122. Storytime - James “Kiwi” Oroc

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem. My guest today is my dear friend Kiwi, or James O 'Rock, Kiwi pilot from New Zealand, who has just recently, actually in the last couple weeks, emigrated officially to the United States. But Kiwi is one of the most fascinating people in the world, certainly the most fascinating person I have ever met. He's been to Burning Man, I think, every year since the late 90s, and has written a couple of books on psychedelics, and has been flying since the mid-80s, and has come across in all that time with pretty much every big name in flying and paragliding.

And this is basically story time with James O 'Rock, with Kiwi. We had a blast. We are down in Texas chasing the world record. Been down here for almost two weeks now, and the weather has not been totally cooperative. We've had a couple of pretty nice flights. So we're just camped out, waiting for it, being patient. And Kiwi came over today, and we just had a nice fireside chat. Of course, without the fire, we don't need any fire down here in Texas. It's warm enough as it is. But having a blast, and this was a fun talk about kind of the history of flying, and all the crazy things that Kiwi has seen along the way. And we also talked just very briefly about his brand new book, his third book, called Under the Infant.

20 Tales of Psychedelic Noir, which I just started yesterday, and I'm loving. It's hysterical, and thoughtful, and poetic, and a lot of fun. So Kiwi's a great writer. You've all probably read a lot of his stuff in Cross Country Magazine over the years, and others. So enjoy this talk with James O 'Rock, aka Kiwi.

Kiwi, dude, we've been trying to do this for a long time. We have, we have. I'm excited that we're down here chasing distance in Texas, and the weather's not cooperating. So it's a perfect time to sit down with you and hear about the craziness. I've just been enjoying your third book.

It's fantastic. It's hysterical. And I think we're going to all be entertained by your stories of flying and the collision that you've had with flying over the years. Take us back to the very beginning. How did you get into this madness?

Yeah, it's funny when you, you know, thinking back, I think I was at university in New Zealand, and I was about 17 years old. And my friends took me skiing for the first time to Wanaka. And I'm pretty sure that was the first time I saw somebody flying, because guys were flying off the road there in 86 or 85. And then the next year, I ended up moving to Wanaka for the winter to pursue skiing. And that was when I first got there. I took my first paragliding mini flights with some of the crew of younger guys out of Queenstown.

And I hadn't actually bought a glider at that point. And then in 87, I went to Jackson Hole. Once again, just purely by luck, really, because I didn't really know a lot about the place.

Continuing my pursuit of skiing at that point. And my roommate was Jim Olsen, who was the first man to come to me. And he was the only person, probably the only person who's legally flown off the Grand Teton. And he'd done it about six months earlier in 1987. So it felt like paragliding, which was a pretty obscure and small thing at that point, just kept popping up for me fairly regularly. And then we had a guy, Kurt Kleiner, in Jackson Hole who was giving lessons. So that was the first opportunity to really give it a go.

And what were the gliders?

I don't remember exactly what Kurt was. A very simple seven, nine cell, square. You know, we're all climbers that just thought it was a great way to get down. That was the real attraction at that point. Because down climbing was definitely a danger all of its own. We had a guy, Rene, a Swiss guy in Queenstown, who made a glider called the Renegade. And it had little pins in the corners. You could pin it to a snow van. Queenstown was quite a hub for paragliding in the late 80s. Because a lot of New Zealand mountain guides would go to France, Chamonix, what have you, for the summers, or opposite seasons. And then they were coming back with all the gear.

My first manual was in French. It was definitely a very French aspect to the sport in those early days. And that was when, you know, what we now call extreme really started to sort of come into focus. The French called glissé. And I remember when I went to Jackson Hole, or heading to Jackson, I really thought I was on my way to Chamonix. And Jean-Marc Bouvan, who had just flown with Everest in 88 on an elder car, he and Bruno Gervais and guys like that were a huge influence on a 20-year-old New Zealander with $1,000 and one-way ticket and a pair of skis.

And Jackson ended up having a lot of influence on you.

Well, I ended up staying in Jackson for 14 years or something like that. I'd like to say I went... The first winter I arrived, I pretty much... I had everything dropped in my lap. In a typical 20-year-old Kiwi, I burned all my bridges and then spent the next 14 years trying to rebuild them all, is the way I like to put it. But yeah, I feel very fortunate that a lot of times, just through sheer luck, I've ended up really at the right place at the right time. And certainly my paragliding career, I've been an observer to a lot of really interesting things. It always amazes me the way it keeps... Keep bumping back into it. But Jackson in the early 90s was a really awesome place to be.

Paragliding was new and we didn't have much hang gliding out there. There wasn't really a hang gliding history. It was really a climber's place. So we were sort of a double-edged sword. We didn't know anything, but we were all figuring it out ourselves. And there was a great early group of us that included guys that were... A lot of them are still flying.

I think John Patterson was probably the pilot most responsible for sort of giving us a bunch of structure because he was an engineer and obviously had been paying attention. You know, like I look back at some of my early mistakes, and it took me years to figure out something as simple as wing sizing. I kept buying wings that were too small because I thought they were fast and silly things like this. I remember John Patterson had this Adele, one of the early ones, and the thing would just seem massive. And I realized, you know, now why? Because it's sizing. And I'm a big guy, so I should have been on big gliders.

But, you know, John was responsible for my first thermal and the first cross country in Jackson Hole. It was me and him and another pilot were living together. And I was working in something manual. And I came home from the day and John had flown like five miles or eight kilometers. But what I couldn't understand was, he'd flown up one of the buttes and there was no ridge, right? Because we were just ridge-soring at this point. So how the hell did you manage to get way down there when there was no ridge, you know? I said, oh, it was easy. It was a thermal. Oh, thermal, sweet. What's that? You know, explain. And he's like, oh, it's really easy, man. He said, you're going to go up East Cremont Butte, fly out over the gravel pit, and you'll feel the air moving and lifting

and just start turning your glider around and you'll go up. And get as high as you can and just point it. I said, oh, that sounds fantastic. So I'm determined to do that the very next day. So I go up East Cremont by myself, 3 o 'clock in the afternoon. It's howling windy, which at this point I think is exactly what you want because I'm flying small gliders and we're trying to ridge-sore, right? So, yeah, this looks good. I'm on an Adele Aero, which was this one of the early ellipticals, supposedly more of an intermediate glider. It had a mesh front and little fiberglass battens. This was in 1990, and we had no reserves, just to add to that. So I go flying out over the gravel pit and hit this thermal, which immediately just wipes my wing out completely.

And I start spiraling towards the ground, and I'm sure I just threw my hands above my head in terror. And the glider miraculously reopened, and I crossed the power lines and crossed the highway and sat it down in the McDonald's car park, shaking like a leaf. And I had two buddies who were sitting about a mile away in front of me, and I said, I'm going to go up there, I'm going to fly and watch. They were watching the whole thing from their couch. And I disappeared behind the Kmart or something. So they called 911. About two minutes later, an ambulance comes roaring in and cop cars, and I'm like shaking and packing my shit up. I remember going back and going to John Patterson and saying, you can stick your thermals on, keeping away from that. But that was definitely the start of XC flying in Jackson Hole, which now is about 200 miles.

Yeah, which

you witnessed, you were there for that.

Many years later. Many years later, yeah.

But like the JP and Hunt and you guys, who did you say the instructor was, Kirk?

Kirk Kleiner was there in the late 80s, and then he was more of a base jumper type. And he ended up coming down. He was down here in Texas. He was a National Parks guy, and they sent him off to one of these parks down here, which kind of freed us all because then we had no instructions, so it was better. Just figuring it out. We were in an area, a lot of times you'll get an instructor seems to take quite a strong grip, personality-wise, on an area. And I think because Kirk bailed and no one really filled the void, we just had this weird little niche.

Nate's got this story when he learned that the guy that taught him, he took him up Greenhorn at home in Wood River Valley, and he brought him up the hill, and they flew off, and they landed, and the guy said, okay, now you know as much as I know. That was like one flight. That's about right. Is it kind of like that?

I mean, the place where Kirk taught us is hilarious. Like when you look at it now, you can't even imagine how you could fly a paraglider. It was in this gully, you know, backside of a thing. And we all had the same size gliders that we were learning on. I was really annoyed that my other friends were getting off the ground and getting so much higher, and I couldn't get up. I'm running down the hill and thinking my technique's poor. It's just I was the heaviest one in the group, obviously. I don't even know if I actually got that far, 10 or 15 feet off the ground probably.

And did JP have like a – I mean, because at that point, the hangings had figured out some XC. So did he know thermals existed? I mean, did he know? Well, we didn't really.

The hang glider pilots that were around didn't really fly Jackson much. They went more over to Idaho. Yeah. They were over at

King and Owens. Yeah,

and Blacktail Butte or that big butte out there in the middle. Yeah, Southern Butte. Southern Butte. And there wasn't many of them. And I think JP was – you know, we had Salt Lake City and Point of the Mountain as a contact point. But it was funny. Like we were all very isolated little islands. Jackson Hole was an island. Sun Valley was an island. Utah was an island. And then Joe Glizinski – we were all on these all ratty old gliders. And then Joe Glizinski, who was a sort of rolling pro-design rep, heard that there was this bunch of potential pilots up in Jackson Hole. So he came rolling up. And this is how funny it was in these days. He gives Hunt a Challenger C, pro-design Challenger C, which would be the equivalent of a D or a CC.

And John's been flying one of these Excalibur bags of rags, things that doesn't go anywhere. And we went up Phillips, and John launched, went straight up and crossed the valley for the first time. And I remember turning to John and said, oh, that's a sail.

Which it was. Hunt flew the hell out of that Challenger C for the next couple of years. But the kind of gliders we got put on, quite terrifying. Same thing happened to me. I went back to New Zealand. And I ended up being sold this ragged out Advance Omega II with race lines that was by a German instructor that was way above my skill level. And I was way too heavy-handed. So I used to spin that thing regularly in Jackson Hole. They called me the spin doctor at one point.

Without reserves. At that point, we had moved up to the Von Blondes that I think would have broken all the bones in my dog's body. Because they were tiny, these little things. But we thought, well, that's great. Because we had a reserve. I'm really glad I never threw my Von Blondes.

Descent rated 12 meters or something? I

don't know how big they were. They were tiny in the bag. So they can't have done much good. But it was a step forward. Yeah,

right. So you were doing, at this point, you were going back and forth every year? So you were spending the… I

went back and forth a couple of times. I was all over the place. I was still doing a bunch of climbing. In 93, I was still very interested in this idea of what was becoming extreme sports at this point. And I was trying to organize different athletes and do some management stuff. And I had all these grand ideas that were probably 10 years ahead of their time. But I had some contact with MTV Sports, which was the very hip. Extreme channel at the time. And I was pitching them this multi-sport Jackson Hole thing that we just about had agreed on. And then at the very last… And I was going to bungee jump out of the tram. That was going to be part of it. And then at the very last minute, the mountain sold and changed hands.

And the new owners didn't want anything to do with it. But I'd gone out to New York and I'd been talking to MTV. And one of the producers had asked me, are there any other sort of things you'd like to do? I said, oh, there's lots of things I'd like to do. And I'd been reading all up about Ecuador. And I was like, oh, I'd love to go on paraglide with Cotopaxi in Ecuador. I just very randomly threw that out. So then six months later, I'm in Jackson skiing for the winter. Completely forgotten about it. And I get a phone call from MTV Sports. And they're like, oh, we've got a thing going to Ecuador next week. You think you'd like to be part of it? So next thing I knew, I couldn't find anyone else to go with me. And so in 93, I went with MTV Sports. To Ecuador.

And I flew almost to the summit of Cotopaxi with a helmet on my head that's about the size of your coffee machine over here. I mean, with a camera on my head. It was just gigantic. I bled to death. And yeah, we got lucky. We got up through the cloud early in the morning and flew pretty close to the summit of Cotopaxi in 93. And Andre Agassi and Dan Cortez introduced me in the start of the MTV Sports segment. Get out of here. Yeah. So then Hans Rey, who was the great mountain bike trip, you know, downhiller and trials rider. He did this really cool segment in Ecuador bouncing around on the stairs and the cars and the things. And all these street kids were chasing him around.

We almost caused a riot. It was awesome. So that was a lot of fun. I did that on a Dell Space.

Okay. Yeah. And here we

had Dell. That Dell gave me. And then I had this Omega 2 that I was telling you about. It tried to kill me. I pounded in pretty hard in Jackson Hole and managed to walk away from it. And it was getting really ragged at this point. All the boys were like, you know, you got to get a new glider. I really needed money. What are you doing for work at this point? You know, I had a bungee jump, sort of an underground bungee jump company going in Jackson Hole. And it was pre-Tandems. Were

they doing Tandems in Jackson yet? Not yet.

Okay. Not yet. When this happened. It was getting close. But I went to New York on some other thing. And when I arrived in the city, they smashed in the windows of my car almost immediately and stole my Omega 2. Which probably saved my life, in retrospect.

I've never been so happy to lose something like that. Yeah, that

one was probably ready to go. I mean, it was just ragged out. And then, you know, once again, just good luck and lots of weird collisions and paragliding. Because I had a good friend in San Francisco area who was a sail maker. Big boat sail maker. And yacht racer. Like North or something. Yeah, but he had his own loft. It's now part of one of those. I forget what it is. But their sails were all being made in Hong Kong in some factory. And he was like, oh, they make paragliders in the same factory that was making our sails. He's like, you want to see if I can hook you up? And that ended up getting me connected with Pro Design, John Yates, back in the States. So he started sponsoring me. And I was on the team with a 17-year-old Josh Cone and a 15-year-old Zach Hosington, who was almost as good as Josh in those days.

And he's gone on to be like a NASA engineer. Really? And I mean, yeah, Josh was a pretty exceptional pilot even at 17. Yeah. And I've known a lot of really good pilots all over the world. And Josh is really one of the world's top pilots, in my opinion. Certainly, for his incredible consistency.

Yeah. And

how long he's been flying at such a high level. The bot. Yeah, I think that nickname came about a decade later. But John Yates, who was importing Pro Design. I think he hired me because I was the only one old enough to drink with him and drive the van. So he figured he'd sponsor me. He had these two kids. And I spent a lot of time driving the black Yates van, chasing Josh.

But that got me into competition.

Pro Design gave me a contest. It was the Wing of the Time. And I went off to my first competition, which was the Mitchman. Mitchmatch. Which Mitch McAleer, the acrobatic hand glider pilot, put on in Elsinore. And there was 16 pilots in it. Which looking back was a pretty funny group. And it included all the top US pilots. And this young English kid that was strutting around with a bunch of tattoos. And just seemed like he was totally trying to run the show. And I was like, oh, who's this guy? And they're like, oh, that's Robbie Whittall. And I'm like, that's not Robbie Whittall. Robbie Whittle's like 45 years old and flies hand gliders and has socks up to his knees.

And I had no idea that Rob was actually younger than me and now flying exclusively paraglider. So that wasn't Robbie Whittall first turned up in the States. And then Rob and I would end up spending a lot of time together over the next few years.

So

at that point, he'd already won in hang gliding? Or he was still

getting ready? No, hang gliding. I think it was the first one he won when he was 19. He

was 19?

Yeah. And then he came back and he won paragliding when he was like 23. And he went to Korea to work with Adele for a start. And then he ended up ending up in Sun Valley with Adele USA, which is how he came into our orbit. Sun Valley had a really interesting and exceptional group of pilots that Greg Smith assembled. It included Dave Bridges, two times national champion. He later died with Alex Lowe in Tibet climbing. And Chris Santacroce and Robbie and Nate Scales and Otha, both teenagers as well. That's one of the really things I love about paragliding is in my 20s, it was the absolute perfect sport to be a lunatic 20-year-old.

And now in my 50s, it's the perfect sport to be a quasi-retired 50-year-old. So it's been just progressing with me nicely.

Yeah. So Robbie, you guys are roommates. Yeah, Robbie. You dropped acid together. You guys have a lot of history together. I wouldn't

know about that.

Yeah. I mean, Rob's been a big influence on me just as a friend for sure.

But yeah, I mean, Rob keeps reappearing in the story for sure. So yeah, we had the Chelan Nationals. And then there was a couple of great Venezuelan pilots. The Cassattamac brothers who were importing APCO into Miami. And I had been spending some time with them. And they were like, oh man, you got to go to Venezuela. Venezuela's so cool. So I went down. I took off to Venezuela. And it turned out they were having this new competition there that was going to be called Paragliding World Cup. And I only really recently realized that I think it was actually the very first Paragliding World Cup. The first PWC? When I look on the PWC app. History, it's the first one that they have results for.

So that's 96? 96, yeah. And Xavier Miraló had put the whole thing together. And it was just a legendary. They, 250 something pilots entered. And they didn't tell anybody no. So almost everybody came, right? Robbie Whittall actually was one of the few that they said no to. Because Robbie had waited so long to put his entry in. But they were like, no, you just can't come. We've got 250 people that have turned up, right? So we had this first ever PWC in Venezuela. And for the first two or three tasks, they actually, 250 of us flew. Jeez. And we broke it down then into an A comp and a B comp. Two comps were like 120.

Because it was just too much chaos? It was chaos. It was crazy. And we had a Le Mans start one day. Really? Yeah, where we laid all the gliders out. And everybody went up the hill. And we ran down to Coole. Oh, classic. It was super cool. Oh, that's awesome. But I'd gone there about a month or two, six weeks earlier. And I'd ended up in this great flying house that was close to Loma Lisa. We were having the comp run by Orlando and Marie. I know they're still there. So hi, Orlando. Hi, Marie. I still want to come back. Loma Lisa in Venezuela, if you ask me, the best place I've ever flown in the world. I would personally say it was Loma Lisa in Venezuela. And I know a lot of pilots who flew there in 96 still think that.

Really? But I'm in this little house in the jungle. And it's me and these two young guys. I've got a 19-year-old, Richard DeLong. Who I think I'd already met. I think Richard had already come over for the Kings Mountain Nationals. I get a little mixed up. And Raul Rodriguez. Who was like 17 or something. Yeah. Right? And so I'm like, we're going up the little hill behind the jungle house. And Raul's doing his thing every day. And I'm just like, couldn't even barely look at him. And Richard was like, oh, this guy's going to change the sport, man. Which turned out to be very accurate. So I want to just, you know, Richard passed this week on his 47th birthday.

And he was a good friend. Had a lot of good adventures with Richard. So we've got some good GCs. We've got some good GC stories tucked away in here. He was amazing, man. He could learn a language in like five days. Wow. And Venezuela, here's a good Richard story. We had this incredible task. You know, we were playing these like 100K tasks in the early 90s. And the conditions were just fantastic. And this day, I didn't make it to goal. We went down at the last turn point. Which was a bit bummed out about. And we went down this big, quite nice looking ranch, you know. And typical sort of US mentality. I'm trying to sneak out of there without being seen. And there's this big, beautiful house up on this sort of mound. Coming around the corner. And this guy comes out.

He looks down and goes, hey. He says, what's your PWC number? He says, we've had vans coming by. He says, we're having a barbecue. Why don't you come up? So I go up there. And this guy's having a carnival party. And he's got all these models from the old days. From Caracas.

And Richard had already landed. So he was already up there. And there was a couple of them. And there was a German girl. That crashed out on the outskirts of the farm. And she was fine. They were just doing a rescue. But it was obviously going to take a few hours. So I know Richard and I passed on at least two vans. And stayed at this carnival party till all hours. We got this German girl out of the jungle. It was really a super fun afternoon. Evening. Yeah. And then they end up. And it had just been an incredible day of flying. And they threw me in the back of this pickup truck. I remember driving back to La Victoria.

And I mean, my whole. Again, like it's tingling sensations up and down my whole body. Like I haven't got a bunch of drugs. And I'm looking. It was the first time I'd been flying in meters per second. Because we'd always flown in feet per minute. So I converted all my instruments over. But I still didn't really know what any of it meant. And then I was like, we're getting like 70. And when I got toerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenereneren laughing at them people don't aren't usually that happy when they don't make gold

but it just been such an epic day from start to finish so for what making gold was even an issue right

awesome and this is you're so you're still flying for pro design then yeah

okay yeah and that's when i was really starting to get into it and then in yeah 95 96 97 98 probably my my prime years in the states um and also when i started to go to south america more

um i remember i was thinking to go to europe to fly PWC the following season in the spring dave bridges goes to me goes kiwi says you know i want to know what it's like flying PWC in europe he said stand in a shower and rip up hundred dollar bills

sounds like it sounds like going boating yeah

he says the place you want to go is bay to bravo mexico this was 96. wow uh and so i hate and i'd actually met miguel gutierrez at that point we've been working together in aspen um and

had pignon been were they flying pignon already then

barely okay yeah chris chris and santa croce and dave and robbie had gone down there because of miguel miguel gutierrez was you know at that time one of the world's top top hang glider pilots yeah he'd gotten i think third or fourth in the owens and been leading the comp to the last day um but then he had back issues so he couldn't really fly hangs very more much more so he took up paragliding pretty seriously in mexico in the mid 90s and the opinion there's a lot of hang gliders in bay in those days obviously but there weren't many paragliders um so i was down there for the winter of 96

um well basically what happened was i tried to fly a hang glider and i was like oh my god i'm going to fly a hang glider and i had to drive to ecuador i tried to move to ecuador so i was leaving the states and i was going to set up ecuador and had a bit of a disastrous trip my traveling partner crashed and broke his back in iguala and was paralyzed and paralyzed for life and then he died and i'd been his instructor um to this day i've thought about that day obviously many many times and i think he passed out in a spiral dive because he was a very good athlete and uh top extreme skier and what have you and he'd been getting into doing his spirals and i was like well mate if you need spirals just do them high and in iguala i'd flown cross country and then gone back up to get the truck and he had thousands of feet to play with it was right at the end of the day he never pulled his reserve you know what exactly happened but i definitely think there's there's a lot of that goes on more than people realize yeah um and so that was really pretty tough having a good flight

when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when in Venezuela on the practice day, chasing Andy Hedega through some saddle. And that went fine. And then I think the next year I threw it in Chelan above the Butte. So my birthday. Robbie always said he'd never throw his reserve. He threw his like twice in six months. Like everybody I knew was chucking reserves.

Bill Belcourt broke his neck at Kings. It was just a lot of carnage. And my love for the sport was kind of what had Wayne pretty hard at that point. Didn't

you tell me a story about Robbie throwing at Chelan? Was that Chelan that he threw right? It was like one of these deals where he kept trying to press forward, press forward. Was that Robbie?

No. Robbie threw in Australia. He never threw in Chelan, I don't think. I don't know. You'd have to ask him. But no, the first time I went up Chelan Butte ever, we drove up and Monty Bell threw right above us and came down. On top of the Butte, under reserve and packed up, relaunched. While we're getting our stuff ready. And meanwhile, you know, the funny thing about flying in America in those days was everywhere we went, we were being told we were going to die. You know, the idea of having a paragliding competition at Chelan Butte in the 90s was highly controversial. Sure. And the paraglider, the hang glider pilots were not happy about it at all. At all. Um, and that was, that's a good Robbie, Robbie Whittall story is him.

They came rallying up the Butte and they had this big pickup truck and he and Nate and Otha were with them. And, uh, you know, he rallies to a stop. They got the doors open and music's on, they're blaring tune, you know, strutting around and you can see this little group of hang glider pilots getting all pissed off. So finally, one of these guys comes over and he goes up to Robbie and he goes, oh, you know, some of us have come up here for some peace and quiet. And Robbie looks at him and he goes, really? I've come up here to rock.

And the guy just turns around and goes back to his buddies, confused. And someone's like, ah, that's Robbie Whittall. Uh, you're screwed, mate.

It was actually one of the funniest things I've ever seen. But yeah, it was very controversial. Everyone. And, you know, I mean, looking back, we were talking with Larry Tudor, you know, when they had the first, uh, idea that we're going to rate pilots and be successful. And, you know, we had a P3 structure and to get a P3 in the early nineties for your first couple of years, you had to do a full stall and a negative spin on your glider above the ground.

That was the requirement.

Yeah. For like, it would now be like an advanced intermediate, you know, which was just crazy looking back. And it was kind of the same with the competitions. We really went the strongest places. Some places that we had two comps at King's. Mountain. They're incredible. But really considering the equipment we were flying on in the nineties, pretty wild. That was, I think the first time I met Rashad, cause he turned up for that summer and he was so hilarious. Like he was just caning everybody, but he kept landing like 50 feet short of goal or something like he would, he would be like 30 Ks ahead of us and he'd be full barring in and he not like you keep coming short of the goal. He was just a ball line.

Doing all this crazy stuff. He was like 19. He was so wild. And then one day he'd get off just going, Kiwi. He said it was so cool. He was up at like 17, 18,000 feet or something. Right. Yeah. He said, I saw this. I was under this cloud and I see this what's happening with this cloud. So I go to the cloud. It's snow Kiwi. My harness is filling with snow. It was so cool. 18 and a half thousand feet all by himself. Yeah. It was so cool, literally. Yeah, yeah. And then he goes and bombs 50 yards short of goal again.

I mean, that's amazing that you guys were, they were throwing comps at King back in the day on that stuff. I mean, they don't even have comps there now. No. I don't think one person flew there last year.

No, well, after Bill broke his neck, I think that was when we probably came to our senses. And fortunately, his feet recovered from that. Yeah. No, you'd never know.

Right, sure.

And that was like, I mean, it was such a little brotherhood in those days. Was this when the

pro design Adele thing was going on? You were on one team or the other?

There was a bit of that going on. But in reality, when, you know, I mean, Bill's accident's a classic example. Bill, it was the last task. And we all saw Bill crash. And then Josh, Cone, and Robbie landed beside him. And very strong. And conditions like that. I don't know. That alone was amazing. Dave Bridges and Will Gadd flew to the bottom. We self-organized the rescue even without the organization. We had the ambulance there. Will and Dave led these two overweight EMT guys up to Bill. And they pull out the oxygen. And they're like, oh, you know, you want some oxygen? And Bill goes,

I think you guys need some first.

And they go, absolutely. OJ won the nationals and he was out in front so he didn't know but everybody behind it just stopped and and self-organized this rescue you know because that's how it was in those days it was right little brotherhood it's quite an amazing group the original US pilots that got it going in these different places and Robbie

was living in Sun Valley then or was that when you guys were living together Robbie was in

Sun Valley I might have moved to Drigsburg then he once he left Adele he started working for Firebird and then he moved to then Ozone started yeah it was when he left the states and which is fortunate for me is Ozone have definitely done a lot to keep me in Paraguay and then I went I always went with and saw those guys in the early years when they started the early 2000s was my sort of my few seasons in Europe but

after that kind of that that stretch that was there was a lot of carnage and stuff did you I took a go away from it yeah I took

a step back from racing and then that sort of coincided with the whole Ozone adventure was Ozone really took a step away from racing when it started you know people don't well they tried to start a serial class with the PWC and that I think lasted one or two seasons and then when that sort of failed Ozone as a manufacturer in the early 2000s was a little bit of a

erenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenerenereneren 15 years i flew dhd2 gliders yeah so by like 97 98 i ended up as my trip to ecuador had not happened it'll fall into pieces and i'd ended up back in the states and and robbie was getting ready to move to europe and uh i was flying uh uh the pro design max at this point and i don't know what was going on with gliders in 97 or 98 but they mustn't have any cord in them or something but they were very prone to spin and and collapse quite radically and certainly none of it not much of the internal structure like the gliders do now so my max had this habit that every time i would give it a decent amount of bar it would never really have asymmetrics it would just do this sort of like more like today's gliders these monster full frontals

and i would come down and almost slap you in the face the leading edge that against the rises and reopen violently and you'd end up i would end up spinning the thing right there was one task at king's mountain when i spun it three times on the way to goal right and it's i'm like and then i'm seeing pilots much more talented than me like robbie and these guys they're also got their hands full you know i'm starting to think maybe this is not such a good idea for me and dave bridges and i was working uh tandems with dave aspen in 98 i remember one of the last conversations i had with him he was telling me that he thought racing was getting too dangerous and he was going to go back to mountaineering to give him something else to do and then he ended up getting killed climbing like a year later and it was about that point that i decided i was going to flip the coin and move to new orleans louisiana which is about as far away from paragliding as you can get in the united states

and you know i have this kind of split personality where there's the outdoor paragliding climber skier personality and there's also the writer photographer underground personality so these two personalities tend to you know flip backwards and forwards a lot um and so in 98 or 99 i made the move to new orleans which definitely sent my paragliding career in a completely different uh

way when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when when I just completely forgot about racing. And then, like I said, I ended up going to Europe in, I think, 2000 and 2001

and was around for the start of Ozone. And, you know, Ozone's become this big behemoth of a company, but there wasn't very many people involved for a start. They all worked really hard. Those first few years were a lot of fun. In 2001, I drove to the World Championships in Sierra Nevada in Granada with Russ Ogden and Matt Taggart. Russ had just started working for Ozone. I think I'd actually met him before he started working for Ozone at a British team training thing in Custerhorn. So we drive down to these 2001 Sierra Nevada Worlds, which... Personally, I think must go down as the scariest World Championships of all time.

The carnage in 2001 in Spain in Granada was crazy. I watched Andy Hedegaard break his foot, top landing on one of the practice days. I think the entire Australian team went to the hospital before the event even started.

Holy what?

I may get in trouble for that statement, but it was crazy. I mean, what happened was, they kept setting tasks in front of the... Granada, Sierra Nevada is this giant volcano in southern Spain. We were in this... It was like 40km up the road to the village. It was just a winter village, so we were up there in summer. We were the only ones up there. It was really crazy. And they kept doing these tasks sort of in front, and they were over with these canyons and things, and it was just carnage. It was like the first year the pods came out, I watched Jin spin... down through the gaggle. I think Josh took a big spin on a pod. The pods were kind of not quite worked out. It was a lot of carnage, eh? It was also some pretty crazy good flying.

One day they did a 100km triangle out in front, and then we did 40km off the back or 50km to the beach. So we launched in the snow, and we got super high that day. For a lot of people, it was the highest they'd ever gotten in Europe. We got to like over 16,000 feet. Wow. But yeah, they did this 100km triangle out in front that I did a little bit of, and then did this big super long glide to the beach in the back. It was really cool. Wow. To launch in the... I think it was the only time we ever launched in the snow and landed in the sand.

And what was that? Was the carnage mostly due to these canyons and stuff, or was it like rotor

and wind and... All of the above, and just where the equipment was, it was starting to get better. I mean, this is where Robbie and Ozone were advocating for a serial... Serial class. Yeah. Which ironically got canned because they said it was too dangerous because pilots would try too hard on serial class gliders, which I never really understood that.

Yeah, right.

Especially now, I think it's really a shame that we don't have a PWC style competitions for serial class, D class gliders because they're so good these days. So kind of

like something between like, the Le Chabre opener, one of the Ozones, and a PWC, something that's... Well, it would be nice if... Oh, serial class. It would

be great if, you know, we could just have a serial class PWC. They had two classes, which was good. Yeah. But PWC as it is, it's full. So it's not like, you know, you'd almost need another whole... Right,

one other class.

But they're so inspirational, the serial class, D class gliders of this era. Mm. Like I think that early dream of a serial class would have been perfect for the Xenos or the Icepec 6s or now the Leopards, you know. And you're seeing these gliders doing... I mean, guys fly Leopards in PWCs and do quite well on them, so. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was actually my first article Cross Country Magazine. 2001. That started my long relationship with Hugh Miller and Cross Country. And I remember I'd been driving down there, and I was telling Matt Taggart that I thought I might try and write an article for Cross Country. And he's going, oh, yeah, Hugh won't print it.

He won't be interested. I was like, oh, I'm just going to have a go anyway. So I was kind of taking notes, and I'd already like written half of it when I first met Hugh. And I said, I'm a writer, you know. Oh, yeah. And I said, I've actually been working. I was like, oh, really? I can have a look. So he sat down, and he started reading it. And he read like three pages. And he was like, yeah, we'll print this. Cool. And that was the start of what's been a long relationship with those guys, which I think, has been great.

Yeah, that's 20 years.

Yeah. I'm getting higher and higher and higher and higher.

And I also, Kite World Magazine, which is one of their spin-offs, I was the feature editor for that for a couple of years, which was fun as well. But yeah, I think that 2000 Worlds also, I was just like, man, these guys are crazy. They can have this racing stuff. Right. And so my own, you know, my own flying career sort of mimicked where Ozone was going at that point, because they put a lot of emphasis into their intermediate gliders. So I was perfectly happy to fly those for years. And then the kite surfing thing kind of took over my life a little bit. There was a few years there where I just didn't really fly.

That's when you went down to Cabaret Day and all that?

Yeah. I started Kite World, and Hugh's like, right, you're going to come and write for Kite World, because it's going to be a much bigger magazine across the country. And I was like, well, I don't like kite surfing.

And, you know, I just don't really want to do it. He's like, no, no, no, it'll be great. So they're all right, we got your lessons in Tarifa. You're going to go to Tarifa, Spain. That's the thing, I didn't know how to kite. So I'm like, well, how can I write for a kite surfing magazine if I don't know how to kite? And at that point, no one really knew how to kite. So it wasn't that big of a deal. So they sent me off to Tarifa. I had to learn. And it rains for like two weeks. And then I'm just getting sick of this. And then I get a call from Robbie. And they're going to Teens to a glacier for the very first snow kites that they'd just been developing. So I end up, I fly to Spain to go to the beach. I end up on Teens, Glacier in Teens, with Pascal Gerber and some of these early, early snow kite guys.

And then I think I wrote the first article about snow kiting ever in that issue. Wow. Which was kind of weird. And then so then I come back to the States. I live in New Orleans. And then the closest spot, they're like, oh, there's a guy in Cabaretta. He'll give you some lessons in Dominican Republic. And I'm a pretty well-traveled person. But I had to actually look up where the Dominican Republic was on a map. I had no clue. And then I went there and ended up there. And I was buying a house. And then that was kind of base camp for a few years. And the flying just kind of fell off. I really wasn't flying. I went to India for the first time in 2000 or 2001 in beer with a handful of guys.

It was really fun. Was

that with Jim and Eddie and John and those guys? Yeah, Jim

Mallis and Eddie and John were there. Jim was. Jim Mallis and I had met in Spain. And I met with Jim and Eddie and John in Pietrojita the season before.

And he is a Sanskrit scholar. He knows a PhD in Sanskrit from Oxford. And I'd always been interested in these Kumbha mailers, these giant gatherings that they have. And I thought it had been that year that I missed it. And Jim was like, no, no, it's next year. He said, I'm going to be there. I'll be there with my guru. He would go there and he would actually camp with the sadhus right in the middle of the craziness. There's 20 million people in these camps.

And I was like, oh, I want to go to the Kumbha mailers. And so he scribbled me down a few instructions on a piece of paper. And then six months later, I went to India for the first time and managed to actually find them.

Which amazed everybody. And 20 million people? Yeah. And that's another story which I probably can't tell you.

You can tell anything here.

Yeah, I'm not going to tell that one. But that was how I ended up in India the first time with those guys. And then I met, and when I first went to Bir, I got super sick. Like we got some guys in the airport saw me, my paraglider bag. And there were a couple of French guys who had gone to Bir, who'd been there before. And we all traveled up together on the bus. And we all, and then we ate something. We went to one restaurant. We got super sick. Like India sick. Yeah. You know. Nasty. Yeah. And I thought I was going to die in the MHO. And Bruce Mills, who was the New Zealand pilot, who sort of helped develop the area, he was coming around and checking on me. And when I met him, we sort of put it together that he had been the mentor of the guys that had been my mentor back in New Zealand in the mid-80s.

So there was like this kind of strange connection all the way back to the start once again. Yeah. And I love Bir. Bir's a really cool place. It's been interesting to watch it keep developing over the years and the way the flying's developed and the way the town's developed and everything else.

So you go through this period of kind of early 2000s, not flying a ton. And when I met you in 2014, you were really kind of coming back to it. That's kind of when you came back to comps, right?

Yeah. I mean, I did a bit of, you know, a little bit of traveling and adventure flying. I always had a glider in the closet.

And I got married, was living in New Orleans, and my ex-wife's family have a condo in Talleyride, which was fantastic. So I got to a bunch of flying in Talleyride with Jeff Crystal, who's the local legend. And then in 2011, part of this was to do with my immigration status. When I got married and I got pretty much stuck in the States, there's a number of years there I couldn't travel outside of the United States getting my green card sorted out. So that definitely slowed me down for the flying. And I must have got my green card back in 2011. I got my green card in 2011. And the first trip I did was to Peru with Jeff Crystal.

And there's this, you know, paragliding. Paragliding opens some crazy doors for you sometimes. Like, it's amazing the opportunities you can get from this very strange, obscure sport. But we turn up in Lima, Peru, and we're flying at the coast. And we're hanging out with the local pilots. And Jeff's kind of well-known down there. He's got a Peruvian wife. And these guys are like, oh, do you want to come to this place called Sonderrame with us next? And fly in this reenactment of an Incan battle. So basically what happened is we go down to this place down towards Cusco.

And they have a reenactment of a battle between an Incan tribe and the local tribe that got wiped out. And they get 5,000 university students. And they dress them up in full regalia. And they do a reenactment of this battle. But it's also tied into a very old tradition. Where the local boys, for a manhood test, they would dig a pit. And they would cover it with bamboo and offal. And when a condor landed on top of the pit, the boy had to reach up through the sticks and grab the condor by the legs and capture it.

Holy hell.

So they had captured three condors for this event, which they released from this pyramid. And they wanted us to fly our paragliders. Off the pyramid at the same time as the condors.

Wow. Awesome.

Right? So only me and Jeff and one Peruvian guy actually managed to get off this little postage stamp of a pyramid. Wow. And I just recently found these photos again. I just posted them recently. I must do an article about it because it was such a crazy event. And then we're like thermaling up with the condors. And there's this giant battle going on below. And there's fires. And there's a shaman in skin. Whoa. It was wild. Yeah. Awesome. It's just like, I mean, because we had paragliders, they're like, oh, we want you guys to be in the middle of this ancient reenactment ritual. It was so bizarre.

In Cusco, isn't that where the tandem pilots put these kind of skis underneath their harnesses because the air is so thin? So when they come in, rather than trying to run it out, if there's not some wind or something, they just land on their butts and skid it out. It's

quite possible. We're a ways away from there. Oh, that is? Okay. Down south. Okay. All right.

Yeah. Because Cusco is like 11,000 or something.

So then from there, Jeff and I went to Joraz, which is the center of the climbing in Peru, El Pameo, Huascaran, all the biggest peaks. And we went out there to do some adventure flying.

And cross country get in touch with me. And they go, oh. This is awesome. There's this guy down there. He's trying to organize this thing, Peter Chirinowski. And he wants to organize X-Andes.

And we want you to meet up with him and maybe do an article on this thing. And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. He's in the area. And it turned out that Xavier Murillo was with him. And I had known Zav since the first VWC and then his wife. And I remember going up to, I've been pretty nervous. This huge comp, all these legends and what's it going to be like? I don't know. First task briefing and Xavier comes out. He's wearing an Addy Hash t-shirt with a big marijuana leaf on it. And I'm like, oh, okay. This is going to be all right. This wild French guy. And these days we took photos, which I don't know how much people remember about the old days of racing.

But we took these turn point photos. Pre GPSs. And the way Zav, they would process the photos that night. They would give us these box cameras. Everyone would hand their box camera in. We'd stick a pin in the map where we thought we landed, which was the immediate source of argument. And then we would have to hand in the camera to prove it. That showed we were in these different sectors. So they would then process all these films at night. And then we'd go. And the task, the race committee, Zav would look at all the photos to see that you're in the zones. And so he's dealing with all these different nationalities and his way of dealing with other pilots explaining why they weren't in the zone.

It was just so classic looking back. He was so good. So good with people.

He was really a heart and soul, right? The Pete ABC was his baby. Guy Anderson told me a funny story that there was a year in the Brits, British nationals, where the guy lost the British championship because he didn't take the helmet photo of his number.

You had to take a photo of your helmet with your number and the passport and all these things. This guy would have won the whole British championship. He got DQ because he can take his helmet photo.

That would be a rough day. Yeah, it would. So anyway, we're in Huaraz, which is a beautiful place, but really like, I mean, I've flown in the Himalayas, I've flown all over the place. Peru's full on and it's windy and there's these, we were probably a little late and there's these deep, deep valleys that you drop down into. Like I was getting blown back out of stuff. I started just landing on top of things and walking down. It was just crazy. Really full on place to fly. Even on an intermediate glider. Yeah. And yeah, so Xavier and I ended up teaming up for most of that week and moving and the whole, the whole ex-Andy's thing was a bit of a shit show.

But Xavier was there because he basically, he was another country that he hadn't flown in. I think he told me it was his 40 something country that he'd flown in, you know, and he was just there on a holiday. And then he unfortunately disappeared on us. We were all in the Sturm altogether and I pulled out to go and take a couple of photos of Elphamale and some stuff that was right by and he made another jump back to this next ridge and Jeff and I were just not quite high enough. He was on a higher performing glider and then he disappeared. And then I just remember waking up, although we weren't staying at the same hotel that night, I just remember waking up at like 5.30 in the morning with a really bad feeling about the whole thing because we were just hoping that he'd flown far and was coming back.

And so I got up and I went round to his hotel to see if he'd come back and I bumped into Jeff Crystal on the way. Jeff was the same thing and Xav wasn't there. And then we had like a seven day search and rescue for him. And I ended up writing sort of daily briefs for cross country that we managed to raise a lot of money for Xav's rescue. Well, there were failed rescues it turned out. Yeah.

And I was really pleased that I actually went to the PWC meeting in Brazil this last year and they still have that fund that we started that came out of that.

I didn't

realize you were flying with him that day.

I was the last one that saw him, yeah. Geez. Yeah. And it was, I mean, he had been a little ill. He hadn't flown the day before, but there was nothing. I mean, there's nothing particularly different about that day or anything else. He just got really into the big mountains and he actually crashed into Huascaran and he was just loving it. And

you never did find him?

We found him after seven days. Yeah. We ended up getting this like slow moving plane that they use for aerial photography. And then they found, they went through the same zone like twice. But this was kind of a crazy story. So we're in Juarez trying to organize this rescue and the PWC sent up a Canadian pilot who lived in Chile, who was a good friend of Zav's. And they sort of sent him up to help coordinate with the rescue.

And there was a report that a kid had seen a glider. And we had, it was kind of a reward being on the glider. And we were trying to figure out if there was any truth to the story. And this Canadian guy who's a PWC pilot, he's got his tablet with him and he's watching the Worlds in Pedrajita live time. And he's like, oh, one of my buddies has just crashed. And then like a few minutes later, he's like, oh no, another one of my buddies has just crashed. So like the two guys that crashed the first time, one was Argentinian and one was Chilean.

And so here we are trying to deal with Zav a year and all the carnage is going on in Pedrajita of the R11s and what have you at exactly the same time. And I remember that was just such a surreal experience. And I told him just to go back to the hotel and do what he had to do. It was just so weird. These two events were going on opposite sides of the planet at exactly the same time. Right. Wow. And I mean, racing really changed that day all over the world. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But Xavier was a great influence and a great guy.

Yeah. He did. I always had it described to me as kind of the heart and soul of the whole thing.

Well, it was his concept. Yeah. Yeah. And the real tragedy of that day and that whole event is he had a drawer full of spots and he was just sitting there. Yeah. Back in France. And he went to Peru without a beacon. Yeah. Which, I mean, they had just come out. So they were still kind of new technology. Jeff and I had them. Now they're like the most essential piece of equipment we have. Yeah.

We can't go flying without those. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's one of the things. It's just amazing how it's the technology. I always say of all the sports I've been involved in, paragliding is the one where my imagination has never kept up with reality. Right. Because as good as my imagination is, paragliding just keeps going beyond it. And we're so far beyond what I would have ever imagined in the 90s. Like if you had told me that one day you would fly almost 250 miles, I'd be like, yeah, right, a plane. Right.

And the way the paragliders have continuously improved and our equipment and in reaches, all these things, it's really opened it up. Yeah.

And when you've got elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant

elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant elegant

after like an 18 year gaffe or something um my recollision came i was in jackson hole

and just you know once again because i'm very grateful for ozone because ozone had kept me in flying all these years and it wasn't just rob whittle it was also russ ogden and mike cavanaugh i've known mike for a long time and they've always been very helpful at keeping me flying i'm very grateful for that and the intermediate gliders were getting really good like the delta two was was a rip was the fit the delta two was the first glider that i got on that i was like oh this is a real xc wing you know it really felt like suddenly you were back on gliders you could do things with and so there was kind of like so with the shark nose you know it was really like this you realize things were happening and then i was in jackson hole and uh with Nick Greece and john hunter john was one of the original jackson pilots and was my main flying partner for like a decade you know so we've always been good buddies and so i rocked back into jackson and that was actually pretty funny i uh we got back the first day and it looked like a good day flying but all the tandems were not going flying so everyone assumed we're all blown out and the boys were going dirt biking so i'm like oh let's go dirt biking in idaho and we go to idaho with dirt biking and we're up on top of this ridge and and i'm with tom bartlett and a couple of tandem guys you know and i'm looking at the clouds and man it's really not moving that fast up there like oh no we just didn't want to fly today we used to go right so they just said it was blown out the whole the whole valley believed them right so now it's like five in the afternoon we finished our dirt biking and i'm like oh anybody want to go to tagi and they're like we haven't got gliders with us and i got my i'm gonna go to tagi so and and you know in 97 i was the first person that flew across the tetons from tagi back to jackson i was the first one that made the crossing after coming back from my from venezuela i was all fired up yeah all right so now this is like many years later i'm on the delft too and uh i go up there at like late afternoon

and i launched immediately go like 15 or 16 000 feet fly back over the grand fly around the place go and land and i don't make it quite back to jackson i land out on the road to the park somewhere the super pools over it's john patterson

hasn't seen me in like a decade right

what are you doing the first guy you started flying away

yeah i'm like oh i just flew in from the geese like no way so yeah but i think the next day We're going up with Nick, who I just met. And we're going up to Phillips Canyon because I think the village was blown out. And Nate had just done this big flight. Yeah. And somebody else had just done it. Beecher. Farmer. Farmer, right. Farmer

had broken the record in 193 miles earlier that summer. And then Nate, a couple weeks later, went 199 miles. Right. Like a week before Nick and Hunt did that.

Yeah, there was this feeling that 200 miles was going to drop in the Rockies at any moment. And it could be Utah or it could be some valley. And Jackson Hole is probably the least likely place for it to happen because it's really not that super well set up. The last few years, they've been having real weather issues. Yeah, a lot of wind. Yeah, they weren't. And Phillips Canyon is one of these funniest little places where you're kind of under the wind. You're in the lee side. You're under the wind. And it releases like once a day when the convergence. When it switches, there'll be this one really great thermal that will take you out of there. And if you just happen to be in the right spot and you catch this thermal, that's the right out. The same thermal that John Hunt caught on the Challenger Sea like 20 years earlier, right? Right. And so we're going up to launch.

And there was a guy that was in a mountain bike accident. And there was this one guy who was hurt. And you could tell that Nick and John just wanted to get to launch so bad. But we stopped and we helped these guys out. We gave them a ride. We did something. And it's funny. I ran into one of the guys recently and he remembered that. He remembered that. He was like, oh, you helped us. Oh. Right. And then we get up to launch and John and Nick just launched straight into that convergence thermal.

And they flew 200 miles from there. Yeah. You know. And John was in a nice big six and Nick was on the first Enzo. Yeah. And that was when I was just like, oh, two liners, huh? These things look. You know, it was a big jump. Suddenly I went from flying 100 miles was manly to, you know, 200 miles was now the mark. And that was a pretty big jump. And so when the two liners was like, okay, I want to start finding out more about it. We'll get back into this. That was

kind of the inspiration. It was

definitely that flight was a huge inspiration.

That's interesting because that series was the reason I moved to Sun Valley. I was in Europe that summer when that happened. And when those flights went down, it just, I think it blew a lot of people's minds. It wasn't just me. It was just everybody in the world went, are you kidding me? What in the hell is going down over there?

And that was that article I wrote, the Rocky Mountain 200. Yeah, right. About the race. Yeah. Which is kind of when I started really getting. And that was kind

of Belcourt's concept, right? Well, didn't he call it 200 on a two liner or two for two liner or something? And that was his whole thing that it was like the push, you know, those guys were all chasing it. Like you get 200 miles on a two liner.

Yeah. That was a fun, a fun sequence for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and even at that point, if you told me that there would be 200 mile flights in my future, I don't know, I wouldn't necessarily believe it. But so then I was like, all right, so that was sort of got me back into the racing back to Shillane. And when I, and when I was like, all right, I'm going to start racing again, you know, all my buddies from the old days, like, all right, get yourself an Enzo. Yeah. You know, I was like, ah, I'm just going to take it a little bit easier. And, um, I flew an M six and an Allium six. And then, you know, once again, right place, right time. I found out that Nick and Greece and Josh Cone and John Hunt were all going to Brazil to Kishida.

And I'd wanted to go. I've been hearing about Kishida for forever. Um, I was good friends with. Um, the Mexican pilot, Philippe Karam and Philippe was, I think the first one that told me about Kishida back in the day.

And, uh, I was like, oh, that sounds like a boys trip. Can I come along? You know? So I kind of just jumped on the trip, but, but like I jumped on you guys this week and I get down there and I realized that, you know, Nick and Josh got their race faces on and this, this series, I want to break some records and stuff. And I think like a boys. And they're all like 400 K 400 K 400 K, you know, and I'm like, that's way out of my league. And, but there was a town called Puri Puri, which sounded Maori from New Zealand. Yeah. Puri Puri could easily be a Maori name. And it was right at 200 miles. Right at it. Right. I was like, right. That's my goal. I'm going to fly 200 miles. Right.

And on the second flight, the M six. I flew 198 miles. And I flew, I got to Puri Puri. And I mean, meanwhile, if I had just float away from Puri Puri down there, I would have easily broken it, but I was determined and I got to Puri Puri and I realized to get 200, I was going to have to go over the town and there was no LZs. And I was trying to get around it. I went down at 198, 318 Ks or whatever, which to my astonishment was the New Zealand open distance record. I'd actually flown. I'd flown further than any New Zealander. And the only reason I knew that was because Matt senior held the record and he informed me that I had beaten his record from Shalane.

Um, Matt's a big part of the story because, you know, when I started to get back into racing, we were down in, uh, Veda Bravo and it was the, the, the, it was the moniker before the pre pre PWC and that first task. Yeah. I did actually quite well. I made him the goal and like, like Lou come on, a bunch of people didn't. It's kind of funny. And, and Maddie was in there. It was like, oh, you know, kind of, cause I met him in Shalane, but he hadn't really paid much attention. And then we were drinking beer. We got a ride back in an ambulance and we're drinking beers in the back of the ambulance. And he's like, oh, you should try and fly for the New Zealand team. You know, I need a teammate because he had represented New Zealand in like the last three.

Yeah. And I had met. Yeah. And all my. Years I'd never thought about trying to represent for New Zealand. It never even occurred to me. And then when Maddie put the idea in my head, I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. And so that kind of set me on the path, being a bit more serious about my race and giving me a goal and, uh, put me in contact with music and flying for better or for worse. And then, uh, culminated in the series that I did for, for, um, cross country with Steve Hamden illustrations. Okay.

Great series.

Which is really one of my most favorite things that I've ever done.

Yeah, that was a great series. Those are you listening to, uh, Kiwi did a, a four part series, right?

Uh, I think it was, I mean, it was supposed to be, I broke my wrist before the series came to its end. Right. Unfortunately. But I think there's like five of them. There are

five. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, they're all long form stories about you making the world steamer. Trying to drive the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fizzles at the end. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have more mishaps than anything else. But, you know, I've known Steve Hamm since the late 90s and going to Petroheater too. So it was really a thrill to work with him after all these years. And it was a really fun thing. I mean, it's good to give yourself goals in flying. I think it's good not taking necessarily too seriously. But it's nice to have goals just keep advancing you along. And I think I'm 203 in the world on my WPRS rankings at the moment. I really think I'm flying better at 53 than I ever have. So it's kind of cool to feel like you can just keep progressing and get better.

You've heard this question over and over again, but I still love it. So I ask it, when you look back, you started in the mid-80s. You've had decades now at this game. 30 years. What would you change?

What would I change? I'd change. I wish I'd been a better learner early on. I think I have a bit of a learning disability.

You know, I was just, I'm still flying more due to good luck than good management. And I've watched a lot of great pilots not be as lucky. Yeah. So I feel really fortunate about that. I don't think there's anything I would really change. It's been. It's been. It's been a great adventure and it keeps getting better. You know, I mean, I didn't expect to be sitting here in Heberville, towing up with you guys and here we are. So who knows where the adventure will go this week. Right.

So Kiwi, using the word you used when we started this thing all off, the collision you've had with flying kind of your whole life. How would you describe the collision between, you know, the psychedelic noir, the life that you've lived in that realm and also with flying? How do those two, how do you see those two lining up?

My two worlds? I mean, I would hope it's more of a dance than a collision these days. I think there's lots of, lots of crossover, but essentially the way that it's similar or the same is really that like tribes, they're wandering tribes and psychedelic conferences and festivals that I get to go and speak to. I always have a really high concentration of interesting people. You know, I think some of them. Burning Man has the reputation of having the highest concentration of the most interesting people you'll ever meet in your life. And that's generally pretty, pretty right. From my experience. Um, and same with the conferences. And I'm finding, you know, I have the same experience in paragliding. It's just a different tribe. It's different family.

And I mean, last year, uh, you know, I flew in 13 or 14. Com. Some 10 countries. And I made so many new friends. I made a ton of friends in the English pilots, uh, you know, flying the last couple of years. And it's, you're moving around seeing your friends and both of these kinds of things. And they're both really interesting groups of people. It was funny at the, uh, PWC and Andradas in Brazil. I kept, you know, asking people about what they had done and what they did outside of flying. And I was keeping the same kind of answer, which is that generally all had really interesting. Careers and often been very good at what they've done and something else. And then they always went along the lines of, and then I discovered paragliding

and their whole lives kind of dropped off. So I think I've maybe done a better job of, um, merging the two. And I'm going to have moments like, for example, at burning man, I ran this giant, uh, riverboat art car for years, the lady says press, and there'd be times I'd look down and it'd be a bunch of people. They'd be a bunch of top American pilots that I know in a very different setting, you know, now enjoying that at burning man. So that was always fun and a thrill. Um, but yeah, I think it's really the, the, the high quality of the people I meet in both endeavors that gives me that gives it an extra element. You know, once it makes a part of my life, why won't it keep it apart? They keep it a part of my life. And then they're both, uh, you know, examinations of differentiated states.

states of consciousness. When we're flying, I think your consciousness is in a total different mode that's not an evolutionary adaption, because we've just forced it upon it. I mean, going into clouds totally is as unnatural as eating a magic mushroom. And so there are these different, whether it's meditation or yoga or different things, you know, experiencing differentiated states of consciousness ultimately makes you a more whole and complete person I think.

What kind of people do you think are attracted to this sport? And draw the line, the comparison with what kind of people are attracted to the festivals, the psychedelics, that world.

Well, the festival world, you know, festivals are very much a 21st century phenomena.

20 years ago, there was like a dozen major festivals in the United States. Now there's 900. And there's similar things going on in Europe where festivals have become a major way, a major social platform and a sort of major cultural event really. So not particularly well understood.

And I think, once again, I think most people are being drawn towards this idea of connection and some kind of a tribe. And the more festivals you go to, the more you keep running into the same people. So you build up. It's kind of like traveling family, you know. And, you know, I think the community aspect of paragliding is very high. Like even at the most top level competitions, people are still friendly and enjoy each other's company. And there's, you know, if another pilot might happen to crash, get hurt, and we're all involved in that in some way or another. So it's a very communal sport, I think. And both are communal in that aspect.

Do you think there's like a, I've often, you know, we often compare life to the ups and downs of flying. You know, you're on the moon. When you're on the moon, it just couldn't be better. When you're scrapping low, it just couldn't be worse. And do you think there's a compare, you know, I've heard stories of, you know, the emotional high that is sustained through, say, a burnout.

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Wyoming, which are two of the more extreme kind of places in America where people are attracted to all these various sports. And we've both been astounded of how paragliding has never really caught on, even amongst a population that you would think would be more inclined towards trying it. So it makes you one, you think, I mean, you were saying the other day, you've got friends you ski and bike with, they think, oh yeah, that's great, but have zero interest. And I do think that there's a certain mentality that's drawn towards paragliding, especially like cross country flying and competition flying. You never stop learning. And there are very few things in life that you can continue to learn and learn and learn and be really jazzed to continue to learn and learn and learn.

You know, maybe music's another one, the playing of an instrument where you never get tired of that process of getting better and discovering new things. And there's no ceiling, you know? So I think maybe that's people like that are really attracted to it. You see a lot of engineers, you see a lot of software people, especially in the traveling circus that we're a part of, you know? So there's a certain, the engineering, the engineering mentality towards paragliding always amuses me. Like the guys who are like, no, paragliding is not an extreme sport. How can you say that? It's not dangerous to, you know, it's a controlled risk danger to them. Yeah. Compared to. It's all

an equation.

Control, you know, controlled risk.

And obviously those are the kind of people that are attracted to it.

When you look back at your 35 something years of flying, would you change anything? Would you do anything differently?

I mean, I think the thing looking back that, you know, we would all love to change would be the accidents and the friends we've lost, you know? I've lost some really good friends, Chris Mueller and different people that I really wish were still around.

My own personal journey has been blessed, you know, rather fortunate. I wish I'd been a bit better learner in the early days. And you know, I took a pretty substantial break for coming back to competition. And there are some days and I'm like, wow, if I just kept at it, I could be half as good as Josh Cohn or Russ by now. Or a quarter as good. But at the same time, I don't regret the decisions I made to go out and do the other things I did and come back to paragliding. That's been a special journey as well. So the only the only regrets I have is the high level of incidents that we still continue to have. And I've given that a lot of thought the last few months since the pre PWC in Chile.

And unfortunately, we had a fatality. And, you know. The equipment gets better. So we just fly it in more and more extreme conditions. We just fly more wing now and everything else. So you have that fact that the equipment is still better. But the one thing you really can just can't take out of the equation is the human element and the human beings decision making process. So I don't and it's funny, I don't think that's something we'll ever get rid of paragliding. It's just it's part of the matrix of what we do. For me. Yeah. I think the ideal is definitely fly a long time. You know, I've seen a lot of really good young pilots come and go really quick. People come in and burn out. People come in and get hurt.

For me, you know, someone like Pepe, Andreas Maliki or these guys are kind of my ideal of just flying at a really high level for as many years as you can, because there are very few sports. This may be the only sport, maybe sailing that guys in their 20s and 30s, they're going to be in the 50s and even in their 60s can be world class at what they do. So that makes it very special as well.

Your latest book is Under the Influence, 20 Tales of Psychedelic Noir, which I'm really enjoying and encourage all of you to go out and get it. It's a blast. Where can people find out more about you?

Yeah, if people are interested in checking out my books, they should look at my website, which is jamesoroc.com, which is my writer's name. And I'll put it in the description. I'll see links to my books and photography and what have you on there.

Kiwi, thanks, man. I hope we get some good flying while we're down here. And it's been good to spend some time with you. And thanks for your insights.

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.

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Bye. Bye.