138. Nik Hawks and Expectations - Nik Hawks

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the CloudBase Mayhem. Got a really fun show for you today that was based off the survey questions that many, many of you have supplied the last couple months since we put that up. And the big one, and we've talked about this in the last previous shows, was just the eye opener was for me for how many beginner and intermediate pilots listen to the show. So and how many asked for more interviews with not just the greatest of the greats, but people that are going through the same learning curve that they are. And so I reached back out to Nik Hawks, who I've had a ton of requests for, especially in the survey, who's definitely in that intermediate zone.

I think he's about 250 hours now. We had him on the show when he had zero. We had him on when he had about 10. And so got Nick back on the show to talk about, we kind of broke the show into three different segments. The first is me interviewing him. About risk and progression and safety and kind of what he's gone through. And really the big, the big one, which was where he thought he would be back when he got into the sport after watching the Rockies Traverse in 2014 to where he is now and how that kind of lack of progression, I guess we could put it that way, has been really frustrating just because of life and work and, and that he discovered, even though he was a Navy SEAL, that he wasn't so immune.

And so he's been able to risk and fear that he thought he would be. So I think this is something that all of us can really relate to. Then we talk a little bit about what we learned from the Kiwi SAR effort out in Nevada. Nick joined us there in Eureka for a few days, flew up from San Diego and really helped us out. So we talk a little bit about the SAR effort there and some of the takeaways. And then we turn it around and he interviews me about just a bunch of things that he's trying to figure out. And so he's been able to talk about in his own flying and on his own hill and his own community. And so we talk a little bit about what I'm changing this time around with the X-Alps, what I'm not, thermaling and gliding and wing choice and a bunch of other stuff.

And just, he's, he's really paid attention to my own years in this sport and has obviously listened to all the shows. And so he kind of picks my brain. And so we had a lot of fun with this. Part of. And one of his suggestions was to put this top of the show tip in, which we've been doing the last few shows. I'm not going to do that this time because this is an already over in an hour and a half show. So I think there'll be plenty of tips within this one. And just a reminder that advanced paragliding is now in the pre-order phase. It has been shipped off for printing. It is done. It will be shipped in early April and the orders have been incredibly strong on this. If you go to XC.com.

You'll see it. And I believe you can still get in on the pre-order special by using the mayhem code, which is CB mayhem 10, put that in the checkout code and you'll get 10 % off plus free shipping. Really excited about this. It's been a long work in progress and I think you will enjoy it. It's kind of a distillation of the best of the best from the first hundred shows in the mayhem. So you've made that purchase. Thank you. If you haven't, I encourage you to. I think you'll dig it. So enjoy this great talk with my friend Nik Hawks.

Nick,

by popular demand, welcome back to the show. We just did this survey, which was super enlightening with me, which I shared the results with you. And one of the big ones that we talked about today was the! fact that we had a lot of people that were interested in the sport. And one of the big ones that came out of that was get Nick back on the show. You know, it's so good talking to people at kind of the other end of the spectrum. And, you know, we've talked to you a few times as you've kind of come up through and learning things about this sport and you and I got to see each other in quite bad circumstances, but in some ways we're going to be talking about the Kiwi SAR effort here in a bit, but got to see each other in Eureka, Nevada, which was, which was great. And I thought it'd just be really fun to catch up. And I think that's a great way to wrap up the show. And see how your progression's going and see where the differences are between your initial perceptions of the sport versus reality.

And some of the things you've kind of been, I don't know, battling is the right word, but, but dealing with. And so, yeah, man, welcome back to the show and I'm excited to talk to you.

Super psyched to be here. I was actually thinking this morning, it's, it's such a, such a gift to have a podcast because you get an hour with someone or an hour and a half, whatever it is. To have a direct one-on-one conversation with them with no interruptions and everyone around you knows you that knows that like, that's your deal for that moment. So it's a, I'm super grateful for all of these podcasts and this one, I like your energy. I like talking to you. So I'm excited for it.

Yeah. Long form, like Sam Harris says, it's, it's, it's how we solve things. Isn't it? It's a good, I dig it too. It's almost kind of a meditation these days. It's just a really nice, I'm just, I'm amazed how, you know, what it's made me do is realize how neophyte I still am. Yeah. I guess is what it comes down to is it's just, I just feel like, God, I'm just, I'm just getting going here.

I'm not talking with a

podcast, just talking with flying. I just, it just makes me feel like a beginner all the time over and over again. I mean that, that show we did with Malin Law about like, wait, what? I,

I haven't heard any of this stuff. It was great. Such a good one. Such a good one. So let's, let's kind of kick it off. Some of the survey results, the ones that popped out to us was that 60 % of your listeners fly less than a hundred hours a year. And almost 80 % of them. 80 % identify as intermediate or beginner.

This blew me away, Nick. Yeah. I, it was cool, you know, having the Google graphs kind of break it all down and the, you know, the circle graphs and I, I just had no idea it was, you know, the, the, the base of the, the listener base. I mean, we've got actually, there were more experts than there were advanced, you know, experts. I think I put over 2000 hours and more than 10 years. You know, that was almost 10%, which was also a surprise, but yeah, it's this, it's this beginner and intermediate that are the real base of the listeners, which I, I don't know why that surprised me so much. I mean, that's what it is in the sport, of course, but that's great. And that's, and it's going to help me tweak things more to, I mean, I think we'll keep going with talking to the best of the best, but we've got to bring in people like yourself and, you know, people mentioned in the survey, some of their best, you know, some of their favorite shows were.

With Cedar when he was getting going and just talking to people who are just getting going.

Yeah. Yeah. It, it, when I was thinking about this show, I kind of wanted to call it like an interview with an average pilot and I'm like, ah, like I always like to think of myself as special, but I think that's kind of the whole angle of this show is like, Hey, you've got these really exceptional pilots who know everything that's, that's kind of going on around them and can understand it. And then you've got the rest of us and it might be helpful for folks out there to see that. You know, most of the pilots out there are, are just as good. I think that's kind of maybe a little less ignorant than I am, but you know, we're all in the same boat, kind of wondering what's going on. You

did this great article for cross country magazine about, you know, kind of being a beginner in progression. And then they, then they revisited it at the end of the article, which was, I thought was terrific because, you know, with your background, you know, we did this show, what was it? 68 on risk. And you know, you're an ex Navy seal. You're a bad-ass. And, and I think that's, it's interesting or it must, it must be interesting. And I wonder if hard, is that the right way to describe it, to, you know, to get into this sport? You know, as I understand you got into it after the watching the Rockies film with, with will get a night, that was kind of the inspiration or the catalyst. So that was 2014. You get into the sport and you know, it hasn't all shaped up and ramped up like an ex Navy seal would.

Yeah. So

you kind of approach

things, right. It just didn't happen. Right.

No, no, not at all. Not at all. No. I think, you know, when I, I started, so we've, this is the fourth time we've kind of had a public con, but the first time I was like a zero minute or maybe a 10 minute pilot. The second time I was at 10 hours, the third time was at 85 and now I'm at 250.

Started in 2016. So it averages out what are a little bit more than 50 hours a year. And that was not my plan when I started, you know, I was like, oh, I'm, I'm, you know, I started in 2016. Like by, I thought initially by 2017, I should be ready for the XL.

Slap down. Yeah.

And then I thought for sure, 2019, like that's a shoe in and that turned out to be totally wrong as well. But so I think we're breaking the show down into a couple of different parts. And as a listener, you might see, you might think that some of these questions, especially if Gavin's asked him kind of directly as they're written are pretty aggressive, but these are questions that I had asked to be asked. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's a good way to kind of fuel back some of the, some of the mystique that I think surrounds some of the pilots out there where you're like, oh my God, that guy totally has it together. That girl totally has it together. And in reality, we're all very similar kind of skin bags flying these things around the sky. And with a few exceptions, you know, not many of us have a really amazing idea of what's going on.

Yeah. And to, to follow up on that, what we're doing, all of you listening is we're going to kind of divide this into two sections. We've got the first half is going to be dedicated to Nick and I'm going to be asking him some questions. We're going to be asking him questions that mostly he's provided actually. So he's been very helpful in creating all this. We're going to get a little bit on the, on the SAR thing with Kiwi, and then we're going to follow it up with questions that we found from the survey about that people wanted to ask me. So Nick's going to follow up with some of the stuff he put, he gleaned out of the survey and also just his own interest. And so we're, this is going to be kind of a two part deal or we'll start with you, Nick. And, you know, before we get into your questions. I, you just made me think of something. Will Gadd talks about that, you know, to get good at this sport, to, to be a good pilot, it often really helps to come from a background of flow sports, you know?

So when he sees climbers or triathletes or, you know, non-flow sport, people get into this where he's often kind of like, do you think that's been some of the, is, is, is that been any of the difficulty is, you know, really more your combat training? And, and being a Navy seal and that kind of thing. Those aren't, I wouldn't define that as being a very flow activity. It's more training, training, training, which certainly helps with, with, with paragliding. And I know you've taken that kind of mindset to flying, but do you think that's been one of the kind of stumbling blocks?

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good observation. I think that you'll find plenty of soldiers who will argue about the flow thing, but I think if you reframe the flow. Instead of, instead of just that aspect into more kind of, I think of them as like earth energy sports. So being in a kayak and, you know, understanding that unlike, unlike triathlon or any of those outside sports, when you're interacting with nature, you're just interacting with this force that is orders of magnitude beyond anything humans can do. And so you get this understanding for kind of the perspective or maybe the scope of what can happen in that sport. You know? And a triathlon, you can really only go as fast as you can pedal or running. You can only go as fast as you can run or, you know, shooting, you can only shoot as fast as you can shoot.

But man, and I think I've said this before on the show, you get out in a small boat in a big ocean and there is nothing that all the armies and navies and humans of the world can do to save you. Like it's all on you and you, there's that aspect of it. And then I think from the kayaking stuff, from what I've heard you say, there's just an aspect of understanding how kind of fluid dynamics work. That comes from that. That I certainly didn't have before coming into this sport.

Okay. So let's get into your questions. And like he said, I didn't write these, so I'm not trying to be a dick here. But so, but Nick wrote these. Most of these are kind of focused on progression, but why hasn't your progression been faster?

It's a good question. So 2016 came into it. And I think our first conversation I was asking you like, hey, when are we going to fly up into a thundercloud and pop out? And you're like, oh, I'm going to fly up into the top. I'm going to fly up into the top. You know, spine of Baja, let's cross the Sea of Cortez. I had all these kind of big ideas. And like, oh, I don't think I ever said it to you, but like, oh, I'll see you in the end of 2017, 2019 X-Helps. And I think two main things gotten in the way. The first was the amount of, I guess, risk and fear that were in the sport that I thought I was immune to, but that I wasn't. And that was a pretty big wake up for me. I'd kind of gone into this sport thinking that... Maybe I wasn't the most amazing human on the planet, but that I could hang with anyone out there and that nothing was really going to scare me that bad or be beyond my ability to manage.

And that turned out to not be true at all with paragliding. I've had a couple incidences, I think as we all have, where you're in the sky and you're going, especially as a beginner, you're going up when you want to go down. And it's an unpleasant feeling I haven't felt in any other sport. And so I think that some of those fear injuries, which we've also talked about before, they're kind of slowed me down far more than I thought. I know I'd had two accidents. It sounds like I'm a terrible pilot. I had two accidents the last time we talked. I had one more since then. And after that third one, I had a pretty bad concussion, turned low to the ground, slammed into the hill pretty hard, bounced up and felt good immediately. But then that concussion took a long time to heal up. That made me think about how fast I wanted to progress and what the consequences were and the risks that I was taking.

And those risks were the ones that I was going to have to deal with. Those risks were just too big to progress as fast as I wanted to do. I just looked at that trade off and said, nope, that's not worth it. So that first part was kind of risk and fear. And then the second part was 2016 I started. I think 2017 and 18, I basically abandoned the rest of my life to fly as much as I could. And it wasn't that much. I think 2017 is 50 hours. 2018 is probably 100 hours. So it wasn't like I went full dirt bag. I still had a business to run. I still had a wife and dogs and friends and the rest of it. But during those two years, especially my business, which is how I pay the mortgage, went way down. And at the end of kind of 2018, Lee, my wife and I had this discussion like, hey, Nick, you really got to get your crap together.

You can't do this paragliding thing as much as you're doing it. You can't devote the time to reading the books and studying it and looking at the weather and writing notes and going out and flying and spending five hours a day to get a 20-minute flight in. By the time you're driving and hiking and laying out, you're going to be a lot more tired. You're going to be tired of going out and looking and chatting and the rest of it. That's not going to work for us. And that was a conversation that both of us had. So from there, 2019 started to kind of come out of the addiction and get into recovery. And 2020 with the exception of COVID has been a super nice balance. There's kind of the six weeks there where I think not many of us in the world were flying. And so that felt like a little bit of a setback. But after that kind of the summer of 2020 up till now, it has felt like the balance has been much, much better. much better for me.

And so I think I've figured out a way to fly kind of 50 to 75 hours a year and make it work for my business. And maybe the progression will be slower than I initially thought, but that's, yeah, that's the reality that I've decided to create.

And one of the surprising things from the survey was how many, you know, I asked the hours question, where do you get your hours? Are you getting it XC? Is it thermic? Is it middle of the day, going places stuff, or is it ridge soaring? And a lot of people are getting a lot of hours ridge soaring. I was surprised with that. That's, you know, that that was a big chunk of their hours, which is to me, it's not, it's not the same hours.

Right. Right. And I remember when I was first keeping a log rigorously, I would separate out my mountain hours and basically my Tory hours. And then I stopped doing that when I more or less stopped flying Tory, you know, more than a couple hours a year, because everything's a mountain, mountain hours now.

But it sounds like, you know, the, the, it's, it's really just the work play balance. And that, that, that's why you can't fly more than you you'd like to fly. It sounds like a lot more. It sounds like you're still very passionate about the sport and learning as much as you can and stoked on it. Although with a little bit of reservation more with the, the accidents and the fear side of things. But, you know, if, if, if you, if someone just granted you a whole bunch of money and you didn't have to worry about your business, you'd fly more.

Yeah, I sure would. I sure would.

You've got on here. Why don't you do more SIV? We just did this show with Malin. It was all about SIV. And I don't know if you've seen it, but Maxime Pinot, very famous French pilot and did really well in the last X-Alps, put out kind of an opposing thought to that. I don't know if you've seen that going around Facebook, but pretty fascinating. I mean, he, it wouldn't be an argument with anything we learned from Malin, you know, of course that's the ideal, right? Is doing a lot of SIV, doing a lot of training, doing a lot of training, doing a lot of training, doing a lot of training, doing a lot of training. But the reality is, I think more along the lines of your life, the reality is very few people can just dedicate not only the time, but the money that SIV requires, but also, you know, okay, you're going to get, you get your vacation every year or some time to go fly.

You're going on a flying vacation. Do you want to spend it doing a bivy across the Alps or do you want to spend it in one spot doing some SIV? That's another reality. So Maxime's counterpoint, you know, the other, end of the spectrum here was, yes, that would be great, but the reality is that's not going to happen. So we need to learn how to keep our wings open and we need to just learn how to make better decisions because it would be great if everybody did 300 plus stalls, but it's not going to happen.

Yeah. No, I think that the number of stalls I've done since our last convo two years ago is the same. It's, you know, three or four. And so it's, you know, some of these things are kind of embarrassing. Yeah. To admit just like, oh, I had all these big plans and big ideas, and I quote, knew better, but for, you know, one reason or another, and all of them seem pretty good to me. I haven't followed up on those things. So the SIV, I think it's the same thing as a lot of people is just like, hey, that by the time you're done with paying for that, that's three days, a couple grand. And then if I'm serious about it, then it's a couple of days after that, like thinking and processing and writing it all down. It's a couple of days before prepping for it and getting ready for it. And so, you know, we're kind of small little businesses, selling cookies on the internet. I can't devote seven days to, you know, prepping for an SIV as much as I think that would be radical and awesome.

So it's just like this, yeah, this life balance. And a lot of this goes into this idea that hit me was that when I'm thinking about flying and my progression is, am I judging myself or am I enjoying myself? And it's not like one is right or wrong, but sometimes when I'm really kicking myself, I'm like, wait a second, why am I doing this? Like, I'm certainly, you know, not going to win the 2020 world championships or the 2021 or probably the 2020 anything. So these, these judgment pieces can only be like you against yourself. And also at the end of the day, like, you know, I'll probably make it to 80 years old. And that's what the men in my family usually make it to. And no one is going to care basically anything about any of the whole biz I've done. It's all on me to figure out like, what am I going to extract from it? And if all I extracted was judgments on myself about how I should have been better versus enjoying the moment, then I missed a big opportunity.

Sounds a lot like expectations. Yeah. Just changing expectations can solve a lot of this. I've been, you know, as we're going to get into in my section, I've been working with Thomas Theroulot and Kriegel's coach and now supporter for this race, which is even more dangerous, but he talks a lot about that. You know, you can, you can strive and strive or you can just change your expectations.

Yeah. And I think as long as you're conscious of those two things, it's fine. You know, if you're unconscious of them, you kind of slam back and forth. It's a harder thing, but if you can sit there and say like, okay, you know, for, for prepping for a race, you're going to have to be super judgment, judgment, judgmental on yourself in order to progress and to get better. You know, you can't like fly and be like, yeah, you know, that was a good enough flight. Cool. I missed a thing. No big deal. You

need to be

relentless. That won't get you down the course line.

Longest XC to date?

Another embarrassing number, five, about five miles right off of, I think right off Elsinore. So this summer, there's a couple opportunities that came up where I kind of got a full day. Normally I just have four hours and went up there and flew. Okay. And that was a super cool thing. It's like, okay, if I had more days to put, put together for this, this would be a lot more fun to do. Yeah. That's, that's what it is. So

that's, I mean, you know, you and I flew that one day, you kind of cut it short at one point. It was like, okay, we've had enough. We've been in the air about a couple hours, as I remember, at Marshall. I feel like I could come down and grab you and take you somewhere and we'd go fly five hours. I mean, I feel like you've got the stamina for it. And you've got the skills for it. It's probably just a matter of linking on to somebody who can tow you around the sky a little bit.

Yeah. Yep. I think that that's an excellent observation. I don't know about five hours. I know when I've been in the air a couple hours now, I'm just like, man, I just getting kind of itchy for the ground. And that was something that the Elsinore experience taught me. I went up there a couple of times was that flying around at Blossom, the local site, which I love and is awesome. And it was like, that's my kind of enjoyment zone where just like the fun meter is pegged for me there. It's awesome. But flying there for 40 minutes, a couple of days, a week will not prepare you to fly a couple hours of XC. And as silly as that sounds, that was a big surprise. Yeah. Five hours

was aggressive. Wasn't it? Five hours is a long flight, but we could, but we could tell you around a little bit. Do you consider yourself a dangerous pilot?

I don't know. I know it's funny. Cause you kind of look at like, all right, I've turned into what I think of as, as a Blossom rat, where I just fly there a couple of days a week, really enjoy it. And I'm certainly missing out on exposure. I'm not going to fly there a couple of days a week. I'm not going to fly there a couple of days a week. I'm not going to fly there a couple of days a week. I'm not going to fly there to a bunch of different sites, but the dangerous part, I think I separate out progression and being a dangerous pilot. And so my progression, I would say has slowed way down, but the safety has gone basically way up. When I'd had the crashes, I was after the conversation that you'd had with Marco Dunn and Max, and I'd had this idea, like, I'm going to fly around with, you know, no brakes on and feel the air and kind of go with it. And I just didn't have the expertise to understand when to apply that and when not. Oh my God. You know,

our shows hurt you. That's supposed to be the other way around. That's not good. No,

no. I heard myself. That was, that was all on me. But I think of, of kind of the, the progression and safety I've made has been kind of leaps and bounds versus the progression and skills, or at least putting numbers on the board, which has been super, super slow. And so when I look around at dangerous pilots, I think you've done that one really good podcast with the pilot who'd said like, oh, the FAA has these, you know, markers of a dangerous pilot. And I think that's a really good podcast. I think that's a really good podcast. I think that's a really good podcast. I think that's a really good podcast. I think that's a really good And none of those usually apply to me other than being The five hazardous attitudes of aviation. Yeah. That

was great. I was amazed, you know, that's, that, that plays a pretty good piece in the book. And until Jeff told me that I'd never heard that. I just, I can't believe that it's not part of our basic education. You know, why isn't that in the first P2 exam? I, you know, I mean, it's something that, that Stefan or Jeff or any of the pilots that we've spoken to on the show that I'm talking about commercial pilots, JK, you know, he did that, that whole T T M episode. Yep. It's just something that's drilled into those guys from minute one. We, so that takes me to our next question. What needs to change in the world of free flight, if anything?

Man, I think if I could kind of wave a magic wand on, on it, I would just say that there was more proactive, more proactiveness on the part of both the students and the teachers to, to learn and to help each other. And I think when I see kind of quote dangerous pilots at the, at the hill or in the air, or you hear about them, a lot of the times they have those hazardous attitudes and those hazards, hazardous attitudes can be solved by having stronger mentorship and also stronger kind of learnership or studentship where you're showing up every time and you're asking people, what are you seeing? What does it mean to you? Have you seen it before? And, and then you kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of kind of what happened last time. And for me, I'm still applying that stuff. And I feel like that is what has made me a much safer pilot. It doesn't matter if the other pilots on the hill are less experienced than me or more is just being a student of the game and being an aggressive student of the game, I think makes, makes all of free flight better.

And then if you're on kind of your end where you're probably seeing a lot of things that folks like me aren't seeing is going over and asking the newer pilots like, Hey, what are you seeing? You know, describe the day to me. What do you think is going to happen? And then you can ask

the newer pilots to come in and

uncover, you know, the parts for them that they didn't even think to, to expose. And you can make kind of, we can all together make the community a safer and better and more fun place to be. Yeah. I

just had this great talk with Kirsten Sito, who's been doing these all women kind of fly-ins down in Australia. And she was talking about the importance of just how we approach people that, you know, especially in our sport where it's so heavily dominated by men. I think men often have the best intentions, but it can kind of rob people of their own, you know, people have to make mistakes. They have to be the inexpensive mistakes, but they have to make mistakes. But yeah, I think, you know, if you, so if you go over and go, let me help you with that, that's, that's not as opposed to, Hey, clearly you got this and I'm here to help if you want me to, you know, and, or like you said, yeah, this, this is really interesting. What are you seeing with the sky right now in a way that's just, that folds them in, that it's inclusive, that is

non-conformist. That's confrontational. That's being aware of how nervous most people are, even after thousand, 2000 hours at launch, you know, it's a time where there's a, there's a lot going on and we may or may not be in the frame of mind yet. You know, we might be still thinking about the fight we just had with our spouse or whatever, you know? So this isn't one of your questions, but is it been hard for you to find mentors, to get mentors? And what makes a good mentor?

It has not been hard to find them. But that I think is part of my personality is that I, I really like meeting people. I like talking to people. I like kind of digging into them. And, and there's a, there's one guy on the Hill. Who's actually the first guy I ever saw up at blossom. This is almost before I was flying. I'd been told to go out there and just look at it. And I get up there and it was a super, what I know now is a super light day. There's only one guy at the top. His name is Arthur Markowitz. He's a former champion RC glider pilot, flew hang gliders. And now flies paragliders. And he's kind of this grumpy old dude. So he's up there flying his RC. You know, I said hi to him, asked him a little bit, and he obviously didn't want to talk to a stranger. So I was like, ah, that guy's kind of a grumpy old dude. I get into flying, you know, heavier and heavier and start being there more and more and see Arthur more and more. And I decided at some point that that dude knows a lot of information that I want to know.

I'm going to drag it out of him. And so for me, it's, it's like a fun thing to, to do it that way. And to say like, how can I, you know, not disingenuously, but how can I become friends with this person? How can I build a relationship with this person that benefits both of us? Like, what do we have in common? How do we explore that? And then how do we make it so that both of us get something out of this? And that guy, Arthur has been just this incredibly kind, patient, generous, incredibly generous person in every aspect of our relationship. And it's been really, really cool to develop that with him. Cause here's a guy who's been flying some kind of aviation for, probably 50 years. And to be able to, to ask him what he sees in a day, he's been flying blossom for probably as long as it's been there.

So he's seen a lot of it all. And he's, he's really funny guy, but he's, he's got this kind of crusty old exterior and he hates being helped out. So I'm always making a point of helping him out. Like, Hey, let me fluff your wing. He's like, get away from my wing. Like you kids get off my lawn stuff. So I think when, when it comes to finding mentors to go back to the question, you just have to be, I think, but an assertive student or like, Hey, I want to learn from that person. I might, I've identified the person I want to learn from, and I'm just going to start asking them questions and not pestering them when they're kidding up. But just when I see them on the hill, call them by their name, you know, ask them what they see, ask them whatever questions you have. And I found that without exception, everyone is super excited to share their knowledge.

What's, what's, what's the one thing that you've learned from him that's made the most difference in your flying?

Um, probably the work-life balance. He's been really good about saying, Hey dude, why don't you go home to your wife and take care of her? You've been out in the hill a lot lately. And so as funny as it, as it is, he's kind of seen, I don't know how old he is. He must be in his late sixties. He's probably gonna kick me when I see him. Um, he's like, Oh, I'm, you know, 62 or whatever it is. But yeah, I think him kind of seeing that flying is it in a whole life endeavor and that it's easy to burn out and it's important to take care of your family and your other relationships, um, outside the hill in order to,

when you

come to the hill to be able to bring it with everything you have. So you don't have any kind of undone business back at home.

Okay. So this spring and summer, you've got, let's say you've got eight weeks to go anywhere in the world. Uh, COVID is long, doesn't exist anymore. Uh, where would you go? What would you do?

Kind of a dream, dream eight weeks. I would like to think that I would devote that eight weeks to getting those 300 stalls. That seems like the single most important thing in like safety and so wherever I would need to go to do that, if it's a Turkey or wherever it is figuring out, like, what do I need to do to take as many SIVs as I need to take to hire people to be in my ear until I'm getting them. And then to just do them over and over and over and get the reps and understand what, what the wing is doing. That seems like that that would be an eight weeks. Well spent.

What would you like to tell your 50 hour self now? We can, we can ask you that one now.

Yeah. Yeah. Now that I'm at 200 hours beyond that, I think just, just slow down a little bit and listen to people when they're telling you that you're, you've got a hazardous attitude. Um, and that's a really difficult thing because that's the way that you progress quickly. Um, I think we'll, we'll get into that a little bit later with the, with the question going to your, uh, three liner and two liner progression, but there's this kind of balance between you can make really fast progression, but it can be pretty hazardous. And some people have the reflexes to get through it. And some people have the luck to get through it. And some, some of us don't. Um, and for me, I think it was just, wasn't having the reflexes of the luck or, or kind of figuring it out fast enough. And luckily I didn't get super injured, but I think I'd tell that 50 hour guy like, Hey dude, you're going to have 20 years to do this. Slow down a little bit and just, yeah, enjoy it more.

So

you were kind of all, all adrenaline and all, uh, you were, you were way ahead of where you were. You were, you were full gas all the time. Supposedly a really funny YouTube channel, but the one saying all gas, no brakes. I heard that's really good. I'll bet. Yeah. Nick, what do you wish new pilots on the Hill would do more?

Ask questions and kind of let us know through the answers to their, their questions and them asking where they are. I just had a new pilot come up to me the other day. And as they started asking questions, I realized like, wow, there are some really big holes in this guy's game. And now we can fix them that we know that they're there. So a lot of the times as a new pilot, if you just ask questions, then people can figure out really quickly how to help you the most. If you kind of hang back and just, want to make sure that you don't look stupid, that's this road to get injured, you know, or the much higher risk to get injured. Gosh, that's

easy to say hard to do if you're an introvert, isn't it? I mean, if it's, uh, it's kind of a, it's kind of an intimidating, it's kind of an intimidating place at launch. You know, you got a lot going on as people are distracted. Um, you know, they're trying to think about just being clipping in and doing their checks and all that. You got any, you have any advice for asking, you know, just.

Gosh, not any great advice. Other than that, I'd, I'd weigh it out. Like it's your life. You've got these two legs and two arms and a body that works. And if you want to keep those things working, then you're going to have to figure out a way to get around that, that embarrassment or that introversion. And if you can't just know that you're at a much higher risk for being, for being injured.

I guess what I would say too, is, you know, trust in our community. We've all been there. Every single person you're watching and seeing has been through it and has seen some horrible shit. And, uh, we all are so stoked on new pilots. We need more. We don't have nearly enough new pilots. And so we're excited to see you. We're excited to have you in our community. We're excited to have you as part of the club and paying dues and all that stuff. It's it all, you know, it helps the community and yeah, we've all been there. So there's no question that's stupid. I've never had anybody asked me a stupid question. You know, they're all just, yeah, I've been there, man. I can help you

out. And I think you can ask that that's kind of standard question. Like, what are you seeing condition wise? And that is a pretty neutral question that everybody's going to have a different answer for anyway. So there's not like a wrong answer. Um, so it doesn't really put people on the hook. It just asks them what they're thinking. How have you

handled pilots that, you know, are maybe reckless, hopefully without their knowledge, but you know,

we've had one dude who, who, uh, comes to mind, um, was a totally reckless pilot showed up, no reserve, no helmet. Didn't care, had the hazardous attitudes was just taken off. And there was not much anyone could do to stop him. I mean, you can't physically wrestle. I mean, you can, but I'm not interested in that stuff anymore. Yeah. And so a lot of it is just, you have to do what you can do on your end to make sure that, that they know they're, they're crossing a bunch of lines. And then it's at the end of the day, when, when we take off, it's the pilot that takes off. They don't take anyone with them. And so for him, it was like, Hey dude, you're not wearing a helmet. You're not carrying a reserve. Like I'm, I'm kind of worried about that. I'm, worried about you. What are you thinking? Like, why are you making those decisions? And for him, he had that kind of reckless attitude, like, Oh, I fly this way all the time.

And you know, this is what I'm doing. And you know, I'm, I'm this, I don't know. He didn't say he's a bad-ass, but he just had that thing. It was like, all right, it sounds like you understand that you're making super risky decisions. Um, and that, you know, that everyone here on the Hill is, is not approving of that. There's not much we can do beyond that. Um, it's a, that's a hard thing. I think there's no like great, right, perfect answer for that. It's not like there's a magician that knows how to come up with a solution. And, and change those attitudes in an instant, just being super straightforward with that person and letting them know where you think they stand. And then if you're wrong and you're kind of missing something, they can explain it, but then it's all out in the open.

Yeah. I mean, I think Will Gadd talked about this, didn't he? And that last one we did with he and Jeff, you know, for a long time, he just didn't really feel comfortable getting in people's faces. He didn't feel like that was culturally okay. And now he's like, I don't give a shit if somebody doesn't like me, you know, that it's their life. And, you know, they may not know it and you got to say something and they it's then, then it's, then it's on them to listen or not. Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Top three frustrations in your progression.

I think there it's a lot to do with the expectations. So I had the frustration was that I had these really high expectations and that since I'd done one special thing, kind of 20 years ago, I could do any special thing anytime I wanted. And realizing that, that just for this sport and probably for a lot of other things that I haven't, touched yet, that's true as well. And so just not progressing as, as fast enough as I'd like, I think that that would cover kind of the top 10 frustrations. It's just like, Oh, I wanted to go faster.

That's all I've got for you. I think you're going to transition to us, uh, to something, you know, a conversation you just recently had, and then we'll, we'll skip down our list here.

Yeah. So I thought what we do is, is basically recreate a conversation that I had, uh, gosh, last night and the last couple of days with a new pilot. So brand new local P3 pilot, he's got a hundred hours. Um, and he had some questions. And as we were hiking up the Hill, I hadn't thought to probe super deeply, but he started asking the questions and I think it's going to make him a safer pilot. So Gavin, I guess the, where I would start is I'll ask you the questions that he asked me, and I just like to get your feedback on them. So you're hiking up to launch with this guy's new pilot, super psyched. You can see kind of right away, he's not an expert pilot. And he says, Hey Gav, man, I'm, I'm usually the lowest pilot. And lately I've been sinking out without any warning, like the wind shuts off and I'm screwed. How do I get better?

Hours. Don't be discouraged. You know, that's where we all were and watch and learn. I think the, the biggest thing that I see, especially new pilots in lower hour pilots do is you can tell them a million times, Hey, watch, you know, observe if there's somebody going up next to you, go to them. Don't hang out where you are move. And then they don't do it because what are new pilots worried about? They're worried about their wing disappearing out of the sky. They're worried about all kinds of stuff and they're not looking around. You know, it's like Bruce Goldsmith said, you, you, you, you should have a really tired neck from observing so much. And you can't observe very much when

you're worried about dying because your wings not going to support you. So you have to go through all this, you know, you have to learn to trust in your gear. You have to learn to be able to get your heart rate down to a reasonable place. You have to learn that most fear is a rational, these things take time. I don't think there's any shortcuts, so don't worry about it, man. Just enjoy it. Every time. One of the things I got from this podcast, that's just that I still go back to all over and over again is you, when I was interviewing Armin, harsh about flying the flatlands. And I was like, Hey, do you deal with those days where you launch too early and you bomb out after 10 minutes and you miss a good day? And he's like, wait, that's not a bad day. That's a great day. I had a safe landing that that's where we all need to be thinking all the time.

So yeah, man, you're good. Slow down.

Cool. There's a, so Tori is, this is cliff site, super laminar air in Southern California. There's a box that's always out in the field. And a lot of the really good pilots kind of cruise through and land on the box. This guy was saying, Hey, look, I can stick five out of 10 landings on the box at Tori, but I don't want to practice them because people think I'm incompetent. If I miss, like, how should I practice sticking a landing?

Number one, forcing any kind of landing is a really bad idea. I don't care how much experience you have. So, you know, I think this is great training to be able to spot land, but you've always got to have an exit. You've always got to have, you know, the best of the best blow that. Right. And if you're, worried about what other people are thinking, and that's, I gather that I understand that this is harder said than done, but you know, your focus needs to be on you and what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish. And all these other people, like I said before, we've all been there. And so you've got to get away from this.

Oh God, it's embarrassing. Or it's just, that is not something you want to have in your head. So, you know, if that's in your head, go learn how to do this somewhere else and get it down. And there are other places than Tori where you can, you can soar and work on that kind of stuff and, you know, get it down, man, get your ground handling down. If you have ground handling, just dialed, then you're a sensei at launch and you're a sensei at landing. And, you know, you, if you're, if you can feel confident about your skills, then you don't have to worry about whatever they're, everybody's

going to be doing. So, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're

thinking, cause you look like a bad-ass. And so I realize you've got to put in those hours, but I would just say, you know, maybe you're putting the hours in the wrong place.

Dig it. I think his, one of his responses was I've got at least 10 hours ground handling. I know what I'm doing.

That's where you have to just, that's where you have to be brutally honest and dude, you know, less than nothing at that level. And we've all been there.

Okay. Yeah. Great, great stuff. So one of the things that he, he also said is like, Hey, I've got at least 50 landings on the spot, but I missed twice. And now I'm psyched out. Like, how do I, how do I get better at that? How do I, how do I not get psyched out?

What did the Zen master say? You know, when his student was looking for mastery, he said, what do I need to do? If I work really, really, really hard, he said, well, you need to chop wood and carry water for 10 years. So after 10 years, he comes back and he said, okay, master, what do I need to do now? He said, you need to go away for 10 years and chop wood and carry water. And he comes. And after that, he's, he feels like he's reached enlightenment and he comes back and he says, now what master? And he says, carry water for 10 years and chop wood for 10 years now that you're enlightened. So it just, again, that's nothing, you know, that's, you're just scratching the very beginning surface. We all miss and your misses have to be cheap. They have to be inexpensive. So don't force it.

Take your time. You know, the greatest basketball, players in the history of the sport don't make every free throw. So they just have to keep shooting.

A hundred percent. I think one of the things that was a takeaway for me, and I remembered it in my own progression in this conversation with this fellow is that you think when you've got 10 hours or 30 hours or 40 hours of ground handling, you've got it dialed and you just don't see, I have the perspective to say like, okay, you probably don't have it dialed until you're at, I don't know, 200 hours or something, you know, and until you can do all of the Andre Bender's like ground handling, challenge, like once you're nailing all of those things, then you can say like, okay, if you're still missing stuff, then there's, there's something wrong. But until you're nailing all of those, if you're missing stuff, it's because you're not nailing all of those different exercises. You're not able to do a heli on the ground at 360 or make the wind wing tip kiss and drag you around and do whatever, whatever it is that you want. So I think it's just changing that perspective from like, Hey, because you have 10 hours now and you used to have zero, you're 10 times as good, but that's still not good enough.

You're still not great.

Yeah. I mean, I think we all need to take inspiration from people who are at a completely different level. You know, this is not riding a bike. This isn't golf. It's not where you get to some place and you can just kind of coast, right? It's when you, when you look at Theo, I mean, is, is anybody better at ground handling than him? Maybe, but he doesn't stop practicing ground handling. So clearly it's important that guy can do anything in the air, but like you said, it's all just. Definitely small progressions at that level, but he's, he's doing that. So we, we all have to get just somewhere in that range just to be safe, you know? So yeah, you know, Chrigel didn't get that good by, by not training.

Dig it. Yep. Last question. And then we'll hit the, uh, the Kiwi star stuff. So he asked, uh, do you have any tips on side hill landings? Cause that's where I get hurt. Is it better to pick a safe spot and aim for that? Or is it better to figure out the wind direction and land into the wind? And then how do you see the wind direction?

Until you get really good, uh, you know, many of you have probably been seeing the videos by Patrick and Chrigel and stuff, you know, landing downwind uphill speed bar, you know, landing on the, on the, you know, this is extremely advanced stuff. So, you know, you can definitely land downwind, you know, doing sidewell side, side hill landings and stuff, but you've got to have a lot of energy with your wing before you go into that maneuver. So you can slow it, you can slow it down and you've got brake authority. This is not something that someone in the less than thousand hours even should be practicing all that much instead of except in a pretty controlled environment with an instructor. So, you know, you should be landing into the wind and unless you've done a lot of SIV, unless you've got, you know, your stall point just dialed, you know, exactly where it is.

I mean, I'm an X-Alps pilot and I spun my glider landing in Annecy in the 2015 race. Um, you know, I had done a lot of stalling, but I didn't know where I was at that point. So again, the best, the best can screw it up. And if you're, you know, five or more feet off the ground, that can hurt real bad. So one, respect it too. The best thing, I think when it comes to top hill, top landing and side hill landing is always have a way out. You don't commit until, you know, you've got it right. And so what I mean by that is most of the time you should be able to fly away from that and go to the safe place, right? So, you know, practice it in laminar air in a really kind of quote unquote safe place where you've got, you've got some cushion, you've got some room to run it out.

Um, you know, great friend of mine destroyed his foot in, in at Torrey doing a totally basic, well within his skill level side hill landing. And just, you know, he hit a little bit of a weird hole. It wasn't even really like a fault, but we are aviators. So yeah, I'm not sure I answered all of that, but you're, you're don't get, we all learn right in the very beginning about object fixation. And that's the same thing when it comes to side hill landing, you know, so it should be okay. That's plan a that's plan B that's plan C that's plan D with everything that we do in this sport that we've got some outs because you might, you know, suddenly the wind might switch a little bit. You might be coming in with, you know, not enough speed.

Remember, you're not going to be able to fly. You're not going to be able to fly. You're going to be able to fly. You're not going to be able to fly. You're not going to be able to fly. Remember that we need speed. And I think a lot of, we need, we need airflow through our gliders. If we don't have airflow through the gliders, you're going to stall. Right. And so I think a lot of pilots, especially that come from ridge soaring locations are used to flying really slow because they're flying into the wind. So they've got all that wind. So their, their wing is totally inflated and it's completely safe. Now, some suddenly you go into a situation where you're slightly downwind crosswind. You don't have a lot of wind. You don't have a lot of wind. You don't have a lot of wind and you start slowing it down and slowing it down. Oh, I'm coming in too fast. And you slow it down and you slow it down. Then you have no energy to manage anything. So you need a lot of speed. So therefore, if you land with a lot of speed, you're going to be in some trouble.

So it's, it's, it's a pretty fine.

It's a fine point there to get that right. And again, it just comes back to hours. So, you know, I would say, you know, practice the real easy Torrey Pines type top landings and that kind of thing. Before you get into the more difficult side hill landings and always give yourself an out. Let me add something to that too, Nick. He said, you know, is it better to figure out the wind and land in the wind? Absolutely. And how you do that is don't stick at the first time, you know, do a bunch of flybys. I, this is one of the things that I think really gets a lot of people top landing is forcing it. That's exactly what happened to me in Annecy in the 2015 race. I was in a hurry. I wanted to land, sign the sign. I wanted to land on the board and get back in the air. It was an epic day. And I just kind of made kind of a bad move coming into there.

So I'd lost about an hour. So I was, I was in a hurry and it was blowing really hard and not blowing hard, dangerous, but there was just a lot of wind come up into the launch and it's all surrounded by trees. And, you know, my first pass didn't work. So the second one, I forced it and spun the glider and got lucky. So, yeah, I mean, you don't just take your time, do fly by, fly by, fly by, because every time you do that, you'll learn something about the weather and what's going on. And you might decide, yeah, I don't think I have this move right now. You know, I think this will be a force. So whereas if you just do it the first time, you're not going to get all that feedback that you maybe need.

I think that kind of wraps that section. One of the takeaways I'm hoping that you get as a listener is you can see in kind of three or four questions that both Gavin and I had this idea of like where this guy is and where we might direct him to fly some more. And so that's just a couple questions. That's all it takes. And now that I've talked to that guy and also heard Gavin's responses. That makes him a way safer pilot and it makes our community way safer. So it doesn't take a ton. You just have to start asking those questions and watch where the conversation goes. All right, Kiwi stuff. So it's now, what is it, December. The whole Kiwi expedition piece was in August. So we've had a couple months to kind of think about it, reflect on it a little bit. Let's start with, actually, let's start with this. There is a really good report out there on what happened to him.

So if you want all the details, what we think happened, you know, by the kind of best experts in the business.

Yeah. Cross country just published that. And, you know, the wing went back to ozone headquarters and they did a bunch of, you know, they, they did a lot of analysis on it and the report's great. And it's really worth reading through. And, you know, of course, you know, nobody saw the accident. So a lot of it has to be speculative, but I would agree with everything that was in the report.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So if you haven't seen that or, or haven't kind of heard of this, we'll just do a super quick four sentence piece. This Kiwi's out flying in Nevada, hit some turbulence. The wings started to whatever spin up lost consciousness, never got to pull reserve. The rotations got so strong, the wing ripped away and he augered in. Massive search effort organized and mounted. It took just under 30 days to find him and eventually we found them. So I think that's the kind of shortest synopsis possible. Anything to add? Yeah.

And I think, I think too, that, you know, just before we got on the horn to do this, I reached out to, you know, there were kind of three main, there was a lot of people, our community rallied. I mean, in from around the world, not just on site, but that was the most inspiring thing for me to see. Cause I was one of the first people there in Eureka, but I mean, people did, you know, we had this massive search, the satellite search effort online from all over the world. I mean, Kiwi was a very well known. Yeah. Very well loved pilot. And so, you know, the community really rallied, but I reached out to Bill Belcourt who ran a lot of the ground game there. And then Revis, who was basically our IC on the, on the whole deal. And then JK Smith, all three of these people I've had on the show actually, but I reached out to them a few days ago to just, Hey, can we do a full show?

Should we do one on, on Kiwi? And the answer was yes, but not yet. So Nick and I were good. We're going to get into, you know, some of the takeaways, some of the things that we've been talking about. Some of the things we learned, some of the things I think are really valuable for the community, but at some point we will do a full kind of a more full debrief on this. I did a little article for a cross country magazine about what we learned from the search, not so much at all from the Kiwi side of it, you know, the victim side, but the, from the search side. And so, yeah, you and I are just going to be talking about, you know, some of the things, some of the takeaways here, but we will do hope, you know, a full show on that at some point.

Take it. I see as incident commander. Sorry. I know you got hit on the, on acronyms, Gavin. So incident commanders, it's from, as far as I know, from kind of a firefighting stuff or incidents in general. And, and when you have this kind of emergency that is happens, one dude gets designated as basically the leader as the guy who runs the show. And in this case, it was Revis stepped up to it and did a magnificent job. Yeah. Magnificent. He was, he was unbelievable. That was pretty awesome. Gav, let's start with something that I think it has certainly made me feel a little bit guilty, although I know that there's nothing I could have done. But David Hunt and I flew up there and David's, I think RV eight rad little plane did a bunch of, of flying. We flew over where Kiwi was eventually found, I think directly over at least once.

And, and where I feel like I should have seen him twice. Should, should we have seen him? I know you had something similar.

Yeah, this was in some ways, you know, one of the more discouraging things about, you know, so the, the timeline again is, you know, he, he disappeared on Saturday. Yeah.

And so the,

the main, the rescue effort really ramped up on Monday and we got a big team in there and a big team, you know, a couple dozen, over a dozen Monday night and, you know, boots on the ground Tuesday morning. Before that, the local search and rescue effort out of a couple of different sheriff's office had kind of been in there. Very, you know, in a limited scope, obviously, because this is, this is a massive area and it took us, you know, a couple of days to really pinpoint. Okay. Well, this should be the search. and this should be our fan and, you know, and just setting up comms. I mean, this is a very remote for those of you who, uh, you haven't been out in Nevada, there's not much out there. And, and, you know, some of the brush was really dense. Some of it was pretty open where we ended up finding or other P I mean, actually the search was, had been called off and it was actually just people going into work on a mine that actually found his wing.

And then subsequently the, the, some of the team went back in and found him less than two days later, you know, that where, where his wing was and where he was, was not very dense. Um, and, you know, it was certainly, there was a lot of juniper trees, which are, you know, have pretty good canopies and stuff, but I, Bill and I were on the ridge, just, just around the corner from where his wing was and, and then where he was. And, you know, I was scoping with, my binoculars, the area where his wing was, I thought really carefully, you know, taking my time and, and, uh, you know, I have just learned, you know, that we had, we had some people in our community. This was so amazing in our community. We've got people that are just experts in so many different fields.

And, you know, we had some people like this guy, Kurt showed up with, you know, four pairs of really high end, uh, spotting stuff, you know, glass, just really high end glass and, uh, telescopes and binoculars. And, and I think I had one of his pairs that day. And I just, it's, I can't believe I didn't see him, you know, from where, where he was. I mean, I later looked at the satellite imagery. I was right there. And so it makes me, you know, the, the, so number one takeaway is, man, we've got to operate slow. And, you know, especially when you start looking from the air in a helicopter, in planes, even bush planes and stuff, which can fly pretty slow. It is really, really hard to spot somebody in tricky terrain.

And so that was, that was the big one. I mean, that where he was, we had a lot of aircraft. We had a lot of drones. Eventually we had a lot of boots on the ground. I mean, this was, this was a high probability area. He was just beyond our fan, which we can talk about a little bit later, the reason for that. But yeah, I, I really do feel like we should have seen him and that's discouraging. And, but also a great lesson that, you know, part of this is, you know, part of this is, you know, part of this is, you know, part of this is, you want to find your buddy and there's a lot, especially in the beginning, there's, there's a lot of hope, right. And there's a lot of optimism. We're going to find him alive. He's out there somewhere and he needs us and we got to get to him fast. You know, this is Nevada. He doesn't have water or food, whatever. And, but really my, you know, when I thought about it later, I don't believe there were like mistakes made.

I think it was just that, you know, the, the big takeaway is, God, you got to slow down. You got to really, really, really cross your teeth. And I think that's a big takeaway. And I think that's a big takeaway. And I think that's your eyes take time and really cover an area. Cause you can go into an area and, oh, I don't know. I mean, when, when Nate and I went in the first day and we had teams kind of coming from the bottom of the brush up to the ridgeline, which was where we really thought was the more high probability that actually wasn't where he was found. But, you know, as soon as we got into there, it was like, you would need a thousand people to really cover this. I mean, it would, he could be right behind that tree and you'd walk right by him. And so the scope of it is, it's a little mind boggling and it's a little like, there's no way. And, and so that rewinds us to before the accident, you know, what we really need to have and how important it is for us to have good comms and good tracking and good safety stuff, because man, you're looking for a needle in the haystack.

Yeah. I think the single biggest thing that came away for me was having some kind of tertiary, um, geolocation device. So you got your GPS, you got your cell phone. We all thought that the, um, in reach was bomb proof and the kind of gold standard before this, it turned out to be really good and it turned out to be pretty darn accurate, but it's not the only thing. And I feel like one thing that is, this has ignited in me is the search for that tertiary location piece. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be as good as, or better than the, um, the satellite stuff, but it's just gotta be there. And so what I found and what I encourage all you guys to check out is actually invented or developed by the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the power glider. If you go to mesh tastic, M E S H T A S T I C.org. Um, and look up, I think it's Kevin Hester's stuff. There's a way to build a $40 radio.

You do have to be a little bit of a geek, but thank God that the sport is about 99 % engineers. So if you're not a geek, make friends with an engineer and have them build one for you. But this is just an, um, an alternate way, a third way, a tertiary way of having geolocation. There's some other fancy stuff that goes with it. You create this mesh network. You can text back and forth. You don't need cell. You don't need satellite to do it. It is geeky. It's not, it's not ready for prime time, but if you're doing these big adventure things, man, $40 and maybe a night of, or two of tinkering in your garage, um, might be the difference between you getting found and not found. That seems worth it to me.

Yeah. I would say, you know, I, I have learned a lot to hanging out with Revis, you know, I was with those guys flying with Kiwi and those guys just the week before he disappeared. And you know, there, there is a, you know, Revis is, is really geeks out and he's really technical on this stuff and he's really good at weather and that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. He's also, you know, adamant that you've got to spend the time the night before, you know, creating your telegram group, creating your in-reach group, creating, you know, is, are the comms working? You know, do you, there's nothing more, I mean, how many times have we landed and gone, Oh, I don't have his in-reach address in my phone. And, uh, you know, and, Oh, I don't have cell. And it's just, these are things we got to as a community start

doing in advance. You know, this has to just, you know, and get your system. It doesn't, whatever telegram, WhatsApp, there's a bunch of different ways to do it, but get your system, make sure your radios work. You know, there were, we spent so much energy and so much time on, does he have a reco reflector? Was this, was his radio working? Was his, you know, did he have two reserves? Did he, all these things that really, we could have a spreadsheet on everybody we're flying with or everybody at the club and boy, it really, you know, and Kiwi was a responsible guy. He's a really good pie. He's been flying for 30 years. And so, you know, there, but you start making assumptions that make the search much more difficult because these aren't, we can't ask him now.

We can't, we don't know. And yeah, so there was, you know, we, we set up these fantastic, uh, telegram groups after I thought that was incredible, you know, so you have kind of like the main convo group and then you have a gear group. And then a lot of this, what, what came out of it that was special for me was just everybody talking about, yeah, like you said, we need, we need a device like an inReach, but that does more, you know, that has Fnet and or Fonet or, and, and Flarm and, you know, all the ADSB, all these things that I don't even know that much about, but these need to be part of our vocabulary and part of our understanding in the future, you know, Revis by having his ham license and really understanding radio and having air band on him, you know, when he flies at a place like Marshall, where there's a lot of air traffic, he's talking to all those planes.

It's just another level of safety that we all need to be, get up to speed on.

And going back to the very kind of top of the show, the survey results, most people listening to this are into XC. And so if you're in XC kind of more than me, where five miles is your, is your longest thing. If you're doing more than that, then this is, it's worth the time to, to figure out what your tertiary geolocation piece is going to be and that mesh tastic place is a fantastic place to start. It's definitely not the only one, but that's a great one that was kind of built for paragliding. I think, um, yeah, we can probably leave the rest of the QE star for its own special show. Was there anything else that you wanted to ping before we moved on to you?

Yeah. And I put this in the article, but give very serious thought if you're flying in even semi remote places to two minute tracking, uh, we are working with Garmin to get that at a more affordable rate. It is quite a bit more expensive than the 10 minute tracking. Most pilots are on 10 minute tracking, but it would have made a big, it would have made a massive difference. You know, this is a three kilometer search pattern as opposed to 78 square kilometers. And that that's huge. And so, you know, give that some thought. This is an expensive sport. We put a lot of money into our travel and do our gear and all those kinds of things. But you know, if I was going to put money somewhere, I'd put it there before that other stuff. I think that makes a big difference. And then the other one is get familiar with your stuff, all of it, uh, you know, know how to use it.

I, I was pretty surprised, you know, that a lot of people really lacked the basic skills in, you know, using your phone for your maps and downloading maps in advance and using your inReach. There's great videos. I do talks on this kind of stuff. You can find a lot of resources on the website, but there's, you know, it's worth spending literally a couple hours before the season every year, just kind of getting re,

reacquainted with our equipment.

Dig it. Yeah. I'd suggest being the gadfly in your club that goes up to people and is like, Hey, can you text me or message me on Garmin InReach right now? And you'll find that 90 % of people like, well, you know, I kind of set that up, but like, let's go fly. Do

it in advance, do it in advance. And the beautiful thing about these, these things is, you know, if you'd send a message and get a message back one time, you've got that, you've got that message thread forever. You've always got that. So you only need to do it once.

Dig it. Yeah. Let's, um, let's move on to kind of last, last piece. Um, and we'll start with kind of a work balance. So this piece is about, uh, Gavin and X-Alps and kind of what some of the stuff you've been learning and thinking about work-life balance. I know that when we met, you had this kite surfing business, taking a boat around the world. Um, and you were super into that and that was your thing. Do you still have that? What's, what's going on with your work life? Yeah, it's

interesting. I, so when I sat down with Thomas there though, for the show, I believe in late March, maybe early April, cause we wanted a chapter for the book with him. Um, you know, he, he asked me a question, you know, where, where do you see yourself? What, what do you, he does these, he calls it a time jump. Where do you see yourself in September, which just happened a couple months ago. And the biggest one for me was I see myself getting out of this business because it has been an awesome ride and I wouldn't want to change a thing, but the last two and a half, three years has been pretty stressful. That's some crew, some challenges with crew and challenges with finances. And it was going into the last X ops in 2019. I had just brought in a kind of a new partnership and that was, you know, basically incinerating right before the race.

And so it's been just very stressful. And I have always believed that, you know, to be successful, it's something you got to be pretty into it and pretty excited about it. And that had just waned over the last few years with that business. And so I'm happy to say that it is just sold. I'm happy to say that it is sold. I will still be helping them out. They're going to continue on and I'll be still helping them for as long as it takes. It might be a couple of years to just help keep it going. Of course, COVID shut us down, but yeah, so I sold that business and that has given me a lot more time to dedicate to this, which is something I love and the podcast that is and, and training in the X ops. So yeah, it's, it's really freed up. I think the most important thing, which is my head.

Pretty cool. Pretty cool. So speaking of kind of how little you're doing, how little you're doing, how little you're doing, how little you're doing, and how much we think, you know, you're going into the X ops for the third run, right? Fourth. Fourth one. Jesus. How is this one going to be different?

Well, in some ways there'll be some big differences and other ways, I hope there won't be very many at all. You know, the ultimate goal is to have a lot of fun and to not pound and, you know, and do it safely. It is the, you know, consistently been the last three have been the funnest things I've, I know how to do with my time. Certainly when you're there, if you, if you train really hard and plan meticulously you can just go for it and have a good time. And we've got the exact same team I had in 2019. And I just, you know, the bond you create, I think I'm sure you can understand this being somebody in the military, you know, cause Ben is military, my, my trainer, and he's been my supporter, one of my supporters since the beginning.

This is a unique place you go in your mind and with your, with your, with your group of people, it's, it's very intense. And so you're sharing this very intense life experience for 12 days together. And in some ways for months together before it all, before it all kicks off. So yeah, I mean, it, like I've been working with Thomas, like I said about it and, you know, talking to him about it, it basically you're in flow for 12 days and, and that's, that's pretty rad. That's pretty special. And so, yeah. But to your question, what's going to be different. I mean, what's been really obvious to me is I've put too much emphasis on where, you know, like thinking too far ahead of in terms of

here's where I'd like to end up which is, you know, a podium goal or a top 10 goal or those kinds of things. And like Thomas says, those kinds of goals just are stupid. They don't mean anything. So, you know, the goals that really matter are performance goals. And in some ways, you know, you put 32 of us on the starting line in Salzburg, we're all pretty darn close when it comes to performance in terms of, you know, our, our ability to move on the ground and our ability as pilots in the air. So there's not a huge separation in there in terms of like the technical side. So, so that leaves the process goals. And so that's what I'm really working on now. And so I'm, I'm doing kind of the time jump thing in my mind. I'm trying to spend a lot of time,

visualizing what it will look like in Monaco and, you know, to have that, but mostly my goals are, you know, what do I need to do right now in this minute to crush everybody else? What do I, you know, how can I turn this moment into an opportunity? And a lot of that has been, you know, I've, I've had this goal of reading kind of a sports psychology book every month and trying to spend a lot of time up here because I, you know, I realized after three of them that,

you know, I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm going to be able to do it. I'm going to be able to do it.

You know, I, I'm not the best pilot, but I'm pretty good. And I I'm, I'm real fast on the ground, even though I'm not built like most of the guys in the X-Alps, you know, I'm kind of short and squat and look like a wombat. And I don't have these big, long legs. I don't look like a marathon guy, like a lot, you know, like a Paul Guschlbauer, but I can move. I remember

hiking up Marshall with you and you just walked away from it. I was like, how is he going so fast? I can, I can

maintain a nice, good pace, especially uphills for a very long time. And so, so that's, that's never, so it's, so what does that leave

you with?

That leaves the air and strategy. And, and I think a lot of it is overcoming this worry about what if, you know, I'm trying to eliminate that from my vocabulary or turning what ifs into what's the best possible outcome that I could have right now. You know, because when we fly well and we do big XC flights and I had a, I had a really interesting, really cool season, some, some big FAIs. I got kind of into the whole US X contest thing. I spent some time in Nevada and I just went out and had some really cool flights, a lot of them alone. And, you know, when I do those, I am very much flow, but also, you know, I'm snapping kind of in and out of it.

And, but I'm allowing myself to make moves that I know how to do. I'm trusting in my abilities. And when it comes to the X-Alps, you can tell you, you can tell you, you can tell you, you can tell you, you can tell you, you're going to do that over and over again, but then you get into it and suddenly day four, day five, you know, you're feeling it. You're a bit tired. And, you know, the sky is, if I was just not in the X-Alps, I would know what to do, but the, you know, the sky is telling me what to do. And, but God, that's 20 K off course line. How do I, what if I blow that? And, you know, I shared this with Thomas and he said, no, you have, it has to remain a game. This has to be a game in your head and you have to, you have to create your training to be like a game and you have to, you know, there's, there is no downside.

We have to turn risks into opportunities. We have to, we have to say, you know, that's going to work. And if it doesn't work, who cares? And so I've had, I've had quite a bit of fun with, with Ben, you know, that we, we had this attitude in the last race, but when it came to execution, you just have to, to, it's, it's just a flip of a switch. It literally is. I've learned that it's that easy. This is going to work. This is going to work because I know what I'm doing and, you know, what's, what's the best outcome that I could have right now and go for that rather than, Ooh, I don't know if that's going to work. I'll take the safe route over here. And that never works. You know, Chrigel talks about taking sport of risk all the time. And, you know, so you've got to, you've got to do that. But so anyway, the long story is I'm playing around a lot with mindset.

And, uh, you know, just trusting in my abilities and, you know, setting up all kinds, you know, I've got a reminder in my phone that goes off twice a day right now that just says champion. And I know that sounds kind of weird, but are geeky, but it's awesome. You know, it's just, it's just reminding myself that I can do it and, and that I've got those moves and not being crippled by doubt.

What's the, uh, what's the Bodie Miller?

Yeah. Bodie Miller. So do you, did you follow ski racing? Is that a name that enough

to know that he's a famous name and he was, yeah. So

he was, he was a couple of years younger than me. And I, my, my ski career was, you know, because of injuries were, was pretty much done as he was starting to become a big name. And, uh, you know, Bodie was very much like some of our best us skiers in history, you know, bill Johnson and the mayors where they just did it their own way. You know, they weren't very coachable, I guess, in a sense. And, you know, they would say flagrant, shit on, on, in the media. And, but Bodie Miller was, he was so fun to watch because he was either going to win or totally wipe out. I mean, he had no, like, like you said, all gas, no brakes. He just, you know, he was a very talented skier, unbelievable, but I mean, he was like balls to the walls and everything and partying and the whole deal.

And it was just, and no one was going to tell him to change and no one, no one could, I mean, he was going to do it his way, but, but, and I'm not trying to emulate a lot of that about his life. Well, what I'm trying to emulate is, you know, so I'm going to have a Bodie Miller sticker up on my wing and it's just a reminder. What would Bodie do? He would go for it. And because I don't have anything to prove in this one, you know, it's like Chrigel said, when I asked him, you know, is it more stressful for you now after you've won this, you know, like after the first one? And he said, no, I don't have anything to prove. You know, I, it doesn't, you know, I want to win. And of course I'm going to do, everything I can to win, but I've already won six times and I haven't won, but I don't have anything to prove. I don't have to, but what I'm trying to say is, you know, I don't really want to come in middle of the pack.

I don't want to be 10th again. We've, we've done that. You know, I want to, if I could do it in the style that I want to do it and only get halfway there, that's totally fine. That's all right. I mean, that's, we want to do it in the style that we're going to do it in. And, because why not, you know, otherwise it's just a fourth X-Alps.

Well, I hope that you look up and see that sticker at the moment that you really need to look up and see that. Exactly.

Yeah. And, you know, of course this is like in skiing, even in downhill racing, which, you know, he was a downhiller. Of course there's, there's pretty high penalty points for wiping out, but it's not the same kind of penalty points that we have. So yes, in this sport, of course, you know, there are times where you can go for it. And that's also, that's a, maybe not a huge change, but something that I am thinking a lot more about than I did in 2015. I really thought, you know, training for the 2015 race, I basically had to go out and fly and all the nasty stuff for months beforehand. And that's not the way I'm doing it now. You know, I've got a daughter. I've got a lot more respect for the sport than I did back then. I've got a much different association and attitude about risk.

And so, and I've talked about this in quite a few shows lately, but you know, I also believe we can, our minds can only really handle so much trauma when it comes to fear and just flying in that kind of stuff. And I know that we will have to fly in that kind of stuff in the race. We got, 2019 was a really weird one where we didn't have much of that. I mean, we had a ton of bad weather, but we didn't have much wind and we had no fern. And so you can pretty much gamble that that's going to be back and for this race. And so I know that that's coming and, you know, I, but I don't necessarily, I need to ground handle for that kind of thing. And I need to, but I don't need to go get scared for the next seven months over and over again, you know, so I'm taking it a lot more careful, I guess, in terms of, in terms of the risk side of it, but

putting in, I think, I believe much better, more exacting hours.

I know you're not a gear head. You've made that pretty clear, but I know a lot of people want to know what, what are you flying and either daily and, or for, for the X-House?

Yeah. So for right now, when I'm training, the Cortel Calibri Pro, which they don't sell, it's the, it's the pro version or the X-House version of the Calibri. So this is an airbag instead of having a pad, you know, the, the Calibri has a, has a pad and it's just a trim down, you know, everything's little tiny straps and, but wow, it's wicked. It's 1.3 kgs and ridiculous, just packs down into nothing. And I really like flying it. I thought it was going to be one of these, you know, super light, lightweight, just doesn't have much command authority over the wing. And, you know, a lot of these hammock harnesses are kind of tricky when it comes to that, but hands down the best light harness I've flown. It's, it's fantastic. Just like I just got in it the first time and it felt right.

So it's just, so I'm really enjoying that. I've been flying the climber for training, which is Niviuk's two liner D and sorry, three liner D that, and they're replacing that with the climber two, which is going to be a two liner D lightweight. That'll be three kgs. And it's just in its final testing right now. So I don't have my hands on one. I haven't flown it, but the, you know, the climber that I'm flying is 3.4. So it's pretty close to the weight side of it. And so I'm, I'm really excited about that. You know, there was a big switch in 2019 and 2015. I think I was the only one to fly a two liner and it wasn't even a light wing. It was just the normal ice peak seven. And and then a few more in 2017 and then a bunch.

Switched over with the advance and the zeolite two liners in the last race, a lot of people, you know, so these are, these are not nearly as high aspect is, you know, a CCC wing. So they're much more tame. They're very gentle, very lovely to fly. So, so they're, they're kind of notched it down to wing two liners, but gorgeous. And so where I'm hoping Niviuk comes in with the, with the climber is, is a little bit hotter. Uh, I like a little bit, a little bit hotter wings, but a little bit hotter two liner than those and just slightly more performance, but yeah. So excited about that. And then, uh, Cortel is just finished. I haven't, I don't have my hands on it yet, but the pack is 280 grams. I mean, it's just, and that's 80 grams lighter than the skywalk and the ozone that we used last time, which are nothing, you know?

So, um, yeah, I just actually did a little video yesterday. I'll put it out here shortly. It's not out yet, but on my whole gear, all the priority stuff. So that's the, the reserve, the wing, the harness, the helmet, the flare, the fly master, you're all the, all the gear that you have to have all the time is 6.5 kgs. So, you know, so that's no food, water and clothes and other random stuff, gloves and that kind of thing. But you know, so that's the inReach mini, that's the phone, that's, that's, that's the XC Racer mini, uh, you know, my very own, so my everything, it's just, it's insane. So 6.5. And then when you add like the extra battery and some clothes and a little bit of food, a little bit of, a little water, you know, another couple of kgs over that. So, you know, just awesome.

It's pretty rad. So funny. I asked you for a gear list and I see shoes, socks, Z-pulls, gloves, goggles, speed sleeves. Like you're so not a gear guy. It's awesome. You know, like the gear heads are like, well, the shoes I use are like the Altra 7.0s, but they came out in 2015 and I really liked the 2016 version, but the sole, you're just like, well, I put that on there just as a

reminder to me, what I would qualify that is, you know, when I go to the race, I'll have 10 pairs. Uh, I, I think, you know, in the past,

I've had a lot of people that have

always had 12. I've got that trimmed down a little bit, but you know, you have to, you have to anticipate some of the trauma. And so the, the shoes will start at nines and, you know, at the end of the race, I'll be in tens, you know, your feet, your feet do get a little bit bigger. I've, I've dialed a lot of that back with, with changing my diet and stuff. I don't have nearly the problems I did in 2015, but yeah, so you do, I do put a lot of miles on shoes and I rotate them a lot, you know, in the race you'll, I'll change, you know, four or five pairs a day kind of thing. I just keep rotating them around also just to stay dry. And all that important stuff and socks. I I'm supporting the sock industry. It's, it's unbelievable. Yeah. I'm keeping some of these companies alive. I'm convinced of it.

Let's rewind back to the first part of the conversation and talk about your progression is that you jumped into two liners pretty quickly. It seems like, but you tell most people not to, what, what do you think has made you different to go so fast?

Yeah. I smiled when I saw your question. I, I, I think most people would say that I didn't, you know, it sounds like I did from the stories, but you know, we have to remember that I started flying, you know, 2004 sort of, but really seriously in 2006. So by the time I jumped, it was the, it was, you know, a couple of days before the world cup here in sun Valley, I made a huge jump. And that was because I got invited to fly in the world cup. And I'd only been in one comp before that. But, uh, you know, so I went from the Arctic, which was a sea, you know, kind of a mid-level sea to the ice peak six, which, you know, by today's standards is pretty tame two liner. But at that time it was the end zone one and the ice peak six, that's where everybody's flying in the gym. And, but I had, I don't know, I can't, I mean, way more than 10 SIVs at that point, I'd done a bunch of acro training.

I've never been an acro pilot, but I had done so, you know, I had done the Sierra trip, you know, some, some, some big bivvies, a lot of top landing. So I certainly think by today's standards, you know, I've seen, I've seen people jump on two liners and like their second year these days. And that's makes me awful nervous. Um, but you know, I think by today's standards, I had, uh, you know, I had a lot of hours and a lot of time under my belt before going to that two liner. And that still felt like a big jump and, and it was terribly exciting, but I'd like to think that, you know, looking back, I was ready for it, especially that summer. I was in Europe all summer flying with Bruce. Yeah. Yeah.

I was flying every possible day. And, you know, so I had a lot of currency and, and I really was, you know, I, I didn't notice that I was missing out on something until I got invited. So it wasn't like I was planning to jump up to a two liner, but certainly when I got on it, it was like, oh yes, this feels very comfortable. And, and this feels like the right wing.

Dig it. Dig it. What, um, what piece piece of kit would you love to see that doesn't exist yet? Yeah.

I put some thought into this, you know, two things. One would be that piece of equipment we were talking about in the Kiwi SAR, you know, one piece of gear that works that, you know, that kind of does it all. So that common, you know, like if the, if the in-reach could have that, uh, those other capabilities, then you'd have everything. So I think that's a missing part of our kit and, you know, and there's a lot of adaption adaptation that must happen there, you know, so. Yeah. So like F-Larm's pretty neat in Europe, but it's not in use here. So, uh, you know, I'm not sure, I'm not sure what that looks like, but that would be neat. I'd like to have that. The other one was something I just came across recently, and this was also a product of the Kiwi SAR thing.

You know, we were talking about what it'd be awesome if you had some kind of a auto deployment system when you're in trouble. So when that comes to say the in-reach, if, you know, if it's suddenly, if you set up an in-reach to be, okay, I'm a paraglider pilot and I shouldn't be doing more than 10 meters a second down at any one time. So if I am, that just triggers an automatic, uh, SOS. What if we had something like that for XC flying? So say like, you know, with the Acro pilots, they've got a pretty sweet cutaway system. So, you know, if you, if you just want to go to your reserve, you just cut away your main wing and boom. And so we haven't adapted to that. Because it's too heavy and it doesn't really work for hike and fly.

And, you know, it's just, it's not there yet, but if, if we had some kind of an auto protection system, it could be like, what if we had an auto airbag, you know, that would just deploy in certain situations? Yeah. So that's a few different things, but I think that one of the things that that really called out for me is that we all have different personal limits. And we all, and there's gear limits that we really need to respect and gear is gear, but personal limits change by the day. And when's it going to, when's it going to bite us?

Yeah. You know, way back in 2015, we first had our conversation. I asked if, um, if there were thermal goggles where you could see all the thermals, would you want them? And at the time you said, no, I hope those never come to the market. Has, have you changed it all? No, more

firmly. No, that's yeah. That's ridiculous. I, I, uh, I've had quite a few other people and they're always very low hour pilots. So I'm not trying to shovel you into them. And I, I even, I was almost gotten an argument with a guy about this. No, I think, okay. Two main reasons. One, it would be terrifying. I think it would scare all of us out of the air to actually see what was going on. I think it'd be really scary. And then two, it would just remove the magic. You know, it's just, that's, we'd all be so much similar in skill if we could see, you know? So I, I think that's, that's the magic of learning it. So now I really hope Google doesn't invent that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Cause I remember asking that question at first and it's like, man, I wish they'd like, I don't care what he says. I wish they come in and now I can see like, look, they're going to come in sooner or later. If we can, you know, figure out flying cars and, and the rest of it, those are going to come around, but I'm enjoying the time of, uh, of the era of paragliding where those don't exist. Yeah,

boy, that would be the end of an era for sure. That, that would, that would radically change the sport. I, I hope that doesn't

happen. Yeah. Uh, safety and danger. So three words to describe the safest or three phrases to describe the safest pilots, you know?

Yeah. It's easy for me to think about this. Cause I think a farmer, my neighbor confident you only fly the good days. That's not a word, but that's important. And then they're Jedis on the ground. Uh, and again, that's not one word, but I think those three, three things coming together make a pretty, pretty good pilot. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe autonomous would be a better one word answer to one of those, but you know, a confident autonomous pilot.

Dig it. So yeah, it's a nice way to kind of look at yourself and think like, Oh, am I super confident? Am I flying the good day? And am I a Jedi on the ground? And if I'm not like, okay, then I could be a safer pilot. Maybe there's something to work on there. Um, the flip side, three words or phrases, to describe the most dangerous pilots, you know,

let me give you more than three overconfident. So on the one hand it's confidence, but it's got to be the right kind of confidence. So overconfidence and that ties into, you know, ignoring in some way, the five hazardous attitudes of aviation. And if you don't know what those are, just Google them real quick. So I don't have to repeat them right now, but that comes into overconfidence. That's one of them. So maybe those are combined. People who don't pilots who don't fly with enough margin for their ability. This is removed some of our greatest personalities in the sport, especially this last year. Um, this has grabbed a couple of kind of, you know, high intermediate pilots that were really chasing it super hard and kind of leaving, just not leaving enough margin.

You know, it's like what Malin said in the podcast, there are, you know, there are a lot of pilots that are really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, there are levels of flight where there's not much you can do. You know, there there's heights of flight where there's, there's not a lot of outs. And so, you know, kicking the treetops is dangerous. And so, yeah, not, not giving yourself enough margin that matches your ability, flying wing beyond their capability. We went into that above. That's a big one. I'm seeing that a ton and maybe that's always been around. I don't know. And, uh, this is another one. That's been getting me lately. I get a lot of people reach out to me and say things like, yeah, you know, I'm working on my P three. Um, I'm, you know, I'm going to be getting my P four or, or whatever that is in, in different parts of the world.

You know, we've got our P two to P four ratings here with USPA, but I don't really want to knock USPA too hard right now, but our rating system sucks. And, uh, I don't think it means really anything. I mean, I was a P three pilot when I got the, Foot launch record that held for eight years until this last summer when Sebastian went farther in Texas and it was a rock and roll day. That was, you know, we've done a podcast on that. So, you know, I wasn't a P three pilot by a long shot back then. I was way beyond that, but I just hadn't put any, I didn't put anything into the ratings and I don't think anybody really should. I mean, I guess it's something that matters to, I don't think it matters. I just don't, it just doesn't matter that much. I mean, it's just, what, what does that number provide?

Uh, except irrational overconfidence, I guess. Yeah. Using a rating to rationalize anything. I just, I don't think that that makes much sense. They're not, you know, they're, they're multiple choice exams. They don't really reflect on what kind of pilot you are. Like again, you know, is it mountain flying you're getting? Is it ground handling? Is it, or sorry, is it, is it a, you know, laminar air ridge soaring on the coast or is it, you know, rock and roll in Nevada? What kind of air are you getting? How many SIVs are you doing? We don't put any emphasis on our rating system on SIV. Uh, you know, if anything, we just put kind of discourages it. So yeah, I don't, I don't like that.

I think I've had two conversations where the pilot came up to me and the first words were like, I am a P four and, and I was like, Oh, like you're going to screw something up. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, we, we have this, we have this, you know, to fly Baldy, you have to be a P three pilot. I just, man, that just reflects such a massive spectrum of ability. What, that doesn't tell me anything. If somebody comes up and says, yeah, I'm a P three. Okay. Well, I guess legally you can fly our site, but do you know where you're flying? You know what you're getting into?

Yeah. That's yeah. It's a good, good thing to keep in the back of your mind is that the number, number isn't that important. Um, next one is a little bit of an experiment is I think of, if you can, um, describe to me what it feels like when you hook into a thermal and when you're doing your description, just be as descriptive as possible. Don't even worry if the words make sense. I know they don't for me when I'm trying to describe it, but I would, I'd love to hear in the mind of Gavin, what's it like as you hook in

patience, mapping, excitement, nervousness by nervousness. What I mean is not nervousness,

unsatisfaction. And what I mean by unsatisfaction is I know that there's a better piece of this. I got to go find it. Uh, I've, you know, that I'm, I'm never satisfied in a thermal ever when I'm, whenever I'm climbing, I'm always adjusting and moving. And, but the, the first thing I'm trying to do is map it. And what I mean by that is, is it a little bit stronger on my left is a little strong on my right. Where is this thing? Where, where is it relative to my wing? So I'm listening really, you know, Ken Jorgensen, who don't Jorgensen calls it linguistics. I'm listening to what my wing is trying to say. And I'm trying to map it. Is it, is it 70 degrees? Is it 90? Is it two 70? Is it right behind me?

Is it, where have I come into this? Where is it going? What's the wind doing? So I'm trying to map all that. And that sounds like there's a lot, but at the same time, I'm also trying to kind of empty my mind and just feel so with an empty mind, you can observe, right? And so in the reality is none of those things are going to be the same. So I'm trying to map it. And that sounds like there's a lot of things that are going to be the same. So I'm trying to map it. And that sounds like there's a lot of things I just said is very front lobel, or it's not very much in the front of my mind. You know, this is just something that is, that starts to happen with more and more and more hours, but the, the, the, you know, there's, there's the initial, thank goodness it's a thermal, you know, so there's the initial excitement and then there's the, how can I get to the top faster than anybody else?

Or if I'm by myself, it's still the same thing. I'm trying to milk every little bit of wonder out of this thing.

Is, are there any, that's super cool to see kind of how you're thinking about it. Are there any kind of body feelings or body sensations, even if they don't make sense that you feel, or you, you kind of say to yourself as you're going up in a thermal?

I don't know if any of them don't make sense. Yeah, sure. They do. I guess

there are many times where, you know, it feels like you're making the right moves and your varios beeping a little bit stronger and then you kind of, and that's always very confusing. And that's always kind of, okay, do I need to round it out a little bit wider? Very rarely do you want to turn the other way? This has been a real stumbling block for me. I, I very often turn the other way, but most of the time it's a lot more efficient to keep going with the way you are, but just explore more. But yeah. Yeah. Best climbers explore the most air. And so if something is confusing, what I try to do is remind myself to slow down, be patient and breathe because the tendency is, oh, I've lost this one and to move on.

If you're not in this, if you're not in the right place to move on yet, or if there are people above you that are clearly in the same thermal that are still climbing, that are climbing better than you, then you're in the right place to move on. And so I try to remind myself to slow down. And so I try to remind myself to slow down. And so I try to remind myself to slow down. And you are, you've just, you're missing the, you're missing the good bits and you need to just slow down. And, you know, that's usually how we bomb out is we leave too early and, you know, before we, we should now that cannot be confused with leaving to, there are times when you leave too early. And that is when you're, you know, you're in a heater and it's going really well. And, you know, it goes from a four to a two and you've been flying in a bunch of fours that day. Yeah. Okay. Go. That's, that's different, but.

I'm not so much worried about kind of when to leave or when to go. I think it's really. More the feel. It's the feeling that I think it's much more like a campfire kind of conversation. Cause it can take so long to describe it and to, to enter into that state where you're saying like, well, I, I kind of feel like for me, I feel like there's these big shark hooks on my hips and these hooks like hook into this thermal. And then I ride around these like rising hula hoops. And sometimes I fall out and come back in. And, you know, for each of us, it's a little bit of a different thing. It's not like, oh, that's the way to do it. Or that's definitely not the way. That's just what we feel. It's, it's pretty cool to hear you describe it.

Yeah. It's, it's like to sky describing gliding. I've never met anybody that can really describe it that well. It's just really tough. You're feeling it. And what I would say is that you should be feeling things at the micro level. And, you know, there, you should be so in touch with your wing that, you know, you can feel the difference. Yeah. In your A3 and A2 and B4. And, you know, you can feel these little, how much is it more out on the, out on the wing tip versus right underneath me. And you can kind of move. And that's the same thing in gliding. It's the same deal. You know, where's the best current of air here? Where's the liftiest line? And it's the same thing with the thermal that, you know, even when there's no wind, they're tracking around and they're there, they are doing different things as they go up through the atmosphere.

So listen, I guess I, No, it's radical. All that little stuff, all that little stuff that's happening, like you say, in your hips, here's what, here, here's something that's concrete, get loose. You know, if you're any of you that, I think that's why kayakers are one of the reasons they're, they, they do well at this sport is they get, they have really loose hips. You just can't be stiff. And that's, that's very much the case in flying. If you're, if you're nice and loose and relaxed, your wings telling you a lot more.

Yeah. Dig it. Dig it. I think there's, there's plenty in there to, for someone to explore on their own and see if they matches up, matches up with them. So a couple more, let's, let's imagine kind of going back to this new intermediate pilot thing we talked about earlier. Let's imagine you hike up to launch and you meet someone who's a cloud-based man supporter. They're super psyched to meet you. And they're like, Hey, I've just gotten, what I've just got my P3. I'm a 50 hour pilot. I'm super psyched. You can see that maybe on this day, you guys have both gotten there way too early. No one else is there. It's just you two on the top and they're stoked to chat. And they ask you, what are you seeing out there? Can you walk me through how you'd respond?

Yeah, I, this is a great one. I, the first thing I would want to know is what did they expect to see? What was the, what, what homework have they done the night before and what homework did they do that morning? So good. If you're just thinking about it, then you're kind of way too late. I've already thought a lot about that day by the time I'm actually standing in a launch. So whether I've driven the launch, whether I've ridden a chairlift, whether I've driven in the, or sorry, if I've walked, you know, hiked, you know, there should be quite a bit of input already. Have you seen any birds thermal yet? Have you seen any Valley flow? Is there any clouds popping?

Like here at Baldy? You know, we often see early clouds, eight 30, nine o 'clock in the morning on the range right next to us, which has slightly bigger mountains, you know? So if those are just starting to pop, I'm a little behind already, you know, I should probably be in the air, be working on getting up. So yeah, I think what we're always trying to square is what we expect versus what we're getting. The models really very often don't align at the micro level. And so how, how is this different than what we expected?

Cool. Super, super useful. Last thing I got is I'm pushing for this on the hill segment at the end of the show. You can discard it if you want, but I think it'd be super cool if you had a suggestion for pilots, like what's one thing that they can practice the very next time they fly. I'm going to head out and probably fly blossom today. If it, if it looks good, which right now looking out the window, it may not be, but what, what's one thing that I can work on that'll make me a better pilot.

Can I give you more than one, go talk to somebody at launch and say, what are five things that you've noticed in my flying that I could improve and then pick one of them. I think we have to be more honest with ourselves about self-assessment and we can get a lot of help with that with other people. Yeah. And finally, I would say that every flight needs to be an opportunity. You need to make it an opportunity to learn something. So don't just do it, you know, have something in mind, whether that's, I've never gone over there. I've never landed there. I've never turn it into something that's different than what you normally do. Have you flown around on full bar the whole flight?

Have you, you know, if you've done, if you've done some of the real basic stuff, like, you know, full bar to, to breaks and just, you know, the dolphin flying through the sky. When Ben was going to go do the X-peer, uh, we, we reversed roles. So he was obviously going to do all his physical training, but I was, I became his coach for air stuff. And so I actually created a spreadsheet for him that was, you know, obviously some days weren't flyable. So it was, you know, on the next flyable day, you know, uh, I wanted to do a little bit of flying. I wanted to do a little bit of flying. I wanted to do a 10 K upwind triangle. I want you to do, and then spot land somewhere you've never been somewhere you've never landed.

And so just constantly a little bit outside of the comfort zone, something a little bit, you know, some, some way to make it a little bit more challenging. Uh, I think you get good pretty fast doing that.

Well, I think, uh, it kind of wraps the wraps the convo for now. We've been going for two hours. I think there was probably a little bit of a cut down to an hour and a half or less, but it's been super good talking to you. Super good. Just hearing what you have to say and exploring some new stuff. Um, I really liked what you'd said about how you feel about thermaling and just being not satisfied. I'd never thought of it that way. So now that's something like, Oh, I need to add that in my quiver. Like just keep searching. So thanks Kevin.

Thank you, Nick. It's always a pleasure. Keep training buddy and keep enjoying it and doing it safely. And thanks man. That was, that was a blast. I really enjoyed that.

Rock and roll.

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