88. Rob Sporrer and building community, risk awareness and focus on fundamentals - Rob Sporrer

Hey everybody,

welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I am out in Santa Barbara training for the X-Alps. Left our snowy Sun Valley for a month. Actually out here, the flying is really good. And I had no idea how amazing this community was. How deep the flying is. Man, it makes Sun Valley look pretty mellow. And how great the flying is. And I've been really dying to talk to Rob Sporrer, who runs Eagle Paragliding. He was there in the very beginning when I first started learning to fly in 2006. He's been at this game since the mid-90s. And he has helped build just an extraordinary community out here. So I was really psyched to sit down with him last night and do a live show.

Those are always real special. So I think you're going to... I really enjoy this. We talk about risk management and training and how to build a really solid community like they have here. Told some great paragliding stories and some fun history there and stuff. But a lot of takeaways here. A lot of lessons, regardless of where you're at. Talked about the X-Alps a little bit, but really helped me kind of bring my mind back to the important stuff like the fundamentals. And anyway, just... Solid community. If any of you have not flown out here in Santa Barbara and in this zone, put it on your list. It's a proper hidden gem. Just gorgeous place right on the ocean.

But big mountain flying right behind it. And you can do some super impressive things. So really enjoying that. I don't have a lot of housekeeping. We still have not brought it across from Patreon. I've said in the last couple shows that we're eventually here going to leave. Patreon and do our own subscription service through the website and save you a little bit of fees, a little bit of money on the fees, and put it more on us. But it's a bigger transition than I realized. And you need really solid internet to do that. And I'm out here camping and got to go to the library for stuff like that. So I just haven't had time. So we will get that brought across. But for now, just stick where you are and keep enjoying the shows. And that will happen here in the coming weeks.

And I'll let you know. So that's it. That's all I got. Today is the first day of the Superfinal down in Baixu. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. But down in Brazil, it looks beautiful. So follow the PWC's website and their app and watch the fast, fun, furious racing down in the Superfinal. It's 10 straight days. It should be great. And yeah, let's enjoy this show. So please enjoy this talk. Rob Spohr, the head of Eagle Paragliding.

Rob, I am stoked to be here with you in your little place, man. This is awesome. And I've had such a killer couple of weeks in Santa Barbara. So we're going to talk about the specialness of this place. But so firstly, just thank you. It's a real honor to come here and talk to you, man. I mean, this is you were the man in the very beginning of my, you know, having things changed. It's crazy. So cool. But thank you.

Yeah, thank you for doing this. It's been a huge effort. I don't know how you find the time to do all you do, but this is something that everybody appreciates. Burning midnight oil, man.

Yeah, no, we're happy to have you. It was fun watching you and Revis send it out there yesterday. The whole community was checking it out. That was cool.

Yeah, we're going to get into your community. And, you know, we just talked a lot about your history. We're going to get into some of that and just Eagle and instructing and just how this all came to be. But I thought a really good way to pull people in right off the bat is to have you tell us. A paragliding story. It doesn't have to be paragliding, hang gliding, whatever. But you've been at this a long time. I'm sure you've got some stories to tell. What's what's something that just sparks out? It doesn't have to be your own flying story either. It could just be like something you saw, something that you still think back on and go, man, that was crazy.

Yeah. You know, it seems like the best stories I've had has been I've been flying with my friends and, you know, flying all the comps. And so there's so many stories. Yeah. Being chased by the by the it wasn't an emu, but it was one of those animals after landing and just some crazy stuff. But I remember I remember landing after a task in Chelan and all the retrieve vehicles are gone. It was getting dark. It was after one of those big ones where we headed east. And I was able to talk to one of the locals. We went to the preacher's house and commandeered a short bus to get back to Chelan. So there's a lot of great stories from the comps. But one of them was from a Dunlap flight at a competition. Yeah. And I remember I was in the lead gaggle, and we were kind of thermal, and it all got kind of hairy, and I kind of bailed out of the thermal, and I got real low and stuck, and barely got back up.

And then little Pete cruised up and we were kind of, hey, bud, you know, so we went cruising. We ended up flying and we weren't really racing. We were just kind of cruising. And, you know, we got to we got to climb and we're like, yeah, we think we got goal. Let's go. And so we started on glide and Dave Hanning had kind of been there with us, too. And he separated with us. And we figured that, you know, we're hopefully just going to make goal. The leaders have gotten stuck and we didn't know it. So we started gliding towards goal and we got low again. We just got drilled. We're like, oh, no, you know, and so ended up climbing back up there and little Pete didn't get it. And Hanning was coming in pretty tall. And so I kind of made a decision there. It's like a better run, get the end of speed and hopefully I'll get back up.

So I went and tagged it, came back and then landed. And it was first in and Dave thought that he got it. So he lands and he's sending texts and whatever. And he's like, man, I've never won a task before. And I'm like, oh, dude, sorry. So that was a pretty fun and we gave him a hard time for that. But yeah, that was that was that was one of the things with the buddies that that was pretty fun. Me and little Pete pulling that off and not expect everybody got stuck. And we're like, where is everybody? That

is really fun when you get your way off the back and you're in there. Yeah, that's a good time. Yeah,

that was a good one for sure.

So we were just hanging out in the in the Eagle. What do you call that place? The Shaw Shop. Yeah, that place is awesome. So we were just hanging out there and you were giving me your history and how you got into this. So you're you're down in L.A. working and you come up here to the beach and you see some people land and you're like, I have to do this. What do you think it is about some because people, you know, you're in Santa Barbara, you're flying off the mountain, you fly over the town, you land on the beach, people do it every day. What is it about people like you that just gravitate towards this? What is it that's that just seized you and we're like, I have to do I have to do that. I can learn that such

a great question, you know, and it's something that I've continued to ask myself and I haven't been able to figure out,

you know, you

line up a bunch of people and say, what do all these people have in common? And, you know, they look different and they're different ages. And it's just, you know, people either have it in them or they don't. It's almost like someone. That, you know, if you fly tandem, say, hey, I'd love to take you tandem. And, you know, people are like stoked or no way. There's no way I can do that. And so I don't know. I mean, flying is such an archetype. I mean, you know, Leonardo and those guys, if they had the proper materials, they would have been getting it. And it's just it's something you see it and you have to do it because some people just have to do it. But, you know, sometimes it's a discovery, too. I think that there's so many sports out there, base jumping, skydiving, wingspring. I think we get kind of mulled into that whole people don't know what we are until they see it.

And then, you know, when we come out to the flight park, there are people and people will be in a group of five people. And one person was that person says, hey, I'm not going to do this with you guys. And then they see it and they're like, I didn't know this is what this was. Had I known this is what this was. So I just think it's part of it is people don't know what it is, but people that actually see it, like probably we both did. And most people see it. It's like, wow. I've got to do this. And then, you know, and then the sky crack happens, as you said. Yeah.

Cedar sky crack. That's right. I love that term. I love that term. So you see it. You're just totally addicted right off the bat. You were talking about Tom Truax, which he sounds like just a legend. I'd love to get him on the show. What has changed since those days? You know, like compare how you learned to 2019. Over at the training Hill. Now it cannot even been answered. Is that, is that just too long? But what are the, what are the main changes that, you know, when you learn in the late nineties to what's happened now?

Yeah. I mean, I think the number one thing was something that we were kind of, one of the points we were talking about before this was the technology. On all levels. I mean, obviously the gliders is, is the first one you think of and how much more performance and, and passage safety, but really just, I mean, Like I was telling you, I started flying kind of before the internet or right where it was happening. Truax would get the phone tree going, you know, you call these five people and I'll call those five people. So, I think the technology of having someplace to post, and the Telegram application that we use here in this community, or WhatsApp that people are using, and tweeting, and all that stuff, really helps bring a community together and have everybody be on the same page. It just makes it easier for that collective to get together and go to church and go fly.

So yeah, I think that's a big part of it. As far as the teaching and stuff, I mean, we definitely have refined things a bit and made discoveries. When I do an instructor clinic, you know, I let everybody know that it's like, hey, I'm here to facilitate this clinic. I fully expect to walk away learning something from you. You might be, there's still stuff to discover. That's one of the beautiful things about it. There's still moves and techniques and knowledge. It'll just never end. It's just forever. It's infinite. So I think, you know, there's definitely some stuff that the swapper break things not happen anymore. People are keeping their breaks in their hand, you know, and like some fundamental kind of stuff. Yeah. Fundamental stuff has changed. But I really feel like, you know, the technology's helped a bunch and I feel like more people are, there's more schools and it's just, it's more, it's in more places.

People are just seeing it more. But back to your question about what makes people want to do this, it's like I scratch my head here because they see.

They see

us flying around and they see us flying out over town and landing at the beach. And it's curious that more people aren't just knocking on the door to do this. And it's, it's kind of in you. And, you know, maybe what it takes is some sort of educational thing to show people what this is and isn't and to show it to them.

What do you think the, you know, because the numbers nationwide, and I think really in the world, don't really back up what you're experiencing here. You know, you're experiencing the best growth and right. Are you experiencing kind of the best numbers that you've had right now, you

know, for, for, for the sport in general here in the U S as far as students are, for our, our, for you, for you,

isn't Eagle kind of, are you guys doing probably as good or better than you ever have in terms of numbers? We're

continuing to grow and it's better than it's ever been. Part of that is because of the community here for sure. Because

I was just going to say, you know, the, that isn't what's happening, you know, in USHPA. It isn't. It isn't. And it's, and it's not really happening. I think worldwide, you know, the numbers are static or they're down for the most part, except in places that are pretty dynamic and, you know, just in my two weeks that I've been here, this is really special. So I'd love for you to talk about how that's been. And I know you're too humble. You're like, yeah, well that, you know, it's, I know it's a community, but how, how have you fostered that or how have the members of this community fostering that? Because it's a really, it's a unique vibe. It

really is. It's a special thing. And I, I I'll go into that and I think I'll answer that first thing you said, because it's such a good point is why isn't it growing more other places? And, you know, part of it is, is it, and it's a philosophy that I've had that seems to make sense and is ethical is, you know, support those that are supporting you. If somebody's puts in the energy to start a school someplace and they throw down for gear and a vehicle and insurance and radios and whatever they got to get to get off the ground. Try to try to nurture them and support them with, with your business and, and, you know, or, and for that matter, anybody that's supporting you in the, in the sport, if I had somebody that I trained and somebody else was giving them the continued support, support that person.

If they've got a school, it's like, there's an incentive there to continue to kind of mentor and nurture and educate. And I think there's a fair amount of attrition because that might not be happening as much as it can. And sometimes it's, it's not the. Yeah. The solo school instructor's fault. You can't be everywhere at once. And there's tough choices to make there for a smaller school like that, to take the new people or it's a good day to go fly. The people that are ready to find the mountains because the weather's good. And you know, Truax always took us flying in the mountains. The new people, he's like, sorry, I got to get these guys up in the air. And, and so it's one of those things where it's a tough balance there. And I think it's hard to, to find that balance and, but it's part of the thing with folks. It's like we're in the Amazon era where you go online and you shop and it seems like there's more, you know, from a capitalistic standpoint, there's more online shops to buy paragliding stuff now, and maybe a little bit of pricing stuff happens and there's not a lot of service happening there.

It's easy to sell and it's challenging to serve. So if you, and you know, it kind of, it points right back to you, if you're someone who's supporting someone in your small community, it doesn't really apply too much to me here because we've got. Yeah. Big staff and big instructors and that type of thing. I mean, granted, we want to support for those we support, but I think it's really critical for a smaller school that's just one person or a couple people that the community really tries to support them. I mean, Hey, they're the people that are out making sure the LZs stay open and mowing the grass at the park and doing everything that kind of makes that community stronger. And if that goes away, it might not be noticed until it's too late. So I think some of that, the followup of continuing education. Yeah. Can lead to attrition. We have a really good thing where we hand, we still are there for our students, but there's a lot of people in our community that play that mentor game, which kind of leads into your thing about this community.

Yeah. So that's something that would help. The attrition statistic and help nurture those communities and help those schools stay successful and have the sport grow. Right. But here it's just all about the, the, the vibe of these people and the Stoke level, as you said, is just higher than it's ever been. Part of it's the technology. Yeah. We're all connected instead of the phone tree, but a lot of it's just, you know, the hang gliding, paragliding, there's no gap or distance here between those two groups. And you know, little John, our, our Sage hang gliding club board member has been the person leading the charge for decades and showing us the way on that and made sure that we've kept our sites and been the point person on that. And then just people stepping up.

I mean, I mentioned that, you know, we could go to a work party. We

could get

launched for a paragliding launch. There's more hang gliders helping than paragliders and, you know, you and Rev is flying yesterday and on telegram, it's like, Hey, who's on chase, who's going to get these guys. And I mean, that's, that's where the Stoke level, somebody has a big day. I mean, Marty has a big day going flying. He's driving the van the next day. He's like, I'll chase today. Right. You know, so it's, it's that kind of, that kind of vibe that just starts feeding off of this stuff and people get it. And then there's like all these little subcultures within that. The OTB crew, people really starting to send it and go over the back and do stuff. And those slogans that go to know, you know, you gotta, you gotta go to know, I mean, be ready and go to know it's, you know, yeah,

there's a real, um, there's a real optimism. There's a real positivity and it's not careless. That's what's really unique about it. There's a, you know, I even heard very recently, the last couple of days, you know, I was talking about this. I was just like, Hey guys, this is kind of hitting me full frontal here. Like what is going on here? It's because I lived in Santa Barbara long before I flew and Santa Barbara has that vibe. It's just people really happy here. Cause it's amazing. It's stunning. You're out on the ocean. You got these beautiful mountains. I mean, I get that, but you know, I was talking about what, what are you guys doing to nurture this and curate this and, you know, make it grow. And, and one of the guys was saying he was a pretty new pilot, but he was like, you know, yeah, it's just, you know, it's different when I go up to the Sierras, it's all about fear. It's all about, you know, like, and they were talking about, you know, there's the Cody Tuttle's up there, new guy, and he's just stoked.

And he's like, wow. Let's do this. You know? Cause there was this real period there for like 10 years, kind of between hang gliding period. And he was just like, you don't fly there in the summer really until Dave Turner showed up and was like, no man, you can fly here all the time. And but I think there's still this kind of like, and we have that at Sun Valley, when people come, we're always like careful, man, careful, but you gotta be pretty careful here too. But there's this real openness, I think with sharing all the knowledge, regardless of where, and I saw it with Mitch and other people, they tell you about what they think about the day, whether you're a P one or P four, you know, they treat everybody like this is a playground. And again, it's, it's this weird, like not, you're not, they're not being careless. We like, yeah, man, just send it, just go, go deep in there, you know, but they're encouraging.

So it's a cool balance.

It is. And Mitch has definitely been the leader on that. He's been a guy, you know, getting a talent like him to come in, to be part of the team and teach it from the new people to guiding people and stuff. It's just been amazing. It's a huge part of our growth and success and the community vibe. He took that leadership position. Yeah. I mean, he basically gives you that energy and tells you the truth that you can take to any flying site and, you know, it's all about the debrief and, you know, he lets you know that, you know, everybody's got an individual decision to make up here about flying today, but you kind of nailed it with that whole fear thing. I mean, there's plenty of that to go around. It seems like. Sure. So let's nurture the other side of it and keep it positive.

Mitch leads by example, but he's someone who can do, He's earned the ability and the knowledge and stuff to do the bigger flights, and he lets people know that, and let's try to get people to check in with themselves a bit on that and causing people to think that way. And so he's been a huge part of that. And I think that that's key. I think that having someone who is up there and, and even talking to people on the way up in the van, you don't talk about for people and there's, you gotta be there for the lowest common denominator. And so it gets communicated. It's not like something like that happens, like, Hey, you guys shouldn't have been talking about that with those first high flight people. That's not what they needed to have in their Ram headspace for their first launch. And so that'll get nipped in the bud, you know, and it won't, it won't get swept under the rug in a graceful way.

And there's communication about stuff happening like that on telegram in the, you know, with the 300 people, 350 members or whatever we have now, you know, Mitch just jumped in last week on, or a couple of weeks ago on a comment that, and he's, he's so great about that. And, you know, he's been someone who came in here and, and, and has taught, who's definitely taught me a lot about a lot of things. So that's, that's kind of what I'm talking about. It's about he's, you know, we make suggestions. There's no ego involved with folks. It's just like, boom, boom, Hey, let's, let's, let's share this information. Kind of like I was at Columbia tours when we're down there. I knew Shapiro's talk and he was down there guiding with us this year and all the guys Turner I'm taking notes at the, at the thing. I mean, there's always stuff in there that you forgot or you didn't know, or that needs to be an affirmation.

So there's obviously got, you know, Mitch makes a living as a paragliding guide instructor, but a big part of what happens here is the community of people that are just stoked to share the energy and see people doing better. You know, there's a huge amount of mentors here that are happy to do that. And just naturally do it. And it's not like, oh, I don't want to jeopardize my flying day and focus on this. They do enough. They walk the LZs and they talk about flight plans and everybody's talking and sharing. It's like when you have an experience, whether it's a great one or it's one, it's not so great. You got to share that with the community so that we can all learn from it. So that culture's sort of been nurtured. There's so many lessons to learn in life and we can't learn them all alone and the same applies for flying.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, this community is really good about doing that stuff and owning it and sharing it. And that helps guys like Aaron, the plant cracker he's, he's, you know, for a community to have an individual like that, who just volunteers so much time to what he does. He organized a comp here for a couple of years called the SB hoedown, which is just a month long task and people can download and gets people to know how to use their instrument and the strategies for racing and that type of thing. And, you know, he's got a score that do that. So just a huge amount of effort for him on that. You got to come to the award ceremony that at the flight park. And the other thing that he's done that has been just super huge is his cracker sauce, his YouTube channel cracker sauce. And he got a commendation for that.

And it's just, it's really where the future of learning is in my opinion. I mean, he just is on there talking about this area and whether you're a local or you're a visiting pilot, you can get the beta and you can watch it again and do that little bit of pushing the envelope a little bit on each and every flight and you get more comfortable with stuff, you know, and know things and then the answers are there for this community. There's a, there's a template there along with of course, Tom Truax's flight logs, but the whole video, you know, that's, that's where everything's at now. You can learn so much and you can log in. So I feel like the hang gliding community is a huge part of our paragliding success just because they're so cool and they're so stoked on flying. They're still out there flying, but it's just all the members of the community, one of our hang gliders. And it's the biggest supporter of like organizing the events and bringing chairs and it's just, so it's part of that.

And it just, it kind of gets like a snowball. It seems like it's just, it's growing. People come here like you. And like you said, it's just mind blowing. Yeah. It's just like, wow. You know? So there's a lot of, a lot of elements there, but it's, it's the collective. I mean, we'll get talked about the collective when he did the Canadian nationals years ago up there. He's like, Hey, everybody's, you know, this is a group thing here. We've all got to, we've all got to do our part. And if you, if you do something, you mess up, we're going to throw you in the river.

We, you know, we don't have a river, but once in a while we've got to throw somebody in the river, but, but yeah, so that's, it's a special deal for sure.

Yeah. It needs to be a, I mean, I, I think that's just, that's how communities work. I think it's just going to get naturally exported, you know, people come in like myself and see this and go, man, this is what, you know, I can bring this home to our club. And, you know, I think of our club as a great little club, but it's, it makes you realize you can really, you can really, I think what you guys are doing is fostering, folding people in. You must take people, you know, very new pilots from the training Hill and you, you know, you wind them in and wind them in and suddenly they're going up the mountain and they're going off a 4,000 foot launch, you know, that's pretty awesome. It

is. And I think they're able to go further and get more confident and, and acquire knowledge and experience. Yeah.

Because of the community being there for sure, you know, just, they're just more available to them. I mean, somebody, somebody blows a launch and has a great three hour flight. It's real easy to talk about the flight, but it's great when somebody comes up and says, Hey, let's talk about that launch. And so you kind of keep it real and, and share that stuff as a group and that's all, that's all a big part of it. And so definitely everybody's feeling good about the community and what's going on. And, and, and really we realize how special it is. And so we all are. We're doing everything we can to nurture it and keep it going. It's a, it's a collective community effort for sure.

You wanted to talk about risk management, how let's take it from there into, you know, it's not the darker side. It's just, you know, there's a dangerous sport and you know, we've, we've got to manage that risk. If you guys developed systems, how do you, how do you teach risk management, not only to your students, but to your newer instructors? You know, is there, is there a real set program? Because you're dealing, like you said in the beginning, you're dealing with people at totally different ages, different histories, different backgrounds, different color of skin, you know, the whole thing is right. People are different.

Yeah. That's a great question. You know, when somebody shows up at the hill, part of the fun of being an instructor is trying to write the prescription or the recipe that's going to give that person success, depending on where they're at and how they learn. And it's that constant evaluation during those first moments in the first couple of days of teaching that we obviously go over and we share tricks with each other of how to deal with certain types of personalities and, you know, there's certain people you need to kind of encourage and there are certain people you got the bit in the mouth and you're pulling back. Yeah. So there's, there's definitely stuff that we share with respect to that, to really how, Hey, this is an individual thing. And that, you know, that kind of gets passed on all the way up to where someone in Mitch in the mountains in a lead position is really good.

Getting people to kind of check into themselves on where they're at, their experience, how they're feeling on a particular day, a good night's sleep, or they hydrated any of that kind of stuff. So, so yeah, I mean, our thing here is for me, risk management with, with my staff is just sharing experiences. I mean, there's obviously all the textbook stuff that we, you know, we go to SIV clinics and we learn that stuff. That's a great way to be more informed and to practice what we need to be ready for in the wild, you know, but my whole take on and I've had to step back and look at the whole risk management. I mean, I've had people that have, have lost their lives that are friends of mine that have paraglided. But when I step back at it after, after those events and I analyze things and just stepping back and looking at it over the years, you know, I realized that whether you're a snowboarder or a rock climber or a road biker or skateboarder.

Anybody that has kind of a serious injury in those sports, head, neck, back, pelvis is getting hurt close to the ground. You know, if you're skiing in the trees, people hit the heads on trees and you know, the hard drive can't be reset on that one. And people falling from rocks, people, I mean, most of the people I see in the community here that are limping around or they're armless things from mountain biking or something else. So we think about risk and we have the luxury to get away from the terra firma, from the thing that's going to, that can hurt us. Yeah. I mean, granted we can fly into another pilot and have a mid-air plane, that type of thing. But when you think about it, when we're up there, I mean, gaggle flying is kind of a different scene. There's more danger there, but there's nothing to smack into up there. So, you know, I tell people on our tours, it's, you know, during our opening talk, I say, I'll bet anybody here that a majority of the incidents, if we have incidents on this, when we're in the risk management topic, again, we're not fear-based, we're down there.

There's a lot of other stuff we're talking about, but we do want to have that short talk. And it's like, it's going to be from landing. And my experience as far as risk goes has been people get hurt landing. That's just been my experience. I mean, whether you're talking about people that are doing the X-Alps or you're talking about somebody that's out of our flight park, or you're talking about somebody just landing in our local LZ or on the tour, it's landing. And so, you know, trying to break that stuff down into just like super basic, basic form, obviously landing in a vol biv. Situation, you might be landing in windy conditions or some uneven terrain. And so there's stuff that you need to practice to be good at that. Good reason to get back to the flight park, even as that level of pilot and practice that stuff.

But, you know, thinking about the fact is what the landing is, is that as long as you're flying straight on your landing, you're probably going to be in pretty good shape. People have caught wing tips on trees landing and fallen from 20 or 30 feet. But a lot of the stuff that I've seen over the years on landing is self-inflicted. So it's almost like if you come to a small LZ, you know, on a cross country flight, or you kind of put yourself in this spot as a paraglider pilot, you got to realize that bushes and trees are your friends. And, you know, it's only after the fact, if somebody tried to put it into a tight spot and they spun their glider or they turned close to the ground, they broke their ankle or broke their back or pelvis.

Then it's like, man, I wish I was hanging in a tree. Right now instead. So that's one of the things, there's so much stuff that's so instinctual for us that seems to be, um, there's so much that's counterintuitive with paragliding, but the intuitive part sometimes is just like, I got to land in a field. So, you know, make friends with trees and bushes. And, you know, if I'm setting up at a small site like that, I'm setting up and I've got my spot that I'm going to try to hit, but I've also looked past that and said, there's my bushes or there's my tree. And I'm so okay with landing there. I'm going to be fine. I don't know anybody. Anybody who's landed it or a bush of trees, anything too serious happened to them, maybe climbing out of the tree, you don't fall out of the tree. So the landing is huge. Um, and you know, there's, there's a couple of, you know, other things where, um, with landing where people, if they're coming in at high altitudes, um, and the ground's moving by faster than they've ever seen before, or they're coming in on a, on a downwind run.

Um, it's, it's natural and intuitive thing to be like, I don't know if I can run this fast. So let me slow this whole package down to make. It's what I can run. But as when we stop back and as we both know and think about, it's gonna be a harder landing, but it's counterintuitive and it's almost instinct. So talk about that stuff. It's like, there's a couple things that you got to do. I mean, obviously landing in a Boulder field or a cactus field or a river, you know, landing, you know, that's, that's not good, but if we're talking about just landing, as long as you're flying straight, you're doing good. And then one of the things that, that Mitch kind of was one of the things that he brought up was that it's good. You know? You know, get out of that seat early and really be in that athletic position where you're almost leaning forward. Like you're launching. Yeah. Like when you're launching torpedo, you go, whatever you want to call it.

That's gonna put you in a place where your body weight's not behind your feet and you gotta parkour with the ground, you know, you gotta roll it out and do whatever you gotta do, but it's much better to have ankles and knees having stuff happen than have coming in and letting your butt hit or having all that weight behind your ankles and knees. So practicing that. And so that's kind of the big thing is, is we get into flying and people have a certain amount of time to fly, especially if you've got a nine to five job and the weekends of your time, man, you gotta try to get out to someplace and work on those fundamentals after a flight or instead of a flight sometimes just to polish that stuff up. Um, and man, it's so hard to turn down a good day to do that. And, you know, some people don't have a great flight park to do that.

Go to a place that has a place like that to train. Make sure you have a good day to do that. Make a trip about doing both because it's, it's super important. So flying straight, being friends with trees, no turns close to the ground and you're pretty good really. And you know, the other half of the equation there is of course launching. That's the other time you're close to the ground and there's only a couple of things there. And number one is, is when you're, anytime you're in the forward position and you're run off the hill with your feet on the ground, it's better to have too much break than too little break on the worst thing that's going to happen is that the glider is going to come back down behind you and you'll get resett again pretty quick. And then the other, if it gets ahead of you, who knows what's going to happen? You can tumble half the wing can fly, pick you up and put you back into the hill. And then my, my big, big one on launching.

And this is something I really talk about in my ground school that happens to pilots of all levels as pluckage thing. You know, it just happens. I mean the key should ah, when it's, and so part of it is really breaking that down like you're talking about with the instructor. Instruct, the instructor. teaching it, and the student understanding it, and part of it is understanding why that happens and when it happens. It happens when the wind's up, usually above eight or nine miles an hour. You're more likely to get plucked if you're on a steeper slope, right? So, if you can identify those two things and be like, "Ah, it's ripe for pluckage now," let me visualize my launch. That's another Mitchism; I mean, he's big on that, and it's the truth. Let me visualize what my launch is going to look like here, and what's my footwork going to look like here?

People need to... that pluckage thing, I mean, it's got some people—I've been there to see it get some people pay the ultimate price. And I've heard, you know, students from Hong Kong, you know, calling everyone, "No man, we had this guy over here," and so it's one that can get you, I mean, and you can get away with it. You know, as Tom Tom Webster always said, Murphy's Law doesn't apply to everything. Paragliding, everything that can go wrong does not go wrong, right? Totally, yeah. How...

Often do we get lucky? It's unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, you know, I, I think about that too. Like, my first takeaway after the 2015 XL, so I've just completed the X-Alps, you know, like I've got some hours and, you know, I've, I've got so much to learn. You know, that was the main takeaway, but the, the big one for me was that, man, I need to work at the training hill a lot more even. You know, it was, it was like, yeah, okay, I'm in the X-Alps, but man, I gotta do a lot more acro. I gotta do a lot more into the hill top landing, you know, like the fly on the wall thing, and then you get that timing wrong, you're gonna break up legs, and you're doing it in that race all the time, you know, the old hang glider style and stuff, and that takes a lot of practice. But you don't want to practice that on a 4,000 foot mountain and wind. You know, you want to practice that at the training hill and, uh, that was, it was, it really brought back for me like, man, you got to work on this stuff no matter what level you're at.

And then to me, like the pluck thing is, you know, if you've trained for that stuff, you're going to be able to do a lot more then. You know, like, if you're going into that kind of situation and you're confident, it makes all the difference. If you're like, man, I don't know if I have this move, you probably don't have that move, that's it. You could get lucky nine times out of ten, but that's the thing in this sport, it only takes once and

You gotta be ready, yeah.

You gotta be ready, and the only way to be ready is to have done that on the training hill on high wind over and over and over to know it. I mean, there's that famous video of Chrigel launching in the X-Pyr and it's blowing at least 40 miles an hour, you know? And there's another X-Pyr pilot right there and he's like looking at him like, "You're not going, dude." Do you remember that? He pops that wing up and just catapults backwards for like 50 feet, just steady, just has it. He knows he's got it because he's trained in 60 kilometer an hour winds in the snow where he can take beaters into the powder, you know? He's done it over and over and over again, so he knows he's got that move. Like when he walks up there, he's like, "Yep, this is a wind that I can manage." Not many people manage that.

Kind of wind, no? And not people, not enough people can manage it in just a little bit of stronger conditions, and not enough people are thinking about like, "Hey, I'm going to do a reverse launch here," and the wind's up. This is a situation, you know, there's some wind here. This is a situation where I could get plucked. The remedy is being ready, and so you get out to the hill, and it kind of, it kind of links up with the SIV training in the sense that a lot of what's being taught out there is like sorting out your glider is not, uh, the first objective, right? It's getting a heading and getting the glider flying in any of those situations, whether it's curvat or whatever it is. It's like, "Let's get a heading," and when that happens on a launch or near launch, you're buying.

You're getting time. If something happens on a launch, like pluckage, and you just start dealing with trying to get untwisted, the guy is probably going to be in a turn and turn you back into terrain. I mean, thankfully, most of the time, you know, the thing just unwinds and you're okay. But you know, like you said, that's, that's part of the deal. Get out to the training hill, and so we get people on their rear risers. We get them, we want, we want it to happen to them at the hill when they're kiting, so they see what a crummy feeling it is. You know, you've got that hang, hang point. There's kind of on the beaners, which is if you, you know, looking at the median line of your body from the profile, there's just the connection points out front. They're just more weight on the back side. It's going to put you back, and when you fall down, you got a break in your hand. Sometimes you're going to put that out naturally and turn the glider so quick, like a cat.

If you've got a break in your hand, you're going to feel yourself being plucked, get turned around. You were planning on going flying, it's just happened a little earlier than you anticipated, you know? And fly the glider being ready, like you said, for that, like Chrigel is, and being able to grab the rears, and it starts with kiting. It also is grabbing the brake lines above, because if your risers are twisted up and you can't identify the rears and grab the rears, you've got to use those brake lines. and get so good at kiting that way that you kind of go to the little back part of the hill and start getting lifted off the ground, and you're not really ready until you can actually backwards, and you're comfortable flying off the hill backwards, and you've got to build up to that in baby steps. You know, you don't want to just get out there and try it right away, but being ready for that is huge. There's so much of taking those little, those little pieces and going to the hill and working on that, like you said, even for a Red Bull athlete, um, so yeah, for the launching, that's really, that's kind of my big one, is the pluckage.

And the thing is, is realize that you can use your feet. It doesn't matter if you're using the um a's in each individual hand, or you've got the a's here with the a's and c's, or whatever, you still want to be moving your feet, and you really want, you want to, if you can, to get that pace that the wing comes up to kind of be the same every time, develop some consistency there. If that thing rips up too fast, and you got to check with Blake break, you're going to get plucked, but if you run fast

you got it

Yeah, you know, some people can't move that fast. So, you know, if you're someone that's 68 or whatever, it's like, then you know, maybe you gotta hold off, or, or, and you know, not go on that day. Or, figures, you know, get a spot or figure something out, you know, that's close to the train launching and landing, and those are the big ones. The only other one is, um, every 360 starts out as a figure eight, whether it's on launch or whether it's on a cross-country flight, and you come in and you got to be close to the terrain. You can't count on that climb that you get there on that spine to where you start pointing to the terrain to continue to climb you, and I'm so glad

You brought that up because that was one of the first things I learned. So I, I, you know, I did my P2 out with Santa, and then the next one of the next stops was here with you. You know, I was with Randy Campanora, we were on a little road trip up the coast, and which was so cool. This is like one of the first places I flew here, but I mean, that one of the things that I learned back. So this was 2005, I guess 2006, it was, uh, you know, don't turn into the hill, you know? And that's still getting people all the time, man. They get, they get a ripper right off the line and

They're like, "Oh my god, I'm going to"

punch, and they turn and they hit all that sink right behind the thermal and they drop. They're like, "I just didn't know I could drop that fast," and they pound, yeah.

It's, it's one that we see at our flight park with experienced pilots, you know? And maybe it's because it's the training hill, and it's this big green grassy knoll, and it's not the rocky mountains, yeah, rocky, rocky terrain I should say. Um, but yeah, you know, you—I had a socal open that Mackler put on like back in the day, I had an ice rink where I was stuck and two people passed me and I, you know, below me, and I'm like, "Man." And I went to where they're at and I wasn't getting up, and I got impatient, and you know, I was pushing a little bit away from the hill going, "I'm gonna have enough room to bring this around." And you know, I—I cut it close, I swooped in with some energy, and I probably cleared the terrain by five or six feet with some energy, and the adrenaline just went, you know?

And then, you know, then you get the buffer adjustment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, another heartbeat. Yeah, now you're talking to yourself. What are you doing? Nothing is worth this, you know? And so, you know, people have that, um, but it's one of those things where, um, again, you got to talk about it and realize that, um, you have to assume as you're looking back the hill, you got to assume that you got a tailwind and you're gonna hit the worst sink that you're—you've ever hit, are you still gonna clear the hill by 100 feet or 150 feet, whatever your safe number is? And you know, you— just about that, and it's just you have that happen once and you got a buffer, but hopefully it doesn't happen and you don't clear the hill and smack in. That's a tough lesson I

Think, yeah, it is one of those. It's like, it's like, you know, backcountry avalanche stuff. You know, you don't—you can do all the courses and be really diligent, but until you get in a situation, it's not. It's really hard to learn. And that's—that's one of those, like, the turning with the hill, because you can get away with it over and over. You're in the rising air and you're over and over and over and over. And I had the same thing the last day of the Sierra Safari with Nick and all those guys, and I hit the ground with a lot of energy, and it was right in between these two boulders. I mean, if it wasn't just pure, pure, pure luck, and I just walked away, relaunched, and kept going. Yeah, and it—I've never done since, and it just reset everything. And so it's, you know, but if I hadn't had that, you know, if I hit the boulder, yeah, all that energy

Yeah, it's, it's a big one. I mean, it's that gets a lot of people. It does, man. And it's, and again, it's so, it's this, it's this my handle for, you know, everybody's got the radio handle here in Santa Bar. Mine was SA, which is not like a SA, it's not that it stands for situational awareness and Truax, it gave it to me after I landed deep and did something stupid. Like, I think it was only in sport for four months, but I had a nine-hour hike and, you know, I was stumbling out of there, dehydrating, I was done. But you got to have that, and you got to have that buffer, and, you know, you kind of got to reevaluate the day as the day goes on. If the clouds come in and it shuts things down a little bit, maybe you're willing, it's not windy, maybe you're willing to get a little closer to the terrain on certain days. And you got to kind of always do that reevaluation.

Where's the day at? I mean, flying into different valleys that have different winds and, you know, around the world. But on a, on kind of a basic level, it's like you really got to evaluate the day and evaluate how close you're willing to be to the terrain, um, you know. And so that, that figure every 360 starts as a figure eight and the other, the end of that is that on a landing final approach, you got to kind of assume the same thing. You got to assume as soon as you make that final turn, you're going to hit sink. Are you going to clear the pendulum or whatever it is on the turn on that? And if it looks like you're not, don't continue the turn and force it into the wind, just stop turning and fly off the wind line. It's going to be the lesser of two evils, for sure. Um, and then, you know, my other big from the risk management thing, really the last kind of my heavy hitting thing on it is the reserve parachute, you know, um, it's one of those things that people maybe get to practice it in SIV

and we, of course, talk about it. Anytime you have your reserve repack repacked, you should always be in the simulator pulling it out instead of just handing off your reserve or you're saying, "Here, repack this for me." It's an opportunity to practice that, just like every landing is an opportunity to practice a spot landing, no matter how big the LZ is. So the reserve thing is something where, and Mitch's visualization thing, it's like, "Let's visualize this thing, let's talk about this thing, let's realize that we need to celebrate the reserve toss." You know, it's all pot. No one's ever going to say to you, "Why did you throw your reserve?" And they all work. Yeah, they always work, man, they always work. That's the thing. I don't know anybody who's thrown their reserve and has followed the proper protocol, which is getting out of your harness and, you know, working disabled the wing.

Um, that's had something serious happen

Yeah, you get an ankle or something. Yeah, you

Know, yeah, they work. So, so, uh, there's people that obviously that we both know that it's like, man, if they were just thrown, and so that's happening too much, and people need to make that an instinct and be comfortable with it. and maybe it's a thing where, with reserve clinics, that we have to have a dummy me reserve and have people doing it all the time and just throwing and knowing and throwing and dealing with all these what-if scenarios What if my handle can't come? We'll use two hands or pull this way, you know? And make it this, this thing, and talk about it a lot, and talk about it at every clinic you do, and just kind of put that out there and encourage people to go through it at the SIV. Because you're right, they do work. Um, I mean, when I was down in Mexico, uh, at the World Championships as the team leader in 2009, there was, I think, 26 deployments, and that was when the wings there, you could find, you know, uncertified gliders.

Back then, there was stuff blowing up, and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna," but everybody who threw, I think the guy from Japan, like, sprained his wrist or something, right? So they work, and that's something that that people really got to get, you got to use that thing, you got to be willing to use it, don't hesitate, you know? It's not going to let you down.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Is that... I, I think that, um, the thing I saw in by this year, is it was just classic by. It was strong, windy. It was on, you know, it was great. And, uh, you know, there was a lot of

What I saw was that, you know, SIV over the water with a dude in your ear is not by a man, it's just that's a totally different ball game. You're not instilled, you know, you—I mean, and what I like that you've instilled here is that everybody here talks about training. They're not going to just fart around in the sky; they're all taking it like, we got to go. You got that place in the evening, they go over here and they top land and they ridge soar and they make little games and stuff, you know? And, uh, yeah, Sage and, uh, you know, everybody's talking about training, and I think that's the, you know, the recognition is that we all know that SIV is awesome, right? And you should be doing it as much as you possibly can, but that is not five meter a second conditions, you know?

You spin your glider in a big wound up thermal 300 feet off the ground, you do not think that's your throw, man, you hawk, you're not recovering that, you know? And so it's, yeah, it's just, it's a different ball game, you know? It's a very different situation that's hard without a lot of hours. It's the only way to get it is hours. That's

It, that's it. And you know, I mean, we're not talking about the whole risk management thing. I mean, out of everybody that I've known on our tours and flying here, visiting our students, visiting pilots, our students, it's like nobody's falling out of the sky that often compared to people getting injured on launching and landing. Sure, so believe me, I'm all about SIVs. I think they're great, but I think people are like, "I gotta go do an SIV clinic." I'm like, "Yes, you do, it's a great thing to do, but you've also got to go work on your fundamentals and be ready for some of this other stuff and think through some of this stuff." This whole fact that the, the ground is what's going to get you and have your game together in all the variables that are close to the ground. Sure, you know,

So let's, let's talk about this guy. Those of you listening, I just pointed my head risk management in the mental side, like I heard, you know, I'm just constantly learning. It's so cool, but three days ago, um, everybody went up and it sounded like the air was a little ratty early, and I was doing a hike down by Franklin, so I just, I heard about it. But, you know, Revis, amazing pilot, that dude's on, right? Yes. And, uh, and he just, he, he just flew right to Parma. He was like, I just didn't like the risk-reward. But the other thing he says, he's got a rule that if he screws up three things before he launches, he's not flying, you know? And he was kind of like two feet away from the ground and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna have to do it again." And he was, um, something else, like he hadn't turned on, you know?

I mean, it's minor stuff, but to him, it's like that's a, that's a, that's a tick in the box, like something didn't write up here. I'm not thinking really clearly, so what a cool system. You know, it's great because when we're a little bit stressed, a little bit tired, a little bit dehydrated, maybe we've had a couple too many beers the night before, whatever, like there's, you know, there's, there's a lot of those times where it's just like, "Man, I don't know if I'm really here." That, well, you know, when I was first learning, when I was first getting my P2, Um, at it with Santa, you know, it was like the last day I was getting my little mountain flight. You know, it was wicked hot in summer and baking and, uh, and Jeff was kind of watching me and he could tell that I was kind of like forgetting it, do I turn right or do I turn left? And I was kind of having a hard time hooking in and stuff, and he just came over, put his hand on my shoulder, and he's like, "You're done today.

You're, you're all over." And I couldn't recognize it, but he could. Just, you know, like, hey, so how do you teach, how do you guys foster that or teach that? I mean, no, I know there's a lot of different levels, but you know...

It's that's a, that's a great point, and it's something that I've seen that three, there's people that I know if they have a three-role thing would have been happening, they wouldn't have had their event. Um, Mitch started developing this buddy system thing, which I think is pretty cool too. We've always had the culture of checking each other's stuff out at launch when you're getting ready. Hey, is your thing? Don't be afraid to say something is your right, is your correct rising top. Um, checking people's, making sure people's leg straps are hooked up, so that that three rules are broken thing. I mean, I definitely know people that have skipped that one and being rushed. Typically, when people are in a rush, if you're in a rush, in the wrong headspace. So yeah, I mean we have to share all that stuff and communicate that stuff in ground school and then continue to communicate it.

Be as an instructor. You know, we've—we've talked about that at the flight park especially, and we get a lot of one-day people up there that are doing their first day, and they're just so stoked, and we have to be looking for what Santa noticed in you that day. Um, that's one of the big ones. So, it's—it's one of those things with that whole check in with yourself, self-awareness thing as a pilot, but also for people that aren't awake enough or aware enough to help themselves to be able to get in and say something, whether you're an instructor or not. That's one of the things that sort of needs to be encouraged is, if you think you see something, say it. I remember when I was, uh, only been flying for a year and a half or so, and I saw a guy flying at this spot where it was kind of a ridge that kind of did this elbow, and it was getting more cross, and I kept saying to him on the radio, "Hey, don't be flying over there, it's getting more cross." And after saying it a few times, it sounded a little bit like a broken record.

I kind of said, "Hey, maybe I should mind my own business, and I'm not an instructor, and I don't know what's top what I'm talking about." And he ended up having an event and—and going in, and I'm like, "And so..." And I've seen that with other people. It's like, if you see something, see somebody flying too deep in the brakes, you know, in a graceful manner, say it. Um, it's something that they need to hear, and at least have some dialogue about it, and bring somebody else that's an instructor in to talk about it. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's definitely something that we're looking for. Um, the fatigue factor, for sure. The focus factor, and if you see somebody moving fast and being kind of twitchy on launch, and they're nervous, it's like, "Hey, that's..." and we try to, as instructors at the hill and um in the mountains, we try to be...

we talk a lot about being in a physical space to do something, meaning as a person there to help and guide, not only reassessing the conditions, but if things go bad on the launch, you know, it's like, "Let's not see how this unfolds, let's stop it and grab onto a riser and bring them down." Be in a physical space where you can do something. If you are up at the flight park and somebody takes off on a first-day thing, and they're, and you're on the radio going, "Go right, go right," they're still on the ground running, and they're going off in the canyon. You messed up as an instructor; you got to be in front of them, between where they're going, and be like, "Hey, let's just bring this one down." And same thing can be said on the mountain. There's a certain point when you kind of step away from people, but why not be there to stop pluckage on the mountain and be like, "Hey, let's just bring this one down?" Someone new, or when the conditions are ripe, and you know, we kind of communicate with the pilot or student saying, "Hey, I'm here.

Um, I'm not going to do anything. Am I making you uncomfortable? I'm going to be here to just kind of support you if you need something, but pretend I'm not here and focus on the task at hand." And you know, to really be in their body for the launch, be grounded. You got to be grounded before you can fly. You can't be... you can't have that tempo up and that nervous energy going. You got to be grounded and in your body before you fly. And one of the big ones with respect to the buddy system and self-awareness and the pre-flight check is the leg straps. Thankfully, all these modern harnesses are building systems into them that prevent you from having a situation where you take off and you're not strapped in. For the most part, but there's still some older harnesses and still some that don't have that.

And I mean, I remember Greg Babush's pod took off at an Owens comp, you know, 10 or so years ago, and it was riding up there. I mean, it was thermaling back in the canyon that, though we didn't, people are coming on the radio and Bernacki's like, "No, there's no pilot in that aircraft." You know, and he slipped out at 10 feet. He had good situational awareness and said, "Hey, I don't want to deal with this. I slipped out." He had a soft, you know, just rolled his ankle and was out for a couple few days. But that's something that I bring up, you know, that weird what-if scenario. I mean, there's been people who've lost their lives because they didn't do their leg straps. Sure, just happened in Columbia this winter. Pilot Air, exactly. So, have people really thought about, I mean, like I said, the modern harnesses have systems and stuff, but have you ever really been in a simulator that's been lifted up higher than a normal simulator and hung from a harness and had both?

See what that feels like to be put yourself in that scenario and what do you do? And I'd never really thought about it till some of those instances were put in front of me. You sit back and you think about, what would I have done there? And that's just something, it's like, okay, let's practice this, you just don't practice it. I mean, you're gonna sit in the simulator and do it, that's about it. But it's something that has gotten people, after reflecting on it and hanging in one of those things, funny. I mean, the whole thing shifts up and you've got some brake on. And my takeaways from messing around was that is, I'm not going to give up my hold position of power to get more comfortable and try to be your hero and get back in the seat and be in a worse position because, you know, the side adjustment straps are up here right by your ribs, they move up to under your armpits and you got brake on.

Now the whole thing's kind of moved up, so what I would probably do for myself is clasp my hands together and not lose anything and just fly the thing into some tree or some bushes at launch. And I don't know how long I can hang on for, but you know, situations like that, are those just random what-ifs? But you talk about them, try to figure out what you would do and pass that information along and, hopefully, somebody who actually has that happen had thought about it and was ready, but yeah, in Colombia that happened. And there was, you know, again, landing, you know, the winds come in and you're pushing the envelope in the afternoons down there. I think one of the girls was landing in windy conditions, a choice, yeah, right. The other one was, um, uh, someone took off from launch and let go of their brakes to get comfortable in their seat and wasn't there to be ready to grab the pressure and have a deflation and run in.

So, all, it's never the gear, it's never the gear, yeah, that's it. And so taking some ownership there on that and just really, um, having it, it's nice when, when it's not fun to talk about some of that stuff, but you got to talk about it to be ready for it and figure out what could have been done differently and what you don't want to do. And so, I think Revis is three, uh, three things is, bro, I

Like, yeah, I agree with you. I like it because it's something concrete and it doesn't change and it—you don't, you know, because otherwise you let yourself out of stuff, you know? That's a real concrete one. Wait a minute, I've done, uh, like, I'm over the limit now, and I think that's one of the things I'm enjoying the most about my flying now is that, uh, you know, you go through this phase where you're so hungry, you know? Like Logan right now is like, "I'm pulling, I'm pulling the wing out of the bag every day." That's my thing. Yeah, that is awesome. Yeah, I dig that. You know, that dude's gonna be good. Um, but what I'm liking about it now, like Nick Greece talks about, like this, you know, you know, you know, instead of getting that extra 20k, I'm going to the airport or I'm going to the burger joint, you know? Or like, I just, you know, there's a lot of times where I'm like, I don't, I don't have it, I don't need to push this like I did for all those years, you know?

And it's still just as enjoyable because Santa said this too. He's like, "The big epic days will come, and those are the ones you gotta nail." And you know, you don't need, like, it's—there is a time where you've got... I had an Instagram, uh, message today and the guy said, "Hey, how much went?" There's

a time where you've got... I had an Instagram, uh, message today and the it

Was after the post from yesterday going over the back of Franklin, and those of you listening at that, we this guy Revis, and I, one of my supporters in the Xops, had a really neat flight yesterday over the back here, which is pretty proper tiger country. I was really impressed, and uh, and and it was really windy, and uh, this guy asked me like, "How much wind are you willing to fly in?" in the lee, and I said, "Man, it's just you can't have a number. It depends on the day. It depends on how confident I am, don't know what gear I'm going to be able to fly in." And I said, "Man, it's just you can't have a, it depends on just where I am. Am I current, you know? Am I 300 hours into the season, or am I five, you know?" And and I just, you know, I've stuck, I've flown in horrendously, and I've flown in not so badly, and the not so badly scared me more than the horrendous.

It just depends on your headspace, depends on where you are.

It's so true, there's so much to evaluate for that question. There's so many variables, so many, and so the the uh culture of self-awareness and checking in with yourself, and that's something that you probably got to practice too. It's not something that you naturally do. I had a, I had a a bummer landing in Colombia. I mean, I didn't get injured, but it wasn't pretty, and I came down on my butt. And you know, after and Mitch's talk about visualization and stuff, it's like you talk about doing that stuff, but do you actually go and sit down and do the yoga pose or do the meditation or whatever you want to call it? That is thinking about going through that, and it's about doing that work. And I think Mitch does that kind of work.

I think that's why I've seen the results that he's seen. He does it, does a lot of different things, but from the mental aspect. And so I did, I did it. I sat down and I did that, and I think it's, you know, people want um to grow and achieve these goals as pilots, and I feel like that whole mental side of it, and the debrief and the review and checking in yourself is such a big part of it. It's kind of harder to do, um, there's not always a roadmap for that, but I think you know it's like practicing the guitar. It's like 15 minutes a day and you can learn to play a few chords. You know, you've got to put the time in to nurture that part of your pilot portfolio, um, and realizing that, like you said, it's not, it's not time to push, it's time to go there. And that goes back to re-evaluating all the time.

I mean, there's times when I've been up there flying and it just, I haven't been able to make sense of the air, and that's part of the reward is being able to track that core and stay with it. And it's like I can't figure out how to figure any of this out. You know, I think I'd rather be biking or doing something else. It's like, it's this just isn't fun right now, and you head out and you land and you live to fly another day. And and um, yeah, like what Santa said, the good days are going to come, they're going to be there for sure. Yeah, the

Last time we flew together that I remember, uh, we've seen each other since, but like proper flying in the air, I think was Chelan in like 2012 or 2013, because I remember this retreat with the big flight that was the, at that time, the biggest one, and then they went even bigger like a couple years later. But that was an epic flight that was, yeah, it was fun out over the Palouse, so beautiful that time, so cool. Um, you were flying the Ice Peak as I remember. I don't remember what harness you were flying, but take me through a little bit of gear. Uh, you know, I know that you're a big shop and you import, and so I'm not really asking for the, you know, like what brand, but like what are you excited about when you're—you've seen this revolution in, in gear from the late 90s and shark nose and just all the stuff that's happening.

You talk about how much you know that the gear has improved. Um, what you know when you're with your students, what wings are you excited about? You know what, what are you personally flying? Just talk about gear a bit. Yeah.

You know, for the school, it's nice. I mean, you get, if you're training on an older glider, you're working harder.

Having as much success, if you know, if you've got five people out there, so it's really nice to get modern stuff out there with the whole rigid foil revolution thing and stuff with the leading edge and going away from Mylar. That leading edge is just so much lighter, and it's so nice for it to come up for them. And so it's, you know, and it's important for the student as well to do well on their first couple pull-ups, be like, "Well, I'm pretty good at this, you know, I can do this." If they're someone that's like, "Really, I can fly solo today, my first day," that's just something. It's so nutty about it is that, you know, if you're going to go to a surf lesson, you're probably not going to show up within two or three hours and be up riding the wave for a minute. Yeah, your first day, no way. But you will hear in our training, you come, you show up, and it's like they're just blown after that first flight. They've got this look on their face.

So the gear makes a difference for people like that. This modern gear gets them going faster and success sooner, you know. The weight is just the coolest thing, and I've just sort of started to get on that train. Um, I got a lighter pod harness now and a lighter reserve, and I'm like, "Oh wow, this is nice." You know, and you know Mitch was, was, you know, tweaking on that stuff a bunch with the Red Bull X-Alps and all that stuff going on. He's gearing light and stuff, but I think that's been a huge thing for people. The designers that, um, I've talked to Frant from Up, and what I've read and heard is that the lighter stuff is better for recovery and that type of thing. So that's positive. Um, yeah, and it's just nice. I think that 27-gram material holds up pretty good. Um, I'm waiting for somebody to make a light tandem.

You know, that's—that's not just single surface, right? That'd be, I think that'd be a hit. Um, and there's some of them out there. Um, but, uh, yeah. And you know, just the—the whole, uh, the pod thing, pod harness thing, has really come a long way. I feel like the reserve thing is great, too, but just the pod thing with the aerodynamics and people are flying those. There's more people doing it, and it's just comfortable and fun, and it feels good. You know, we're obviously not having people not jump into two things at once, like a new wing and a new reserve. Just get used to something for a bit and get to know the pod, or get to know the wing, before you're jumping into that kind of stuff. That's a consideration, but yeah, just loving all the gadgetry. I mean, when—when we did that comp with Truax and Aspen back in the late 90s, I mean, we didn't—we were had two disposable cameras around our wrists, taking turns at turn points, taking pictures at turn points.

You know, you know, it's like, this is crazy. And—and then, you know, now with all these instruments, I remember the first time

Yes, variometer integration with glide ratio, and you're gonna arrive this high at the turn point. I'm like, "This is like cheap, man. This is crazy, you know?" So that's been fun, yeah. The—the all the instruments, and it seems like the, uh, you know, the the instrument game has just exploded. There's so many different brands out there and stuff like that, and there's so much going on with that stuff, um, and knowing how to work on it. That's why, I mean, we've always been with, uh, you know, Fly Tech. After Steve Crew, he's been so great with service and stuff like, "Here, help us with this," and he's been really good about that. But there's just so much of that; it's pretty cool. It's fun to see. And then the reserves, you know, people—the Regalo reserve, the steerable reserve, um, and these new square designs are pretty cool. Um, Charlie's got a steerable square now, and you know, my whole philosophy on the reserves, after seeing what we talked about, seeing over the years, they just work.

The whole "keep it simple, stupid" thing. Boy, do you see someone coming down under one of those regalos? It sure is pretty cool. They're like, wow, look at their kind of flying along there for sure and stuff. I haven't ever really met anybody that's been like, darn, if Bill would have just had a steerable reserve, he would have been okay. I'm not saying that, that obviously has never happened, but in my experience, um, it's just about using whatever you got, get it out there. Um, but you do notice with those square designs compared to the rounds, just the descent rate is as much better for them. They're coming down slower and, and, uh, less oscillation. You see that up at the SIVs for sure. People, you know, they haven't been around for a whole long, very long time, and people are like, why didn't you sell me one of those? I'm like, they've only been around for a handful of years, you know?

They see the difference. Yeah, sure. Um, so yeah, and then you know, just the whole wing thing, I stopped saying years and years ago, can't possibly get any better. It just does. And so I think it's great that there's so many brands out there succeeding and pushing the envelope with design and stuff like that. And, um, some of these newer, newer wings that, that have good performance and that have good performance and that have good performance with real passive safety, giving them the attention and the labor and the materials and stuff that the higher level wings have given an end-comp type wing, love to a lower level wing, and it's got all this performance with all this passive safety with, you know, fairly mellow aspect ratios, is pretty eye-opening. It's like, wow, so the, that kind of technology and those brands is pretty exciting to see.

And I think maybe we'll see more brands doing that. Um, they're more expensive because of the labor that goes into making them, but you know, you, you compare an A on one of those gliders to that goes about as well as a high B. And so you can't compare the price of that A to the same A's; it's, you got to compare it to the glider it performs like. And the price doesn't—the reason that those cost more is because they're more cells and there's more labor to go into them. But to see that happening, and you know you're paying an extra four or five hundred bucks, is—is that four or five hundred bucks worth having all the performance of that glider in all the passive safety that comes with an A? People, from what I'm seeing, people are saying, "Uh-huh, it is the handling." I mean, my wife was flying a high B, almost a C, and she went to one of those—it's an A.

She went one of those type of gliders that's got that kind of love going into it, and she's pretty happy on it. Yeah, yeah, having a good time. Yeah,

Wow, cool. That's really cool. Um, so what are the things after all these years of instructing flying, you know, you've seen a lot of great and, obviously, some tragedies we all have. What are the things that still—you still see? What's like, if you could remove one thing from, you know, it's the—the most common mistake that you still see people make, what is it? What could you remove? You know, like, if you were—if you can talk to every paraglider in the whole world right now and you could give them one bit of advice, what would it be? Good.

Question, what's at the top of the list? It's not a specific thing; it's you have to keep your fundamentals polished, you know? The the best guys, the best pilots that I know, have been hurt doing basic fundamental things. And again, it goes back to the launching and the landing. Blowing a launch or having a rough landing—I mean, if I'm going to have, if I'm going to prevent people from having, if that's what we're talking about, risk management and injuries, for preventing people, that's what's the most important thing, which kind of is to me, you know, mother hand. I don't want anybody getting hurt. It's about having fun, is keeping your fundamental balanced portfolio. It's not just about flying; it's your skills and your decisions and, you know, an awareness that when you're, when you're close to the ground, you're in the red zone, you have to have hyper awareness.

You have to be sharp, you have to be, you have to, you know, you have to have a code, you know, you have to have a code when you're close to the ground and you have to have a code on launch. Um, not getting plucked is a huge one, having the three rule and being about a pre-flight and carrying enough break on a forward run that you're going to be okay. And that's a pretty good solid. You're, you're the percentage just drops significantly there. And then on landing, I mean, flying straight, not turning close to the ground. You know, the injuries that I've had, have I haven't hurt my wrist? I mean, it was me early on in the sport, kind of. I compare it to being on a motorcycle and looking around being like, "Wow, it's beautiful," and I was pretty close to training. There was a line and I quickly made things close to the terrain.

You know, it always is. It's, um, not very common to fall out of the sky and have to have an issue where you get injured there. It's more common. If you took a poll of everybody in your community, it's like, "Wow, it is. We all are having stuff that has happened close to launch and landing." Um, you know, not to say that that deflation can't turn into a cravat where you don't throw or doing a 360 too close to the hill, but being on the top of the list just has to be keeping your portfolio rounded to where your ground handling is super solid and you realize what's important on your landing. Um, you realize what can get you on a pluckage launch, that's part of landing and that's really, I mean, that's such a huge part of it.

Yeah, because we're up there flying around and there's nothing for us to smack into and as long as we're ready We're good. Uh, it's just, it's the cornerstone or the foundation of of risk management because it's where the most stuff happens. It's where the most stuff I've seen happen. And you know, when stuff happens and nobody pays a price, it's a great thing. It's almost good that it happened in a way, you know, nobody got hurt. We all learned from it. Let's all talk about it. But that would have to be telling pilots of any level something that applies to a Red Bull athlete and something applies to just got their P2 or getting their P2. And it's, you know, I used to see people come out in our community that were great pilots who'd been flying for years and the new students' launch looked better than theirs.

And you can tell that the conditions are a little cross or whatever, and they're up there just thinking, "Man, if I can just get past this launch, it's going to be a great flight." That's not... that's not where you should be, you know? And it's... I know it's hard to sacrifice a good flying day, but man, you get out there and start doing that stuff and you realize how fun it is to be out at the hill and playing with that stuff.

and you're like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna do that stuff."

And you know, the the wind sock at the hill dictates what you're gonna work on. If there's no wind, you do, you practice forwards. How long has it been since you've done a forward? If it's real windy, you practice the pluckage. Um, if it's about medium, then you know, maybe you work on spot landings. There's always something to pick depending on what that wind sock is doing, you know, to work on.

Yeah, that—I'm glad you brought that up, because it's, it's, uh, I mean, and we touched on this before, but it was really interesting for me.

In the X-Alps, coming out of it, it made me realize how much more critical that stuff because I, you know, you kind of go through the phase where you're working on all that, and you're bringing the bag, you know, the wing out of the bag every day, you're crazy about it. Every sledder is just a ripper, you know, it's awesome. And then you get, I don't know, you're not jaded, but you just, you know, you start chasing the bigger days, and if it's not a hundred K day, I go mountain biking, you know? And you just don't, and you start not doing the forwards, and you start not doing the really hairy ground handling, and you start not, you know, doing enough top landing, and that kind of thing. And you know, it's like, like for me, it's like you don't really work on top landing until you go do a bivy trip, and then you're like, "Holy hell, I'm really bad at this, I need to learn how to top land," you know? But going to the X-Alps made me realize, like, how many things were pretty built up, okay?

And a lot of things needed a lot of work, you know? And it was like, yeah, going back to the training hill, you go just step outside in the yard when it's blowing on the flat ground, and farting around, making things go wrong, yeah

There's definitely some stuff for, for the, for the X-Alps that's you can work on. Some of it, our training hill, but some of that's beyond. I mean, that's high-level stuff, but you're right. It's almost like you have to. I mean, I noticed you top landed the other day up in the mountains when we were up there filming that thing, and it's like, that's great practice for you to come in and be doing that. Do you do that a lot, all the time? Yeah, yeah, all the

Time, yeah. I, I basically for kind of the year before the race, I kind of dropped the whole like trying to send it, and I'll just try to send it in five parts, you know? And just, just, you know, try to put it down in the middle of the day when it's ripping, you know? Not stuff I would ever want to teach somebody, that you know, but just I learned that from Honza, yeah. That dude can launch and land off anything like a cat, you know? And that's what that race is all about, you know? If you can't do that, you're gonna bomb out, climb another four thousand feet, you know? Or you can sit up there and wait for the to pass over and relaunch in an hour, save yourself a lot of energy, you know? It

may be something you are teaching someday, who knows, down the road, you know, five, you know, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, people are going go get with Gavin, he'll show

You, well, what it made me realize was just the, you know, that yeah, that's hard to practice that and, uh, and it's, man, it's easy to get hurt practice, you know, doing that. So you just got it, but you got to do it, you got to practice it, yeah.

And and on that note, um, you know, I try to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, and so I don't want my students or newer pilots top landing in the mountains. I differentiate a top landing site; it's got to be only, uh, ridge soaring, and it could be near the ocean or somewhere in there, but then there's thermals mixed in, it's not a ridge soaring site anymore, you know, because of that whole philosophy of the red zone. We want to get away from the terrain, so I don't top land unless I'm doing a rescue and it's safe for me to top land.

Someone needs to have that in their portfolio if they're in the X ops, and so you got to practice it. The rules can be bent there a little bit if the conditions are right for it, and you've practiced it to top land for grabbing the van to drive it down. I'm always at the thing, it's like, "Hey man, I'll take you back up the hill," you know, unless you got it nailed and it's overcast and it's not windy. It's like, we just tried to get away from that when we did it, so let's stay away from it type thing. No,

I think it's, you know, there's, there's, I think staying in the sport for a long period is eliminating undue risk and, but what, what, what the X ops does, it's just scary and, you know, and you, if you don't do that, you're, you're, you're gonna get hurt in the race, you know, because you're so tired and you don't get enough sleep and, you know, so it's just kind of one of these things where it's funny, you know, as of course I think it's just age and hopefully some wisdom, that kind of thing, you know, I get more and more conservative, but I realized that, you know, come June, I gotta be in a headspace

and i'm gonna

headspace where you're invincible, you know, you just have to be like really on your games, otherwise you're gonna suck, you

Gotta be ready. It's all going back to being ready, and you chose to fly this event, and that's part of the portfolio you need for that event, yeah? And you can all that.

weird stuff, and you can

Get good, honestly. I don't really want to encourage people. Yeah, I mean, you can get good at it. I'll encourage people to do it if they do it like this and practice up, and not try to do it once the training hell and then they're doing it only in the mountains, sure.

To that build up to that at, and and so only ridge soaring places for the students like, hey, and you got to check at a ridge song site too. Yeah, I mean, you go up to Sand Dollar up at Big Sir, and you know there's some people that have been worked coming in there, and you're kind of scratching your head and you're saying, "Why is there a rotor here?" Sometimes it's hard to figure out, and luckily there were some pioneers that took some arrows at that site. That I landed at the beach. If there's no beach at that site, I'm probably not gonna fly because I'm not gonna top land there, and I so I try to play it uber conservative and set the example, and it's like I walk the walk, and and I don't miss out on too much fun at all being that way, you know, a lot of ways.

You're just missing out on intensity, yeah? Stress, yeah? It's not, no, after the ex-ops, there's no more of that stuff, yeah, for sure. Well, maybe you've already answered this, but last question, um, and this is—you've heard the podcast, so I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but if you could rewind the clock, uh, this would be going way back for you, but if you could rewind the clock to your 50-hour self, so like that first year, second year, or something, right in there, you're—you're out here, you're just learning with Tom. Um, if you could have gotten some advice that you didn't, what would it be? Like, what, what, what would you change if you could, knowing how it's all kind of, yeah?

Yeah, good question. Um, something that we didn't have back then that we have now are those spots in the delarmes, or actually it's not anymore, it's Garmin is fly with those, man. If you're flying cross country, you got to have one of those now, don't you? Yeah, I mean it's so cool, but that's not really something that was available then. Um, but you know, I tell myself just to, I didn't put myself in a position, so it's so, it's so different for everybody. Some people need the bit in the mouth, some people need to be encouraged, you know? But I, you do have situations where you know one bad decision turns into a bad decisions, so kind of always, always have a plan A, which means always get to a landing zone, and that can be a landing zone that's small with some bushes around.

It's like just always make sure you keep a spot to land within reach and not put yourself, be thinking ahead on that. Always have a plan A, you know? Taking off for a flight, every flight, it's like there's the landing zone. If I don't hit any lift and if I happen to get a climb, then I've thought about plan B, but as I get low, plan A's, I can have a new plan A if I'm not in that area, but just not getting to a point where you're, um, doing rash decisions, just diving in places When you're green, that's going to come, and a lot of... I learned a lot of that stuff just following true acts for years. The the A-team that was here following him around was just... it's like, really, we're going here, and you know, it's like you figure out that it works, and you

know what, some of it doesn't work, and it usually worked with him. But learning from those guys and flying with mentors, it's like I would team fly and not be a lone wolf. That's one of the things I would tell myself, for sure. Um, as a... as I was, you know, part of the reward of this sport is... is making decisions and flying far, and your reward is, your proof is in the pudding, dude. You flew over 100 miles, or you did this great flight, and you know, sometimes even on comp tasks... It's like you arrive at the end of the day and the guys that you were with made it and you didn't. You're like, "Man, I should have stuck with those guys." So there's a time when you got to kind of—that sounds like discipline. Yeah, exactly. You got to have discipline. You got to—you got to use the—use the team, you know, be it, be part of that. And you know, you got to take your lead out of the climb once in a while, find mark the next lift.

But um, fly with other people. Stick with—stick with other people. Don't be in a rush, you know, as greasy calls it, the big brain. It's like, stick with the big brain. There's a lot of—there's a lot of smart people in that thermal. Um, so fly with people. That's a good one. And man, that's our door. Yeah, it is. You know, depending on your personality, it's taken me years to get that one. Come on,

stick with the brain, stick with the brain. No, I'm not.

I mean, once in a while you're rewarded and you've made the right decision, and if you're in the flow or the groove or whatever, you go that way sometimes and do it.

You're gonna get so much more out of, uh, slowing your roll and sticking with the crew and sticking with the team and team flying, especially in the flats. But yeah, that's something I would, I would tell my 50-hour pilot self. It's like, you don't know everything. You know you're pretty good, but you don't know everything. You're not always right. It's like, sit back and learn something. Because the other thing about that is, is that when you do that, you have something to share at the end of the day. Whereas before, you're like, thinking about it, and you're like, "Oh, I'm not thinking about it," and debriefing yourself. If you take the time to do that, I mean, you're actually, you're definitely reflecting on those fun moments of the day, whether it's a low save or a climb or you got really high. But to be able to talk about those moments with a group of people and share what you saw them do and stuff, you get more.

You do, you know? Yeah, and we really try to teach that on our tours. We try to teach the team flying thing because you're just going to go further and do better and learn more with the team, Ben.

was saying that last night on the way home because he had a wicked flight, you know, and he, he landed. I wouldn't say he bombed out, it was just like, "Man, I'm on a glider, I don't... there's way too much wind." He made a really good call, basically, and, uh, landed out and that, you know, the one move back and, uh, got back to the truck and chased us down. And on the way back, you know, Revis and I are just like, and then we did that and then we did that and he's like, "Man, I learned more from these retrieves, like everybody should do retrieves all the time." He's like, "I'm, I'm learning so much from this, you know," and it's exactly like that's a, that's, that's, yeah, it's a good thing to volunteer for, that's

What's that's what's been happening in our community exactly? And people are hungry for, we try to get the new people, we're like, "Hey, it's not really flyable up for you today, but drive and you're going to be psyched. We'll buy you dinner and beer and you can get all this stuff." Yeah, and that's such a part of, again, going back to that community thing, there's so much, uh, extra gravy that everybody gets to just being in that, in that van and that pod of information and energy going up the hill, the stoke, and everybody's talking about the laughs, right? What they saw, the weather, what do you think? And where are we going today? Yeah, and a new pilot's just going, "This is cool," and he's listening, he's asking questions, he's just listening to conversations. Like Ben was listening to you guys talk about today and sharing, sharing it. So that's, that's something I definitely would tell my, uh, 50-hour pilot, "You should still do retrieves, yeah?

And you should team fly instead of being a lone wolf, for sure." Yeah.

I like it, I like it, Rob. Thanks, man. Super honor, uh, it's very special being back here, and it's special to see you, and uh, I appreciate that. Thanks a lot, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, and thanks for taking the time and energy to put this together. Um, it's the same kind of future learning thing I'm talking about with respect to the cracker sauce and mayhem. I mean, this is where it's at, and uh, thanks for taking the time to do it. It's huge for, and you know, it's global. It's beautiful. I won't stop listening, man. It's just great. Keep going, buddy, and good luck in Europe. Thanks, man. Thanks, man. It's gonna be fun. Hope to see you here next winter. You

Got it. Oh, I will be here. I gotta figure out how to afford this place; I'm gonna move here.

Thanks, man. I hope you

Enjoyed that, always fun to sit down with these great pilots in different parts of the world. Super inspiring as always. All we ask for is a buck a show, if you're getting something out of the Cloudbase Mayhem. There are many ways you can support it, either financially through PayPal and soon to be just directly through our website. We'll have details of that up pretty soon, but if you can't support us financially, we totally understand. This will remain free as long as we can do it, but you can support it in many other ways. You can give us on a rating on iTunes or Stitcher or however you listen to your podcast, that really goes a long ways. You can blog about it on your own blog, you can post about it on social media, share it with your friends, talk about it on the way to launch. I know many, many of you are doing that, I really appreciate it, and I'll see you next time. Bye bye. And another way you can support us is through our store.

We've just got a whole new load of awesome Patagonia t-shirts for men and women and a whole new box of super styley trucker hats by recaps. Each one is totally unique. I got a whole bunch more colors that seem to be more in favor, so go to cloudbasemayhem.com, click on the store link and get some cool swag. That's another great way to support the show. Um, but yeah, get behind us. You know we're doing this, we're doing this directly just through you instead of sponsors because I just can't stand having that whole sponsor thing at the top of the show, and I want you to know that it's a authentic conversation. It's just opinions and they're not being skewed by advertising dollars, which I think is a pretty toxic thing that's happening, going on right now globally with all the stuff going on with Facebook and others.

So anyway, we'd like to do a direct. We appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next one. Cheers.