Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem. Our guest today, Cade Palmer, is a guy I've been trying to get on the show for a really long time, even though we're kind of in the same neck of the woods. He does tandems all summer down in Jackson with his girlfriend, Becca, and they really live the life. They built the van a few years ago because they thought it was kind of silly to be throwing away money at rent in Jackson every summer, which is a pretty expensive place. And they were doing the Jackson thing in the summer and then down in New Zealand in the winter, and they fly paramotors, and he's got a skydiving background and major speed flying and aerobatics background. Also flies XC. He kind of does it all. And he's also just nailed his rating in flying small planes and may go commercial one day.
So I've been trying to track down Cade for a long time because I've been following those guys on Instagram for a long time. He puts up some amazing films and clips and videos, and he's also a designer and test pilot for Ozone. So a lot of background. He's been flying since he was 19 years old and really is truly living the dream. But we talk about that a bit and talk about, you know, life is always grass is always greener on the other side kind of stuff. And we talk about safety and how to get into speed flying and taking baby steps and the importance of mentors and a little bit about accidents. But this isn't a dark show by any means. But, yeah, I had a really nice flight with him here in Sun Valley this morning and because he just came through town. So that was an opportune time to do a live show, do it together, which is always really special instead of doing stuff on Skype.
So I think you're going to really enjoy it. Don't have really any housekeeping this week. I want to just put out another push for the fundraiser that Cross Country and the Cloud Base Foundation have put together for our that. So we're going to be doing a little bit of a magic accident in Indo with the with the tsunami and earthquake and we lost seven pilots over there so you can find the show notes, you can find find the link to where you can contribute to that campaign in the show notes, also Cross Country magazine and also on the Cloud Base Foundation, they're well on their way to raising their goal of 60,000 to send to those families and contribute to that. That would be most excellent. So without further delay, please enjoy this great live.
Conversation with Cade Palmer.
Cade, man, thanks so much for coming out here. It's rare for me to be able to do this live. This is pretty cool. I'm sorry I don't have better accommodation for us here. Usually I'm just solo out here in my little sound room, but stoked to have a quick flight with you this morning and stoked you've been able to make the time to to get on the mayhem. So thanks, man. Welcome to Sun Valley.
Awesome. Thanks for having me and thanks for the flight this morning. It was a lot of fun.
Yeah, that's fun. Hopefully we'll get some more in the next few days. I've been following you and Becca. For years on the various social media platforms. You guys are building this killer van right now. I know you guys do tandems down in Jackson. You're wicked speed pilot and do a lot of design work with ozone. So we got a lot to discuss, but I thought like a cool, maybe audience icebreaker would just be to have you recount like the coolest flight, like what's the flight that comes to mind and why, like when you look back at your. All your years of flying.
Oh, man, it's so hard to pick one. There's so many good flights out there. One that comes to mind right off the bat is a flight from Vulcan Atitlan in Guatemala. And, you know, we hiked and spent the night on top of the volcano and then flew down in the morning. And, you know, it was kind of we didn't know whether anybody had flown off of it before. And I think now we found out that there was a few people that did it before us. But it was a pretty wild experience. We were hanging out in Panajachel and working for real world paragliding with Christian Behrens. And, you know, we'd been there all season and flying tandems every day or looking across the lake at this massive volcano. And it was cool to finally get the idea and make it happen.
And we took boats across and it was a pretty big crew of us, like eight or nine of us, I think, climbed up there and all flew off in the morning. It was quite the experience. And
did you land down by the lake? Yeah. Yeah. I know that I climbed up that way before I was a paraglider. I was living in Chelan one year. I was down there actually whitewater kayaking and we had all our stuff ripped off in Guatemala. And I just stayed. My buddies went home and I just stayed there and started studying Spanish in Chelan I hiked up that volcano. So I kind of know that zone. Did you land down by the lake or did you go the other way?
It was down near the lake. It was on one of the towns that's near the lake. But on that side, there's not really like a beach landing area, kind of like we have when we fly on the other side. But we landed in a schoolyard and I think the town is called Solalá, maybe? Okay. And did the kids go crazy?
I think it's been so
long, I can't remember exactly the name of the town, but yeah, the kids went nuts.
That's so fun.
Yeah. It was, by the time the last person landed, it was almost dangerous, kids running around the landing area and trampling gliders. And there was some pretty funny footage and some pretty funny audio clips, some of the pilots yelling at the kids trying to save their equipment.
So you and Becca have this kind of like from the outside looking in, like the perfect scenario. You know, you're doing tandems in Jackson to kind of bank up enough cash to, you're just finishing up the second van build now. Take us back through like how, you know, what started this fascination with flight and, you know, feel free to long form this. You know, how did it start? You know, how did you discover it? And how have you created a life? How have you been around flying?
I've been around flying my entire life. My dad is an Air Force pilot, and so he flew fighter planes in the Air Force. And so I've been around small planes, big planes, all that stuff growing up. And I saw paragliding the first time when I was like 11, and I was in Salt Lake. My dad was working at Hill Air Force Base, and we were living in Draper, so really close to the flight park there. And it wasn't really much of a flight park back then. But. I was actually flying RC soaring planes. And we went out to the site to fly planes, and I saw people hang gliding and paragliding there. I was like, man, seems like way more fun to be out there, like actually flying than sitting here and, you know, doing it from the ground. And so I knew I always wanted to do it. I didn't get the chance until my 19th birthday was my first flight.
But I came back to the point and learned there. Did you grow up in Salt Lake? I grew up in Idaho. Okay. Grew up in Boise. And my dad moved around a little bit with the military. And so we ended up with four years in Salt Lake. He took a four-year assignment there. And so that's where I saw paragliding. But we had moved back to Idaho at the point that I learned. But I moved back to Salt Lake in order to learn to paraglide, basically.
And Draper, is that the point?
Yeah. Draper's the
point of the mountain. Okay. So bringing back to that era, who were your mentors? Was it Santa? Was it all those crew?
Yeah. So I was Carson Klein. He's a really good friend of mine, a really good friend of my brother's. He's also a paraglider and skydiver. And my brother had actually already started to fly a little bit. So he recommended Carson. And Carson kind of took me under his wing. I moved into his house in the basement. And so it was really easy to head out to the hill every morning. And I was actually his first student after getting his instructor ratings from Santa Croce. So Santa was kind of watching over the shoulder pretty close. Yeah. So I learned from Carson first. For sure. But I had a lot of help from Santa. And I started working with Santa pretty early on. I started volunteering, running drugs for him at his toe clinics and just trying to get a toe here and there. And I think my third flight ever was a toe with Santa. Wow.
So I got right into the towing aspect of things. Saw a few people doing aerobatics. The flight park was a lot different back then. There wasn't a parking lot. There wasn't grass. It was kind of the old west out there. And the people I was looking up to was Jake Walker was out there flying, making it look really good. Michelle McCullough and Hun Lowe and that whole crew, they still fly out there a lot. Yeah. I remember watching them doing just huge wing overs. And I think specifically it was Michelle and Hun Lowe that were doing synchro wing overs. I was like, man, I really want to do that. And yeah. So I just dedicated myself to learning and baby steps. And I kind of did that.
I kind of started speed flying almost right away. I was skydiving as well. I learned to skydive, paraglide, and speed fly all kind of together. And yeah. Then after volunteering for Santa Croce for a little bit, he finally got me my instructor ratings after about a little more than a year. Started Let Me Apprentice. And I started working for Chris. And it was all downhill from there. Once I learned I could make money doing this sport, then I just couldn't get enough of it.
And has it been mostly your job since then? Have you kind of made a living out of
free flight? Yeah.
I've been
super lucky, fortunate in a few ways to fall into some pretty good gigs. And I started instructing and just kind of scraping by and then started doing tandems and found Jackson Hole. And it was a really good place to do tandems and taught me a lot about flying tandems. And then through friends in the community, I started asking about other places I can go in the winter to try and fly. And Nick Greece and a few other people pointed me to New Zealand first off. And Becca and I, I think 2010 was our first year we went to New Zealand. And that just opened a whole new world over there. Like they're super pro. Right.
They're really pushing it, aren't they?
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a few tandem operations out there that do really good. But I mean, G-Force Paragliding, they do upwards of 10,000 tandems a year and they're very professional. One of the most professional organizations I've ever seen. It's good to learn a lot from them, both technique wise and kind of how the business runs.
You and I, this morning when we were hiking up, we were kind of talking about like one of the themes maybe we would talk about today on the show is, and one of the things I've kind of struggled with. Is dissecting down risk with, if you haven't had the experience. When you think back to when you were 19 and you learned this, what were Santa and those guys, how were they trying to keep you from killing yourself and getting hurt? Because until you have that experience, it's all just theory. Like, hey man, this is really dangerous. Well, great. Well, okay. How do you... Because like we were talking about, in a lot of sports, mountain biking, tennis, golf, whatever, you get hurt and it's not like it's the end of the world.
You've sprained your shoulder or maybe you've broken something and you're going to heal and you're going to come back. Where you don't really have that, that might be really lucky in these sports. So, the stuff you're doing on your speed weight right now is, you wouldn't want somebody just doing that right off the bat. You got to take a lot of time. But how do you adjust that? How do you teach that?
I mean, it's really hard in this sport. I think I was really fortunate to have some really good mentors who were really close to me and were willing to tell me when I was doing something wrong. And me having a lot of respect for those people and their opinion really, I feel like, held me at bay a couple of times. And I did make mistakes and went past my abilities a few times and they were quick to let me know. And I think that mentorship, having a good mentor and somebody that you respect and somebody that is keeping a watchful eye out for you is really important in our sports.
Like we were talking about this morning, it's easy to understand how to manage risk and risk management and identify hazards and weigh those consequences. What's the probability of this hazard coming true and what are the consequences if this hazard does happen? And then we can do things to mitigate those and figure out whether we want to accept that risk or not. But as a beginner pilot, it's really hard because you don't always see all those. You don't know what you
don't know.
I know in the last few years, you're flying this experimental plane that's like a cub. You're licensed now. You're flying solo. Are there systems that you've learned through that whole side? Of free flight that you wish you would have had maybe back with the speed flying and the paragliding? Because it's quite a bit more, there's a system there. You learn this and then you learn this. I'm not a plane pilot. I'm guessing. I'm assuming that.
It's very regimented. And I haven't really thought about it like that, where back to my early career would I have benefited from that. But I think absolutely. I've definitely tried to apply it to the tandem flying in the professional aviation world. And that kind of started before I learned to fly planes when in New Zealand, they got the commercial tandem operation and tandem operations all across New Zealand got incorporated under the CAA, which is like the FAA here in the United States. And so lots of the practices from professional aviation got adopted in like morphed to where paragliding could adhere to those practices and rules and regulations. And so that's really where I saw that. Professional aviation has a really that regimented attitude and like their checklist.
And you go step by step to prevent accidents and do everything you can to reduce the risk. And I think absolutely paragliding could benefit from that, paragliding and speed flying both.
So what are just a few things that, and this is a question I ask of a lot of guests. I'm assuming there's going to be some overlap here. But in your years of, you know, New Zealand and the tandems and Jackson and you do a lot of paramotoring, you're kind of like your broad strokes, you're doing them all. You've probably seen, you know, a lot of things you wish you hadn't. What are some of the common errors that people make, like the mistakes that shouldn't be made?
I mean, all of these sports are judgment sports. And most of most accidents can be traced back. To a bad decision. And it's really hard to exercise good judgment and be really diligent and be really have a lot of self-discipline and be able to step outside yourself and look back and be like, you know, is this really a good idea? And, you know, I feel like a lot of those accidents, it's always a chain of bad things that happens. And, you know, we're always looking for a way to break that chain. And you look at every accident and you're like, man, there's like. Four or five things where he should have been like, you know. Red flags are popping here and here and here. And so I think learning how to be self-aware.
And identify ways to break that chain to an accident is the most important thing.
Are you doing, are you instructing as well?
I do. I haven't instructed a whole lot over the past couple of years.
When I moved to Jackson, I instructed the first few years there. And then kind of moved more towards dedicating myself towards that. And so I do lots of mentorship and some more upper level instruction. But I don't end up doing a whole lot of P2 courses anymore.
Okay. What do, you know, when you and Beck are planning out your year, what are you most stoked about? What's the, is it the travel? Is it the paramotoring? Is it the, you seem to pursue all of it, but you're, I don't see a lot of XC. Do you, are you also flying XC much?
I mean, I have a handful of hundred mile flights and a few triangles. I don't do anything that's like, I'm not setting records or anything, but I enjoy flying cross country. I really like the mental challenge involved and, and yeah, I enjoy flying cross country and I do it a little bit.
So what, what are the, what of all the things you do or is there a favorite? Is there a thing, is there something that gets you most fired up?
No, man. It comes and goes. Like I really thrive in staying as well rounded as I can. Like I want to enjoy all of these different aspects of our sport and of flight. I really like flight. That's what I'm all about. And I want to do it in as many different ways as I can. And I think being well rounded, each of them, each sport kind of helps other sports out in certain ways. But learning the difference in between the two is been really helpful for me. And I don't think that's the same for everybody, but I remember there was a very like definite point in my practice. I had a lot of progression where I was skydiving a lot and paragliding a lot. I was working in both sports. I was packing parachutes at the drop zone in Ogden and I had started teaching out at the point and flipping that switch to go back and forth in between the sports and two very different.
I mean, they're both Ram Air technologies. They're both parachutes. They both, you know, you have two toggles, you pull on them and things happen, but it's amazing how different they can be going from, you know, one parachute to a paraglider. So I think that helps. Helped my progression in understanding those differences and the similarities at the same time. You know, every piece of fabric above your head is going to act, you know, somewhat similar.
So. So perfect transition. I know you've been working with Ozone for the last few years and you were really involved in their Rapidos project. How did you get involved in that? What have you had? That just seems super complicated and difficult. And beyond my skill level, but it seems also really interesting and fun.
Yeah. So I do testing for Ozone. Rob Whittle still does all the design. We do get help from like the design team in France. You know, Luke, Dav, Russ, all those guys. But the majority of the Speedwing designs come from Rob.
I had no idea. I thought he was all just in kite surfing and riding motorcycles. He was doing that.
There's a lot of that too. But. So he's the reason I actually ended up with Ozone. I was in the right place at the right time. He was living in Salt Lake at the point of the mountain when I was there. I was flying Speedwings a lot at the point in those days. And he ended up needing help with the project.
It was the Bullet GTs. So that was back in 2008, 2009 when we did the Bullet GT project. So I helped with that and the XT16. And I was, you know, it started really slow. I was just helping like do a few things. And I would fly and come back and he would ask something really specific. Like, I want to know this about the wing. And so you go up and you'd fly it and you'd be like, OK, I'm going to change something. And you tie a few knots and then say, OK, go tell me how the flare feels now. And so then you land and you come back. OK, it did this. It ties a few more knots. And so we did that for probably about a year until he left. And then they continued having me on and help with different projects. And I, over time, learned a little bit more about what how to trim gliders and how to fix that part of testing.
So, you know, there's lots of little tricks we use for tying knots in different places or making loops at the quick links to affect the angle of attack of the glider or change the handling characteristics. And so I just learned more and more. Then it turned into a job. And I've been working for Ozone for almost five years now. Yeah.
So is that part of your income as well as design? It is. Oh, cool. And tell the audience, what does a test pilot do? What does that involve?
So for Speedwings, it's kind of it can involve a lot of different things, like doing a rapid dose project is a lot different than doing, say, you know, the Firefly project.
But it it's more boring than a lot of people would think. We do a lot of, you know, flying things over and over again, a lot of repetition.
You know, we get a glider from. So Rob makes a design. The factory will put out a proto. They'll send the proto to me. I'll kite it first for a long time. Like I want to kite it and a lot of wind and turbulence. I want to know how it's going to act on the ground before I ever want to leave the ground with that glider. I can set things just through kiting. So I'll start tying knots straight away to set things like the angle of attack. So trimming the glider to be steep or flat will affect both the inflation, the handling in the air and the landing. Another thing is kind of overall stability of the glider. You can do a few things to make the glider more resilient to collapse and a little more stable by putting more of your weight on, like, say, the B lines.
Shorten the B lines and it'll. Increase stability. You lose a few other factors. But so I get the glider set to where I feel comfortable flying it. And then once we fly it, then we'll start to work on more things like handling. So the brake flange, the brake length.
It's a lot. It's a different process than testing paragliders. Last year, I think it was last year. I got to go over and do an ENT. Test pilot course with Alan Zoller. And so that was really interesting to learn all about the ENT certifications. And, you know, I'd done a lot of kind of partial testing of that through Speedwings. But the ENT testing process is very regimented. It's kind of like, you know, aviation. They go out and set a break range. And then you do a very specific input to the glider. And make sure that you're doing the same thing on every test. And so it can tell you lots of behaviors about a wing and make sure you're getting consistent results.
So Speedwings. First, we set the trim. You know, safety is really important for us. We want the stable glider. That's not going to do anything crazy above your head. Handling is really important to us. We want it to handle well in the air and also on the ground. We want it to have a nice clean. Inflation. Be easy to launch. And a nice easy flare. And a long forgiving break range if we can.
Where do – you said your brother is also a pilot. But let's imagine that he wasn't. And he's your little brother and he comes to you one day and he's like, dude, I've been watching all your videos. You kick ass. You're doing all these barrel rolls right off the ground and all this stuff. And I really want to learn this. How would you fold him into learning? What would be the progression you would want him to take?
I mean it's so individual for every person. So I do have another brother that I did teach to fly. Oh, perfect. Okay. Let's use him. And he mostly wanted to paraglide. He didn't show a whole lot of interest in speed flying right off the bat. So we started him out paragliding. And, you know, the thing I really try and instill in all of my students is the importance of baby steps. Like, you know, you have a long time to fly. And people try and get ahead of themselves really quickly. They're like, I want to do that. I want to do that. And you're like, well, there's a progression to every level of flying. And I really like following that set progression. And, you know, you increase and push your limits a very small amount of the time. You know, the instant you're comfortable doing something is the instant it's going to bite you.
That's a good one.
So I say just emphasize baby steps and cater it to your student. You know? If a student is wanting to learn aerobatics, then there's a very set out progression to learn aerobatics. You know, there's people that want to go out and tumble right off the bat. You're like, you know, that's not the first thing you learn. There's one or two things we're going to teach you before we teach you tumbling. You know? And if you go and you learn, you know, wing overs and asymmetric spirals first and, you know, get stalls down, stalls and spins down before you ever sat. That's one of, you know, it's a big pet peeve of mine. Lots of people, a sat is a really easy trick. And so lots of people will go out there and they're just like, well, I'm going to sat. It's like, have you stalled and spun before? Well, no. It's like, well, you should probably do that before you sat.
It's probably not going to happen on your first time, but if it does, you want to know how to fix it. Yeah. You're going to over crank a sat
at some point. You're going to spin it. Yeah. Exactly.
Stalls, spins, helicopters. Once you're comfortable at sats, you can start to go, you know, rhythmic sats or dynamic sat entries. Yeah. And slowly work up to tumbles, you know.
Did you self teach tumbling?
You know, I worked with a lot of people. Okay. And by the time I was learning to tumble, it took me six years to learn how to tumble. Like from when I tried, I was like, I set my mind to it. I was like, okay, I'm going to learn to tumble. I want to infinite tumble. You know, I'd done tumble entries, but I was like, I want to infinite tumble. And it took me six years. And almost 30. 13 reserve tosses before I was like really comfortable tumbling. And, you know, it started out, I was working with Nick Peterson. He's no longer with us. He's an awesome guy. Excellent coach. Sick Nick. Sick Nick. Love that dude. Yeah. Yeah.
But so I spent a lot of time with him. And back then the glider technology wasn't quite there either. Lots of gliders were really hard to tumble. They weren't quite as easy as they are today. And.
Another big help for me was Craig Taylor in New Zealand. So him and I, he's a SIV coach and a really good acro pilot as well. Him and I were learning to tumble at the same time. So when we were in New Zealand, we were both like, you know, running things by each other and, you know, talking about timing. No, I know I'm doing that, but it's not working. I'm really like, yeah, it's hard to make your brain do something new in some of those scenarios where you're so peaked and so amped. And there was like two years where I knew that I needed to give a later input. And I was like, I thought I was doing it. And it just, it wasn't happening. One day I messed up and I like accidentally, I was a little bit late. Yeah. And I hit it in the right place at the right time. And I was like, whoa. And it was like total breakthrough.
You're in. An accident. I was like, well, there it is. Now I can tumble.
Interesting. Wow. Why do you think you've been more drawn to acro and aerobatics than, I don't know, XCE or just other aspects of the sport?
I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. I mean, even before I started to paraglide, I was watching paragliding videos. So I was in the military for a short time. And I learned to fly right after I got back from a deployment. And I had decided that I was going to learn to paraglide like I had seen it when I was 11. I was like, I know I'm going to paraglide. And I went on this deployment. I was in Kuwait for six months. And in Kuwait, I was on the internet all the time. I'm learning to paraglide as soon as I get back. I started watching paragliding. I was watching videos. I saw videos of like Brad Ganuchio. And they had just started doing the infinite tumble. And a few other guys in low. And so I knew before I started that I wanted to get into acro. And I know instructors hate that, too.
They're like, you haven't even learned to fly yet. You don't know what you want to do. You have to fly for a little bit before you figure out what type of flying you want to go into. But I knew I wanted to do acro. And I wanted to do all those other things, too. But I knew I wanted to try aerobatics. And I've always kind of been into, you know, I used to ride BMX bikes and motorcycles. And I like jumping and doing tricks. And so it just kind of seemed like a normal progression for me. It was like the style aspect of the sport. I wanted to showcase style and finesse.
You talked about baby steps. I really dig that. Let's make that brother that you taught, he comes to you and really wants to learn speed flying. So one of the things that I've struggled with my own speed flying is canopy time. You know, I mean, I can take off here in July and fly eight hours with my paraglider and get more time than I'll get in a season of speed flying. And I try to speed fly quite a bit. But it's just it's hard to get that much time. So how do you how do you reign those people? How do you how do you teach the baby steps when you I mean, the flights are so fast. You know how? How can you accelerate your your progression when you really it's really tricky.
I mean, I
kind of look at it a little bit different than paragliding, paragliding, especially cross country paragliding. You know, you want that seat time because you're trying to get your bump tolerance up and you're trying to be comfortable flying in big conditions and know how to react to the environment throughout a full day when there's gnarly conditions out there. Speed flying is more about launching and landing. So, like, even though you don't get that seat time, you know, lots of flights in repetition. We'll give you lots of launches and landings. And that's what you're looking to improve on. And then obviously starting at that base where you know your conditions, you know how to tell your conditions and you don't fly outside of your conditions. So in that case, I don't feel like you need a whole lot of seat time. Okay. As long as you know to leave yourself a huge safety margin.
You stay far away from the hill. You're not going to fly terrain right off the bat and baby steps again. You know, we're going to start every day. We're going to have really easy launches on really big wings and really easy big landing areas. And as you dial those down and get better at launching cleanly, you know, being really deliberate and accurate in the control of your guy are both in the air. And when you land, then you can start to go to sites where the conditions or the site or the condition is a little bit, you know, not outside of your comfort zone. But, you know, you go up in baby steps that way. And start of, you know, I don't look at it as seat time and speed flying. I look at launches and landings and flight numbers more than hours in the air.
If you're going to learn speed flying, do you need to learn paragliding first?
I don't think so. So it obviously helps. And, you know, if I'm teaching somebody who wants to learn to speed fly, not in the U.S. because here now you have to learn to paraglide first. So say I'm somewhere else and somebody wants to learn to speed fly. That's all they want to do. I'm probably going to throw them on a paraglider for them. I'm probably going to send them on their first few flights. But I'm not going to send them through a V2. They'll be downsized to a speed wing pretty early on. The teaching speed flying for me has always been about breaking bad habits for most people. Very rarely do you ever teach somebody who doesn't have some sort of canopy experience. And I think that is almost your best student, somebody who has no canopy experience because they have no bad habits. Everything that I teach them is, you know, can build upon one thing upon the other. You know, skydivers.
So if I'm teaching a skydiver to speed fly, it's very different than teaching a paraglider to speed fly. A skydiver is very comfortable flying a small wing most of the time. Somebody who wants to speed fly is probably already a swooper. They probably have plenty of jumps on a tiny canopy. They're really good at landing it. They're not going to turn it too low because they know hook turns kill people. And so they know how to judge that recovery arc. But ground handling skills are horrible. They don't know how to launch a glider and they don't know how to read wind in the mountains. So that's where I focus my energy on a skydiver. Paragliders, though, same way. I mean, they have bad habits as well. They know those conditions in the mountains. They know how to launch pretty well. Ground handling is already there. But, man, their landings on a speed wing can be a little bit tricky to teach somebody how to land a small speed wing.
And they're used to being able to turn low. And turning low on a speed wing is going to break your legs or your back or kill you in the worst case. And so you really have to beat that into them. You know, you can't turn low. And the landings are, you know, you can't. Paragliders, a lot of time, because they sit with the weight of their arms in the brakes on approach to landing because you don't want to take a whack. You know, they get comfortable with landing from a little bit of pressure in the brakes. On small speed wings, you can't do that. If you come in with a little bit of pressure in the brakes, you're not going to have any energy for a flare and you're just going to pile in. And so teaching that to paragliders is kind of difficult. But I see it as breaking bad habits. So
you don't see that paragliding time or ground handling is a requisite. Ground handling is a requisite for speed flying. I know you're going to say that. But you could just go into speed flying.
I think so. Yeah, cool. And, I mean, I appreciate what USPAA and this national organization has done to bring speed flying under its wing. And, you know, I'm happy to follow their rules and regulations. But when it comes down to the basics of it, do I think somebody absolutely needs to learn to paraglide before they speed fly? I don't.
What are your thoughts about – I think one of the things that's getting a lot of the speed pilots is that, you know, depending on their background, depending on where they've come from, it's a pretty extreme – I'm quoting, audience. I'm doing the quote thing with my fingers right now because you can't see me. But, you know, it's a pretty extreme sport. Not hard to learn. Not hard to fly.
But it's – you're flying fast and you're flying low to the ground. How do you take like a pretty marginal athlete or somebody that, you know, really hasn't spent a lot of time – because I think if someone has a lot of hours and a lot of time in extreme sports, whether that's whitewater kayaking or maybe, you know, big mountain skiing, they kind of understand the risks a little bit more. Like they get extreme sports. And so this is an extension of experience they've already gotten. And maybe I'm wrong. I did. I think maybe a lot of the accidents are coming from people just not, you know, not having the race car experience.
Yeah. I can see some of that. There is that aspect. I call it the base jumper mentality. For a long time I thought that speed flying was like the base jumping is to skydiving. Like it's that to paragliding. Like it's always going to be illegal. You're always going to be running from somebody to do it. It's always going to be dangerous. You don't talk about it. You just do it. But it's not that way anymore. And I think it's become a lot more accessible. And I think the majority of people in speed flying aren't blind risk takers or like, you know, it's just like in climbing or all these other risk sports. You know, people from the outside look in and they're like, that's crazy. Those guys have a death wish.
They're going to, you know, nobody wants to die speed flying. You know, they want to do it the right way. And there absolutely is a safe way to do it. If you learn the same way, you take baby steps and you're smart about it. I think you can do it safely.
So, but more, more like the added, you know, if you, if you, if you had to deal with in your instructing experience, like the, I'm sure you've seen like, you know, a wide range of talent when it comes to how fast people can learn things or not. I guess. How do you
slow somebody down? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's hard and everybody's different. And in base jumping for a long time, they had this, uh, they called it the death video. And so they would show it to people. Most people that learned to try and show them that, you know, this is serious. Like if stuff goes wrong, it goes wrong, bad. And so I, I don't necessarily think that's the best way to do it, but I think for some people seeing the consequences of what happens, if you step outside your comfort zone, you know, your boundaries and go too fast, um, sometimes that will be enough to slow people down. Um, it's a hard thing to get people, especially people that are fresh in the sport, because once you've been in the sport for a couple of years, inevitably, you're going to run across it.
Um, Hey, or you'll hear a story and something will relate to you, but your first couple of years in the sport, people are really almost naive about it. Like they don't, they haven't had that experience. They haven't watched it happen. It's happened to somebody they know. And so they don't quite, they've heard about it, but it's kind of, it's not,
it's not, they're not attached to it in any way. They don't have any real connection to it. Yeah.
Okay. And I don't know the best way to make them respect the sport and give the sport the respect it deserves because it is definitely, you know, more dangerous than a lot of the other, like paragliding, the consequences are definitely higher. I mean, you're traveling faster. You're normally wearing less protection.
Um,
how in your own, uh, in your own kind of speed flying progression, uh, you know, today when I was watching you come down, you're just doing these barrel rolls right off the ground and I've seen you and Jamie's videos and stuff. How do you, how do you keep making it exciting once you've, you know, once you're at that level? I mean, I mean, do you keep pressing lower and lower or is it more just the aesthetics of it? Um, you know, I, I see all your guys' videos and I mean, I, I think it seems to me, you're, it seems to me from an outside perspective that you're just enraptured by flight, but is there in speed flying specifically, is it, um, you know, can you reach the Holy grail and then how do you keep being interested in it?
Yeah. I mean, there's always something new to learn and I always, I try and view every flight I do as a learning experience. And so, uh, that keeps it new and fresh for me. But yeah, I think you, what you're making an aesthetic line down the hill is definitely what's it all, what it's all about for me. You know, finding the cleanest, smoothest, styliest line from top to bottom. And that doesn't always require me to push my limits or like, you know, like expand my comfort zone. So on every flight, I'm not pushing it beyond, like, I'm not trying to go a little bit further on every flight anymore. Um, and even when I was learning, I don't think I was doing it on every flight. I definitely wanted to, um, progress in baby steps, um, as much as I could, but everybody likes to take a step back every now and then, and just enjoy the, the cruise, you know?
So perfect transition to lifestyle. Um, let, let's finish it off with just you and Becca, um, and what you've created here with the, uh, with the van, with your schedule. Um, how do you, how do you orient, uh, like how, um, you know, specifically what, what do you, what do you, how do you orient around, around your, your lifestyle around flight? What have you tried to do with your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your lifestyle because it's, you know, again, from, from looking at you guys from the outside you're living it.
It's always greener, man. Of course. Of course. You know, the whole van thing started for us, like as a, you know, it was a reaction to a situation we were in. So uh, Becca and I, we've been together in traveling for nine years now and you know, when we started we were moving like that very first year. we got together, we went, um, to Hawaii the first winter and then to New Zealand the very next year. And so we were always kind of picking up and moving from one place to the other to keep our lifestyle going and be able to work in paragliding. Um, so we traveled to work together and over, you know, five years of going to New Zealand, we started to get tired of, um, packing all our stuff up every six months.
And it's challenging in Jackson, the housing market's really hard. You have to sign a six month lease. We're only there for four months. You have two months, you're throwing away. Um, you know, we have a dog. Um, we had a different dog back then. Now we have a new dog and it's hard to find a place to live there. That's doesn't cost you an arm and a leg or even a place at all. And so we started looking for options out of it. Um, we took one year, 2013 and 2014 that winter, we loaded up in an Astro van and drove to Costa Rica and back over the winter, over six months. And yeah, so that was our first kind of experience on, you know,
hashtag van life.
Yeah. We can kind of live out of a vehicle pretty well. I mean, we kind of did it in the off seasons anyway. And still, we didn't really think about doing it full time. We did it for six months and came back and got another apartment. And then the next year we went to New Zealand at the end of the season, we borrowed a friend's camper van and it was a little Toyota camper van. And we took a month and drove all around New Zealand in this camper van and having the ability to, um, cook inside and stand up. Um, we kind of, there was, we looked at each other and we were like, you know what, you know, why do we, why don't we just do this all the time? And so instead of putting all our money into rent and throwing it away in Jackson, it was kind of almost like us settling down a little bit in a way for like, we're going to, you know, we're going to do this right.
We're going to buy a sprinter van and we're going to build it out and make our home in it. And that way we don't have to pack up when the season starts. We turn and drive out of town. Everything's already with us. Right. And so, yeah, it was like a reaction to our situation and we fell in love with it right away. I mean, it's for our lifestyle and for what we do, it's perfect. It doesn't get any better. You, you know, are flying in the evening and finish flying and you don't want to drive all the way back to, you know, have a couple of beers after a good flight. You don't want to drive anywhere. It's all right. Your house is right there. Cook dinner, go to sleep.
And, uh, what, how do you, how do you orient your year? Because it's, it's, uh, it's pretty interesting. It seems like you're just going to the coolest places. Is it, is it more, are you kind of into this, you know, because you're not doing it as New Zealand anymore in the winters, you've been kind of exploring the States. It seems like,
yeah, we kind of, we talked about that. And when we decided to go with a new sprinter van, as opposed to, um, you know, something used in something a little more budget, we, you know, we're investing a lot of money in this and, um, it's a big investment. And we're putting a lot of energy into it and we want to enjoy it. We don't want to leave it somewhere and go away for six months. We said, no, if we do this, we're not going to go to New Zealand anymore for work. And we might go there for vacation. We still haven't yet one day, but, um, you know, we're going to enjoy the van. And so, I mean, there's so many places in the States that we wanted to explore a little more and especially driving down to Costa Rica and back through Mexico and realizing that if you don't have a schedule, you don't have, you know,
you know, we have a destination to go to, but we don't necessarily have a date. We have to be there. It allows you to enjoy and, um, really experience a place more than you could any other way. And we decided we wanted to do that with a lot of the States. And so lots of these places we'd been before, but just for like a day or two at a time, like Southern Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, you know, there's so many places, so many cool spots to go. I decided, just start checking them off the list. Yeah. Drive down there. And if you like it, stay.
Have you gone through any kind of, have you gone through any lulls, uh, since, you know, when you were 19 in, in flying? Cause it seems like this is what you guys were doing year round. Is it, uh, you know, are you ever having any trouble getting out of bed? Like, oh man, I can go flying again today. Or is it just, it's just, you're still just stoked.
I mean, every flight's different. They're all, they're all fun. And I think a big part of what keeps it fresh for us is us moving around and changing, um, and moving with the seasons. Uh, I think it was good for us to stop going to New Zealand. I mean, I was worried about it when we first decided to go that way. I mean, it's a big chunk of our income every year to, to go down and work there and, but going straight from one tandem job and only having a little bit of time off and going into another tandem job. You do flying tandems. You can get burnt out. I've seen lots of people get burnt out and I try really hard to not get into that headspace, but everybody, everybody has their days.
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I've definitely had days where I show up to, to fly tandems and you'd rather be somewhere else. But there's worse things you could be doing. That's for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, Becca's put up some pretty cool posts in the last couple of years about, uh, you know, you guys have become pretty good at flying tandems. And I think, um, it was interesting to clarify, I, and it was very, very important for me to go to the DAY club one time. Because I just love Six-Packogroup because I saw cooking and lettering, willing to watch an information show that you send me when you're Farming for the These days. And, but, but after a few other days where I'm in any other Slays and the Doug Hart Tier Ground - renewals, I've been doing that for the past few weeks. Um, so thank God, that's a, a little more fun THIS way. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 007 that you guys have done um what are you concerned about you know thinking about the future in the next five ten years um
the traveling lifestyle i think we've always realized that you know we're not gonna travel forever and so i mean those are the things i think that concern me from time to time is you know what's our next move when we're done with this where are we gonna go next what's you know that's kind of what our travels have turned into over the past couple years have been like you know where where can we end up what you know is there something else out there that we can go and you know put our time and energy into and um that's
actually a really hard one i mean that that that one there is uh you know that uh what's what's the what's the uh fear of missing out fomo you know that you know when you when you travel it just becomes like this self-perpetuating you have to keep doing it you know it's almost uh yeah it it's hard to um you know as the end is a little bit scary yeah i don't know how to end it do you do do you guys even discuss that do you talk about that is it for for now is it just like hey let's just let this roll until it inevitably comes to some kind of inevitability um
yeah i think that we will always be travelers we might settle down and have a home base somewhere but i mean we're always going to be traveling um and we've each talked about you know what we can do next and lifestyles that can um continue to allow us to live a free lifestyle like we do um i've been working on my pilot's licenses i've been working through my commercial and kind of got to the point there where i'm ready to if i want to pursue a career in aviation i can um so oh i didn't know that i thought that was more
for fun um so you're actually maybe going commercial there yeah
it definitely started as fun and it is fun like the backcountry aviation and stuff that's always going to be fun i'll never turn that into a job and that was kind of a decision i made but um i have started to think about you know flying planes for a living there's lots of different ways to do it it's a big um shortage of pilots right now and it's a lifestyle that allows a lot of people
to do it and it's a lifestyle that allows a lot of people to do it
freedom and a lot of security you know that's where our lifestyle you know there's nothing you can really count on down the road the way we live right now right which isn't you know we've been really lucky for the last couple years and we've done really well for ourselves and i'm you know i don't see any like big crash coming or anything or us losing the ability to do what we've been doing for the past couple years but
um yeah looking forward more years into the future um sometimes makes you crave a little more stability yeah totally kate
i haven't done this in literally i bet it's been two years since i've done this but i used to do this on every show and it's just because it's sitting on my desk here uh it's kind of got some water on it so i hope i can read it but have you heard of the proust questionnaire no okay let's do it uh and we're gonna end on this so what's your favorite word why what's your least favorite word bad weather that's
too well that's all right that wasn't together that's all right
uh what turns you on and what turns you off um
anything tall and steep turns me on being in the middle of the flats turns me on what
sound or noise do you love and what sound or noise do you hate um
i love the sound of wind in my ears and i hate the sound of nails on a chalkboard oh yeah that's a good one um what's your favorite curse word trying to think of the one i use most often
bugger
bugger what profession other than your own would you like to attempt gosh it's been so long i don't even remember these yeah i don't know scientist and how about would you not want to do what profession would you not want to do for sure
sailor okay i
know you're a boatman but i don't i get scared of the ocean man that doesn't look good yeah leaving land behind is not for me okay
final one uh if heaven exists what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates what
did somebody say turn around and kick me back out
yeah can
i go back yeah
Will Gadd said that he's like we made a mistake you get to go back and do it again that's perfect yeah okay thanks a lot man i appreciate your time uh thanks for coming to visit in some valley good luck with your travels this year we'll be following you um before we sign off where can people find out about you where you know how do you communicate um you guys got this cool van build site you want to say anything about any of that
um yeah sustainablevanlife.com is a good way to get a hold of us or if you want to know anything about building out vans and ask us any questions that's uh that's a good place to start cool thanks kate thank you man i
hope you enjoyed that uh some really good stuff always great to sit down with the pilots that has so much background and history and so much passion for the sport i hope you really enjoyed that uh make sure you follow those guys he and becca um on instagram you'll find the links for that in the show notes they're super fun to follow and they put out a lot of really great content and thoughts and stuff and um and you can see their van their van bill their new one is just unbelievable thanks uh my fan build feel pretty pretty lacking uh but yeah the if you're into the whole hashtag van life thing i think you'll enjoy that as always all we ask for is a buck a show if you're getting something out of this uh don't send a buck uh wait till you've listened to 20 shows or so make sure it's worth it and then send us a little bit more if you can financially that sport goes a long way into making all this possible as i've said many times we are not relying on advertisements because i just don't like that transaction and i don't want to bore you at the top of the show with
uh with that kind of stuff so uh and if you can't support us financially no problem i totally get it that's uh this will always be free and there but there are many other ways you can support it that i'm super appreciative of you can share it on the socials you can talk about it on the way to launch you can write about it on your own blog uh you can suggest people and topics and you know reach out to me get involved i try to pay attention to that stuff as much as i can i do get
and i didn't get back to you it's not because i'm rude it's just because i get lost in my inbox these days it gets uh pretty snowed under but uh you'll find the links if you can support us financially you find the links to do so on the cloudbaseman.com now you can do it through patreon you can do it one time through paypal and then we're now also accepting uh crypto which we've gotten a couple lately which is kind of fun because i don't really even understand what that is but that's pretty neat uh and that's it thanks a lot for listening we appreciate it as always we'll see you on the next show cheers you