were most focused on back then was how long you were in the air. That was a big thing. Right. And then spot landing.
Okay. So only because – I think I could listen to these stories from there forever, but only because I want to be mindful a little bit about time. And I want to get into some of your world records and some of the huge distance. So get me – Get me from where we are here. So you're kind of flying Swansea. You're doing figure eights to the – in 1983, as I understand it, you were the first person in the world to fly over 200 miles. It wasn't counted because you had to have an observer and all that back then, of course, because we didn't have GPSs keeping track of everything. But still, I mean, how do you go from that kind of wild cowboy to – and not just you, I mean everybody back then. But how do you – what happened?
What happened there? Was it – obviously it was gliders, but what else was going on? And I don't even think – was the Owens even discovered then in 77, like when you guys were going up to Invermere? Were people flying the Owens already?
Well, actually, I think the Owens was just getting discovered. Okay. We were – when JC and I were in Southern California, he told me about these two pilots he met in Sylmar, the Sylmar-Van Nuys area, who had – been flying this magical place called Cerro Cordo. Well, at any rate, the description of the place didn't sound possible. The amount of vertical to the mountains and just the length of the mountain range and the size of the thermals just didn't sound even possible. And back then, we were still convinced that Salt Lake City and the Wasatch was the best place on the planet to fly.
So when JC and I got back – When we got back to Utah in 77, there was one day where we were flying Francis Peak. And because it was a little bit southeasterly, it was pushing away the marine effect of the Great Salt Lake. And JC and I actually got pretty high. We got to Cloud Base, and we flew across to Bountiful, which is where we usually like to spend the end of the day trying to stay up. And then we just kept going. And – And that day, we flew down to the bench at the point of the mountain, which is like 38 miles, which at that time, it was just a few miles shorter than John and Teresa Lyers had flown in the Owens Valley.
And so that was really the beginning of some long cross-countries. There was the people doing cross country off Cerro Cordo, Scarier Cordo.
And then we started flying up and down the Wasatch. And in 77, Lance had to go on mission. Did you have Varios? Oh, we had these giant Culver Varios that had like eight AA batteries in them. And they probably cost us a point in glide because there was these big boxy things on the control bar that – So you had
that. You had like some kind of altimeter. Anything else?
Yeah, I didn't have an altimeter. JC had a Skylake. Skymaster skydiving altimeter that was good to about 1,000 feet.
But we didn't have anything very sensitive back then.
So anyhow, let me jump real quick to Lance's story. Lance had to go on mission, but Lance wanted to break the world distance record, and he wanted to do it on a standard. So they had discovered this place in northern Arizona called the Echo Cliffs. And a couple of the pilots who were official observers of the USHGA. Went down there with him to observe his flight. And he almost got the distance record. He was flying cross country, flying north toward the Glen Canyon Dam. And a thunderstorm that dumped behind him pushed this east wind and caused him to lose control and get forced down in front of the Echo Cliffs. And he somehow landed on the Echo Cliffs in a standard regalo, broke the glider down.
And using that to – As a chalk or a wedge in the cracks of the cliff, managed to get down off the cliff. He didn't break the world record on a standard, but the next day he got back to Salt Lake City and then went on mission. So that's about the very start of the cross country scene in hang gliding. And give me a year? Oh, that was the summer of 77. Okay. And then I think it was the summer of 78 when George Worthington worked it out with the FAI in France to begin having officials. And then George got some of the first official world records in the Owens Valley. And Jerry Katz from Pasadena flew from Cerro Gordo up to Benton Station, which is just short of 100 miles.
So those were the first big flights in a hang glider. And was that – when
George did that, was that just – I mean obviously it didn't spread via internet back then. But did that just kind of go? Did that just go worldwide and did everybody just go, whoa,
what? Well, yeah. Actually, Jerry Katz's flight, the flight that was almost 100 miles was very monumental. And that definitely went worldwide. And so the following year, a pilot in Bishop, Don Partridge, organized the first cross country classic in the Owens Valley. And so Pete Brock knew that I flew cross country. And he said, well, you know what? He said he'd pay my way to this competition. He said it was right up my alley. Go out there and see what you can do. And drove out across the desert. And I came down Westgard Pass into the Owens Valley looking up at Boundary Peak. And instantly I knew why these guys were getting these crazy long flights because it was just the most magnificent mountain range you could imagine.
Well, you've probably been there. It's amazing. It is amazing. The scale is hard to describe. Yeah. So that was when cross country started catching on. That's when cross country became a thing. And that's when cross country started to make its way into all the competitions. This was the first cross country classic in Owens Valley. And that's been going on. Yeah, that was
what, 78, right? Yeah. Unbelievable. Carrie talked about that a little bit in her podcast. So, I mean, so you've been flying in the Wasatch. You know, the Wasatch is meaty for sure. But the Sierras are kind of a new, you know, was it? Was it a little bit, oh, God, when you got out there? Because you guys used to fly that all summer, right?
Exactly. Yeah, we'd fly it in the middle of the day, any day of the week. Yeah, I mean,
that's just, that's, you know, when I got into the sport, which is much, much later, you know, that was all, that was all legend. You know, that was all, wow, those guys back in the day, they used to fly this every day. And it wasn't really until Dave Turner that, you know, that paragliders started flying it again in the summer. It happened. It used to happen back in the day. And then it just, I don't know. No, it just got, it got that reputation that scared everybody away. And they didn't fly it in the summer. And, you know, then Dave Turner's now gotten, you know, he's flying it all the time. But you guys used to fly it all the time like it was nothing. I mean, like the first time you stepped off Walt's Point, was that, was
that a little hairy? So we didn't start flying Walt's Point regularly. It was, it was more of like a morning sled ride site.
But in one, one of the days in the competition in, in the Classic, the Cross Country Classic, they had us fly across to the Sierras. And we all thought we were just going to get forced down. But even so, we found that there was lift on the Sierras. And we, we got up and made it back to goal. So at that moment, everybody started to realize that, hey, maybe the Sierras are, are working in the morning and we could get an earlier start. But before that, everyone always thought that Cerro Gordo on the south end of the Ineos was the best starting point. And so we started going down there and launching. Way below Walt's Point, you know, we were launching off the, the road further down because Walt's Point just seemed like it was too far back in the canyon.
And just, it's just the exact same time we started flying Walt's Point. Steve Moyes was also flying there. And Steve flew an out and return from, from Walt's Point to Boundary Peak. And then he couldn't make it back to Walt's Point because it was too late in the day. He couldn't get up over Walt's Point to do the, the return point. But later that week, I, I kind of pimped him by taking the same flight, but making my start point out in the valley. Something that I could make it back to on the, on the return route. So Steve had already pretty much done the flight, flying up the Sierras, across to the White Mountains, to Boundary Peak, and then all the way back down the White Mountains.
And then I got the record for the out and return. And on that flight, actually, I took off. And I was flying Walt's Point for the first time. And somebody had told me that the saddle to the right was, was always good. And I should go to the right side of that saddle. I accidentally got on the wrong side and had to fly all the way out the canyon on the lee side to the front and make a low save before I even got up to start my cross country flight. And I was already hot and sweating and, and worn out before my flight even started.
So, so that's kind of when we started flying Walt's Point. And
I mean, you guys were, you guys were getting, I mean, even back then, you guys must have been. Getting up 17, 18 grand, right? Were you getting high? Were you getting tall? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're not using oxygen and stuff, right?
We didn't even, we didn't even carry water. It was stupid. But, no, it was stupid. Okay.
So, so I definitely want to tap some of the stupidity here too. But so I've got to jump to this. Your, your, your record flight in, in, in 83, you know, you're, you're doing these out and returns. Yeah. You know, the competition scene has now been kind of established. You guys are flying cross country. Was that, was that something that just happened on a really good day? Or was that something you really had in your sights? Because that was pretty, I mean, you're just talking about, you know, the first hundred miles, milers are being done just, you know, in 78, 79. I mean, I imagine this was a pretty big deal. And then I'm not trying to, you know, I know you don't want to make this about you. I'm just trying to say, you know, like, that's a big Denali mean, 200 miles in 83. That's incredible.
It was that, you know, was that really a product of just this constant getting after it and training? I mean, did you have that in your sights? I guess that's my question. Did you have that in your sights to do something like that?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, we knew it was possible because during the cross country classic, we'd be taking off Gunter and flying way up past Looning and even as far as Gaps, Nevada. So we were getting lots of flights out into the desert and figuring out the, the desert at different times of the day because there's different valleys that have different wind conditions. And there's, there's like a sea breeze that comes off a walker late, lake late in the day. And so we started one, we started figuring out where we wanted to be at what time of day out far into Nevada. So we already had it kind of scoped out all the way to Austin, Nevada, or at least to the Shoshone and Toyabe mountains.
So we, we just needed a way to get. Off the ground earlier and out into Nevada earlier. And from Cerro Gordo, you really couldn't do that because the sun wasn't on the Inyos or the white mountains quite yet. So, uh, it really was, it was really, uh, you know, Steve Moyes and, and the discovery that waltz points, uh, had just great conditions. Yeah. At nine 30 in the morning, it was already just really beautiful flying. It was. Pleasant, the thermals weren't crazy or strong and, uh, you, you know, you get to go up past lone pine peak and Mount Whitney and Mount Williamson and just looking over the back at all these just beautiful mountains.
So we started figuring out the white mountains and the Sierras and which mountains you wanted to be at, at what time of day and how to get across the Valley. Uh, after talking,
you're talking about crossing their Bishop and getting over to the white.
Yeah. So. So we, we discovered, uh, how, how to fly the white mountains and the, and the Sierras early in the morning, uh, after each of the cross country meets, we'd, we'd spend like another three or four weeks in, in Owens Valley. And it was just a wonderful place to be. Even if you're not flying, we'd, we'd go hiking or bouldering or hitting the hot Springs or the artisans for swimming. And, uh, there's just tons of opportunities, tons of fun stuff to do outside in the Owens. And, uh, on this, on that particular year, when we did, uh, 221 miles from Walt's point, uh, I was there with my girlfriend, Lori, who also got a pretty good out and return off Mazurka at a boundary peak and back we, I just woke up that morning when the record happened and just felt like that was the day and everything just clicked.
Uh, other pilots landed early cause they thought it was too turbulent and, uh, I'm not sure. Why that was, uh, because I didn't really feel like it was that turbulent. Now, wait a minute. Are
you talking about your flight in 83 or in 88?
Hmm. Not sure.
It doesn't
matter. I'm not sure. So, so, uh, well actually, so, so for a long time, the longest flight was, uh, Jerry Katz at like 96 or 98 miles off of Cerro Gordo. And then after the first cross country classic, Tom Crecci, no, it was the second cross country classic, Tom Crecci and Mark. Jackson and I, we were flying off Cerro Gordo and, uh, that's the first time we made it off the end of the white mountains and, and broke a hundred miles, but we didn't have barographs and all the FAI sporting license stuff and all the, all of the paperwork stuff for an actual world record. And so I, I flew out toward Miller peak and thought I had the world record and then, uh, found out later in the day that Tom had beat me by another 10 miles.
So at that point in time, Tom Crecci had the longest flight in the world and, uh, I was second, I guess. And then we, we just, uh, celebrated the next couple of days at the hot springs and it was, uh, we felt pretty happy about getting the longest flights. And back then it wasn't as important to get the world record itself. So then after that, then people really started concentrating on the absolute, the actual FAI world records. And
was, was home in the Owens then? Did you, had you moved out there at this point or were you still living in the Wasatch? Uh,
I was living in Utah, but I would spend at least six or eight weeks in, in the Owens Valley. So, uh, I would try to be in the Owens Valley during the best part of the season where the days are the longest and the thermals are the best.
Okay. So you, I think you were tapping, you were, you started talking about this other record. So you go 200 miles in 83 and then, uh, and then, and that was the record at the time. And then fast forward a few more years in 88. You break. Another record, uh, 243 miles. And that's the one, according to the book, that's the one where everybody else landed because it was too turbulent. Uh, so you were, you were talking about that. Did you, was that kind of state, it was that SOP back then for you, or did you just have a really high bump tolerance or was that just a day? You felt like everything was right.
Yeah, I had a really good bump tolerance from flying in the Owens all the time, but it was nothing compared to Don Partridges. Don Partridges was a local. Who had a ranch in the hills, uh, below Gunter. And when I would think it was bumpy, I'd, I'd ask, uh, Don, if he thought it was bumpy and he goes, uh, no. And so I said, well, what's bumpy to you? Cause you know, people were tumbling and people were getting tossed around pretty good. And he'd say, oh, well, when I actually have to hold onto the control bar, that's when I consider it too bumpy. Cause normally he just rests his elbows on the control bar. So if you lived in the Owens Valley, you'd definitely. Um, but I
mean, your, your flight in 88, you, it was July, so it was, it was definitely ripping. Um, you, you land and it's, I guess you, you felt like you could have gone a lot further that day. You went to 43, according to the article, um, you, you weren't really happy when you landed cause you hadn't done 300. Um, one, is that true? Were you unhappy? And then, and then two. Um, you know, I've always had this theory that, you know, chasing big numbers can, can, uh, distract us from the beauty of the flight. And I'm totally, you know, I've succumbed to this as well. I'm, I'm a number chaser just like anybody else, you know? Uh, but, um, does that, yeah, I mean, I guess, tell me about that, you know, that record flight.
Did you land and were you kind of like, oh man, that sucks. You can get 300 or did you land and go, God? That was amazing. I went to 43. That's a long ways.
Well, for sure. I wanted to go farther. The goal, the goal back then, it always was to make it to battle mountain on interstate 80. Uh, but when I got past Austin, the, the road cut Northwest through a range of mountains and there was no road to follow anymore. And it was too late in the day. So rather than going off into dinosaur country and, uh, landing out and not having a witness. Uh, I decided to land, uh, where the road curved left out toward the Northwest. And as I was spiraling down to land, a car pulled up and, you know, I must've been hypoxic or tired or something. And I, I figured they'd, they'd stopped there to see the hang glider.
And so I started yelling down at them and the guy ran back to his car to get a gun. Cause he heard somebody shouting and screaming and thought there was something going on out in the bushes. And he was, he was screaming. He was prowling around out in the bushes trying to find out who was screaming, and then I landed. Yeah. And I landed, and he's like, where did you come from? And I told him, and it's like, yeah, right. There's no way you made it from Lone Pine, California. Because it's a lot farther by car, by a big ways. And so I talked these guys into signing all my witness forms and taking all the required photos and all that kind of stuff. And they didn't have a rack or anything, so I hid my glider off in the bushes. And they gave me a ride back to Austin, to Austin, Nevada, which was an old mining town in the Toyabe Mountains.
And so we're heading back toward Austin, Nevada, and some hawk comes flying across in front of us and splats on the front window. And it was just like a bug, you know, hitting a bug to this guy. He just puts on his windshield wiper, starts smearing. All the blood and guts across the window and didn't miss a beat. You know, he kept talking, and he's talking about how, oh, yeah, the U.S. just shot down an Iranian airliner today. And I'm like, what? Why would we do that? And apparently it just was on the same day that some airliner had been flying in the direction of one of our missile ships. And so I don't know. It was just all pretty surreal. And I got back to Austin, Nevada. And there's only like one place open. There was a bar.
It was an old whorehouse. It had been converted to a bar and a restaurant. And the guy there gave me a room. You know, who knows what the history of that room was. But I called back to my rides and everything. And Joe Bostic, he flew up and picked me up. I got a ride out to the little airport near Austin. He flew up in a Cessna 152 and flew me back to the Owens Valley where I picked up my truck and then went back up. I got a ride out to the Owens Valley where I picked up my truck and then went back up to get my glider. Unbelievable. Yeah.
And okay, so now we're up to 88.
These crazy numbers just keep going down the line here. In 1990, I'm assuming before then, you guys discover Hobbs, New Mexico. You're the first person to fly 300 miles. And I actually went back and looked at some of this track because, I mean, again, you don't have tracks like we do now with the devices and everything. But you flew Hobbs, New Mexico across a big swath of Texas and land in Oklahoma. Like, I have to hear about this flight. That is just awesome.
Well, yeah. So just about the time we're, you know, getting about as far as we can possibly get flying in mountains, some pilots started cracking off really long flights in Illinois. And Kevin Christopherson did like 286 miles off Whiskey Peak in Wyoming. And that's when we started doing the math and looking at how fast you go across the flatlands when you're going straight downwind.
And rather than try to jump off a mountain in a hurricane like Whiskey Peak, we started thinking about towing. And we had connections with Jerry Forberger who had the atoll towing system in Lubbock, Texas. And that combined with the fact that I talked with Rich Jessaroga who… Was at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research Institute in Boulder. He had all these aerial thermo maps from satellite that showed that West Texas retained heat during the afternoon. And the thermal started a lot earlier there than anywhere else. And I started calling all these sailplane pilots that had world records around there that lived around there. And they were happy to talk to me about their soaring and, you know, how happy they were to live there and fly there.
And they said it was the best place anywhere to fly.
So, Joe Bostick and I went out to fly with Jerry Forberger in West Texas in Lubbock. And for several days, we were stuck on the wrong side of the dry line or the Marfa-Dupont line. And it was kind of low clouds and breezy southeast winds and overdevelopment. And Joe started doing some research and figured out that if we were on the west side of the dry line, we'd probably be getting a lot more flying in. And we… So, we decided to take a road trip to Hobbs from Lubbock and check out the Soaring Society of America and the airport there at Hobbs that their office was at. And we showed up there and said, hey, you know, we're hang glider pilots. We're towing hang gliders and wondered if we could try towing our hang gliders here. And they were all for it.
And they said, yeah, you know, you guys can fly here. You know, just, you know, give us a demonstration. So, Jerry was there and Joe and I. And we wanted to make everything just perfect, right? So, we just went through. All of the pre-flights, all of the checks and made sure everything was perfect. And I took off and soared up. And he used up the whole runway and I went to release and couldn't release. It wouldn't release. And I didn't have a hook knife. And I was like, oh, man, this is bad news. So, I'm, you know, trying to pull on this and it just won't release. And so, they're out there with Jerry on the truck and they're saying, what's wrong? And Jerry's like, oh, I don't know what's wrong. It's like something's wrong. So, eventually, I end up landing with like a mile. Line pulling out behind me and land on the runway near the tow vehicle.
And we figured out what was wrong. It was a glitch in his tow release that he hadn't encountered before. And the people from the soaring society said, well, you know, if you guys can get through something like that, it looks safe to us. You know, it looks like you guys have got it together. So, yeah, you guys can start flying here and we've got some hangers you can set your gliders up in. So, you're out of the sun and the wind. We're happy to have you. So, that's when Joe Bostick and I started flying at Hobbs. And the neat thing is you can fly just about any direction to get big distance.
And just about that time, there was a day where I took off first and – no, I'm sorry. Joe took off first and Joe beamed away from the airport and he was on his way. And then I took off second and I got up and I was on my way. And we were going straight east toward Texas.
And Joe bombed out after his first thermal and I was on my way. I kept going into Texas. So, apparently, Josh, our driver, who was Jerry's son, showed up to pick up Bostick and say, hey, Bostick, hurry. You haven't broken down yet. Hurry up and break down so we can go chase Larry. And Joe is saying, no, set up the rig. Set up the rig.
And Josh is like, we can't tow here. You know, it's a state highway. There's power lines. You know, we can't do it. He's going, no, no, no. I want you to take me back to the airport. And he didn't want to break down the glider. So, he puts the glider back up on the tow vehicle and they start going down the state highway there. Oh, that sounds like a bad idea. Yeah, sure enough to get pulled over by the police. And he's like, you guys are never going to get that pickup truck off the ground with that thing.
So, Joe goes right into his Czech accent, which he could turn off and on it. And he's like, no, no, we are trying for the world record. And my friend is already going and I need to get back and catch him. And it's very important for the world record. And so, the police was like, you know, this has got to be illegal. But I don't know what I can cite you guys for. So, he said, okay, you guys have to follow me. I'll have my lights on so nobody hits us. And he escorted them all the way back to the Hobbs airport. And all the way down to the end of the runway. And Joe was on the back, hanging underneath the glider the whole way. And the cop is sitting there trying to figure out, you know, what to give this guy a ticket for.
And, you know, he's never seen anything like this before. And Joe looks over at the cop and says, I owe you a six-pack. And then he tells Josh, go to cruise. And then they go down the runway. Joe takes off. And he ended up getting the big flight that day. He flew way over 100 miles. And I ended up having to chase him with Josh. And when we were trying to find him, we weren't really sure where he was. And so, he says, hey, do you see a B-1 bomber making circles? And we're like, B-1 bomber? And so, sure enough, we see a B-1 bomber. He goes, that guy's doing circles around me. So, that's where I am. They were just like, what in the hell is going on?
Exactly. Holy cow. They probably thought it was an alien. Yeah,
these guys were up there flying around Joe and trying to figure out what this thing was. It was flying around at 12,000 or 13,000 feet. And Joe landed out by Monday, Texas, M-U-N-D-A, I think. But anyhow, we were approaching that part of Texas. And there was this long line of power lines that had just been snapped off at the base. These giant power line poles had just been snapped off at the base. And we get to where Joe was. And we're talking with some of the locals. And they go, yeah, we had a windstorm come through here a week or so ago that was so powerful that we had this baseball-sized hail that was bouncing off the interior walls before it was hitting the floor. Whoa. And so, you know, you just have no concept.
You know, if the Owens Valley is big for thermals and giant mountains, Texas is big for thunderstorms that defy. Yeah,
they just get massive, don't they? Yeah, they're on. Yeah, they're. You can't even explain them.
So I'm not sure if we got a big flight that year or not. But the following year, I was out there with Ted Boyce. And I got to say that Ted Boyce had the right attitude for long-distance flights. He would fly every day no matter what. And he would start early because he said you never know how early you can start on the world record day unless you just try for it. And he wouldn't try to predict the weather. He wouldn't try to second-guess the weather. He would just go for it early and try to. He would go for it every day. So he had really the right attitude. And I learned a lot from him. Well, there was. But he was a racer. And I'm more of a floater. I didn't ever race that much. And that's probably why I never got the big competition results either. I'm too patient and like to take thermals, you know, too high and stay in them too long.
But there was one day where Ted had put it on the ground somewhere around Clovis, New Mexico. And I was still in the air. And we still had Josh Forberger as our driver. And on this one particular day, there wasn't much in the way of wind. It wasn't a world record day, but it was a good day. It's just that there was no wind and the dust devils were dancing around in the fields going every way, you know, north, south, east, west. They were, they'd make little patterns in the fields. It wasn't really a good day for open distance. But at any rate, I made it up somewhere near Amarillo. And. And. And Ted comes on the radio, Ted comes on the radio, says, Hey, Larry, where are you? And I look around and said, Oh, I'm about 15 miles southeast of Amarillo.
And Ted goes, Larry, what the fuck are you doing in the air when there's a tornado? What? Like, well, this is that's what was amazing. On this particular day, there was no wind and it was an inversion. You see these hazels. These domes everywhere, but no, no cumulus.
And I looked around to see where there might be some rain or a storm and to the west of me, no, I'm sorry, to the east of me, about 30 miles, 40 miles, there was a little cloud or not a little cloud. It was a cloud that was dumping rain and, and Ted comes back on the radio, Larry, what the, what the fuck are you doing? And, you know, get down on the ground. There's a tornado. And I'm like, I don't see one, Ted. You must be mistaken. It must just be a really big dust down there.
Ted, Ted comes back. He says, nah, Josh, Josh has seen a lot of tornadoes. And he says, this is a tornado. It's, this is definitely a tornado. And so I said, oh, okay, I'm just going to, I'm just going to go on final and, and, uh, and land and we'll go back. Cause it's not a record day anyway. And so I, I turned north again on course and I went, holy shit, there was a cloud that had popped. In front of me that had a tornado going straight to the ground. It was like a solo cloud at no big thunder line of thunderstorms. Nothing like that. It was just one cloud that had put this tornado out the bottom, right to the cloud cloud, right to the ground. Oh my God. So I just about shit.
Cause I, I, I'd always want to see a tornado before, but never from, you know, never face to face, like five miles away. Not flying a hang glider. Not flying a hang glider. Yeah, I was only like five miles away, literally. Um, and so I turned south, I turned around to start racing away from it. And I, and I'm flying as fast as I can in my glider. And I hear this little voice on the radio from Ted saying, don't forget to take pictures. So I'm like, oh man. Oh, okay. Okay. So I, I turned around and my hand, I'm by then my, I'm already shaking and I'm taking these photos. I'm like, okay, that's enough. And so take some photos and turn south again. And I'm, I'm just blazing. I'm blazing south, trying to get on the ground as fast as I can. And, uh, not, not having a lot of luck.
Cause something happened that day where everything started letting loose around five o 'clock in the afternoon, everywhere, all at once. Just the entire desert started lifting and, and just clouds were popping everywhere and it was hard to get down. So perhaps what was happening is the cloud off to the east triggered a, a gust front that wedged underneath all the hot air that had been building all day to the west. And then everything just kicked loose. It was just enough to bust loose the inversion. So after racing south for, I don't know, 10, 15 miles across the Palo Duro Canyon, uh, I was looking down and, and I thought my, you know, my eyes were watering or something. Cause everything looked all blurry and I wiped my eyes and looked down.
No, it's definitely blurry. And then I realized that the whole desert was just a big windstorm. And I was like, oh my God. This is not good. And so, so I start spiraling down to land on the, probably the wrong side of Palo Duro Canyon from where Josh and, and, uh, Ted were chasing me from. And we were already out of radio contact and I spiraled down to land and I started backing up pretty quickly. It was, it was blowing so hard that I was backing up at a pretty, pretty fast rate, looking over my shoulder at where I was going to land and had to pop it up over a barbed wire fence. And just. I just, uh, managed to get down on the ground and jump out on the front. What's your, what's your trim speed on a hang glider? Well, I'm pretty sure I was flying about 40 or 45 miles an hour when I touched down and I was still going backwards.
Uh, I jumped through the control bar and grabbed the front flying wires and my hands were so cramped up from gripping the control bar so hard that I couldn't, I couldn't undo my carabiner. Uh, I kept trying to undo my carabiner to get loose to the glider. So I could lay my glider down flat. But I couldn't, I couldn't, uh, make my fingers work. And so back about that time, everything's getting black. I mean, the sun's going away. The sirens are starting for the tornado warnings. It's getting really surreal. And, uh, people are trying to get out of town. There was a guy leaving with all his horses in the back with his pickup truck. He pulls up at the road next to me and he says, Hey, do you need any help? And I'm yelling, yes, yes, help. I need help. And he, I can see him.
Look at me, look up at the tornado. Look at me. Look up at the tornado. He got back in his car and just called ass. And I'm like, Oh no. So here I am, I'm standing there in this big field and you know, all hell's breaking loose with the weather and I can't unhook from the glider. And fortunately, Josh and Ted show up and we, we broke down the glider and record time through it on top and started working on our way out to try to get back to Lubbock and the whole way out. It was just surreal because there would be these baseball games with all the lights on and people were out there on their lawn chairs. And. The tornado is right there. They're looking at the tornado and look at the baseball game, look at the tornado and look at the baseball game. And it's just life in West Texas. They're just used to tornadoes. And.
Man, that is terrifying. The hackles on my skin are. Oh my God.
It was pretty terrifying, but it just, you know, really showed me that weather can change so quickly and when you're at 15,000 feet and everything starts to lift off, it's pretty hard to get down on the ground in any, any short amount of time. Man.
And so tell me about that encampment. Did you, was that the year you did the record? Oh
yeah. So, so Ted and I were trying for these flights and getting some pretty long flights and there was a competition coming up in Hobbs because Hobbs started to be discovered by then and they were going to hold a tow competition in Hobbs.
And there was a. Yeah. One day where we got a really long flight up past Klein's corners up towards Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was somewhere around 260, 275 miles. And the next day, uh, got back late, like three 34 o 'clock in the morning, got a few hours sleep, tried it again and got another flight up to up toward the north of New Mexico. And that was like 280 miles and had another real late retrieval and very little sleep. And there was, this was the last day before the Hobbs competition was about to begin. But even after having two long flights in a row and being, uh, sleep deprived, I just jumped out of bed that morning and I had this premonition from the previous night's sleep that I was going to do this flight and I lived this flight exactly as it panned out and I knew it was going to happen.
Uh, we were always doing, uh, declared goals. We never really could be sure where our declared goal would be when we're flying the flatlands. Cause if you're off a few degrees, it's, it means miles and miles of difference. But uh, I knew I was going to do it. So I called up Wills Wing and I talked to Rob and all the boys and said, I'm going to call you tonight from Elkhart, Kansas, cause that's where I'm going to land. And they're like, Oh, that's nice, Larry. That's nice. Hope you're having a good vacation. And which is always sort of an inside joke because they always figured when I'm out on the road, you know, I'm not at work bending back. They're doing real work. And uh, then, uh, there was a pilot in Elkhart, Kansas, uh, Ron Kinney, who I had flown with on previous years.
And I found his number and called him up and say, Hey Ron, would you sign my witness form if I, if I land in Elkhart tonight? He's like, yeah, yeah. Right. Whatever. Are you here in town? Are you putting me on? Are you, you know, what kind of joke is this? And I said, no, no, I'm calling you from Hobbs and I'm going to land next to the pizza hut tonight. And I want you to sign my forums. These are like, Oh, whatever, dude, you know, just have fun, have a fun day, you know? And so then, uh, I told, I told my, uh, my driver, Pat page, uh, my, my official observer, I said, you know, find the coordinates for the airport in Elkhart, Kansas, because that's where I'm going to land. I, um, that's, I know I'm going to land next to the pizza hut on the grass in Elkhart, Kansas tonight. That's what's the end. And I don't know how I didn't know.
It was 300 miles at the time. He just said, that's where I'm going to land. And so we filled out the forms, took the photos and the flight played out exactly like, uh, I relived it. In fact, uh, the first thermal I took out of the airport, I had a low save above all these oil derricks. I was only about 200 feet off the ground and there's not much, uh, not much good landing around there because it's all Mesquite and oil derricks and electric lines. And I wasn't nervous. I wasn't nervous that I was going to land or anything. It was all part of the same dream or the same premonition that I'd had the night before. So all the low saves, all the, all through the flight, it was exactly as it played out in the dream with the exception that at the very end of the day, I started getting low in the panhandle of Texas, Northern Texas, and it didn't seem like there's going to be any thermals left, but there was a big feedlot.
The feedlots are just huge. And so I flew over the path. I passed over the feedlot and didn't get anything and just kept heading North and was thinking that this was just another cruel joke that I was going to get another 280 mile flight and, uh, not, not get the world record. And so just about that time I started to smell manure and the burials started to be dead and started getting real patient and just working this thermal, uh, for what seemed like an eternity and gained enough altitude to, uh, turn it off. Turned downwind again and make sort of a, a dead reckoning toward Elkhart, Kansas. We didn't have GPS at the time, so I wasn't really sure exactly where Elkhart, Kansas was, but you know how late in the day you just get that buoyant air and when he had a good tail, uh, I just got real pointy and brought my elbows in really close and kept my head down and, you know, I tucked my thumbs in behind the control bar and just did everything I could to not move and not, uh, not, uh, detract from my glide and just flew along at minimum sink to let the wind carry me.
So
is it literally just a compass you're following for 308 miles? I mean, were there roads, were there landmarks, were there, or was it just this premonition guiding you?
It's pretty much dead reckoning. Okay.
God, this is
awesome. Okay. Keep going. I don't want to interrupt. Oh yeah. So, uh, I was heading across the Oklahoma panhandle and with all that altitude I got from that last feedlot thermal. And uh, then I started to make out, uh, some. Uh, grain towers and a diagonal road and the railroad tracks and all that. And I knew that that was, uh, Elkhart, Kansas and got there with about, I don't know, three or 4,000 feet. And, uh, since that was my declared goal and everything, I, I hovered down and landed, uh, just exactly where, where I thought I would right next to the pizza hut at the airport. So you could have kept going. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even so, I'm still glad I did it.
Um, it's just, and so the most special part about that flight wasn't that we went more than 300 miles. It was that you did what you said you were going to do. That's insane. Well, yeah. And it's not only that I said what I was going to do, but in this life you hear stories about people that experience things that are beyond, you know, what's explainable, but until it actually happens to you, it, it, uh, doesn't carry the same weight. So just to know that these types of things are possible. Or just to know that, uh, we do have senses beyond what we, we encountered day to day that we're kind of dumbed down to. We have potential that's just, who knows what our potential is.
Oh, this is so inspiring. I'm just thinking about all the times that all the things we can do on, on paragliders now. And I want to, I want to get to you and paragliding, but th this, this is kind of remarkable because, and I know you're going to play it down cause you're humble, but you know, you, you fly 308 miles, you land at the pizza hut. This no one goes that far for another 10 years. Is that why what, what, you know, what, what breaks down there in the hang gliding community? Is it the, is it the weather is you just, those days didn't come around anymore or did where people just not pushing because I mean, you've got this, you know, you go 200, you go to 43, you go 300, you go 308, uh, over, you know, a decade.
Um, no, a little more than that, 11, 12, 12 years. Um, and then it's not repeated for 10 years. That's, that's amazing because the gear certainly didn't stop getting better.
Well, it was probably a combination of things that, you know, definitely the pilots were getting a lot better, uh, with all the competitions and, uh, the racing that was going on, people were becoming a lot more efficient at their flying. Uh, for sure, you know, pilots like Manfred Ruhmer, we're so fast and so efficient and not afraid to fly fast. Uh, whereas I was more of the type of pilot that would, uh, just, uh, try to stay aloft for as long as I could, because if you could stay aloft for 10 or 12 hours, uh, with a good tailwind, you're going to go far. So I think it was a combination of, uh, the topless gliders coming along and the, the minor sales. And then of course, Gary Ossipa in Kansas, uh, discovered that this sea breeze that comes in from the Gulf of Mexico.
It's a pot to Texas, uh, triggers really early morning thermals that people can, can use to get up toward west Texas into the same sort of air that Bostic and I were flying in out of Hobbs, New Mexico. So I think those are the things, however, you know, it's like you said, there's the numbers game and then there's the flights that just stay with you and the ones that are, are just, um, memorable. And you look back on them and you just think, wow, how did that, how did that ever happen? The ones through the mountains, like what you guys are doing in, in Idaho or what Will Gadd and those guys are doing up in British Columbia. Uh, those are the type of flights that I love.
And, you know, just the dreaming of, you know, how I, you see these mountains all the time when you're growing up or in your climbing career and you look back on that and you go, wow, I would really like to fly that mountain. So what Antoine Girard is doing. In Pakistan, that's my hats off to that guy. I mean, he's, he's extraordinary. And what you guys are doing in, in, uh, Idaho is extraordinary. I mean, there's a lot of hang glider pilots. I don't know if there's any hang glider pilots are doing the type of flying that you guys are doing. And, and you've come up with a way of maximizing the potential of that place by jumping ranges instead of trying to follow mountain ranges, you're just getting up and going over the back and hitting the next range. And the next range.
And that's, that's pretty amazing. Cause you can't keep a driver underneath you when you're doing that kind of flying. And so you're a lot more exposed.
Yeah. I mean, but it's at the same time, I, I, I just really am fascinated with the commitment that you guys have with it because of the machines you're flying. It's just, that's a different thing. I mean, on a paraglider, you can land anywhere and walk out anywhere, you know? And I mean, I guess you guys could leave your gear and walk out, but it's just, it's, it's more committing for sure. When you're on a hang glider, just in terms of movement, you know, you, you just don't have that. Anyway, I just, hats off that it's just remarkable. And before, before we leave it, I I've only asked you like one 10th of the questions we've got, but we're already almost an hour and a half in. So I want to hear, I do definitely want to hear a couple of things. One is you left hang gliding for quite a long time, and then you've come back to flying pretty recently, but you've, you, but now you're.
Paragliding. So tell me about, uh, those two, those two things. I imagine they're, they're similar, but different.
Well, uh, so yeah, I was hang gliding a lot and in the industry a lot. And I think that when you make your love, your, your business, it's, uh, it loses a little bit. And when that came to a head for me was, uh, I was importing laminar hang gliders from Icaro in Italy. And, uh, one of the pilots that I was sponsored. It was one of my best friends I've flown all over the world with. And he, he tumbled at Sandia peak in Albuquerque and his bridle for his parachute, uh, snapped his neck on, on opening and he died. And then his wife's brother brought a lawsuit against us. And, you know, some toothless old hag in a rusted out Chevy Vega, Vega pulled up in my driveway and served me.
And so I was a little bit soured at that time. Cause I'd spent. All my time doing, uh, parts orders and delivering gliders and testing gliders. And, uh, you know, just wasn't getting as much flying as I wanted. And I was also going broke and I had a wife and a daughter by then. And even when I was flying, once you have a daughter, you're, you're kind of thinking that, you know, the risks you take for yourself aren't, aren't, uh, aren't good when you, you've got a family waiting for you at home. So it was kind of a self, it's the sport seems more selfish at that point. So I think that lawsuit definitely soured me completely. And, uh, and
when was, when was that?
That was nine. It was 99. Okay. And so I was basically pretty much out of money. And that's the only reason that they can get anything out of me that the loss didn't go anywhere. Uh, they could have gotten some down tubes and some spare parts, but here's a carabiner go away. Exactly. You can have everything. I don't want it anymore. Please take it. You know, but I, I was, I didn't have any desire to go out and fly. I hadn't quit hang gliding, but I just didn't have any desire to fly. And we, we were doing a lot of other things like skating and speed skating. And, uh, my daughter turned into a really good figure skater and, uh, my, I didn't fly. I didn't even follow flying. I just, just basically disappeared from the face of the planet.
And over the course of time, you know, my daughter had, I heard rumors like she'd do Google, Google searches on me or at school. They'd have a, uh, like career day. Yeah, exactly. And, and she, she'd do a Google search and say, oh yeah, here, here's my dad. He's got all these world records and hang gliding. Oh yeah. There was a Guinness book that they opened up and she found my name in there too at school. So she knew that I flew and she knew that I had made a name for myself in flying. And she was, uh, about ready to leave for Europe this year to go study in Lugano, Switzerland. And she wanted to paraglide there. And I said, well, if you're going to go, go there to paraglide, you, I want you to know how to fly before you leave. And so, uh, we went to Utah together with another friend of mine from work who was wanting to fly paragliders. His name's Raghu.
And we hooked up with Chris Santacroce and, uh, we started right at the bottom of the hill and started taking the lessons together as beginners. And out of the three, I was probably the slowest to learn because I was having to unlearn old bad habits. And I just don't, I learned as quickly as I used to and my reflexes aren't as fast. And with somebody yelling at you, you know, pull this, don't pull that, let off this, you know, left, right. And, uh, you know, I was, I was, it wasn't the best student. I think turtle got kind of pissed off at me more than once. Cause I was, he thought I was just being obtuse, but, uh, we went through the whole course together and, uh, started at the bottom and Ariane was soaring by the time we left. And, uh, there was one moment that was, it was pretty cool. Uh, there was a beautiful North day.
I mean, it was one of those perfect North side days and she hadn't actually had a soaring flight yet on the North side. And so Chris took her up the North side and, you know, you climb, you're climbing up the North side and the lift is getting stronger and stronger. And you crest the top of the North side and you look back on Mount Tipanogos and the Wasatch and Utah Lake and everything just opens up. And, uh, she was telling Chris, wow, you know, now I understand why my dad does this, you know? Yeah. And she started crying. And, uh, so when she landed, she came up and hugged me and she went, wow, wow. Now I know why you do this. This is so cool. This is so much fun. Wow.
That is so cool. The talk about full circle. And I mean, and then for you, um, did it just kind of reignite all those old memories and, you know, and why you were always, you've always been a pilot. I mean, it must've been, it must've been incredible to just rediscover flight.
Yeah, it was. In fact, that's exactly, that's exactly what I've enjoyed most about it is it, uh, reignited those same exact feelings I had when I first discovered hang light and every, every little step was, was, uh, was fun. You know, so every, the first little flights off the South side and the first soaring flights. In fact, the first soaring flight I did on the, on the North side where Chris remote controlled me up off the bench to the, to the top of the North side, uh, looking down on all the houses and on the bench and houses in the gap. And, uh, it just, I just seemed so out of sorts. It didn't seem like it was real because, uh, you saw it when none of that was there. Yeah. I didn't recognize anything. I just, I wasn't sure if I was in a dream, but I thought, well, you know, I might not be in a dream, so I better keep it together.
And, uh, so that's, that one was that one. I wasn't a hundred percent there on my first flight when I benched up, uh, on the North side, but on another flight off the, the bench, I got up and the clouds came over and I, I was the only one on the, the North side because no one else could bench up. And so I had the North side to myself for a couple hours. And, and that was really, really, really special. And then I, I really took advantage of that. And, uh, then the, definitely the love came back for the flying and for the point. And I was afraid that I'd go back to the point and see how developed the North side was or developed the Valley was and, and, uh, be bummed out. But I was actually pretty enthused to see all of the families and kids, and hang glider, paraglider pilots that are enjoying the, the point of the mountain.
And it's a park now. And it's, it's really brought out a lot of energy and, and positive, uh, you know, just a lot of positive things that, that it, there wasn't there before. Cause it was just, uh, a bunch of, uh, uh, enthusiasts. But now that there's homes up there and kids that are out there being free range kids and, you know, just be part of the, the hang gliding paragliding from, you know, the, the, the moments there, they can first walk is really cool to see. It's really cool.
And now you've brought it back. You've brought it back to Boulder and Denver and your, your hometown. And you're flying with those kooks, Matt Siegel and Cedar Wright. And they, they call paragliding their sky crack. Yeah. That must be a pretty fun, pretty fun scene to be a part of.
Yeah, it actually is. Cedar's just a total crack up. He's super funny, super clever. And, and super anti-authoritarian, which I like as well. And, uh, you know, I, instead of sky crack, I like to call it speed to fly. Just the whole energy of the pilots in Boulder is, is, is outrageous. You know, they're, they're all just, uh, total enthusiasts. Uh, and, uh, they, they're just enjoying going cross country, any, any direction they can, every flight they can. And, uh, it's so cool to go flying, uh, you know, take some Uber up the hill. And then find out that it's Matt Siegel, you know, and you know, there's, there's Seth and Matt Siegel and Cesar, right. And these legends of rock that have
discovered our little, little, uh, sky paradise, isn't it? Okay. Well, I, I think, I think, uh, this is really timely with your, your daughter learning. One of the questions I had, and we're going to end it on this one because I want to be mindful of your time. And I think we're going to have to do a part two or something with this. Cause like I said, I, I didn't ask you half, half the stuff I wanted to, that was just fascinating talk. Thank you. But if you could rewind the clock all the way back to year one, when you were, you know, or year two, when you were a 50 hour pilot, what, what advice do you wish you would have either followed or would have received and think about your daughter when you answer it?
Oh, well, most definitely. I think I've come full circle in, in the sense that, uh, when I first learned how to fly here in Colorado, uh, anybody that learns how to fly any type of, any type of aircraft in Colorado, uh, learns how to judge the weather and be respectful of the weather. And especially with paragliding, you need to stay within your limits. You can't fly in overdevelopment or, or wind. And so, uh, as Chris Santacroce says, you know, fly for smiles, not miles. Just, just think of the, the longterm and not, and not, uh, trying to catch up with, uh, you and Will Gadd and,
you know, don't try to make a big name for yourself all at once or get the big flight all at once, but enjoy the, enjoy the ride. Enjoy the, the process. Take your time. It sounds like. Yeah. Enjoy your time. Be safe and, and don't have any horrendous experiences that'll, uh, cause you to drop out. Cool.
That's great. Larry, uh,
you've, you've given me wrinkles here, man. I've had the biggest smile on my face this whole talk. Thank you so much. That was just fascinating. I heard about your tornado and 308 mile flight. And I mean, I think we're just going to have to do a part two, but it's really cool to talk to an old hangy and, uh, utmost respect, man. That's just, uh, so admirable. And I'm, I'm, uh, thrilled that you've, uh, kind of refound the sport and, uh, and that you're doing it with your daughter. Very, very cool. Um, thank you very much. Thanks for coming on the show. And I hope you and I get to meet at cloud. Base someday. I
can't wait. Thanks for having me, Gavin.
All right, buddy.
I hope you enjoyed that. Uh, such a cool talk. I've still got the hugest smile on my face after that one, a couple of weeks ago when we recorded it, uh, took a while to edit that. Thank you so much to my friend, Miles Connelly, who's helping me out with, uh, editing of these shows. Got some great ones coming up for you. Working on one right now with Mickey Siegel. Uh, got a great one in the can with, uh, Russ Ogden. And as we near the holidays here, trying to get some great material, out for you guys, as always, thank you so much for your, uh, donations to the mayhem. Uh, as always, always, all we ask for is a buck a show. So if you got something out of this one or one of the previous episodes, uh, send us a buck. I really appreciate it. It goes a long ways to making this all possible. If you're just discovering the podcast, um, go back and check out.
I, sometimes I rattle off the same people over and over again. And I actually just printed out the sheet of everybody we've had on. We're almost, we're near 30 now, um, terrific stories from guys like guy Anderson who disappeared here and the, uh, PWC back in 2012, Isabella messenger just wraps poetic on all things, flight, uh, fantastic talk with her, uh, really good Acro talk with Andre Pershaska. He is, uh, Aaron Dury, God, he's ex-alps supporter. Great talk with Aaron actually in there. So yeah, go back, check some of them out. Uh, Tom Dorlado has some fantastic advice after a couple of accidents, uh, in the ex-alps. In other words, uh, terrific pilot and part of that search project team. They're doing so many great things. So yeah, dig in, uh, download these for a big road trip, wherever you're going to fly in the next time, fly safe, fly far, have fun, and we'll see you on the next show.
Cheers.