Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloud Based Mayhem. A couple of things of housekeeping here to kick us off. The first is I have some friends over at Akando, A-K-A-N-D-O dot com. They make skydiving accessories and they sent me some stuff just to see if it would be applicable in our world. Rain gliders, bear gliders, that kind of thing. They make some really cool gloves. These are not warm gloves, but more like summer gloves, ground handing gloves or hike and fly type of thing. But really nicely put together and they make sunglasses and a bunch of other stuff. Their sunglasses are really good for keeping the air out of your eyes, obviously, you know, like for skydiving. So you don't get a bunch of watery eyes and you can keep your vision. So I've always worn goggles when I fly paragliders, but these would be quite a bit slimmer and less weight.
So take a look at those. They are not a sponsor of the show and not a sponsor of me. I'm just doing them a favor to let you know about them. If you also go to their website and want anything. If you put in the discount code GAVIN20, you'll get 20 % off. So check that out. But thanks, guys, for sending that stuff over to me. The other bit of housekeeping is we did this show a couple weeks ago now by the time this one gets released on COVID. And sat down with my sister and my good buddy, Terry O 'Connor, who's an ER doc here in town. Our town remains one of the worst counties in the country. I think we're in the top five right now. And obviously that's per capita. It's not like New York here. But. It is certainly raging. And the scale of this thing is just mind boggling.
We've took us 30 days to go from one death to a thousand in the US and took us two days to go from a thousand to two thousand. So we seem to be on the exponential curve of that right now. And everything in that show, if you go back and listen to that, if you missed it, has been pretty accurate. My sister has been reporting on this since the very beginning. And Terry is certainly really in the thick of. So I've been really encouraged to see that our community, our flying community, for the most part, has taken this really seriously. I'm not seeing anything on X contest these days. And I really appreciate that. So thank you, everybody, for thinking about the greater good, thinking about our health care workers. This thing certainly is serious. And I don't know when we're going to be able to return to the skies as we should be this time of year.
But I think we need to. Well, I don't think we obviously need to be. We keep we need to keep thinking about all of our health care workers and resources and just the greater good right now. And at some point we will. So I hope you're all enjoying this silent, quiet time to the best you can. I'm certainly enjoying my kitchen quite a bit lately and cooking and hanging out with my family. And I know many people are going to be very negatively impacted by this. Certainly my business, my boat businesses. That's a whole that's a pretty interesting story. The boat got. To the Seychelles a few days ago, and they've completely closed their borders. So we can't even get the boat into the country. Obviously, we're not going to be operating trips for a very long period of time. But yeah, just certainly a very interesting time.
So my guest today, this is not dark whatsoever. And the opposite side of that, my guest today is Charlie Bowman. He has been flying hang gliders for forty seven years. He started in nineteen seventy three, along with his good friend Larry Tudor, who we had on the show a couple of years ago. One of the more. Enjoyable. And entertaining, fantastic talks we've had on the show and by Larry's Larry's insist that he was the first person, certainly in North America and maybe maybe the world that figured out how to thermal. So he was one of the originals. He comes from a skydiving background. So Charlie Skydive back in the sixties. He'd been skydiving for quite a while when he got into hang gliding in seventy three. And so it was kind of natural that canopy experience. He just he picked it up faster than anybody else.
And so we hear stories. It's about his early days in Colorado and then the great migration out to Salt Lake and flying the point. And then now he lives out in Bend. He moved out there in two thousand and very recently, two thousand eleven broke the state record, which still holds for two hundred and eighteen miles into Idaho. And he's still chasing it now. So that was he was sixty four at the time and now he's in his early seventies and he's still chasing it. So proper legend. This was a really fun talk. We talk about things like the best flight. He talks about he ever had was flying thermal wave, which I didn't even know was a thing. So a lot of interesting topics, a lot of great stories, some fun retrieve stories. I think you're going to enjoy it. So hang in there, everybody. Please be safe.
Continue taking the social distancing and all that. Seriously, get out, get some sun, get some exercise to carry your immune system and some point we'll get through this thing. Thank you. Enjoy.
Charlie, I can't tell you. I'm kind of. I'm actually shaking a little bit. I'm so excited to talk to you. I spent a good portion of this afternoon talking to Larry Tudor on the phone and he has sent me a ton of questions and it just made me think about the fantastic podcast we had with him a couple of years ago. He and I have become really good friends. I didn't know that you two shared so much history. So we just before we started talking there, if we've got I got my math right, I said 50, but you've been flying for forty seven years. Is that right?
Yeah. This fall, it'll be forty seven years.
That's incredible. And so the first thing I wanted to ask you is Larry said today that he is absolutely convinced that you are the first person, certainly in North America and maybe the world that figured out thermaling. Can you take us back? Is that true?
Well, I had another person tell me that, too. So maybe it is. I don't know. So we were flying standards at that time and I had read some sailplane magazines about them circling in thermals. And I go, well, all we're doing is just flying around. We're not really circling in thermals. And even though a standard had a terrible sink rate, we could if we got a strong enough thermal, we could circle in it. So I started trying it and it worked.
And you were in Colorado at the time.
Yes. Yes. I was at one guy mentioned it at Telluride when we were flying there off the east side. And I just it was just getting natural to me. And he brought it up to me and I said, well, yeah, I thought I'd try what the sailplanes were doing. So that's what I started doing.
And you saw that visibly with sailplanes or something you read about like where you guys, you know, you could just see them flying around. And getting up.
Well, yeah, I don't think I had contact with tailplanes yet. I think I read it. I don't really remember probably read it in a magazine or something.
And what was the so give me give me a time frame here. Is this 71 72?
Well, it would have been 73 because that's when we were flying standards. Okay. That's the first first type of glider that was really manufactured and they started mass producing and everybody was flying. Those things those death traps.
And Larry was talking about you guys would you would launch and you were the only one that would kind of do this move where you'd fly around the other side of the mountain and just do this like fly on the wall move because then you could relaunch again really quickly.
Oh, yeah, I look out Mountain out of Golden, Colorado. There's a mountain with an M on it. And I really never wanted to go down. I hated to go down. So I figured out how to launch and then fly around the mountain. The mountain was a kind of a cone shaped. So it was easy to fly around it. And then you just fly right up the slope on the backside and land is uphill landing and made it really easy. So I would take off and if I wasn't getting up, I'd fly around and land because I didn't want to go down and I could make it like 10 flights a day and then not go down. Although sometimes I should have kept working the lift because I didn't really need to land, but I went for the security of not going down.
And I'm sure you were doing this with variometer and GPS and while they didn't even have GPS back then, but I'm being facetious here. You didn't have anything, right?
I did fly a lot without a variometer and I just use my eyesight, you know, on the side of the hill to judge that because
I mean, let's say you're flying a lot. Larry talked about it, you know, watching you was like watching magic. I mean, he said just, you know, there was everybody else. And back then, you know, the hang community was huge. You know, this was booming and everybody was doing it and everybody's out. But you were the one that was going up.
Well, I figured out how to get up and stay up and land on top. Nobody had that figured out right away. But it didn't take too long for everybody to catch up to my techniques. And like Larry said, he was watching me one day doing that. And I heard it on his podcast. And he says, I can do that. And he did.
And I understand you came from a skydiving background. Were you still jumping at this time? And how did those two things coincide? And did that give you do you feel like that gave you kind of some canopy knowledge? And some air knowledge that maybe some of the other pilots didn't have?
Oh, definitely. I felt like I could go fly a hang glider with no problem. I just had to learn how to take off because stalls were similar, you know, and it was very similar. I had well, I had a they call them ram air parachutes. They were similar in and not really well structure as paragliders are today. They didn't have the glide ratio, but they were big. They had these big spaces. They had these big cells in the front and there were ram air parachutes and I flew those a lot before I started hang gliding. So I had a feel for it and I didn't even take lessons in hang gliding. I just jumped right into it. And the funny thing is, it was pretty wild in those days.
We went up to the mountain one day and I had this new glider and I had to ask somebody to help me set up.
Before I. And I didn't really have any trouble flying. How long did you skydive for? I got seven years, 700 jumps. And it really taught me a lot about taking chances and equipment that was dangerous. And well, you know, manufacturers will push their equipment even though it's dangerous. I just I just put my foot down on stuff like that. And in hang gliding, it was it was happening all the time. And I would try to avoid it or warn people to stay away from that glider because, you know, in the early days we had the dive problem and some stuff was worse than others.
And until some gliders came out that had luff lines like the Moyes and even better was Roy Haggard's truncated tip, which was revolutionary, really. So those gliders had positive pitch. And they were so much safer. And and then the gliders just got better from there as far as safety goes. And then the other thing that came along was the Hang Glider Manufacturers Association, which there was so many people dying and having problems with gliders that the Manufacturers Association came along and said, we've got to start testing these things. So they tested them for strength and they tested them for their pitch stability.
And boy, from then on. And the gliders just got so safe. It was a wonderful thing to happen.
How'd you get the name Hawkman, Charlie Hawkman?
I don't know.
Did they just stuck?
I flew pretty good in those days because I think I was ahead of everyone. But, you know, I wasn't magical forever. Larry came along and showed what magical was. You know, his his flying was magical. The
dark. Branson and the Hawkman. You guys sound like a heck of a team.
I don't know where the dark prince came from. I don't know if I ever heard of that. What does that mean?
I don't know. I remember I read so many articles about Larry before before I actually talked to him. And, you know, now it's been a few years. I don't remember where that did come from. I got to check in with them that I think it was, you know, it was like this black magic, you know, that he was he was quiet and he just would just crush. Yeah. But I think it was kind of like mysterious. I don't know if that's if I don't even know if that's even remotely accurate, but that's how I remember it.
Yeah, he was he was a very quiet guy, you know, a real introvert. He could do he had the confidence to do everything on his own and fly by himself. And and he was really smart, really good chess player. And he was lightweight. I have to say, I think that helped him a whole bunch. He had a really good climber, really good. Always had a really good climber. It's hard to keep anywhere near him.
Tell me, tell me about the the culture back then. You know, what what was it like and Telluride and Golden and, you know, because there was a lot of people participating back then. I mean, it just must have been it sounds to me very much like the Wild West. It was just like and like you said, a lot of carnage, too. But yeah,
since it was a new. Sport and everybody was interested in it, hang glider pilots were kind of like gods. I mean, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it was a really exciting time. And we had lots of party and we're really young and had tons of energy. You couldn't stop me from going flying. I was almost flying every day and just about almost any condition. But I had some background in skydiving and I knew you could die doing this. And. Yeah. So I I did have my limits, although I have too many stories to tell you, probably about close calls. I don't want to get into death too much. I'd like to do the positive stuff.
Yeah.
No, I don't. I don't want I don't want to either. No, we got plenty of positive stuff to talk about. Well, but but just before we do, I did promise Larry that I would ask you about the Shan Chantel comp or the Shandell comp.
OK. OK, that's one of the gliders that was super dangerous.
I stayed away from it. I knew from what I was reading, the guys that were dying on it, I think 13 guys died. And what happened on the Shandell was it would get into a steep enough dive that it would just they called it a luff dive. It would not come out. It would just you'd be going in at whatever, 70 miles an hour or whatever. And you couldn't stop it. And we didn't have parachutes back then. They did modify it later, so it wasn't quite as dangerous. But it did have a little better performance than most gliders, so it was popular. But yet it was, you know, extremely dangerous. Did he did Larry tell you about that or did he just want to hear? No, he
just wanted to hear your stories. He just kind of thought it'd be fun to hear about things like the Telluride Airman's Rendezvous. And. The fellow feathers and, you know, these just I've been reading hang glider books lately. There's this one that Tim Delaney sent me, the Eagle's Perch, Eagle's Nest. It is the funniest book I've ever read. It is so great. But it talks about this this era of mostly you guys flying in Colorado. Well,
well, Telluride mate that they had every year was just spectacular because this the surroundings are just so beautiful. And the town is like an old mining town with boardwalks and you just stroll up and down the streets at night and stop in it, walk into the bars and say hi to these people and then walk on to the next one. And it was the atmosphere was just incredible. It was you can't I doubt if it's like that now, but I I don't know. I haven't been there for quite a while. And then and then the mates would be off. Well, part of the time. I was on a lower launch, which wasn't too exciting. But if they went up high off Gold Hill,
you know, I think you're launching at twelve thousand feet. And so you better run fast. And the landing area was not good either as nine thousand feet. So that's really thin air for a hang glider to land in. And so you had to be pretty good at it. And other than that, thermals were strong. You could fly all around the canyon and look at these fourteen thousand foot. Peaks. It was really beautiful. And at night you go party at the bars and it was a really wonderful atmosphere. Wow.
And in back then, are you still getting up super tall? You know, where you had you guys kind of figured out, you know, you obviously figured out thermaling at that point. But were you getting up? Were you using oxygen and that kind of thing? I
think we did. No, we did early cops. We were getting extreme headaches when we come back. And it wasn't real good.
And then at what point did you guys start to, you know, have reserves? And I can't imagine flying with with just no reserve there. I mean, there obviously wasn't any S.I.V. It must have been a very naked feeling. Or was it you guys? I mean, you didn't have any reason to think of them because they didn't exist.
Yeah. Yeah. We didn't we didn't know what we were missing at first. And then the idea came up. Yeah. We got to have a parachute. And Bill Bennett made this thing called a 10 line. We call it a 10 line. It was small. It wasn't very strong, but it's better than nothing. And we snapped those up like crazy. And then not long after that, somebody started making regular parachute type parachutes. You know, the conicals, 20 Gore conicals. And then the bags weren't designed that well at first. They had to change where the handle was and relate. They were the where the rubber bands were in relation to the handle. So it wouldn't accidentally load it. And so we got better bags and we got swivels. And that's about all it took. And then, of course, later on, they developed PDA, pull down apex,
which is better. And then they came out with the LAR and the quantum, which are just beautiful shaped parachutes, as you probably know. And so anyway, we we snapped up those parachutes right away as soon as they were coming out.
Was there kind of was there. Was there instruction in schools at this point or was it still all everybody's teaching them themselves?
I mean, as far as just learning how to take off and fly. Yeah, yeah. I think there always was schools, but I don't think the schools were. I mean, they just got better and better. They I don't know if they were that good to start with, but they got better and better.
And was hang gliding in this period? Was it your job? Is it how you lived or were you just kind of the. Can't for Yosemite version of of hang gliders, just you guys living out of your cars and dirt bagging it and flying as much as you can.
Yes and no, I was I flew as much as I could. I didn't really have time to work and I did work building houses part time and the rest of the time I was pretty much flying most of the time. And then I started going to some comps and getting sponsored a little bit. Yeah, I flew. I flew most of the time living in my living in my van and
I understand you and Larry. I don't know if that was together, but in your in your post that you put up about, you know, your record flight in 2011, which we got a long way to get before we get there. But that you guys were living in Salt Lake for a while. You went out. You went from Colorado out to Salt Lake.
Yes, I think there was a mass migration from Colorado to the Salt to the Salt Lake area. I get a lot of pilots from Colorado. Yeah. Just moved right out there because that was the pretty much the Mecca at the time. I mean, there was there must have been 15 flying sites around the Salt Lake area, although most of the flying I did was at either the point of the mountain at Inspiration or Heber because they were all the closest ones.
And were competitions kind of a big deal back then? I mean, you had you had a lot of comps where you guys traveling around me going to the Owens and going to Aspen. And yeah,
I mostly just went. To the closest ones. I was I wasn't I didn't have enough money to be running around the meets all the time. I just went to whatever ones I thought I might like. I mean, Larry was sponsored. He started going to a lot of comps and he did well. And he was more interested in breaking the record world records, though. And he concentrated on those a lot in the summer. What
was kind of your focus?
Well, I did focus on state records quite a bit. And then when I did start going to the Owens Valley, I was hoping to do a world record. But you have to get conditions, too. And I really I didn't live out there in the summer like Larry did. And, you know, pick the best days and go for it. That's what you really need to do. He would take the whole summer off for at least a month or two and then have a driver and everything to prepare him for that task. He was very goal goal oriented for that. And he broke a lot of records, too.
Yeah, he broke a ton of records. Gosh, when he was listing them off, it was just done. And then I did this and then it is. It's amazing. It's amazing history.
Yes, it is.
And so Salt Lake was your was your home for a bit. Would you stay there in the winter, too, or would you go down to other places to fly Florida and Arizona and that kind of thing?
Not too much. I would just stay there in the winter in Salt Lake area. And then I moved out here in 2000.
Out to Bend.
Yes. And
was that to follow flying?
Yes, kind of. But I also wanted to get away from the population was just booming in Salt Lake. It was getting too much for me. And they were building all these houses on the point of the mountain and just wrecking the place. So I said, I'm leaving.
Have you I mean, when you started flying in 73 until now, has it been pretty solid all the way through?
Oh, yeah, yeah, pretty, pretty solid. I mean, I do less flying every year just because I'm older, you know, and I just I started going more for quality days. You know, I go out there when I look like a pretty good, pretty good day today in the counties are puffy and beautiful. I'm going. But I didn't just go out there on any all day, though, maybe only once a week now. All
right. Well, let's let's let's let's check more of the of the history here. You also wanted me to ask you about time you flew out over the Uintas and landed landed so deep that you had to bring your dog in to get your glider.
OK, I have two flights down the Uintas that I thought were pretty cool. The one the one that went in that I got stuck in the snow was in kind of in the late spring. And it was I think it was April and it was I flew from Inspiration over to the Uintas and I thought I could just cross over and continue to the northeast. But I ended up landed on some pretty high terrain on and really deep snow. And I think that flight was like only 80 miles or 85 miles or something. And I packed up the glider and I walked out, but I was post hauling and it was just killing me.
There was so much effort to walk, walk in this deep snow. And I was just trying to get down the mountain. I was walking down the north face and trying to stay on a road. And I came to this sign that pointed two different directions. And I wasn't sure which one. And I picked the wrong one. Didn't take me down to town where I thought I could be OK. So I had to spend the night and it was pretty bad. My legs were soaking wet from the hike. And it was way below freezing that night. So I put the I put my mittens on my feet. I took my wet shoes and socks off and put my mittens on my feet, which really helped out my feet. And I stuck my feet in the harness, tried to make a bed out of it as best I could.
But it was so cold. I was shaking all night. And I guess it's a good thing that I didn't get worse than shaking because then you're hyperthermic. And maybe die. But so I was shaking all night. I didn't go to sleep. And I was going, oh, please come up, son. I just wanted to see that sun start coming up. And it just wouldn't come up. Finally, it came up. I jumped out, put my wet shoes and tennis shoes and socks on. And once I started hiking down, my feet got warm and I was fine. And meanwhile, my wife had already called search and rescue.
So I was. So I called her up and she came, got me and then we had to go back and get the glider. So I had a friend and we and my wife got on some free heel skis, which I hadn't done before. And it was a neat experience. It was a couple of weeks later. So that more snow had melted. I rigged up a glider container with skis on the bottom. I thought we'd put the glider in that and bring my husky along to pull. And he did. He pulled it and we skied back and had a good time and got the glider out. The other flight was a lot more successful. I took the straight east route.
My intention was a flight on the Uintas, which are high peaks. I think they're up to like 13,000 or so. And there was a nice cloud street on it. It was pretty gutsy, though, because when you get on the ridge. There's all these spines running out north and south, but they're five, ten miles long, you know. So there's no place to land in those canyons. Every time I start losing out to that, I'd fly out of spine to the south until I got up again. And then I go back into the main ridge. And I kept doing that until I got to the maybe it's Green River. Green
River just past just past Flaming Gorge.
Yeah. Yeah. And I did the parking lot of the pizza hut. And that's where I waited for my wife to come get me. That was over 100 miles.
You guys in your pizza huts. You remember from Larry's show? You know, when he was flying from Hobbs in New Mexico, when he got the big record, you know, when he went, I think it was 300. Yeah, that's when he went 300 miles. He called it before. He'd never been to this place that he flew in Oklahoma or something. And he put it. Before he took off, he said, I'm going to land at the pizza hut. And he did.
Yeah, he was really good at calculating all that stuff. He knew what the wind direction was. And he'd get on a map and figure out where he wants to get to. And he could do that really well.
Tell me some more. What's a story that, you know, when you're sitting around with the grandchildren that, you know, there was this one time.
Well, I don't know if they'd understand it. But one of my favorite. Flights is the thermal wave that I got into at Pine Mountain. It was totally different than anything I'd ever run into. And it was just, you know, mesmerizing. It was. And I had a camera on my wing and I was shooting glories on the cloud that was below me. And I was above it in a thermal wave. And I was getting 2000 feet over the cumulus. And, you know, this might happen. It might happen on the coast or something. But in the dry desert, that just is something that just never happens. The thermals were pretty good. They were setting up. And apparently the wind hits the line of thermals and just gets pushed up and over and forms a wave.
And the wind was also increasing at higher altitude. And it must have been unstable, too, because I was just flying in this wave that was so super smooth. It was just so much fun. And I had to dive down to get to the cumulus because I wanted to take pictures of the glory. So I would have I would make passes on the side of this cumulus and take pictures of the glory. And then it was like a ridge run. And I'd have to turn around and do a 360 and make another pass on the cloud. That was the most that kept me busy. Otherwise, I would have just been floating up high in this super smooth wave lift. And Gary Oswald is the one that told me it was a it was a thermal wave.
And I actually had that happen to me again, but it wasn't as strong the next year. And both times it was in the fall. I guess when waves or more waves are forming, I actually could see a wave cloud on the Cascades that evening. So it was a sign that there was waves forming, although there was no cloud. I was in no cloud up there above. But above the above the cumulus, there is nothing there but wonderful air.
How high do you think you could have gone in that?
I was getting about 2000 over. I think 12,000 was the top of that. And the cues were about 10,000.
I've never heard this term. I didn't know that you could get wave off of thermals.
I didn't either. Wow. It was brand new to me. And the weird thing is nobody else could get up there. Really? Yeah, they were getting, you know, eight or eight, eight, five or so. But I guess I broke through and got into the upper stuff because there's no trouble staying up there once you got up there. But I was telling those guys down there, get your butt up here. It's wonderful. And they didn't. Of course, you know, when you hear that kind of stuff and you're struggling, you're you're going, shut up. Leave me alone.
All right. Are you still flying with any? The guys you flew with back in the 70s?
Well, that would have been in Colorado. I don't think any of them are out here. Oh, well, except for Tingy. Mike Tingy. I flew with him for a while. He's a great pilot. He was from Colorado and then he moved to Utah, just like me and Larry. And he came here and he kind of retired from flying. He's still in. He's in Lakeview right now. But as for the rest of that group. No, I don't think any of them are here.
And you. Yeah, he he had the he had the record in Utah from Cedar City. 157 miles. I'm just looking at your notes now. And then you broke that record in 93 from Heber into Wyoming. 178 miles. You guys were going so far.
Yeah, that was what? Ninety three. Yeah. That was really. I like that flight. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm not the only obstacles were all those mines that they have out there, you know, and they're they got fences around them and stuff. So you got to be careful. There's a lot of those out there. Other than that, there's pretty small ridges that, you know, are popping thermals off them. And you really don't. I didn't really figure out exactly where to catch thermals out there, but I usually go for a little mountain or a ridge. And I'd stay along. I was staying along Interstate 80 and I landed along Interstate 80. So I got to tell you what happened to me after I landed. I was packed up and walking down the freeway. It was dark or really close to dark.
And I was trying to hitchhike. And then, you know, a truck could go by me. And then about five seconds later, I hear all this noise. And that truck had rolled over on my side of the highway. And it was was rumbling along on the side of the highway. And I was on the side of the truck, just skidding along, making all kinds of noise. And apparently they fell asleep. I walked over and looked at him and there was already a bunch of cars stopped. But that could have rolled over on me.
Holy cow. Can you imagine flying 178 miles in a hang glider and then getting rolled over on by a truck on a freeway?
There'd be something wrong with that whole.
Isn't that terrible?
Now, in that in that article in the Bend paper, when you broke the record in 2011, so that's just a few years back here, you flew a hundred you flew 218 miles from pine into Idaho. And now you gotta go farther, man. You gotta get to catch them next time. And we will throw you the best party ever. No one's ever flown even from Boise to here. So that would be, that's one of our real goals. Uh, Nate Scales did a pretty nifty flight from Boise kind of around the corner, but no one's actually ever gotten here, but. Yeah. an awfully long flight.
I've studied the map and I was trying to figure out the route to stay out of the airspace, you know, to get that far. But on the flight that I made, I was worried about going east because I didn't know the terrain. I know it's rough. I know there's a lot of mountains. I didn't know where I could land. And that's the direction I should have gone. I would have had a longer flight, but I took the easy route and I turned southeast and went down toward Middleton. And so I only gained 18 miles in that last hour where I was doing 40 miles an hour.
So you were kind of crosswind at that point?
Yeah. Yeah. So I really didn't like the idea of heading that way because it just, I know it's pretty rugged.
Are you talking about like, instead of going southeast, sticking with kind of going through Baker City? And, and, you know, kind of south of the Wallowas?
Oh, I can't remember the name of the town, but it's straight east from Ontario. Okay. All right. Yeah. I forget the name of it. And the highways don't go east either. They run into mountains and turn south or north, you know? So it makes it really hard for cross country. I mean, maybe I could do it. I just didn't know. I just didn't have that memorized.
My mistake.
Yeah. I mean, that's, Bill Belcourt always said that, you know, that often the big flights, they end because you've, you don't have a plan anymore. You know, you gotta have a plan for those big days. You've got to keep, you know, you got to still be thinking ahead and have that kind of mapped out. And then suddenly you're in territory where you're just like, whoa, what do I do with this? Then you've kind of lost the advantage.
Well, the rest of that story turned out really well. I flew southeast. It's along the I-84. And I started flying faster and faster because I just wanted to burn off altitude. It was getting late. And so I just kept gliding fast until I had to land. And after I landed, there was a flatbed truck came out with a bunch of kids and dogs and people. And they had all been celebrating the Labor Day weekend. So they picked me up and took me over to their fire pit party and fed me, gave me beer. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And I slept in their motorhome.
So that was easy. And I stored my glider in their garage. And then they gave me a ride to the bus station in Ontario. And then I took a ride to Burns, back to Burns, which I had a truck stored there for just retrieval purpose. And I drove it back to get my glider and then back to Bend. So it was an extra two days of retrieval.
Wow. I was just about to say that. I was about to ask you what the greatest retrieve story you have. Is that it? That's an epic. Oh,
yeah. That's a self-retrieve. That's
an epic. It's self-retrieval. Yeah. So you, wait a minute, you put that truck way out in Burns in advance, thinking that that was where you're going to fly?
Oh, I figured that wasn't really far enough. I mean, I, but I had some, I had a person there that would took care of it. So that's where I left it.
Oh, you mean you would just do this in the summer? You just leave a truck? Yeah. You just leave a truck out there in the summer.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just for that purpose. Oh my God, man. You're my hero. You just leave a truck out in the... Well, it was a, it was a pretty much a piece of junk, but it ran and it had a rack. And so it served the purpose. And I was thinking, you know, on a day where I struggled to get to Burns and I didn't think I could go that much farther. I could just land there, get the truck and drive home and not have extra...
Retrieval time. Okay. But I never did that.
And how, how many hours was that flight? And how long were you in the air?
That one was, I think six. Okay. Now these, I got to mention, these days are pretty short. That was on September 4th. Oh, wow. So the days are really short. And I could have taken off earlier. That's, I probably could have had another hour or two earlier, but it just, it just didn't happen that day.
I got to, I got to put some things in perspective here for our audience because, you know, you and I are talking about Oregon and Bend and Pine and that all makes sense. But a lot of the people listening, that won't make any sense. They don't have any idea of the kind of terrain you're, you're flying over. You know, for when I first moved to Sun Valley in 2012, you know, I always thought that our quote unquote tiger country was, was pretty serious. You know, we, we often fly from here. Pretty deep into Montana. And, you know, to me, it just seemed like, wow, this is incredibly remote. And it's, you know, on a global scale, you know, compared to the Alps, it's insanely remote. You know, there's, there's, there might be some dirt roads, but you can, you can land in a lot of places and, you know, there's hunters and there's fishermen and there's people camping and, you know, the right times of year.
And, you know, that put it this way, I've never had a huge walk out. You know, there, somebody will come by, you know, that might be a couple of cars in a desert. But somebody will come by. Now, the first time I really got a piece of bend and, and Pine Mountain, I went out and flew, you guys have that fly in about that time of year. It's the first weekend in September every year. And I came out there and Matt Hinsey and I had an amazing flight out. We landed at the base of the Steens. So it was nothing like what you did. It was about 210K or, or something. So whatever, yeah. 160 miles, something, 150 miles. And, uh, I could not believe how remote that part of Oregon is.
There's nothing. Yeah, there's
nobody out there. Nobody. You're flying over
the mouth here and it's just, whoa, it's, it was dizzying how vacant and there's nothing out there. And it
doesn't, it doesn't go anywhere. Exactly. Those highways aren't going anywhere. They're, you're in tough. Shape out there. And,
but no, but also they don't go anywhere, but there's also no traffic. I mean, I didn't see a car all day.
No, there isn't.
Tell me another retrieve story. So you've got the one, you know, so your dog towed your, your wing out once, uh, another time it took two days. Uh, if you got some other interesting retrieve stories, cause that's, that's often kind of the most interesting part of our sport, isn't it? Is getting home.
Yeah. That was the hardest one coming out of the UN is in all. That's no, that was definitely the hard one. Uh, you know, I wanted to mention that, that I was on interstate 80 one time after a long flight. And, uh, usually you don't expect interstate people to stop and pick you up, but this one guy, he was a local out there and he stopped and I said, well, how come you stopped? He says, I wanted to see what you're doing out here.
So that, that was a ride. That was a, got me a ride to a phone at least anyway. I
mean, and for, uh, it's also, I think so easy for us to forget, you know, now we're flying with in reaches or spots and, you know, cell phones. And I mean, cell phones are still pretty useless in a lot of the places you and I fly. I mean, once I get out of catch them, they're, they're totally useless, but, and I know in Oregon, I remember that day I didn't have cell service all day. So I don't think they're doing much for you, but you know, back in the day, I mean, what you had radios, I guess, right?
I don't really have radios, uh, except for CBs, which were real big and bulky. So I never flew with one. And then we started, uh, getting ham radios, which you could access off cell tires. Some people have those. And then from there, things just got better as far as radios go. But yeah, we were pretty primitive back in those days and we didn't, yeah, we couldn't call. We had to get to a pay phone or something to call people to come after us. Yeah.
People listening now are like a pay phone. What the hell is that?
You know, I was in Yellowstone just recently and they have a pay phone there. I thought it was the neatest thing to call my wife from a pay phone. And she really loved it. And I just threw about $2 worth of quarters in and you get three minutes and there you go.
It's like using a satellite phone these days. It's so expensive. That's because
they don't have cell phone service. I know.
Thank God. Oh, it's so nice.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yellowstone's a really, really special place. Even with all the people it's, it's still just amazing. I, I, I forgot my question when we, when I read that article from Ben, uh, there was a really cute piece about your wife and it asked her, you know, are you scared about this old guy flying, you know, 218 miles into Idaho from, from basically, you know, central, kind of West central Oregon. And she said, Oh no, no, he's, he's always been fine. He's never been hurt. Uh, he'll be, he'll, I know he's going to get home somehow.
I'm not quoting that exactly, but it sounds like you guys have a pretty special relationship. She's been chasing you in the sky for 47 years.
Uh, yeah, she doesn't do that anymore.
She quit, she quit a long time ago. I mean, I can call her and beg her and she'll come after me, but that's only after. After I fly, she won't go up and do a regular retrieval anymore.
No, that's that she's, she's smart. I talked my wife into that one time, uh, about three years ago and she chased us out across the Idaho flats and out in the snake river basin, just down the freeway. It wasn't even that huge of a day. And I got back in the car and she said, I just want you to know, I will never do this again.
She's helped you to that promise.
Yeah, I know. It's, it's pretty hard to get someone to do that. I need somebody to drive for you more than once or twice. That's true. That's true. If you were writing a book or something that would be good for somebody like that, you know, or they had something to do.
Okay. So 2011, you helped me out with the math. What, how old were you then when you did that flight? Uh, 64. 64. Okay. So you're, you're butting up on, no, you're, you're, yeah, you're over 70 now and still, it's still psyched on. It's still, still chasing it.
Yeah. Yeah. I'll fly. Yeah. I just had a nice flight with Patrick Cruz here. And, uh, last Saturday we got up to 10,000 and, uh, had nice landings. And, uh, and then we got stuck trying to get our car down.
I had to tow him out with my truck and it was a little extra hours all that. We had a fun time. We, we were wearing our, our masks, uh, our virus masks. We were wearing our masks and wiping down our hands and stuff. And, uh, we had a very good time.
Good for you. Yeah. I, I appreciate that. Our, our community seems to be taking the social distancing pretty seriously. That's, that's good. Um, what do you credit? I mean, that's a long time. You see, you, you, you know, you did, you skydive for seven years. You've been flying hang gliders for 47 years. I understand you've never had an accident.
Uh, I've had accidents, but I haven't broken any, bones. Those
aren't accidents then.
Yeah. Right. You can walk away. It's a good landing. Yeah,
exactly. Exactly. Especially on a hang glider. You guys are going fast.
Yeah. Yeah. We have faster landings. We dread a no wind landings. That's for sure. Yeah. If we got, if we got five, we're okay. And what are you flying these days? It's an Atos VR. It's a, it's a rigid wing with like a 44 foot span. I think it has. Wow. And yeah, it's a, it's something else.
So back, back to the question though, Seth, what do you credit? Okay. You've had some accidents, but you haven't broken any bones. What do you, what is your approach, Ben? You thought you think that has kept you safe that whole time?
Well, you know, I have this theory that good pilots always are doing something to save
you. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know,
no matter how bad the situation is, there's always something you can do to help yourself out. And, uh, I think, I think luck might be a little bit of it, but you do have to know what you're going to do in emergencies and do something. Don't give up.
Here's a question. Would you do anything differently?
Oh yeah. My God. Ha ha ha. I wouldn't have taken off. on a bunch of those flies i wouldn't have attempted i wouldn't have attempted that flight for sure okay i'll tell you another story i was in boulder colorado and they had this rock that they were jumping off of i think they i don't know what they call it maybe the boulder the wind was uh not too bad i thought i could take off tandem and uh the wind started decreasing and i really didn't want to go but this girl forced me into doing it charlie isn't that terrible i
don't believe it
for a second uh yeah that was really stupid and uh so the wind was decreasing and when i think back about it i go i don't think we would have made it if even if we'd have launched and what happened is i went i had a wire guy hold him wires in front and there wasn't any room to run or anything you just take a step and you're going and so i said clear and the guy didn't get out of the way he just laid down on the rocks so the controller was hitting him i was trying to launch and the controller was hitting him and i tried lunged again i hit him again and finally we just tipped over nose down and
bounced down this i don't know at least 40 feet to the ground maybe more and so i was the good thing was i was pogo sticking down it was hitting my wings one way another way and they were breaking but it was uh taking the fall and so we got down to the bottom and i didn't get hurt at all the girl got a really big uh hematoma on her hip which was not you know that healed and so i had a broken daughter that's the worst of it for me let's talk about some good stuff yeah okay let's
talk about good stuff no i did that that's good stuff you fell down a 40 foot cliff and walked away that's great yeah
we had a good outcome here's another one uh along with that flight uh the one we were just talking about the record flight i have to tell you that i was pretty much thinking about going cross country because it was uh you know a paraglider meet and there was going to be there was all these paragliders flying so i could see how the air was and before i got set up i could see they were doing pretty well you know like a thousand over so i was in a hurry and i got up to launch and i went dead all the paragliders were sitting around and nobody was in the air so apparently there was a sink cycle and so i got up to launch and just got ready and for the next cycle and and uh while i was standing there something came in i didn't even see it anything coming in but it put my nose on the ground my tail straight up in the air and just held it there for a few seconds i thought i was gonna be spinning around or picked up or something and then it was gone and i looked around i go what was that i've never had that happen before and i think it was just a little tiny twister with no dust and it was enough to pick the glider up but it wasn't big enough to even spin it i just set the glider back down and went oh well
there's some wind coming in i'll get ready to go and there was a guy standing around pointing at my nose and uh i just kind of ignored him going uh okay i'm launching now and he was trying to tell me but my nose cone was coming off and i was in such a hurry i launched anyway and i didn't even notice it till later i looked up and the nose cone was half off and just kind of dangling causing all kinds of drag although i didn't notice anything different during the flight but that was another case where i was in a big hurry and i shouldn't have been and
that was the one where you went big yeah that that was the record flight yeah oh my gosh oh
well don't need that today when you think back you know some some some flight that just really still makes you smile yeah
i gotta i gotta tell you about you were talking about retrievals uh my previous record flight was a record flight and i was in a hurry and i was 196 miles it was to ontario that was in uh august of 2006 so that was uh four years before yeah i did i did 196 miles and that was to ontario well i landed there and some uh people saw me right away gave me a ride to their barn i put my letter in the barn and they gave me a ride to a motel but i had forgotten my wallet it was in my truck and so i had to call my wife and she gave a credit card number to the motel so i had a place to stay and then i had been i was working at columbia aircraft so uh i knew some pilots there one of them came out in the morning and picked me up at ontario airport
and gave me a ride back to bend whoa and then i yeah that's a long ride yeah then i had to drive my truck all the way back and get my glider and then go back so that was pretty nice uh retrieval there that's
terrific yeah that that's a goodie oh
that flight yeah that flight's only about an hour or so i mean that's 200 miles by car but airplane that's that thing goes about 150 i think yeah
no that's that's a that's a sexy retrieve when somebody picks you up in a plane
yeah it is wow
any real fond memories from you know back when back when things were just kicking off back in the 70s or the 80s that uh you know again back to what i call the wild west days i don't know what you guys call them
yeah crazy days uh you know i remember once we went off at night off green mountain and i'm surprised nobody got hurt doing that and some guys were on drugs
uh we lucked out on that one we just had to fly i guess you know it was pretty dark too is
this where you had some cars down in the lz with with headlights on or was it just totally dark i
don't think we had cars down i don't remember the landing but it was you know it was easy to land standards that was a good thing those were so easy to just stick anywhere because they you know they only had a four to four to one glide and you know it and they had a big surface area so they were easy to flare and land that was the best thing about it but since you mentioned headlights that reminds me of a flight in uh california cressline yeah
marshall and cressline
or pine flats i think it was uh me and sean dever were flying there pretty late and apparently we didn't know much about it but there was a convergence at night there a lot and on uh he landed and i really had trouble getting down and so it was getting darker and darker because the convergence coming through and uh i mean the lift was good because of the convergence and he did get the car out with the lights on and that really did help me land what's
your favorite place to fly all these you know you you cut your teeth in colorado and you spent a bunch of time out in salt lake but i i know you you know you've done you you did the comp thing and uh you and larry were doing some traveling around and you know you ended up out in bend i know you've flown all over the place but do you have a favorite spot i
don't know if i do i don't know if i do i don't know if i do i don't know if i do really there's a lot of good places i i really haven't been to that many places compared to a lot of people the only thing is if you go to a beautiful place it's usually pretty turbulent yeah you know there's big mountains big mountains i i prefer scenic places uh but you know i i remember in the old days when i go cross country a lot i i didn't really know the train i was going over all the time and i i used to say one of the neatest thing about cross country was seeing new scenery flying and sometimes flying low over the train and seeing different animals and different birds and and everything was just magical because you've never seen it before and you probably never will again yeah that was half the reason i flew i think back in the old days was for that scenery and the new the new terrain that i was flying over charlie
so awesome to talk to you i've just been dying to do this for a long time i know you've been really busy but this was really special for me and i know very special for our listeners to hear about your 47 years and we only very barely touched the surface i know but so hopefully we can do a we can do a follow-up or something but i really appreciate it thanks for thanks for sharing your time yeah
it's really really nice talking to you gavin and uh i'll be talking to you again thanks a lot sounds
good all right thanks charlie talk soon one
quick clarification about the show charlie and i talked about the chandel comp this is a glider that was very prone to left dives that killed a lot of people before they stopped manufacturing it in a single year charlie said 13 and later he reached out after we stopped recording he reached out and said he preferred to pull that comment because he didn't know if that was an accurate number or not it's a great segment so i wanted to leave it in i reached out to Larry Tudor who was pretty familiar with that whole scene back then as well and he's reached out to mark winsheimer who really understands the history and was very involved with chandel and the number is somewhere between 10 and 14 that year and that was in a year that 40 hang gliders died nationwide so certainly that one wing was problematic if
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