Thanks for watching!
Hi there everybody, welcome to another very cool episode of the Cloud Base Mayhem. I have been promising you all more hanging shows. I've been very slack in doing that and this one was just a ripper. I sat down with Larry Buehner who was the mastermind and one of the four pilots who pulled off the X-Flight this last summer. 21 days, 11 states, they went from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. They never used their cars to advance. They would only go either laterally, east or west, kind of chasing the weather. And just an awesome, super inspiring mission. And they got some great images. They raised a bunch of money for breast cancer. It was just super cool, incredibly inspiring. Larry's been flying for 45 years, he's never had an accident.
So there's just a lot of great information in this. I think you're going to really enjoy it. All the conversations we have here on the Mayhem are terrific. But this one was kind of in a league of its own. I really enjoyed it. It was painful cutting it off. Before I get into a whole bunch of housekeeping, I also just wanted to mention that he wanted me to give a special shout out to their tug driver. There's a bunch of people that made this happen. Not just the pilots, obviously, but their tug driver, a guy named Rick Mullins, who you'll see in the show notes. Obviously, they couldn't have done it without. They did a lot of towing. I think something like they contacted like 82 airports to pull this off. So very, very, very cool. Before we get into the show, I've got a whole list of housekeeping items here as we descend on the holidays. The first is a weird one.
I bought a tow systems winch out of Slovenia many years ago that we had out on the boat all those years. Did a bunch of towing as I was sailing around the world. I left that at a friend's house in Malaga, Spain. It's been sitting in his basement. I don't even know if he knows it's there, but it's in pretty good shape. The line is, you know, the line on this thing's worth a thousand bucks easy. So if anybody needs a winch in there. In Spain, I would love to hand this off to somebody who's at least going to use it. So it's just been sitting there for years and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it. And I'm obviously not going to use it. So if you're in need of a winch and you're in Spain or can get to Spain, give me a shout. You can reach me through the website, cloudbasedmayhem.com or any of my other channels. Secondly, the foundation for free flight. So those of you who fly in North America, you may not be aware of the foundation for free flight.
This is run by volunteers only. They make access. And site protection. And they do a whole lot of behind the scenes stuff to let us fly. So they have been a major proponent and part of the reason that we're able to fly, especially in North America. So when it comes to lobbying and drones and all kinds of stuff, they are critical and they have a great campaign going right now where anything you give to them, they're a nonprofit, obviously. But they need money to protect sites and protect access and improve sites. Right. And those are the kind of the main things they do. But they also raise money for the world's team and the ex-alps teams and that kind of thing. So I've done a lot of great stuff with them over the years. They're fantastic people and they need our support. But they've got a generous donor right now who's going to match up to $50,000 that's given to them.
So right now your money goes, your money gets doubled. This is in my show notes for this for this episode. And you can also find out more if you just Google foundation for free flight, you'll find out all about that. But it is the giving season. And if you can help them out, it would be great. If you're a pilot and you care about free flight, you really need to be giving them as much as you can. The in the last show, the Ask Me Anything show, we got a lot of great feedback for that. People really enjoyed it. And it was great to be able to reach out to other people with questions that I couldn't answer very expertly. So we had some great responses about gold. Bruce Goldsmith's his talk about the challenges with being a lighter pilot in competitions and a whole bunch of other stuff. Bruce. Is just a fantastic person that knows so much about this sport and especially about glider design, obviously being the head of Bruce Goldsmith Designs.
So he is running, I believe it's their third weightless comp this January down in Columbia. And if you're looking for a really great way to get access, you know, if you're wanting to learn more about competition flying and have a really supportive way to do it and also find out more about this kind of weight issue, they have one of their weightless comps coming up in in Columbia. And it's there's still some spots. So check that out. Just you can find out more about it on Air Tribune and another fantastic resource. So check that out. Reach out to Bruce or me if you need more information. Finally, some giveaways I've got. I still have two fantastic. These are you maybe have heard of Blue Fly Vario's that Alistair Dickey makes. He sent me quite a few of these way back when.
I still have two more that and I would like to be able to give those away. To you, the listener. And I've also got a little pack of Patagonia friends and family discount cards. These are worth 40 % off on almost everything. A few exclusions like wetsuits and stuff. But anytime they're not having a sale, this is, you know, it's basically like a pro deal. And they are. They've given me the nod to be able to give these out to you, the listener. So what we're going to do for these is anybody that shares a show or gives us a review on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify. I'm going to give you a little bit of a shout out. If you share it with your friends, if you follow me on Instagram, this show will be on Instagram. It'll be on Facebook and it'll be on Twitter. So those are all.
If you just Google Cloud Based Mayhem, you'll find all those. But on Instagram, I'm Gavin McClurg. On Facebook, it's Cloud Based Mayhem. On Twitter is Cloud Based Mayhem. So find this show, share it with your friends. I will track all those and everybody that shares it or gives us a rating or does something other that some other way that I haven't thought of. But I will do my best to kind of get this podcast out there and get this show out there. And what this is all about and has always been about is just sharing knowledge and trying to make us safer, better pilots. So it really, really does help when you don't just listen, but you tell your friends about it or talk about it on the way to launch. It might just be sending me an email. Hey, man, I talk about this thing all the time. I'd love to be in this drawing. So and before the next show, I or maybe two shows from now, sometime in January, I'll drop all those people into a hat.
And I'll have one of my neighbors here. That I fly with Willie or Nate or Matt or somebody just draw out of the hat and we'll give all these things away. So again, a couple of blue fly various. These are audio various that are awesome. That Alistair Dickey makes. I think they're like a hundred bucks a pop. And then a bunch of these family and friends discount cards. So share it, share the love. We appreciate it very much. And now let's get into the show with Larry. This is fantastic. You're going to dig it. I will do more of these shows with hang gliders. I've been like I said, I've been. On������������������������������������������������������������������!�!
!����� � � � � � a great opportunity because you guys did a really cool mission this last summer. And I'd love to just hear more about it. You called it the X-Flight. So tell me about the X-Flight and what it was all about.
Well, X-Flight, I actually solicited a bunch of friends, Robin Hamilton, who was one of the four pilots. And I kind of did most of the logistics as far as the planning goes. And one of the things that we were kicking around was what we should call this journey. And so we had queried a bunch of hang gliding pilot friends and then settled on X-Flight, X being somewhat extreme. And this being the initial journey, decided to use the X-Flight term and then the visual part of having two hang gliders bordered the logo. So yeah, that's how we came up with the name.
Yeah, very cool. I mean, as an X-Alps participant, I dig it.
Yeah, that was a great idea. Great read this year. My heart goes out to you for all of the challenges that you encountered. Certainly made the ones that we encountered seem kind of minor. Well,
yeah, but it was a cool mission you guys did. So for those who aren't aware of it, what was it? What did you guys accomplish? It's remarkable. It's on a map. It looks awesome.
Right. Well, several of us had been flying out of South Texas for a couple of years. And on a personal level, I've been a cross country pilot my entire 45 years of flying. And
I compete mainly to try and improve my skills so that I can fly farther, faster. And Mick Howard, who's in South Texas, kind of set up a Zapata-like X cross country, excursion and using a tug pilot, Greg Ludwig. Initially, we were located in in Referio, Texas, which is just northwest of Corpus Christi. And we had some good flights there, but they weren't quite as good as what you could get out of Zapata. I've never been to Zapata, mainly because of the safety issues related to flying out of there. Just many stories of the first 50 miles being very, very tough.
But it was a really, really fun experience. And I think it's to get retrieved and I know several pilots who had some significant issues after landing out early and so we located this old sailplane soaring port called Rook Field in Referio and started flying out of there. We had some pretty good flights the weather wasn't quite epic but I ended up with 250 miler 400 kilometer flight two years ago and my challenge was to determine whether I still had it in me to go long distance for a long time and I kind of slayed that dragon. I flew nine hours and 34 minutes that year.
Nice. The
only thing that put me on the ground was the setting sun so you probably didn't maximize the front end of the day as much as as I could have but it's all part of the learning experience of flying down there is trying to time it properly so that you can get that early window in that you guys seem to manage very very well. It's not quite as easy for us in the hang gliders but that's mainly because of retrieve. You know if you go ten miles out your day is almost shot by the time you get retrieved get broken down take go back to the airport set back up get all your gear configured properly you've lost a couple of hours.
Significantly shortens your day so. But anyway to go back to the genesis of the mission last year. I was kicking around in my mind but what was next for Larry Bunner and I'm 65 years old now and I still have this immense passion to fly hang gliders and I thought man we've had such good success here out of South Texas. Wouldn't it be cool if we could do that. I thought you could just keep going. So over the winter. I kind of started putting it together and initially I was going to do it by myself which was somewhat foolhardy but I started asking toe pilots around the country. What what they thought I would need to be successful to fly you know almost 2000 miles north to Canada.
And one one toe pilot that I talked to is out of Ohio. And. He gave me some really good feedback he had a 580 to try. And he he told me that he could set it up and tear it down and set it up in 20 minutes and tear it down and in about the same amount of time but you would need help on the tear down. Like oh okay. And so. I said well hey at the end of the conversation I said if you know anyone that would be interested in doing this journey. From South Texas to Canada let me know. You know. He hesitated for me. He hesitated for a minute and then he said well I do know someone. I'll do it. Oh nice. I said do it. He said yeah I'm retired too. So.
This is an adventure that I can't pass up. And so that started the ball rolling. And then last. A year ago in December. Robin Hamilton called me and I don't know if you're aware of Robin's qualifications as a hang glider pilot but. Holds multiple. World records and different. Has held them in different.
Types of gliders from the swift to you know topless. And. I had flown with him at at referial for two years and we we got along really well and have for many years actually and. He was asking me last December about my journey and where I was how far along. Did I think it was going to happen and I said well yeah I do. I do believe it's going to happen I have a tug pilot. You know I have a driver. In. You know I'm really geared up to go as far as. Putting all of the logistics together that's still. Yet to be solved but. You know I have six months to do it so. At the end of the conversation I asked him I said well why are you why are you asking me and he said Larry.
He said even when I was back in Scotland my main mission was to fly cross country and I just love flying XC. And I'd like to join you if you'll take some time. And. You know I'm two seconds I said you're in you know. So. Of
course yeah
yeah. And. So eventually we we did kind of build up to four people. We had Glenn Volk from San Diego Robin Hamilton's from Houston. And then Pete Lehman is from Pittsburgh area. And they all approached me and and I thought man this will work I just need to check with the tug pilot. And fortunately the tug pilot was a go. He said hey. You know three or four or five more toes that's not that big a deal. We'll be done in the morning and I'll pack up and be on the road following you guys. You know shortly thereafter.
This is a new term to me. What what's a tug pilot. That's just your toe. That's that's who tows you.
We call our our toe our arrow tow device a tug. And. Oh I didn't know that. Our tow pilots tug pilots.
Ah that's cool. I like that little little mariner.
A little mariner term. I like that. That's good. Yeah. And so there's four pilots. What are what are your rules. We
did it like you know I don't golf anymore. But back in the day we would play best ball a group of four. Whoever hit the ball the farthest then everybody had moved their ball up to that point. And and you would go again take your next shot. And we thought that that would be the most efficient way to get to the point. And so we went back to Canada within the limited somewhat limited timeframe that we had. So that was one rule that we established was of a few rules. One was that we would use the best flight of the day as our next starting point. The other rules were that as much as we possibly could we would travel laterally east or west just to stay at the same distance out basically from Canada.
To fly from our next airport. And.
Okay. So you're always towing from the airport. Yes. That obviously makes sense. And I know your map that's on your Facebook page. Yeah. There was never I mean any visible advancement. You're just you're just you're laterally you're moving directly east or west. Correct. Right. Kind of chasing weather.
Yeah. We did have to compromise it at a at a point during the journey due to weather considerations. But for the most part I think the total total distance ended up being eighteen hundred and eighty four miles from from Falfurrias Texas where we initially took off from to shoot. What's that town up there and in Washington State. You probably know it well flying at Chelan. Right. Soyuz. Yeah. Soyuz. Yeah. Yeah. All the way up to there.
Beautiful. What an amazing journey. So and when you guys are towing are you are you able to kind of gaggle fly or are you pretty much solo playing best ball.
Well one of the one of the reasons for picking South Texas and Falfurrias in particular is that in the summer months there's usually a lot of wind. And we need the wind to provide the fuel to go a long distance. Sure. So. So we did gaggle fly not all at once but on occasion. Glenn is Glenn Bulk is a very good gaggle pilot. He's able to stick with pilots really well. I've never really never really perfected that technique which makes my my competition results variable. I tend to go out on my own too much and too fast.
And so invariably I put myself in situations where either I'm really low for a long time or ended up end up decking it. So to answer your question because of the wind there was a significant lag time. It's probably almost 15 or 20 minutes. So that's 20 K by. Yeah. That's tough. Significant win and that's tough to make up. What was the longest flight. I believe it was a hundred and fifty five miles out of Hobbs Bay. Hobbs New Mexico.
Hobbs. Yeah. You know I had I had Larry on the show a couple years ago. I need to get him back on. But that's where he got his 300 miler I believe. Right. Back in the 90s.
One of them for
sure. Yeah. And we got to get down there. You know Will Gadd set the record from there ages ago. The paragliders just haven't been on that scene. So Hobbs is still happening.
Yeah. We contacted the well to regress a little bit. But as part of the planning I am somewhat of an anal planner. My my philosophy about life is you want to if you want to reach excellence you have to have an excellent plan or an outstanding plan. And my career as a I was in the nuclear field for thirty nine years. And in the end I was responsible for planning outages which were twelve to seventeen thousand tasks performed in. Sixteen to twenty two days. So in my my whole belief is that if you want to perform those tasks on time then you got to spend tremendous amount of time preparing before you ever shut the unit down.
I've kind of taken that with me into hang gliding and actually in the pre worlds in Mexico. I believe it was 2010 might have been 12. I had an opportunity to interview some of the top pilots in the world. Actually I talked with them. I had a chance to interview with twelve of them and all of them had been competing at a very high level for a very long time. And so I kept asking them the same question. It's okay. You've been very successful for a long period of time. What is that one attribute that you have that allows you to fly so well so consistently over this time period and almost to a person. They all answered with some general same thing. I fly in the moment.
I focus on now. I don't let distractions impact my ability to fly.
I'm thinking it was Christian checks that I learned to fly the conditions early and there was only really one deviant from that and that was Johnny Durand. I don't know if you've had Johnny on the show or not. I
haven't. I got to get him on the show.
And Johnny said I have excellent vision which I thought was just phenomenal. Some expecting someone to say oh it's the glider or oh I climb really well. And none of them said that they all were very internal looking except for Johnny who was external looking. But and Johnny said I can see the flip of a bird's wing much further off in the distance than others that I fly with. And I've experienced that. I mean he'll take off and I am like where in the heck is.
Where is he going. Yeah. I have the same thing. I know
better. You know. But. Yeah. So anyway to fly in the moment my philosophy that I try to bring to the as a mentor to our sport classic competition for up and coming competition pilots that are flying the sport gliders in Florida is to sit them down and share with them that you know to get into the moment is very fleeting for most of us. On�
On�
On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On� On�
On� clicked. So now I've been in the pursuit to kind of get myself into that moment. And what I've resolved is that in order to do that, I need to remove all of those distractions that impact my ability to focus at the task at hand. And so you say, well, yeah, what the heck does that mean? And, and I tell them that, you know, I, we all need to, I need to fly with intent and intent, you know, you'll know when you get it, but intent means that means that very thing that you're focused on the task at hand. So what are distractions? The distraction could be, you got to pee. A distraction could be you were out late the night before you didn't get enough rest or your head's not right.
Could be equipment related. Could be that you don't have your radio working properly or your instruments not working properly, or your gliders not, tuning properly, or your harness is not situated so that it's the most comfortable. So there's a period of things that you can go through that can impact your ability to focus. And so that, that, that is my philosophy and that's what I strive to do. You're out of shape. So, you know, at 65, that's a challenge for me. So I work out four or five days a week in a pretty intense environment to try and retain what little muscle mass I have left. We're fast. I'm not the best twitch muscles that I have left, but. Have
you, have you read any Stephen Kotler stuff on flow or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? I never say that his name, right. He was kind of the one that first started writing about flow, but what, I mean, what you're describing is, is to me is flow, which is a little nebulous still, I realized, but it's, you know, that, that kind of being in the moment and being, uh, present is, is very much described as kind of a flow state. But the way, the way you described being, you know, in the moment and all those pilots talking about that, I think that's one of the things that comes up a lot on, or one of the reasons it comes up a lot with pilots is it's, I think for many, for, for pilots, just all pilots, it's kind of a cheat in the flow, whether, you know, you're in it or not, or even know what flow is.
It seems like flying something is, has an intensity that you can kind of bypass some of the, the things that need, you need to go through to find flow in other areas. Cause you can find flow in work like, like you did maybe with your, you know, uh, working in the nuclear industry, you could find flow in a lot of different ways. It doesn't have to be sporting, but is that, is that something think about?
Doug Grant 1.117.7 00.097.7 00.097.7 00.097.7 00.097.7 00.097.7 00.097.7 00.097.7 It's related to all things in life. It can be your relationship. It can be, you know, your work. It can be your sport. Golf is probably a good classic one for being in the zone. I mean, getting into that zone. And it's just, yeah, so that's on my mind a lot. In fact, I was just visualizing in my head that when I'm flying, you have all this stimuli in front of you. And it's really all about your ability to take all that input in and process it in an efficient manner so that you can then make your next decision as to what you're going to do. So, yeah,
I think about it.
How did you get into flying?
Well, I'm in northern Illinois. I have four brothers. And we've been kind of an adventurous group for a flatland area like Illinois where we're going to fly. We grew up with very few limits. I can remember my mom saying the 8 o 'clock in the morning and we're headed out. And she'd say, all right, you boys be home by dinner and don't get your feet wet. You know, so what would we do? That left a lot of open. Right away. Because, man, that was too much pressure. Right. Hit it over with. Hopefully they would be dry by the time we got home. But we had some sand dunes down by Lake. Michigan. And several of us had dreams.
And I know I still do about running and leaping off the sand dunes. And each step, your stride gets longer and longer until you're floating. At the time I was reading Sports Illustrated. This was probably in the early 70s. And I saw in the back of the magazine an article about hang gliding. And so we shared it with my dad. And my dad came home with a book. It was by Dan Pointer about hang gliding. And in the back of the book, there were 40, over 40 manufacturers in the U.S. at that time. And this is like 74 maybe, 73. And one of them happened to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which was 40 miles away. So my oldest brother, I was probably 17 or 18 at the time.
But my oldest brother, he went up to the manufacturer, which was really a guy building hang gliders in his garage. And he was a guy who was a big fan of the stuff of popular mechanics instructions. And came back with a glider that he paid $395 for. And so we all pitched in, of course. And then we took it to Warren Dunes, Michigan, on the other side of Lake Michigan, where the sand dunes were bigger. And the prevailing westerlies would hit the slopes. And we taught ourselves how to fly. And that's how I got started. And I still fly. And then my brother, Rob, who's the youngest, he still flies. And he's a great guy. And my other three brothers only dream about flying.
They haven't gotten into it in your 45 years of flight?
They all did. We all flew at some point. But they've all moved on to up to the center.
You're the only one that stayed in scene. Yeah, no kidding.
How has it – I mean, this is an absurd question I'm going to ask you anyway. How has it changed your life?
Well, being a family man with three children, I was married very early and had children very early. And it was tough to fly very much, especially in northern Illinois, where there aren't any mountains or any appreciable-sized hills to fly off of. But there were some that were close enough, three hours away or whatever, that we ended up migrating there whenever we thought we could. And we thought the conditions were good so that we could get some flying time. And so I would characterize how it – I've been so passionate about flying and so motivated to get in the air, but yet at the same time so patient for 34 years to be able to raise my kids and make sure that the home scene was taken care of.
That when they all finally did leave the nest and I retired, it was like – it was very obvious to my wife. What we were going to do from then on, and that was to fly as much as I possibly could. So how has it changed my life? I never really thought of myself as an athlete. I wasn't as fast as my brothers or as strong as my brothers. I was kind of the book reader and more of the thinker and the dreamer. And I think what hang gliding – what hang gliding has done for me is it's allowed me to continue to strive to live that dream. Which I had as a kid when I was running over the sand dunes. So in fact, you know, Gavin, everything I do today, except for my relationship with my wife and family, is geared around hang gliding.
I mean, it's maybe a little selfish, but it's what my – I want to do it until I can. And I have friends that I fly with. One is 80 years old. And he still flies. He probably gets in 50, 75 hours a year flying in southern Wisconsin. So I always have these mentors out there that are showing me the way and letting me know that I can still do it. And the other one – the other friend that I fly with in Wisconsin is 78. He flies a topless hang glider. And the 80-year-old flies an autos glider, so a fixed wing. But – So
you got plenty of time left.
That's right.
I hope I do too.
So yeah, so to kind of summarize, I think what hang gliding does is it's given – what it did for me, it's given me a pathway to experience things that most people don't get a chance to experience. And it's given me that path and that drive then to – Yeah. To follow that path. So yeah.
Has that balance between family and flying – has that been easy, hard? Have you ever – have you ever had to really kind of rejigger and not listen, we need to straighten this out? I think a lot of people really struggle with that.
Well, and certainly we had our moments about whether I should be doing this. I mean, I'm not going to be going out flying on my day – my only days off when I haven't been home. And the industry that I worked in was pretty intense, many 12-hour days. You know, you're committing a lot of time to work. And so there was this feeling that hang gliding was then pulling me away from the family. So there were moments where, you know, I couldn't go when I wanted to. However, the good thing about staying – or living in the family, you know, is that you're not going to be able to do anything else. And so it was very��
� And we would, my buddies and I from the local area, the two pilots from Wisconsin I had mentioned earlier, we would always migrate west for a week of flying. And we started out going to Salt Lake City, where you could fly the point of the mountain, you know, south and north, and fly some of the mountain sites around there. Commodore, which was one of my favorites. And then we heard about Kevin Christopherson doing these big flights in Wyoming, which shortened our drive if we could fly there. So we started flying at Whiskey Peak, which is on the eastern side of the Red Desert, or the, I'm not going to get the name of the desert out there.
I can't remember. Yeah,
it's the Red Desert.
And it was just not really much of a mountain. It was only about 1,400 feet from a safe landing area. But the wind would blow there very early, 7 a.m. It was sweeping off the desert, up the slope, western slope. And. Kevin would, what I call, would do what I call troll. He would launch and ridge soar until the first good thermal that he thought was good enough to leave with would take him up high enough that he would leave. And so we were lucky enough to watch his exploits. And he set several world records from that site. 287 miles, I believe, was the record he had in 1987.
And we started flying there. And. So we had a great. Great week. It was hot, hot, hot there. I flew 688 miles in seven days of flying. Lost 10 pounds. I'm burning the midnight oil, racing to get back to our hotel. You know, going back up the mountain. And I can remember one day I'd just flown, finished flying 200-mile flights in a row, which I'd never done. And I'm like lollygagging around on top of the mountain. And my buddies are slapping their ribs into the glider as fast as they could because it's blowing up. We're hearing thermals kicking off already. And they're like, what are you going to fly? Like, ah, no, I need a rest day. And my buddy, my buddy, Matt, who is the oldest, he's 80 now.
He looks over at me and just gives me a kind of a leer, you know, said, I can't believe this. And then went back to doing this thing. And I'm like, all right. So I throw my glider together and kick off another 100 miles. So at the end of the trip, we're headed back. And usually this is late August now, early September. And when the cold fronts start kicking through, that's our best flying in the Midwest, post-frontal. And the cloud streets line up. We have good wind and high altitudes because the humidity is so much lower. And I get a call. So I'm just home from being gone a week, worked a week. It's the next weekend. And I get a call early in the morning.
And Matt. My mentor says, Hey, it's going to be a great day today. Are you coming down to Harmon or ToeSight? Said, no, man, I can't go with you. We just got back. I just got home. He says, okay, you're missing like an epic day. And so I hung up and I'm just moping around the house.
Isn't it amazing how that happens? You just had this epic trip and like, oh, I'm missing out. I'm
moping around the house. And.
My���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� I knew it was right on the VFO, and I scrambled to get down there. And that's when I had my longest flight at that time. I flew, got there. I was ready to go at 1145. They were already in the air and gone. And I can remember the tow. We used a static system. We didn't use a winch. And I don't know if you're familiar with static towing. I've heard about it. I've never
seen it or done it.
We'd lay 2,500 feet out on a road and attach it to a hydraulic cylinder to a pressure gauge that was magnetically connected to the hood. And the driver would drive by pressure on the line. And so we'd say, go, go, go. And then he would take it up to launch pressure and then back down to towing pressure. And I will never forget this. He's driving my vehicle to tow me up. And he radios. He says, hey, my truck is stopped, which meant I'm in a thermal. And so I'm just screaming up at 1,000 feet a minute. And all of a sudden, he radios. He said, the truck is in neutral, and it's backing up.
So the thermal was so strong, it was pulling my four trunk back. And so I knew it was, as soon as I got dumped, I was going to have to get off. And immediately. Turned because it was blowing like 20. And so I did that. And it was I was well beyond where I'd launched from before I hit the edge of the thermal. And you're committed. I mean, you just have to go. And so I went and went for many, many hours and flew to the last thermal. The last cloud dissipated and glided around from there. And yeah. So I mean, this story. It was all about is how does this work out with family?
And yeah, it's a negotiation.
It certainly is. But it's funny. After this X-Alps, I was really moping around. The mental side of it after an event like that and everything that goes into it is you really come down kind of off a cliff at the end. And I don't know, a month and a half later or something, we were over still in Europe. And I was dropping off all my supplements. I was dropping off all my supplements with a buddy of mine who was really into the tour, the France and really into road biking. And I thought, well, I don't know. I'm not going to need this stuff. This will be my last X-Alps because I'm giving it all to him. And so Maddie, my wife, my fiance at the time, now my wife, you know, looked over at me in the car. I said, what are you doing? I'm dropping off all this stuff. I'm going to give it away. She's so you're done with the X-Alps. I said, yeah, yeah, no, I'm done.
She's all that's smart. Good. Give up. Give up the thing that you love the most. It keeps you from being mopey around. The house. That's good. And hanging out with the, you know, you have the best time of your life doing these. That's a, that's a good move. I thought she was going to be like, oh, thank goodness. You know, this is great. I get you back, but you know, I think the women are smarter. Oh yeah.
Oh yeah. You know what? My, my wife had never driven for me in all of my flying while I was working. And as I was closing in on retirement, she said, so. How is this going to work? And I said, well, um, I w I would like you to be my drivers so that we can do this in tandem together. And she said, ah, you know, she's thinking of all her, the things that she normally does that this was going to impact her, take away, take her away from. And I said, well, let me put it to you this way. If I fly 50 days a year, then you get the other 315.
And I mean, I'm not kidding. You're
right. It's going to go. And she
said, you know what? I think I can do that. And then, uh, uh, so we started going to comps and she started driving for not just me, but my friends too. And, and, uh, of course, uh, a woman, only a woman would think this way, but she, she started packing washcloths, getting them wet, put in plastic bags. And when she picks somebody up, she'd run out with a washcloth. And she'd be like, Oh, I'm going to go get a bottle of water and a beer.
Oh my gosh. She's the, she's the most favorite person everywhere you go.
I'm in love with you. You know?
Yes, of course they are.
That's a dream. So that's been, I've been really blessed to have, have that transpire and in the retirement side of things. And I've been at it now 10 years. So, but, um, yeah. It's, uh, really good.
That's terrific. This, there's a lot of things that you just said in the last few minutes that I want to tap back into, but back to your expedition, the X flight, you know, on, on paper, a lot of it looked pretty tough, but I'm guessing that it was kind of like the flight you did. And your brother said, man, that must've been the hardest thing you ever did. And you think, yeah, no, not so much when you look back on it. Right. I mean, time changes. It changes everything. My question is, you know, talk about that, but also if you found it hard to have pulled something like that off looking forward, I'm curious about this because you're, you're wiser than I am. I am just because of age.
I'm 47, you're 65. Uh, you know, you've been flying for 45 years. It's something I think I've certainly, I am struggling with. And I think a lot of others are as well is, you know, we want to be able to fly. We want to keep pushing it. We want to keep doing the X flights, but how do you keep pushing it and come home?
Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um, well, I'll, I'll go back to when you said you kind of, when you finished the X-Alps this year, it was kind of like stepping off the cliff and I totally related to that. I mean, the drive home and for two weeks I was just in this funk. I, it was, I was surprised. Yeah. Just by the fact that I was in this funk, but yet I couldn't really do anything about it. In fact, I couldn't even process the previous three weeks of flying that I'd done. And there were moments where I couldn't, I couldn't even remember some of the flights. And then finally I'd all started coming back and I'm sharing the stories with my friends and, and it was, it was really cool.
But, uh, yeah. So when we, when we finished Glenn Volk in particular, the pilot driver. He was a pilot from San Diego. He said, Hey, what about next year? What are we going to do? This was so much fun. I wasn't, I wasn't even close to being ready to even think about it because number one, the logistics that I was involved with thinking that I was going to do this by myself. The planning part was, yeah, it was, it was taxing. It was, it was much more taxing than the actual flying. But I had 82 airports on our path to make sure that we had permission to tow. From those airports. And 81 of them gave us the okay. Which was very pleasant and very surprising for me because I'd been trying to fly from airports in the Midwest for many years.
Until AeroTowing started and then it became much more natural, but yeah, I never dreamed I would get that kind of reception from these airports. But most of them were very rural and, you know, well away from airspace. So obviously the population density is much less. And as a result, these airports are finding ways to survive. And they actually welcomed us to come and come and implored us to come and fly from their airport. Cool. And one airport said, we'd like, love you to be here and we'd like to make breakfast for you. So the townspeople will come out and prepare. What? Oh my God. And of course, as in, as in paragliding for you to pick an airport that you think is going to be a good fit for you. And then to go do it when it's over a hundred miles away is.
That is wicked. Tidily improbable. Yes. That's what we found is that, you know, we, I think one day it was our last day we landed at an airport that we'd actually called. So the rest of the time we were scattered all over the countryside. But then we would, we would try to get to the airport that we had contacted and, and go and fly from there the next day. So, but so X-Lite, as Glenn, Glenn told me, he said, Hey, why don't we do the mountain version next? And I had already been mulling that over, but man, it was just too, too quick for me. And so I don't know that we'll do it in 2020. The dialogue about doing something in the mountains has kind of died down.
Would that be, would that be a similar kind of mission? Would that be a traverse? Yeah. We were thinking again. So. I want
to, can I do that with you guys?
That would be cool. I've been looking at some of the mountain sites in Arizona and New Mexico and, and this, this would bring a whole new level of challenge in my mind for hang, for a hang gliders. We, we had the advantage this year of having a southerly push almost every day.
And in the mountains. I mean, you know, you have mountains where the weather kind of the amount, the mountains themselves generate somewhat the conditions that you, you get, obviously the southerly flow then is much less predictable.
So but the challenge, it would still be a blast. And we've been thinking about, we would still bring a tug along. We would try to mount, you know, fly from the mountains themselves, launch from the mountains themselves and, and go north. And only use those. And we'd be� necessary, you know, when we didn't have an option available to us. So that may happen. And it's still, I think, in its infancy. I have something that I want to do. And I've been thinking about this for a long time. And it is still an ex-flight dream, I believe. It's just on a different scale. And that is, I'd like to fly to tow, to static tow again. I actually have two reels in my basement that I'm rebuilding to prepare for next year.
And then, but tow in Iowa, North and South Dakota, maybe Montana, to Kansas, to set the state record for cross country. Now, some of them are pretty low, so it wouldn't be that tough. But yet at the same time, I'm not, I'm not interested in doing a 30 mile jaunt just to set a record. I mean, my vision would be, you know, do 150 miles or 180 miles to set that carrot way out there for the next person that wants to try.
Yeah. So, I mean, both, both those missions are just weather dependent, aren't they? I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're traverse with the mountains is just going to be, I mean, I imagine you guys can just deal with a lot more weather and well, I know you can in the flats. And so, you know, as long as you have time, it's just, it's just more waiting around.
Right. Right. So, yeah. So there's a, those are two things on my mind for future X flight. And, you know, there's probably some other ones out there. I'm thought about individual site records and that kind of thing. And that's probably the one thing that fuels my desire to fly is, is to try and do the best I can and, and possibly set a record at a site or a state or whatever.
It's
definitely something that builds��
the plane convergence out here that we see all the time and, you know, fly all the way to Jackson, you know, for sure you can set the record from there. And so we started looking at that and I have a friend down in Boise, a guy named Aaron Beck, who follows what you guys do a lot and follows what the sailplanes are doing a lot. And he's really good at looking at weather and that kind of thing. And one of the things he's been kind of jiving me about is, you know, you got to talk to more of these hang gliders because they, they've been doing this so much longer and they know all these sites and there's not a lot of young hang gliders, you know, that this, this knowledge is slowly disappearing. When you, what are you guys collectively, you know, I'm curious, you know, when you're having your coffee or your beer and all this kind of things, what are you guys talking about in terms of, gosh, I don't understand why the paragliders aren't an X, you know, like that site you're talking about.
I've never heard of that. And we, we have been pouring over the maps, you know, trying to figure out how to do that. And I think that's, I think that's one of the things that we've been doing in terms of, you know, we've been doing this for a long time. And we've been doing this for a long time. And we've been doing this for a long time. And we those guys have been doing these big flights from lab and porcupine down in, in Wyoming and Utah, where they fly across the flats, but they're always getting hit with this North, you know, so they got the Westerly for the first 70 % of the flight and they always get this North. And then it's late. It doesn't line up, you know, the monsoon kills them until kind of like late August, September. So we've lost those long days that you can do down in the middle of the year. But I'm curious with your, all your years and all your knowledge, you know, like places like King mountain, they're just kind of fading.
Yeah. I mean, we know all about King mountain, but there's just, there's not many people. I mean, that's my backyard. I mean, we know about King, but, but there's places I'm sure like that, that are, you know, that just aren't getting used as much anymore.
Yeah. I, I don't know. I think things are changing a little bit. Here in the, in the Midwest, in the flats in particular, we've got a really strong developing paraglider contingent. Um, Illinois is classic example. Uh, Yarrow Krupa has, um,
paragliding or whatever it's called. And he's been breaking off some unbelievably long flights. And I keep looking at my hang glider buddies going, man, what's going on? We need to get our reel going again, because we're missing, we're missing out on these opportunities. And, um, you know, we're limited somewhat by having only a few, uh, arrow tow places and not all of them are open every day. And so we miss, we miss opportunities that, that Yarrow has taken advantage of. I mean, the most recent one that just absolutely blew my mind is he flew on November 5th, you know, six weeks away from the solstice. Yeah. Over a hundred miles. Yeah. I saw that. That was awesome. Yeah. That's incredible to me.
So I think maybe, um, you know, that, that what's happening here, Minnesota's having the same thing where they're out actively towing all the time. That's going to change and help the Midwest in particular, as far as the mountains are concerned. I I'm not really that familiar with, um, you know, I, I dream of some of the, some of the flights that have been made out. There are scales in particular and, you know, Nick Greece flying over the, over in Idaho. And this was probably a few years ago, but, um, yeah, the, uh, that sounds very intriguing to me or flying from Missoula up to, um, uh, uh, Northern. I've actually mapped out a couple of routes and man, that would be so awesome to do that.
See Shapiro, uh, actually fly that route. And I, somebody most recently did from Missoula. That's one of Jeff's friends. But so I'm not sure. You know, I thought we heard rumor that there was going to be some paraglider pilots in Falfurius. And there's another airport west of that between Falfurius and Zapata that they were going to be trying to set records. But I think they were smart enough that they could see that the weather wasn't going to be epic. It wasn't going to be that supportive. And one of the newer paraglider pilots who formerly was into hang gliding actually had camped out in the hill country and was going to fly from Lakey with the hopes of setting a record for a lower end paraglider.
But I think it was blowing too hard for him for his experience level. I think it was more than he could handle. But we were communicating every day. Hey, about what are the conditions? What do we expect? And really for us, for X-Flight, our conditions, although we had many hundred mile flights and almost averaged 100 miles a day, we did not. We had maybe one epic day and that was the day out of Hobbs. And we never foresaw flying out of Hobbs. It wasn't even an airport that I had contacted on my list because we were thinking we were going to be further to the east flying. And the planes up using the more southerly flow. And we got kind of boxed in by weather.
We're on the route that we were going to take up through Oklahoma. And so we had to divert to the west hard. It was probably 150 miles, 200 miles to get to Hobbs after we flew out of Junction, Texas.
And luckily, I mean, the conditions were great. We weren't prepared for them, though, Gavin. Because we said there's. No way we're going to need oxygen on this trip. Don't bother bringing it. We're staying in the planes. The highest we'll get is 10,000 feet. No, maybe 11 over here. Big spring. But no, no need. And sure enough, at Hobbs, I thought we were going to get to 13 looking at the skew T diagram. And we were getting to 16 and spent hours above 14,000. It was that good. So.
There was a story to go along with it. I Glen and Robin talked to me later and said, hey, you were hypoxic. And I said, what? What do you mean? And I said, well, you're on the radio going. This is Larry.
You know, I'm like, hey, you guys sounded kind of funny, too. So, you know. But so, yeah, we were ill prepared. And, you know, the worst thing about the O2 is not necessarily. really um i mean a hypoxia is significant it's it's the most it is the worst thing but the cold we weren't prepared for the cold either and you know when your body kind of starts to address the low two and your digits start getting cold first and and um you know i know what chilled to the bone means i mean yeah oh
it's a cold that's just a cold that you can't escape from too yeah so do you guys do you guys start shaking so hard your gliders are shaking that's when i always know i'm really cold when the whole glider shaking from you just go
so
yeah so uh that was probably the most challenging day but yet it was the most fun i mean we were in the vicinity together the the entire time in fact i think we all ended up at the 155 mile mark something like that landed in separate fields at separate times but uh yeah but
it's really cool too that you guys did that when you did because you know i was over you know when you did that i was over at the X-Alps so i wasn't but we had you know in the rockies this year the weather was brutal uh it was just so windy i mean you guys can handle a lot more wind than we can but um that's just it's just neat you guys were able to pull off such a cool mission when most of us were just grounded it just wasn't just it was a tough year a lot of wind yeah
you know it was even um not that great uh for us i mean we we may do with what we could but there was so much moisture even in cal potto kansas oklahoma it just was wet wet wet in fact we finally got out of colorado we were in wyoming and i think it was robin or one of us said man this is this is like minnesota the land of 10 000 lakes it's just water everywhere and wyoming in particular was dark green i'd never seen it that way uh you know it must have been beautiful yeah yeah because we were so close to it we could really see it well yeah
right right very high but what was what what was the coolest flight like i know and i saw you flew from king um what was the coolest flight of the whole trip well
for robin he he managed to fly from king we were we were in kadoka south dakota thinking that we were going to fly there after we flew from casper wyoming and because it was the only weather that was even looked like it was sorable so we diverted from gillette wyoming east to kadoka and we went too far to the east and got caught in too strong a wind so in rapid city it was still north in wall south dakota we saw it turn to the south and we should have stopped there and flown because we're on that transitionary boundary between the north and the south but we kept going another hour to the east and it was just blowing like stink 20 25 gust in the 30 and so uh eventually the smarter minds prevailed and we ended up not flying at all and then we did a 13 hour drive to king mountain um at 5 30 that night so two two of the pilots glenn and and pete dropped back off in gillette said we're not going any further um my driver and i made it to uh billings and we were just wiped just wiped and robin and his son sasha made it to i want to say butte and and then they got up uh got a little bit of shut eye and then had to go to the next one and then we got to the next one and we got to the next one and then we got to the next one and then we got to the next one and then we headed to king and we were too far behind them to be able to climb up on the mountain you know to get to the mountain and if you remember robin's story they get to king and he's in a two two-wheel drive uh suv and they tried driving up to the lower launch and they couldn't there was one turn or something now that couldn't do it no
that road got all washed out in the floods a couple years ago and and they still haven't put it back together. So, yeah, I mean, you can manage it, but it's tough right now.
So they backed back down and turned around and drove up in reverse and were able to get through that using now the rear-wheel drive to get up to launch. And Robin, I think he launched about 4 p.m., and he'd been there before where, you know, it's kind of like mini Owens Valley at times. And he said it was the most pleasant flight he'd had at King ever, and that was his favorite flight. He was able to get well above the mountaintops, Mount Bora, and kept heading up toward the Snake River Valley past Chalice. Oh, that's a nice flight. Yeah, it's 100K, 120K.
I had already been talking to one of the locals while he was there. He was actually flying. And he said, hey, he's going to get to the neck of that valley, and he's going to think, man, I can't go any further. But he said, there's LZs down below. You can make it all the way to Salmon pretty easily at that point. But, you know, Robin didn't have that information ahead of time. And as he put it, he decided that it was time to land. So he came down and landed in Ellis. I believe it was Ellis.
Okay, yeah.
Quite a great flight for launching at 4. So that's
amazing. I mean, when that big lost valley starts booming, I mean, we've had some pretty newer pilots, you know, up at 16,000 feet at 10 p.m. wondering how they're going to get down. The glass-offs can be proper magic. It's pretty special. Well,
Gavin, I should say one thing about Robin. You know, I was probably the catalyst for starting this thing, the most involved. I was involved on the planning side. And then Robin was lockstep with me all the way through this. And then every morning and every night we were talking weather, talking site, where are we going. But the thing about Robin was that he is just one tenacious pilot. And he had three days, I believe it was three, where we had all gone down. And he was able to, to stay up and fly for two or three hours more. And so he really pushed it for us to be able to make the whole journey happen.
It was just a phenomenal flying that he did. I'm just wowed by what he was able to accomplish.
You need that guy on the team. We did our Sierra Traverse way back in 2012. It was kind of my first big bivy. Nick Green, B -�� B�� to have guys that could drive 350, you know, with a four iron. You
know that? And I said at the beginning that it was kind of folly that I thought I could do it by myself. And this is where it dawned on me that Larry, man, this is a team game here. This turned into a team game and it was a very welcome team game. So, well,
and I don't know how much more difficult it would be for, for hang gliders to do this. You know, I'm, I always think about Dustin and, and Johnny's flight, you know, when they, when, when Dustin broke the record, but, you know, but they were together, you know, the, the stuff that's been going on down in Brazil and the Sertau, I don't know if you watched all that this fall, but the, you know, the Brazilians have mastered the team flying, you know, so there was just multiple 500 plus flights, you know, day after day after day. And then the Brazilians just showed up one day, the three of them together and destroyed it again. It was the same team that did it the last time. The last world record. And, you know, so it's, it's very clear that we got to learn to fly together. And I think especially those of us in North America are a little too cowboy and we don't do it. And we're, you know, we, we've all got our own opinions on how to do it together, but I mean, how to do it alone.
And we've got to learn how to stick together and, and you know, stick with that philosophy because it's also sexy. I mean, I, I, that must've been an amazing day for both of those guys, but imagine how amazing it would have been if they'd landed together, you know, with Dustin and Johnny. I mean, cause they were really fun. You know, they were really kind of together and that would have been pretty cool for both of them. And
I think I remember the end, Dustin caught a little 50 foot per minute thermal when Johnny had left and actually told him, Hey, I'm in 50 foot feet per minute, but Johnny going and Dustin, that was to get like a 300 foot advantage on him and flew three miles further or whatever. But, oh, one of the things I wanted to mention about X flight. And this last X flight or the first X flight inaugural one. Yeah. Let's let this, this is the first, you know, the, the, the thing that impressed me the most in, um, maybe I watched too much TV or something, but we had not one negative experience
in the entire journey with people around us. Not one, not a crossword was spoken. Well, number one. We were friends, better friends at the end than we were when we began the, the nine that were in the crew. Not once did we have, um, any, any really any real tension or anxiety or, or, you know, disagreements or whatever. But the people that we interfaced with from the airports, from the townsfolk everywhere. I mean, I told my wife when I got home, I said, I have seen the real America. My wife�������������������������������������������������������������
!���� � � � particular day, we had excellent cloud streets. We're flying over this no man's land that turned out to be not an issue. And then all of a sudden we went from seven, 800 foot per minute climbs to 10,000 feet to a hundred foot per minute climbs. And we're under the same cumulus clouds. Something weird was happening. But anyway, we all pushed North as far as we could. And then a cell in Colorado kind of started to overshadow the ground that we were flying over. So we knew it was going to be over relatively soon. And so we were debating whether we were still in Texas or were we in Oklahoma? And we weren't sure, but we all landed and I landed in a field by myself and it's still honking 20 mile an hour winds on the surface.
And this, I landed there in this field because I saw vehicles moving around in the field, some ag, doing some agricultural work. And I looked down wind and I didn't see anything. And I thought, man, I'm going to land by people. I'm only going to get another three or four miles. I'm going to land by people. So I land and this older woman, probably my age comes out in this big pickup and says, are you all right? I said, yeah, I'm fine. She says, do you need anything? I said, no. And, and I said, ma 'am, am I in Texas? And she looked at me with this look on her face and she says, I've never heard of that place.
Oh my gosh. That is awesome.
And their kids were just the salt of the earth. You know, I mean, you know, the 11 year old boy stuck on my hip for the two hours I was there breaking down and talking and whatnot. And I mean, when he shook my hand, it was like I was shaking the hand of a man. He was just, just, it was just amazing. Amazing. So it's
awesome to hear that from you. You know, I'm so happy to be here. I'm
������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������� ���������������������������� just the, the, the guns and the schools and everything is, you know, the, all the stuff that people see outside of the U S I can understand why, you know, I'm constantly asked, well, I'd like to come to Zapata and do that, but gosh, I don't want to get shot. And I'm always like, you know, I live in Idaho, everybody's armed and I have never once had a bad experience landing anywhere, you know? And it's just not, um, I mean, I'm sure I have landed in places where wherever I land, that person's not on the same, you know, like we probably wouldn't be friends on Facebook, but we're friends in person, you know? And I just, this social media is tearing us apart. It really is. And it's, uh, that's great to hear because I mean, you really were in middle America and, uh, and the people are awesome.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a fantastic, uh, fantastic trip on that particular day. So landed right now. That had to be really
reaffirming. And that has to leave you in a more optimistic place. That's, that's great. And that's the great thing about travel sometimes. Larry, let me ask you why you just keep going forever. This is terrific. Um, but let me ask you a question that I asked a lot of our, uh, a lot of the people I've had on the show, if you could rewind the clock and this is going way back for you, buddy, that if you could rewind the clock to your 50 hour piloting self, uh, what advice, do you wish you would have gotten then? I'm assuming somewhere along the line, there's been some close calls or some accidents or something, but what, what would you, you know, you you've seen a lot certainly in your career. Um, what would you have changed if anything?
Yeah.
Um, you know, I was somewhat of a, a loner pilot in that in Illinois, there weren't a lot, there wasn't a lot of experience and not a lot of flying going on. So most of the things that I did, I had to learn on my own. And so fortunately I was able to kind of come through the keyhole and emerge from the other side and the shape of the key. And I call it, it was an amorphous blob going in and, you know, things shaped me to, to, uh, um, you know, I survived, I guess is probably the best thing to say, but so if I had to do it over again, I would have sought more, more mentoring,
uh, instruction. And I did learn that later. I mean, it wasn't that long ago. I went back to the training hill to, to fly my hang glider and people are like, why are you doing that? I said, well, I'm not satisfied with the way I'm landing my glider. I need to get some repetition. You know, when you fly XC and you have one, one launch and you land four hours later, you only get one landing and, and you do that maybe 20 times a year and you don't have, uh, you know, that's not enough. Repetition to perfect, uh, your landing skills. So yeah, I wish I had sought more, uh, experienced instruction to, so that I could be, become a safer pilot. And I, I think I was on the safety side, but there were a couple incidents that I had that, you know, I was pretty lucky.
So.
I lied. I'm going to ask you one more question. We had this show a while back with Bruce Weaver and a bunch of other guys. And I was like, I'm going to ask you one more question. A bunch of folks that was pretty fascinating, kind of focused on the future of hang gliding. Where do you see it going?
Oh, it's, it's still slowly dying. I know that Wills Wing is really working hard to try and get the, uh, beginning side, uh, much easier that, you know, that is the allure of paragliding is that, um, the convenience of carrying a bag around with you and being able to open it up and fly, um, the ease with which it is to learn to fly. And I think that's, I think that's one of the things that we need to kind of get back. Uh, I know that with the development of the alpha glider that, uh, Steve Pearson has designed, um, that is helpful, but yeah, I, I still think we've got a long, a tough, long, tough road to, to go down in order for hang gliding to turn around because it's on a slower, slow decline.
Any of your kids fly? My, no, my son tried it as a graduation, uh, present. He did a tandem and, you know, maybe that goes back to my kind of my safety conscious self and why I've just taken baby steps my whole flying career. You know, I, I obviously are definitely knew the hazards and the risks associated with hang gliding, especially in the beginning when we had no safety devices that could take you out of a dive. I think I kind of pushed him away from that, not purposefully, but now when I look back on it, I think it was somewhat, it wasn't a covert thing on my part to say that, no, you, you know, you're not hang gliding, but I'm, and then the interesting thing is, is they came with me on all my journeys.
Many of the kids would come out and watch me fly and then we'd go home and, but, uh, no, they, they were much more in the conventional sports and now they're kids. They're in the conventional sports. I keep telling them to take them out to the mud bog and let them get their fingers dirty. You know, they're just too structured for me, but, uh, you know, well,
that's not good, is it? If your kids don't, they don't, then we're not on the right trajectory there. That's what we got. We got to figure out how to get the kids into it. It's pretty special. You know, they've, they have figured it out in France and Switzerland and, you know, there's, you can go to school and learn how to fly and it's credit for college. And, you know, there's mentors and coaches. And you can make a living doing it. I mean, imagine that. It's incredible.
We do have a, um, um, one fellow that's got a business in Wisconsin. He's got a lease on an airport there that he's doing. It's got a training hill on it. So they do training on, uh, uh, they do introductory training lessons on the hill. They do tandem flights behind the, behind the plane. And, uh, he does that six months a year in Wisconsin. And now he, uh, bought, uh, Sonora wings in Arizona and he's doing it the other six months. Um, great, you know, Southwest of, uh, uh, Phoenix. And, uh, so it, and it's, it's slow, but he's building it and we're hopeful. We're hopeful. I mean, yes. Very great. Not a very positive statement for hang gliding, but, uh,
man, I can't, I'm, I can't give it up. That's for sure.
Yeah. You can hear it. And your voice.
Hey, I, I do, uh, there was one story I wanted to mention. Um, you know, as we migrated West to avoid bad weather, we went to Casper, Wyoming, and I had mentioned earlier flying from whiskey peak. And so I was able to find Kevin Christofferson who had set the record back in the eighties, a world record. And I found him on Facebook. I contacted him. We were actually going to fly out of an airport in the Valley down below Casper, uh, the city of Casper. Um, to the east of the main airport, just like, uh, might've been a County airport. It's just a grass strip, got permission to fly from there. And then Kevin contacted me, said, Hey, come and fly from my, my runway in the foothills of the Casper mountain.
So I called him and we ended up migrating up there to his place. And all it was, was his driveway into his beautiful home. But, um, we, we flew from there and it was not the, uh, it was not the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, probably the riskiest, uh, towing that we had done the entire trip. And, um, but anyway, it was so fun to be able to fly at with this man who was a former world record holder, still flying hand gliders and trikes. And, and, uh, um, and he was giving us the confidence to fly the route that we were, we were intending on going off to the Northeast because it was somewhat a tiger country. I know it was tiger country in the eighties when I was flying there, less so now. Because of all the fracking that's going on.
So there were a lot more roads out there, but you know, that doesn't necessarily mean they're accessible. There's a lot of lock gates around, but, uh, sure. Yeah. He gave us the confidence to go. And we had a remarkable flight until another sun storm shut us down about 80 miles out, but, uh, um, fun, fun time. It was fun revisiting with him, um, you know, to see him still have the passion and, uh, uh, Harry Martin came out. He lives on the other side of Casper mountain or mountain. He's the guy that does all of the, the, uh, comic, uh, art in the USHPA magazine. So he was there and, uh, yeah, it was, it was, uh, another highlight of the trip for sure.
And then the last piece I'll give you is when we were flying into the Dorothy, I'll shoot, uh, Dorothy Scott airport up at the Canadian border. In Washington. Um, I called the airport ahead as I did every day and said, Hey, we think we're gonna, we're going to fly to your, to your airport. He said, okay, great, great. Well, Robin there, but didn't dip his wing into Canada. So we all went up there on the last day to where he landed and then, and then flew into Canada. And I was talking to the airport manager who was in the seventies and he says, I'm surprised you guys are here. I said, well, what do you mean? Well, I was reading about you online. I said, well, where were you reading about us on X flight?
He goes, no, I was just reading some aviation stuff that I normally read. And it was talking about hang gliders flying to Canada. I'm like, are you kidding? You know, so it was kind of cool. I mean, we started out with just this little group that was just going to do this for ourselves and really weren't looking at too much public, uh, acknowledgement or, or, or interface. And, and then we brought on the Susan G Coleman foundation to try and give back to the community somewhat. And by the way, that ended up, I think it was over $30,000 that we were able to donate to that foundation out of, or at least, and that's for breast cancer, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. And Robin was a huge instigator and getting that going and a huge driver and making it happen for sure.
And, uh, but you know, we created that Facebook group page and we started out with 25 members and then I, I, I kicked it off like a month. And by the time we started, we had like 200 members and then we had 500 and then 700 and then 1100. And I'm, we were all just floored. It's like, whole crap. Hey, we better fly well, you know, but the interesting thing for me was that probably a third to four, maybe even 40%. Of the people that joined up weren't even from the U S they were from around. Really? Yeah. That was amazing to me. Just, uh, you know, it was, and it was word of mouth, you know, somebody would say, Hey, you need to check this out.
And, uh, so we ended up with almost 1200 members and people are still signing up today. So, yeah,
it was, it was a cool mission. And, uh, you told the story really well. Fantastic. Uh, this, the place that you guys started that, uh, you mentioned, you know, that some of the parallels we're looking at and maybe trying to build an encampment effort down there for the world record. Is it just, is Zapata still better? Cause there's a lot of people also internationally that really are dying to come over because of what's going on in Brazil. You know, I mean, it's, we all believe, and I haven't been there, but I mean, that the rumor is, you know, on a good day, we can go better. We can go farther than they're what they're doing now in Brazil.
Oh, absolutely. I, I'd actually,
I kind
of like to spend a month down there to kind of take advantage of things, but, uh, Falfurius, um, which is between, uh, Referio, which is Northeast of Corpus Christi, um, Falfurius is Southwest of Corpus Christi. And then there's Zapata, uh, we're right on the edge of, uh, what I would call the, the mesky mess, you know? Yes. Yeah. And Falfurius was changed. On ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� But Falfurius would be an awesome place to take off from.
And I know Dustin knows he's got places picked out where he thinks that he can go and set the world record for sure. But the benefits to Falfurius, and I say this about any competition, is you need a good place to fly from, a mountain or a good airport or whatever. But then you need the infrastructure that can support the people that are there so you're not driving an hour to get to the place or whatever. And Falfurius had multiple hotels and very accommodating.
The airport was accommodating as well. It's massive. So you get a really good high tow. And I think, and this is contrary to what others believe, Zapata is a little... It's a little bit landlocked. So you don't get as much cumulus development. Oh, interesting. Whereas Refurio and Falfurius, you're much more likely to get cumulus development. But anyway, my thinking is, and Dustin may have a better insight, is that Falfurius could be better than Zapata because you get your Cloud Street overrun much more frequently.
So yeah,
you always fly faster if you got clouds.
South at Zapata, you're not going to get the overrun. Interesting. And southeast, you may not because there's a lot of land in between you and the Gulf. Yeah, right. In Falfurius, you know, the Gulf's not that far away. And in Refurio, we had Cloud Streets every day. We never had a blue day there. But because you're further east, you're in wetter country. And so there's a tradeoff. There's a tradeoff between how high you're going to get versus.
So, yeah, there's a story in itself. Johnny Duran was flying with us at Refurio. He was flying a King Post, a glider, a sport glider. And he launched it. Of course, he's got a lot of experience at Zapata. He's like, hey, what are we waiting for? It's time to go. We got Cloud Streets. So, yeah, but they don't look that high. He said, it doesn't matter. You just get up to the top and you just stay there. Oh, OK. So he takes off at 9 a.m. He goes. He calls. And on the radio, he says, Mick, he says, I'm at cloud base at 1600. But I don't know that this street, which street looks better. I'm in the street to the east. Does the street to the west look better? And Mick Howard says, well, Johnny, I think it does.
It does look better. Johnny goes, OK, thanks. Crosses the street from 1600 feet. Gets to the other street. I don't know what altitude. He was at. Closed back up and he's gone. I'm like, man, that is that is supreme confidence. Yeah, that's confidence.
That's yeah. He's he's the in our world. That's Chrigel. You know, just the moves he makes over and over and over again. You're just like, how did you have the confidence
to do that? Yeah. Gavin, thanks, man. I'm glad I could share with you what I know about X-Flight and what we did.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Congrats to your team. The project for those of you who are interested, look it up. It's on Facebook. It's called X-Flight in the Gulf to Canada. They did. It was 21 days, 11 states and over 1800 miles for pilots. It looks just cool. Larry, congratulations. I hope this is the first of many X-Flights and I hope I get to fly with you guys. I know there's just so much knowledge there that I would love to tap into and share with our listeners as well. But thanks for sharing your story. This was a true pleasure.
If you find the CloudBase Mayhem valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways. You can give us a rating on iTunes or Stitcher or however you get your podcast. That goes a long ways and helps spread the word. You can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media. You can talk about it on the way up to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And of course you can support us financially. This show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing, a lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes costs. So if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. And you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal, or you can set up a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out. We put a new show out every two weeks. So for example, if you did a buck a show and every two weeks, it'd be about $25 a year.
So way cheaper than a magazine subscription. And it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but I, for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people, and these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So I hope you dig that. Um, you can support us. If you go to cloudbasedmayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash cloud based mayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We've tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material, little video casts that we do and extra little, uh, nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show.
But we feel like you should hear. We don't put any of that behind a paywall. If you can't afford to support us, then just let me know. And I'll set you up. With an account. Of course, that'll be lifetime and hopefully, and you're being in a position someday to be able to support us, but you'll find all that on the website. Uh, all of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought cloud based mayhem merchandise, t-shirts or hats or anything, you should be all set up. You should have an account and you should be able to access all that bonus material. Now. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next show. Thank you.
On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On On