Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. This show is with Dylan Benedetti, and we recorded this the first time before I left for the X-Alps back in May, and then submitted it all to Miles, and the sound wasn't good enough. I didn't pick that up when we were doing the recording, so we had to do it again. So this is take two. I think this one's a lot better, so that worked out anyway. And that was what caused a little bit of a delay, which we are hopefully now caught up with. So, I apologize for the missing show after the after the X-Alps, but hopefully we're all caught up with our regularly scheduled programming show every two weeks. A little bit of housekeeping before we get into this one, just wanted to remind you all—I said this in the last show—but that we've got this really cool hike and fly race, and adventure class and pro class coming up in late September, October, early October at the Red Rocks fly-in, Red Rocks X.
It's five thousand dollars of prize money for the winner of the pro class, which will be 30 participants in that one if we fill it all up. More information on cuasa.com, c-u-a-s-a.com, and we're hopefully by the time this is out, we'll have a website, more information there, but you can always reach out to me if you need anything else with that. Proves it's gonna be an awesome event and, uh, in a beautiful part of the world, and it'll be a lot of fun, so hope to see y'all out there. This show with Dylan, I did some acro training with Dylan in conjunction with him giving one of his SIV courses out of Lake Barry S in California. He's got a fascinating history; he's Italian, started flying in Italy way, way, way back when, spent a bunch of years in Morocco under the tutelage of Toby Cologne, who I've also spent a bunch of time flying with back in the day, and then he spent years and years, I think seven years or more, out in Nepal training acro and flying tandems, and and then he came back to the states and got married, had some kids, and became, well, he started this in Nepal, but became an SIV instructor under the tutelage of the whole APPI system, and I was super impressed with what I saw out there and how he runs things, and his toe techs and his approach to SIV is just is is awesome.
It's really, really, really terrific. And so I wanted to get him on the show to talk about a little bit about his history, but just about risk homeostasis and conflict of interest with instructors and selling gear and some of the holes we've dug ourselves in here in the States under our system of training and coaching and lack of, I guess, compared with other parts of the world and SIV and maneuvers and a whole bunch of stuff. I think you'll enjoy this. There's a lot here and we had a lot of fun with this talk. Please enjoy Dylan Benedetti.
Dylan, take two, buddy. It's great to have you back again on the show. I know we did this before I left for Europe and this will just be tighter. We had some sound problems with that one. So we're going to, this is awesome. I get a chance to do this all with you yet again. And it's good to see your smiling face. I know you've been doing these courses all summer, and the first one this season was with Ben and I, and you had a whole big gaggle of students, and we'll get into how awesome that was that ended up saving my life, as you know. But yeah, I wanted to just introduce you to the audience before we get into all the topics we're going to cover and give us a little bit of your background, How you learned, pretty, pretty fun.
And then, how you've spent your time since when you learned is pretty fun, and now you're out in California. Even though you're, you're Italian, you must be chasing the good pizza out there. Well,
First, like, again, thank you for rehabbing me, I guess, because I stayed too. And it's, it's always a pleasure and an honor to be part of this great platform that you have. And, and thanks for, for everything you do, because it's just insane. Um, I'll mention my, my part of the thanks for what changed me and the way I, I, I approach what we do and what I do personally. So, but I guess we'll talk about that later. And it's great to see you and your smile back after the race that, that kept me glued to that screen, as I told you. That phone call, my, probably my screen time went up, up close to an high school girl. I was like, unbelievable. I was like waking up in the middle of the night just to check.
But yeah, that was, that was pretty great, man. Thank you. So how this started? Well, it started in 2008 when I was taking this break or sabbatic or whatever from my, my old job. I was working as a, as a war photographer for the UNICEF And I was kind of losing it in a way. I was like pushing myself too hard, I guess. And I needed a break. So I went to the Alps in Italy and started working with cows and horses. Anything that kept me away from the past work environment was good. And then one day I saw this guy. I was walking a horse with a little girl on it. I was looking for these people that had horses.
So they used to do walks with me with kids, and I remember I was walking this little girl on the horse and I, I looked up and I see this glider coming in the middle of the valleys. You know that valley is the, the Balto Nunch, nearly where you got the matter and the Travino right up top, like in between this mountain just comes up just
flew over it a little over a week ago. Yeah, yeah, and I'm
Jealous, it's beautiful. Yeah, and so I was walking her and I saw this glide. It was an acro rider, I didn't know obviously back then, and that's and it was and, uh, sorry, Anthony Green, one of the acro twin brothers from California, and he started doing ellies. Well, now I know what he was doing, but back then I was like, "Whoa, what is that? I want to do that." And I remember walking straight to the the owner of the horses and just with this little girl, I I gave him the horse and I said, "Just I got to go," and I went to see Anthony at the landing. And I'm like, what is this? What is this thing you're doing? I want to do this. And the instructor was there. The local school instructor was there. So in probably 30 minutes, we had an agreement that he was going to teach me flying.
And I was going to make cocktails for him in this bar that he had at the landing. So it was like all set up. And the day after, he gave me an old glider and a harness. is, and that's kind of how I started. It was pretty fast, yeah. But, um, but I probably, I made a mistake because I said, I from from the beginning, I said, "Dude, that's what I want to do, what he does. I want to do what this guy was doing," you know? And that, that probably didn't, didn't set the tone right because he was, uh, he was pretty scared, and he kept me on the ground for, for a good 10 months without letting me go to take off, and I was just allowed to kite. And that's what I did. 10 months kiting, kiting. I was there six, seven, eight hours a day.
I remember having this huge bruise on my chest, like it was just like purple, green, and yellow. The chest strap was like, I was pushing and pushing. Wind? No wind, no rain. But yeah, I was there a lot, let's say. And, and then after 10 months, he kind of had to, so he brought me up, did my first flight there, and he started going fast, and he was flying like eight, nine times a day. You know, this place is a probably 25 minutes ride to take off, and when you take off, if you go in the middle of the valley, you have 800 meters like, um, height that you can burn like doing spiral, trying wing overs, and trying to to do everything that that performance flying and jockey showing that DVD, they were like fixing my DVD recorder for for my DVD player for months and and yeah, and then whatever from there, this oh winter came game and uh, and
somebody said, "Oh, it's Morocco is flyable," and I lived in Morocco before I speak the language. So, wow, I remember in two days I bought the tickets for Morocco, moved to Morocco for the winter, and start flying again seven, eight hours a day non-stop until I met Toby, and Toby is that Toby Columbia, that you know, is the one that probably probably made all of this happen in a way because he pushed me to go against the thing that I was that I would never imagine I was going to do was teaching paragliding. I was from the beginning when I was seeing all my friends with the radio, staying on the ground, teaching people. I was like, nope, that's not what I want to do.
I'm never going to be an instructor. I want to fly. I don't want to be the guy on the ground with the radio. Nope. I told Toby one day, he gave me a job. And that's kind of where this started. I spent, I think, a good couple of years going back and forth from Morocco because it was easy access from Italy. It was like 30 dollars plane ticket, and then um, I was getting more and more into acro, and when I started doing ellies over the ground, I, I tossed four times, four reserve toss in Morocco over the ground away from hospital, and I got lucky four times. I was like, I landed on my feet, um, even, even the time when I throw reserve went straight in my line, and I had to pull those bridles to get it open, and then it opened.
Probably similar to your case, it opened. I, I felt the opening, and this the fraction of a second I hit the ground in my standing up, I was like, this soft patch and like freshly, uh, worked from farmers, I guess, and um, and that, yeah, that day was the day where at the dinner table somebody started talking about this place in Nepal with the lake, lake good for acro pilots, and I didn't know anything about it. Was like, so I went to see the guy after dinner, I'm like, what was that place again? You, you were poke, poker, or something like that? And he goes, yeah, this place in Nepal. I mean, it's not really high over the lake, but there's a lake, there's a lot of acro pilot there, and it's like, it's just crazy, like, okay.
And so they, after they went to Marrakesh and bought a plane ticket for Nepal, and boom, soon enough I was, uh, I think I went back to Italy, and then, then left for Nepal. Yeah, I wouldn't say, yeah, I went back to Italy and then left for Nepal, yeah, so and
Was Nepal? You, you were making a living there? You were doing tandems? Yeah,
Well, initially I was actually, my ticket was just for two weeks and then I stayed for seven years. But um, I didn't have it, I just had my acro glider with me. And then staying there made some really good friends, one of them Peter Wolf, and uh, he's the one that actually gave me my first job as tandem pilot was like um, and I'm ever thankful for that because it was started a kind of a crazy life, you know? The back then poker was still the the golden age. We were making a lot, lot of tandems. There were not so many schools, there were like six structure, I think. Now there's probably around 80 with six pilot each, so six, six schools with six pilot each. We're going up and down and we were making a lot of money. I mean, for a country where with five hundred dollars you leave like a king, we sometimes five thousand dollars a month, six thousand dollars a month, plus picture money, it's just insane.
You need nothing to leave and so you, you can even put away money, which was the first for me. I was like, "Wow, look at this, I have money on the side, like how did this happen?" And yeah, and um, yeah. That's where with Bella was there, Jamie, a lot of people that you know and see. It was, it was seriously the golden age. It was like just amazing, and not that it's not amazing now, but it's, it's changed. It's not, it's not the same now. It's like, plus with the airport coming, but
Your passion then was still very much acro. You weren't—you weren't really into XC yet, like you are now. It was acro and tandems, well...
Yeah, I mean, my XC glider was my tandem, you know? I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't have enough money. Or if I probably, I maybe I had the money, but I never thought about buying an XC because when I, when I was not doing tandem, I was up and down during acro. So before tandem, it was acro. Or if in between tandem there was a hole in the schedule and it's like they needed only five pilots instead of six, I'd go up with the jeep into acro and it was just like the pre-infinity. So when you, when you put in your head that you want to learn infinity, it's like that, that's what you do, you know? You like, you lose your brain out of it. And yeah, and that's, that's, that's slowly, slowly tandem after tandem and then, then
david arufat that is which is the the owner is my mentor and uh thanks to him if if I'm an SIV instructor today, because he asked me if I wanted to become an SIV instructor. I already had my comp results with the championship in Italy, and I had my instructor license with the APPI already. He's actually, Davide Ruffat is the founder of APPI. He created the entire system, and then it became too big for him to be able to actually follow the entire thing, but he started it, and he started it in Nepal. So, coming back from that comp, he asked, yeah, everything started in Nepal with him. And it's this instructor from Switzerland, an acro-pilot, an SIV instructor, an acro-trainer from Switzerland that lived in Nepal for many years.
Actually, he was one of the first with Adam Hill and Frontier Park Lining, which back then had another name, I think it was Sunrise. And then they split, but um, that's those two, him and Adam, are they kind of started everything in Nepal, and David started at PPI, and he asked me if I wanted to become an SIV instructor. I'm like, well, you know, that's that's interesting. So I started studying with him and following him around for SIV and slowly, slowly got me him and um, and Matthew Bram, also French instructor, really good with a SIV instructor and acropilot, him and Sabrina, his wife. They helped me a lot, and they are my mentor.
They taught me everything I knew back then and got me into this. So I started doing SIV for them.
I was just going to say, one of the things that really caught me in watching you operate and watching your courses and your students was the – I mean, I, I remember watching jockey with this too. It's there, there's so much happening that you guys seem to be ahead of, you know, you're, you can predict what's going to happen before it actually happens. And it, in talking to Logan, one of your tow techs and very keen pilot who's over chasing in Europe right now, I just competed in the Eiger. Um, he talked about it, that it's It's just, it's so much observation. You know, what you get from being a tow tech and towing people all day, every day, over and over again, all summer is being able to just observe, you know, I, I can understand the maneuvers, but to see it and tell people what they're doing, you kind of have to be ahead of the game the whole time.
And it seems like, uh, it seems like you really have to spend, I guess, years, right. Just observing, just watching it, you know, Being kind of the low guy on the totem pole, or girl on the totem pole, and and doing the towing, or doing the observation, or running the boat, running the rescue boat. Um, how much of it is it just watching versus you being an acropilot and doing these maneuvers over and over again? I guess it's a combo of both, but yeah.
I, I guess it is, I guess it is most of it is watching and also like, it's, it's true that like most of the time when I, I tell the student that they're going to have a collapse before that happens, a couple of seconds before, because you see what is going to lead to a collapse, you know? Okay, you're late, it's going to collapse, stands up and one, two, bounce, collapse, you know? So that's, that's kind of being—I always say that it's like, I, it's very addictive for me because I think I do get in some um mild flow state when I coach. That's why, 15, when I get the 15 second signal and nobody's allowed to talk to me, and, and probably that's why I love it so much. But yes, observation and there's some kind of mirror, mirroring involved for sure. I mean, the fact that I did in the past, that I went through that, all that learning process with like, and mistake and errors that are somehow imprinted in my subconscious, that helps a lot when it comes to watching someone doing um something, especially, especially when they do it wrong,
knowing what's going to happen and be ahead. And if it's something that needs correction, then instead of just going to say, oh, I mean, if you know it's going to have a little frontal, you just go, oh, it's going to have a collapse, just go and stop. But if something that needs immediate, like go for a break, stop it, or lock your elbow, break towards it. If you have to stop an auto rotation, then you have a different input. But you do see and know what's going to happen ahead of time, way before it happens, actually.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like you had things stacked up really quite well that I'm sure you weren't thinking about it back then when you were in Nepal practicing acro, but it's, I mean, it doesn't seem like it's, it's not riding a bike. It's not something that you can just, okay, I've been flying for 10 years. I can be an SIV instructor. You've got to have a certain set of, you've got to have the observation time. You've got to have the maneuvers, you know, just down. You've got to have, you know, and that means being an acro pilot to me.
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I remember when first I came to the U.S., I was like, and I was seeing that several people doing clinics. with um, no acro background not being certified because the system here, I mean, there's no that still now, it doesn't, it doesn't exist and, uh, even if you by now are like pretty, um, initially I thought, I think I heard you also say, "Hey, you space this like that," usually is discouraging people from taking an SIV, and that's what I heard and thought at the beginning. And lately, especially last year with COVID, when we were kind of struggling to get back at work, and Marty and other, uh, from the youth, but were incredibly helpful, they sent letter to the BOR explaining what I do and, wow, it's so vital that I'm out there at the lake doing it.
So it was, it was, it was pretty impressive what they do and, and it changed my, my, my, my, my idea on it. You know, I did, I thought it was like, "Oh no, don't go for an SIV, it's dangerous," you know, like BLC and, and also like, again, looking around and seeing people with the, with the toe and with the winch and the boat doing clinic without any acro background, was like, well, that, that's that's not right, you know? And, um, if you go to Fabian, if you go see Fabian and, and you want to become an SIV instructor, I mean, the exam, you have to do tumbling. If you can't tumble, you can probably not pass, you're not going to become an SIV instructor. That's awesome. Well, I mean, there's a reason.
The way I see it is if I have to send someone to learn P1, P2, to learn power gliding in general, I want to send my sister, for example, to someone that did himself at least 1,000 takeoff and 1,000 landing, right? Sure. So if I want to send my little sister to learn stalls, I will try to send her to someone that did 1,000 stalls himself. self, and that's—I mean, yeah, only acrobat. It doesn't—that many stall, you know? We're not talking about the magic number 100 stall to understand. No, we're talking about thousands of stalls. You know, it's like we do stall to enter, ali to exit, infinity to—to recover from a cactus with like, we're—we're stalling all the time. So yeah, but again, well...
That's a good, that's a good, Dylan, that's a good transition. Uh, you, before we started talking about you, there were some subjects that you really wanted to cover, and this seems like a really important one, and that's standardized training. You know, to me, especially this part of the world, North America, your training is 100% dependent on who you go to. I mean, there's no—there is no syllabus like the APPI offers, that is. You're going to do this, and then you're going to learn this, and then you're going to learn this. And this is why—this is why these things are important. It's totally dependent on, you know, do I go to Dylan or do I go to somebody else? I'm gonna learn completely different—maybe not totally different things, but um, you know, the emphasis is going to be different, the maneuvers, the order that you get taught them in.
And I'm—and not just SIV, I'm talking P1, everything, you know, from
Everything, everything, yeah. Well, uh, I mean, it's, it's difficult, okay? So we're, we are with paragliding, so small still in the U.S. and there is an effort to grow the sports, and probably because we want the sport to grow, uh, we're, we're sacrificing, um, quality over quantity in a way, um, what happened? So, what what you're saying makes sense. I remember I heard someone, probably it was you, it was on a show with you. And I thought the guy was super smart because he said, hey, when it came down to choose where to go and where to learn. So I did my research. I found out which one were the three best pilots in the U.S.
or five best pilots in the U.S. Then I did another research and trying to find out where did they learn. And I came up with only two schools. And I chose one of the two that was like, "Whoa, that's pretty smart, you know," but it should not be that way, no.
You know, it should not and learn how to drive.
Exactly, and so every instructor, I mean, then obviously there's the big school, but with the big name, the guy that owns the school that is like smart enough to surround himself with, uh, with good instructor instructors, and and that's always going to happen, even in a country where they have a standardized training. But the thing with what happened here and what I think is I heard you say also a lot of times that because and or people asking why the Swiss and the French, why they're so good. And obviously, when we ask that question is we're comparing it to us in the US. Why are why are they so good compared to us? Because we can't compare to anybody else. I mean, that's what that's what we have. And that's what we can see.
And and the answer is often, oh, the Swiss have the money and the French have the coaches, but it's not. So in France, for example, and I'm going to say sorry for this because I know my wife and some of my friends will start drinking because every time they think I say Europe is better than the US, now they have this drinking game on it. But in France, to become an instructor, a paragliding instructor, first to apply, you need competition results. You need two comps where you rank yourself in the first turn. And you know comps in France. They're like high level.
In other words, you're an epically good pilot. Exactly.
To do
that in France. You're an epically good pilot.
I mean, you have passion. You have everything. You have motivation. You have commitment. You chase it. You get the hours. You're chasing it. Exactly. So once you have the comps, once you have the comps result, then you can apply. And if they accept your application, you enter the school. And it's 10 months mandatory working in the school with no payment. So you need a bank loan, obviously, because you need to pay for your bills. And it costs you around probably $10,000 to $15,000. dollar, and every weekend, or sometimes every other weekend, you have a college grade exam organized by the the government. It's like the Secretary of Sports, you know, la jeunesse, the Minister de jeunesse de sport. It's like, it's, it's the same thing for mountain guides, river guide, ski instructors; they all go through the same process.
And actually, the the the initial part of the studying, it's the same for everybody, and then you, you choose your branch, you go for again, river guy, mountain guy.
Yeah. I mean, it's like becoming an IFMGA guide. It's a lifetime. It's a career. It's not something you just do half-ass. It takes massive commitment, both time-wise, money-wise, talent-wise. Yeah. It's totally different.
And at the end, What that brings is that no matter if you're the guy that wants to learn in paragliding instead of having to go through that process that that very smart guy I think went through, I mean no matter which school you hit, you're gonna have an instructor that has the same background and isn't as knowledgeable as the school next door. Then it comes down only to, um, personality to. It's like, you like the guy, it goes with who you are; you stay, you don't, you go to the next one, okay? But it's not gambling, you know? It's not like you when you don't know better, it's, it, it's, it turns this thing in into, it's, it's, it's pretty, it's gambling, you know, it's
Not Russian roulette, yeah. I mean, here, here it is, literally to me, it's Russian roulette because you're, you're aviating, you're playing with gravity in the ground, and you're literally, okay, does this bear will have the bullet, well...
Exactly. Well, then again, if depending on who you are, you might be able. And that's that. This, so think about it in the U.S., probably you need one week, uh, when you do your instructor clinic, your basic instructor clinic, so you do one week, probably, or a weekend, a little more than a weekend, and then you have to do a little apprentice and you can become an instructor. And no long after that, you can open a school and start selling gears. And so for that, what you need, I think, is a P3, no tandem license, and no SIV experience. So you never did an SIV, you don't have a tandem license, and um, two weeks before you were all right.
Whatever, let's not go that far, I think. Oh, let's be nice. But I mean, and it's um, it's not to blame them, it's not to blame this, this young, uh, instructor. They are just like passionate and they try and what's what's the reasoning behind it's like, oh, but if we want to grow the sport, we need we need to make it easy to become an instructor so we can have more and and spread it, spread this thing that we love so much. But I think by doing that, well, again, it's like we're sacrificing quality over quantity. You, you know, it's like and and it doesn't seem right to me. Most I joke about it. Yes, I mean, with students like most instructor in the United States probably don't have an S.A.V., never did an S.A.V. And so when I have a P2 with 20 hours, the second he goes back home, he'll have probably more experience than his own instructors.
And the other thing is like if you remember when you started flying, you fall in love with the guy that taught you how to fly. I mean, um, you, uh, it's, it's normal. This is like, this guy just taught you how to fly. Is the coolest thing you've ever done with your life, even if you had crazy experience with your life. This is pretty cool, so it's difficult to question them. It's difficult not to put them on the pedestal. It's difficult to start even looking around and start comparing what you're getting with what you should the beginning, so, um, and especially again, if there's this, if there's a community that has been created around this, and now finally, for probably the first time in your life, you feel that you belong to some something, and this, there's a lot that goes with it.
You know, it's, it's, it's pretty, I think we should, but as, um, the fact that we say, "Oh, but it's so small in the U.S. that we we have to grow it," and so this is the way to do it, and we can't put too many rules. I think, again, the fact that we aren't in such a young nation is we have the responsibility to look at others and do better. Yeah. Right? I
mean, I think the numbers back all this up. I mean, we attract lots of people to the sport. This is going to be your next thing, and then they all leave it. And the reason they all leave it is because they're getting shit instruction, and they get scared, and the attrition handles the growth. You know, it just cuts it right off. We get the same number of people flying in the states now that we did 10 years ago. The gliders are better, the sites are better, you know, we know a lot more. We got better weather apps, we've got everything's on our side to attract more people to the sport, but it doesn't happen. But well, like I said, the the attrition takes care of the growth. And so, um, it's not working.
So if it's not working, you got to change it.
I think it will. I think it will. I think it will. Cause, um, I, I've, I've, I asked questions. I'm like, why is it like this? And then you hear, Oh, it's because there's some old Anglider pilot in the USPA board that there are refused to change stuff to, to set rules. And, um, and then obviously you end up always hearing, uh, which, uh, This is not just the U.S. This is everywhere. When you talk to old school pilots and the freedom, then if you put too many rules like mandatory license, then you affect the freedom of the free flight. And I always answer to that. Because even in France, I mean, France, with all we said about France,
there's no mandatory license. In France, you can go and buy your glider on eBay bay and pay for the third party insurance, and you can go fly it. You don't need it's the license is not required, but everybody goes to a school because they all know people that come from the school. They know that the system is so good and instructors are so good, they—why would you do it by yourself? I mean, yes, there are those they don't have the money and they have a good friend that is a paragliding instructor, or even just a good pilot, and they'll learn. And it's not that everybody Everybody goes to school, obviously, but freedom, when we start talking about that, I mean, if you're not properly trained, if you don't know what you're doing, now, every time you fly, now I'm not free because you're dangerous and you put me in danger, okay?
Yes, you're by yourself. Yes, you're the pilot in command. It's an individualistic sport. But we fly together. And if the only mistake that I made today is to take off after you and now I'm below you in the terminal, I'm going to pay for your mistake. If you have a collapse and you go into an auto and you fall into my glider when we're close to the terrain and stuff. Happens, so your freedom should stop when mine starts. And if you're a dangerous pilot, probably you're affecting my own freedom. So it's like, if we want—if that's an argument they can, that we can bring to this freedom thing, uh, the free flight spirit. I, I love the idea.
I love the idea, but not, yeah, not really. Yeah, so why
Why, let's wrap that the initial thing up. Well, why do we lose so many pilots? Is it that... is it... is why is the attrition rate so high? Because it's also really high in things like kite surfing that are much less risky. It used to be very risky; the initial kites and everything were a lot more dangerous. But, you know, it's... it's kind of the same there. You... you... you learn it, you fall in love with it, it's super awesome, it's amazing. You know, you're using the wind, uh, to power yourself along, and then inevitably the attrition rate is really high. You... you blow a knee. I mean, the accidents are different in kitesurfing. They're not nearly as extreme as paragliding because you're on the water typically and you're not using – gravity is not such a killer. But is it injuries?
Is it fear? Is it something that scares people or is it something else? Is it just lack of training?
So I think it's a bit of everything. I want to start with the optimistic one. And the optimistic one, I think, because I thought I spent time thinking about it. So, what can we do to change this? You know, I think part of it is just human nature, okay? A lot of the students that come into park riding, they're just like, "Uh, testing things in life," you know? You know, you do something, you think you're lucky, you fall in love with it, and then you get bored, you want to do something else, and now you do kite surfing. And so we go through phases, we all did. Oh, we are so... it's like, like when you grow up, you're a teenager, you listen to heavy metal. And then two months later, now you grow dreadlocks and you have a jam band and you listen to reggae. You know, so it's like we do that.
You know, it's part of who we are. So I think that a lot of people that come to the sport, they're just exploring, experimenting until they finally find what they love and stick with it. You know, but the other reason for it is, um, so another, another thing that I think caused, um, people to leave is we tend to, um, probably again for the same reason, we're trying to grow a sport, so we don't want to scare people, um, and we tend to keep the danger of it hidden, you know, when when people first start in
the school. We're not
being strict
with people in a sense.
Exactly. And when people start, you're not allowed to mention more like accident, crash, death or danger, you know, because otherwise you scared them away. So I don't think that's right. Right. I think I think any adults that starts or even young, like younger people that starts, they should be put in a position where they can make an informed and smart decision before starting, before getting into this. There's no point of not talking about like accidents. I mean, I'm all for it. There's a time and a place to talk about accident. If we're going up on takeoff or even if we're on takeoff, you're in the van, you start talking about crashing an accident. I'm the first one that tells the driver to stop I will ask you to leave the sheep
that's not the right place at that but when you have a student I think before they invest time, energy, money they should be put in front of the this is aviation
I don't know if it was Bill Buck or Mitch McLean in that podcast that said, "this thing every time you take it out of the bag can kill you," and and probably that's not the right way to say it to a student that is about to start, or that is thinking about getting into paragliding. But I think the more honest we are, the better. You know, that will probably filter people. Instead of having them starting this thing, falsely believing that they're safe. If you get a low B, you're safe. And then one day, once they start really like looking around and start seeing that people die doing this, or people break their backs, or they have accident, or like you said, they twist their knee, they break their knee, they break an ankle, and now they suddenly realize, like, well, wait a minute, I don't want this in my life.
This is, this is not what I thought, this is not what I was like brought to believe. I mean, this thing is dangerous, and that's when they go, "Shit, I, I'm out," you know? And so that's, that's part of it. And and for those who don't, uh, get to that point, I think what also could contribute to that is the is premature exposure to condition that are not, uh, right for them. Yeah, and what I mean, I mean I don't know if you, if you listen to to that podcast that Judy Moore had with this guy, Tony. He's a trained psychologist and paragliding. I learned a lot from him, and I actually started using a lot of that in my classes as when you first start this, when you are novice and you don't, you, in a way, you don't speak to any community.
Any community, paragliding community, ski, snowboard, they all have their own language that goes with it, okay? So when you just enter this community, you're not absorbing and you don't speak the language yet. And so obviously the second you start naming something or you don't know the language around something, now the reality is more of a socially constructive one. So we're not, the example that he gives and I thought was brilliant. It's like a walker will walk on the edge, on the cliff, look down and see a place where he can fall and die. and the paragliding pilot with an experienced paragliding pilot will walk in the same spot and look down and see is it soarable? Where are the trigger points? Is this place flyable?
Is there a house turmoil here? You know so again it's all about that language you know so when you still do not speak language and you're not again absorbing to this community
You go through turbulence, for example. That's what it said. You go through turbulence, which is, terminals are terminals for definition, and you, you're uncomfortable. You know, you feel like you're, like, you're being, like, you're the victim of this incomprehensible dark forces that are, like, tossing you all over the place. You know, but, uh, the way he put it down, it says, I had a lot that, like, I repeat this to my shoes all the time. It says turmoil, like iron acquired taste, like whiskey and cigarette. You know, as you remember your first whiskey, yeah, it's terrible. Yeah, well, but then you force yourself, uh, because the older guy is saying the whiskey is good. And what do you do? You keep trying until you actually start. Oh, this is actually really good, you know?
And the same thing with terminals. Now, in the community, the cross country pilot with dire status, with the reputation, or even worse, the sky god, and I'd like to talk about that once, but, uh, say there are, they're all saying that thermals are great because they get you high up, and then you can go cross country. So that the, the student that it's even now being absorbing to this new language into this new community, will force himself to suck it up and get used to thermal till you actually learn how to use them and climb. You know, when, when we, when doing that, I mean, this there's no No, by the way, I think you see it like me. I mean, to learn, you need to expose yourself to stronger and stronger conditions, right?
I mean, that's how we learn. We have no choice. If you always stay in laminar flow and fly early in the morning and fly late in the day, you'll never learn what we just mentioned. But the problem is how fast are you going? How fast are you moving that bar? Back to sport psychology, they often talk about the 4 % rule. I remember Meech talking about that. And since I know that you're into flow and flow state, and you probably read all the books that I read, and I went pretty deep into that rabbit hole, and I'm not out yet, you remember that one of the main components of flow state is the balance between challenge and skills. Okay, every time that what you're doing is above that line, it can easily turn into something that it's too much, overwhelming, frustrating, therefore dangerous.
You know, same thing when it's below. When it's below, it's we could be boring, destructive, and same things, dangerous, you know, exactly. So if we, if we don't move that bar slow enough, we'll end up by putting people in that position, yeah? Uh, where what they're going through, what they're experiencing is too much, and it's frustrating, and it's overwhelming, and dangerous. Okay? But, and even without, uh, end up having an incident or an accident, it's, it could be enough for them to say, "Fuck this, you know, I'm out. You know, I don't want this." How, how can we not do that? That's the tough one, because put yourself in, in the school shoes as an instructor that has like maybe five people coming through at the same time for the program, P1, P2, and they're all done with their like seven to ten days at the hill.
They all did the 25 flights, but we're all different, right? We're all different because we have different experience, different, um, different things we did in the past. I think we talked about when we were up at the lake, you know, when you have like cross-referencing from your past, like kayaking, or, or like rock climbing, or Floyd sports in general, you know, this might be a little easier for you to learn, you know, and when you don't, it might take a little longer. So you always have like five, six people that are done with the program at the same time. And now it's time for the mountain flight, you know, and you bring them up to take them. It's always difficult to point a finger and say, Hey, yeah, not you today. It's good for you. Good for you. Good for you, but not for you. It's, it's, it's, it's tough.
You know, we're dealing with ego. Go, we all have one. And actually, in paragliding, I think we're—we, we top the world when it comes to ego. We, we're pretty good at it, yeah. And so it's, I don't know if there's actually like a way to do that, you know? Because literally, when you are in that position, when you get—we don't speak the language, you know? Observing the community, you're fragile in the sense that anything that happens to you, the lack of understanding, that's—if you miss, if you can't analyze what happened and understand it completely, well, that's when you run into the risk of getting traumatized. And and we all know how difficult it is, how easy it is to imprint the trauma like a negative experience in your subconscious, and how difficult it is to get it out of there, you know?
And then, then, then you start dealing with the whole brain, and it's, it's a lot more difficult. So, so that's probably also one of the, the reason why we lose so many people, you know? I heard some numbers, there was, I don't know what to trust when it comes down to numbers, it's like eight out of ten they leave after three months, four months, yeah.
which is similar, I think it's eight or nine out of ten kayaking. Uh, I don't know, I don't think it's that high for, for kitesurfing, but you know, that when I learned how to kayak, it was mid 90s, and I think I went through with 13 other paddlers, and we all, all learned, you know, we did the pool and we did the theory and we went out and paddled some class two stuff. A year later, I was the only one that was still paddling, you know, everybody else had dropped out, and it was in every one of them was fear, every single one of them had gotten the situation gone upside down, freaked them out. I mean, nobody got hurt, that I know of, nobody died. It was just, you know, it was just, it was, it went from fun to scary, and, uh, and that was it, and then we're done, yeah.
Well, uh, I remember when—so, when you were up at the lake, you had to leave because you had your plane. But at the end of every class, I started, probably a couple of years ago, I say to all students, because most of them—you, I mean, you were up there, you saw like, there's a lot of people with five hours, ten hours, and they do great. It's just insane how good it was. Awesome. This is awesome. Yeah. And again, no power, no bad habits, no parasite, no like, yeah, not too much watch YouTube or power waiting talks. So they're not, they're not, they're not contaminated. Yeah. And they do it. They do it. But at the end of the clinic, I always, I always say, Hey, if you do, when you go home, if you do go through something that scares you, there's something in anything that you don't understand, just call me,
call me. And I started as like, as my little contribution to this, like to stop people from getting to the point where they're hitting their head against the wall. They don't have anybody to explain exactly what happened to them because, again, once you—once you have a full understanding, once you can analyze it, you can skip getting traumatized. You can go around, you know, like not fall into the hole, into the hole, and and go and, you know, it started as a as a like something that I threw out there. And today, I mean, I spent probably five, six hours every week when I'm not the SIV, talking to people on the phone and um and and you, when you're at your, your, your accident or compilers, even like pilots that didn't do my class, but they heard from a friend that I do that.
They called, say, dude, I know I didn't do an SIV with you, but this happened to me. And it's like, and again, I was, I'm obviously not being there. I didn't see it, but with their recollection and, and which again,
to remember it, you need to have I don't know if you remember when you first told me about the accident the first thing that I captured from your recollection was the slow motion part, when you said that I was like yes, we have a lot to work with, you know, because you're an experienced pilot so you went to the frame freeze, You were in flow, so elongated time, and you remember, remember like in slow motion, where happened. So we have all small details that can actually—you remember, we put the pieces together. It was like, okay, when you told me the way you reach for the reserve and where you look at right after you had a collapse, it was like, great, you know? But someone that just started this don't have that, you know.
And if often after an accident, if if you go see a novice and a pilot that is not that experienced, when you ask them, they can't remember. Everything went too fast, you know. So at that point, what I do, I ask them to give me the names of people that saw the accident. And I made a few phone calls and I get all the feedback from people, from witnesses. And with that information, I call the guy or girl back and we go through the entire understanding process, you know, to the analysis. is and this
is why
this happened lack
of understanding is really scary, you know? I think that I, I would have gone to the x-ops with, you know, a definite, definitely a fear injury. If that, if none of that made sense, if it was just like, "Holy shit, holy shit," and then I threw my reserve, you know? But I remember everything. It all made sense. It was just, okay, this happened, this happened. That's, that's what I did to do it, and I stayed active, and then I threw, and then I hit the ground. It was all, it all made sense. It was all okay. My training took over, and, you know, I was in a bad spot, and, and but it all worked out. But I knew why it worked out, and that, that's, that's the difference.
Yeah, yeah, that was great. In your case, I don't know if you remember, but that the the little details. When I asked you, "Did you see the collapse?" and when you said yes, then I knew why you went into an auto, you know? So it's not the collapse itself, it's like I remember you talking to Mal, which I, I love that podcast. I listened to it probably three, four, or even more, five times, and he was mentioning about like how we have to struggle as an essay instructor to get, um, to fight this naturalist instinct that we have, like this trying to protect your back when you're, when you feel like you're falling out of the sky. And now, what you're doing when you're doing that, you're pulling brakes, so you're overreacting and you're not getting out of situation. You're not using any of the exit windows because you're doing that.
And the other one that we have to fight, that I think it's even more important, is that when we do have a collapse, if our first reaction is to look up, looking at the glider, we'll go with it because the glider, the collapse itself creates enough drugs for you to start, for it to start turning. And if the glider starts turning, little you looking at it, you go with that. I mean, this is that you, if you do like a little visualization and try, if you look up, the glider turns and you follow with your gaze, you're actually following it with your weight, with your body, and you go straight with it. That's a difficult one. That's, that's something that my, I still do it myself. Yeah, I still, I slap myself in the face every time I do that. It's like, "You're idiots, you did it again." So then you do, you fly and you're, you're like full on and big whack.
And you immediately, it's, I mean, we're flying this piece of plastic with a bunch of strings. It's normal that when it goes slack, you look at it, you know? So training for that probably will take me forever, but I hope one day I'll be able to, you know, and just stay focused on my heading, lock my elbow if I need to, and not look at the glider, you know?
Yeah. We'll have to, it's hard to explain it in audio, but it's the, The whole blocking with the elbow and bracing against the flying side is, I love that. And that was a really awesome takeaway. I'd never seen that. I'd never heard that. I've been practicing it since you showed that to everybody. But I think that's, describe that real quick. Let's see if we can do it without visuals. visuals because otherwise we'll we'll we'll slap a video into the into the podcast where you can show it but yeah
We can maybe even do it on the simulator once when we get together. I know you're going to come for aqua training, so uh, we can do that if you want. But ideally, it's like this, uh, technique that we all learn when we learn power landing. They'll say, "Oh, what do we do when you have, if you have a collapse?" Well, throw your body on the open side, right? Lean towards the open side, towards the flying side. Okay, the problem with that is that when we fly, we do fly with this famous two pounds pressure, or the dead, the dead weights of your arms. And when you throw your body on the opposite side, you end up applying brake. And now, now you don't have a fully open glider; you have probably 50 remaining, if you're lucky. If it's, if it's more, it's even worse. But even a 50 remaining open glider, uh, the, the, the wing low changes, the stall speed changes, and the stall point changes.
So if you throw your body carrying that much break, you're very close to stalling your glider at, like, at ribs level. You know, it's not under your seat anymore, it's not below your butt, it's like, but at your ribs, you will stall that 50 remaining open glider when we do lock our elbow against the riser and the beanie with our fist against the rise and not pulling any break. Okay, we can do that. And it's immediately when you do that, you're fully weight shifted towards the open side without effort. You know, if you release the elbow, your weight shift, your weight shift goes back to neutral. So you're not, like, you're not, like, struggling to keep that position. It's very easy. You remain in upright position, your torso is straight.
And the other advantage of that position is that you can always see and grab your reserve. If you have a collapse on the right and your reserve is on the right side, and now you throw your body on the left, and you have to stay fully weight shifted to clear the turn to get ground clearance, it's first, it requires a lot of energy. Okay, so if it takes you long time to get to a safe place where you can actually address the problem, uh, you'll be more tired. And, and again, your visual, you can't really see around because you're fully way shifted. Okay, and you're, you're far from your reserve. You know, it's like sometimes some extreme case where you need to be really fully way shifted to, to keep it straight, you won't be able to grab your reserve. You know, and every time you go for it, every time you move your way to go for it, you will straight, you'll go straight into an order in the opposite side.
But again, we'll, we'll probably like do a little video maybe if you want to put it that, that will be, that will be helpful, I think. Yeah.
That tell me, Dylan, you wanted to talk about why people choose certain gliders, which is worded differently than "glider choice." We talk a lot about glider choice on the show, but I, I, I have a feeling you're gonna take this in a different direction, um...
Yeah, why glider choice? Yeah, so as this again, it's I'm not the the original. I took the the initially is the the same guys that sat down, um, with Judith again, and I I thought it was it was pretty interesting, and I started talking about it with my students, and I try I I started as an experiment with my student. I was just asking the question, and it works, it works, and slowly, slowly I see more and more people after a clinic, um, they come to see me in private, and they decide to to downgrade, to step down, to step down a class or even two sometimes. Basically, I I think there's a lot if you if what he says is, if you ask a pilot, "Why did you choose this glider?
Was that out of the performance? Did you look more into the performance or the safety aspect?" They will all say safety, all of them. Okay, only a few actually. I had a couple that said performance. Okay, I bought this for performance. Okay, but that's more advanced pilots, you know, they will choose like a Xeno instead of a Mirror or whatever. The what I tell them, what he actually says was, "What's your biggest flight? What kind of flight do you achieve with your glider?" And the numbers, well, it's it's it's pretty stunning. It's like they could have achieved those glider not not stepping down one class, but probably two or more.
Yeah, on an E &A.
Exactly. So you're talking about safety. You choose that glider for safety.
But when I look at the flights you do today, well, you could be way safer, because I do think there's nothing safe in what we do.
We develop B or an A, looking at what you do. So I think it all comes down to, he's right, Sperling, it all comes down to ego, and unfortunately for us, testosterone. So that puts us, men, paragliding pilot men, in a worse position than women. Because if you notice, I started looking around and actually, I started noticing, it's like, well, that's right. This is actually happening, and you see women's, they do not do that. They just don't have, they don't rush through classes like we do, and they have a different way of learning.
It's Logan when we were driving saying, "Yeah, they have this, it's more building block system that they put up." And two pilots, they start together, a boy and a girl, a man and a woman, whatever we want to say. Say after two years, they might have the same skills, the same level, but he will be on a d with a pod, and she will still be on the low B with an open harness, and she's going bigger. Yeah, she's almost every time.
I've seen that every
time, and then what you hear from the landing is, "Ah, she must be light." Oh yeah, she's—she's higher than every—oh, she's still up because she's light on that glider. It's like, "No, dude, it's not. They don't—they just don't do it. They just don't rush through it." And part of it, again, going back to the community, I'm all for paragliding community, okay? I think there's so many aspects of having a great paragliding community that are priceless, you know? The mentoring, the—the friendship, and even just sharing this thing that we love so much. But—but there's other side of it that are pretty dark. You know, it's like this peer pressure or the puppy syndrome or even just like going back to what we were saying about the status of the cross country pilot, you know.
You hear even pilots like beginner pilots say, yeah, but the XC pilots, you know, like if they were the separate species, you know, they're being called the XC pilots, you know. and now, so now some people end up wearing their year as a badge, as a label. You know, it's like probably because they don't want to be looked at as a beginner anymore because they're, they weren't a hope and harness with a low b, so now they want to rush. They want to be part of the cool guys, you know what I mean? You know, they want to the popular, yeah.
I almost feel like, and we've talked about this a lot on the show, I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but I almost feel feel like when, when you were phrasing it that way, I almost feel like this is, it's, it's really a community problem. I feel like, I feel like we're not rewarding, you know, it's the Bernie Pessels, you know, that guy's throwing down 250, 300 FAIs on a mentor every year, you know, and they should be the ones, or Urs Hari, who I had on the show, same thing, you know, he decided when he stopped doing comps and he just didn't have enough time and he gets five, six big days a year now that he doesn't have the hours. He'd love to fly those gliders, you know, the hot end gliders, but he doesn't have the hours. So he kicks everybody's ass on a B and those should be the pilots that we, I mean, look at Josh Cohn.
He comes down and kicks everybody's ass on an, on a low end E and D every year down in Valle because he's that good, you know, and I'm not saying, I mean, a low end E and D is not, not the conversation we're having right now, but But, you know, it's what I have always said and what I have observed is if you can't stay in the air for 10 hours on an ENB, you got no chance of doing it on an ENC. There's no way because staying in the air is all about observation. And if you can't observe because you're dealing with your wing, you're not going to stay in the air. And so the only way you're going to stay in the air is if you're so good and so confident on the wing that you're on and, and those skills have to align.
It's not, you're not going to stay in the air longer moving up. That's not how the equation works. It's opposite. And so, yeah, I mean, it's almost—we should almost be, you know, celebrating the pilot who can kick everybody's ass on a low-end B, you
know, but in a way we are, we are, because this is not right. We've been seeing this for a year now, pilots on on B like kicking asses, and but we still have this because probably again the statues and and again wearing the black skirt, the big pod, and everything, and look cool and be part of the XC pilots. Now it's more important than that, you know, and it's like, so that thing what you were saying comes down to currency in a way, you know, and I used to like give this talk about currency to my my students and make them understand, yes, if they if one day they realize because now they have a new job, or or a kid, they just got a kid, or they can't fly as much as they used to for any reason, probably stepping down, down great one class.
It's it's going to help them, you know, because now they don't have uh time to be current on the on the glider they're flying, you know, and it's that I have the students and very good friend, his name, His name is Ron Davis. He's an airline pilot, and he's been coming to SIV a lot. And they're just like good friends, me and Maria, him and his wife, Gigi. They're so helpful, and they're just incredible human beings. But he taught me something. I mean, he probably doesn't know that he did last. He was up a couple weeks ago. And he said, so he's flying this, oh, Fusion now, I think. Yeah, he's flying the Fusion now, just beautiful sea machine, great glider. But he and he was flying, uh, he had his old keyboard, so he kept his old glider, you know?
And every time he doesn't have a chance to fly a lot, and then and he thinks that it's not current enough. Well, what he does because I usually used to tell my students, "Hey, let's say at the end of the season you were flying in like rowdy condition, you were putting yourself in big air. Well, maybe you go to a winter break, you should not be like looking for those condition, uh, don't start where you left, step down a little and choose like an easier day and slowly build up again confidence and everything you need to be safe in big air." You know, it's not because you left, uh, on the plus 12 meter per second in the Owens that you should do your first flight after three months, not not where you're not be flying in the same condition. But he does even better, so when he's not, if he's not current, if he's not been flying for a while, he puts away his fusion and he takes out is all, uh, high beat and he goes with his kibu and he's super.
I thought that was like, that's that's great, and I'm, but it's again another way, but another reason why people step up all Often, and too early and too soon, is... uh, their glider still in good condition? And now they can sell it and make a big chunk of money to put into the new machine, you know? And so the thing is, if... if this is obviously not for everybody, there's people that, again, have cross-referenced it from previous sports. They learn fast. They go fast to it. And they got skills and some talent. So it's not for everybody, what I'm trying to say. But if your glider is given, let's say, for 600 hours, and now you flew 150 hours, and you want to sell it because it's still in good condition so you can get the next step up, well, probably you're 450 hours short to be ready for the next one.
Yeah. Does that make sense? Totally. Yeah. That's, I like, I like the hours too. That's about right. I think, I think the, the number of hours can be really dangerous because every hour is different, you know, it really depends. Are you, are you ridge soaring? Are you doing SIV? Are you doing acro? Are you thermaling in the Owens? You know, there's, there's a huge spread there, but what it does come down to is I think the number of hours, even if they're good hours, you know, I'm talking thermaling and I mean, I see that kind of hours where you're really learning, they need to be, I think we're very average and not very skilled until that number is massive, way higher than, than we have traditionally said, you know, there's, there's no, you know, Oh, at a hundred hours or 250 hours, man, you kind of suck until you're in that.
No, I know
how close they are. I mean, that's, that's the other thing. I remember, I mean, again, I, I lost my, my, my brain into this. like you did, and a lot of my friends did, and I, I, you, I stopped everything, love, quit everything else, and just went down at first into it, single-minded like a, like a maniac person, and I was probably close to a thousand hours in less than two years, you know, but it was like seven hours a day, all the time. If it's not eight hours a day, ten hours a day, it's like learn how to pee in the air with before I even learned that there was a p-tube available. Now I know, now I know, and but, but most people don't have that. They can't quit their job, they're already responsible adults with bills, family, and so, uh, I
was like, "When you said, 'How many hours you have?' Well, I have 150 hours. How many years you'll be flying?" "I'll be fine." "70?" "Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah."
right right yeah there's that too There's that too. How current are the hours? And I mean, I hope this isn't coming across as preachy. I think it's just, you know, I think it's just what I'm getting from this part of the conversation is, you know, humility is really important. It's important for us to be humble and I dig it. I dig it when the pilots on the bees just kick ass. That's really sexy. And I think that that's, you know, something to be rewarded, applauded, um, pushed more, I guess. Yeah, um, tell me about risk homeostasis. You and I had kind of a fun conversation out in California about that, you know, safe, safest, um, you
Give a good talk, yeah? So that's, that's another one that the same guy, Tony Spielman, talked about it. And it's like, I, I had my first, my first, uh, kind of, uh, experience with it, um, on a tooth on it. I was in paragliding, I was bike riding with Mitch, with Mitch Riley, and um, so me and Mitch, we used to live together in Nepal, and um, every morning at 5 a.m. in the dark, uh, we were meeting in front of my house. Like, the first person, I like, my wife was still sleeping. I, I would go down the stairway with my bike on the shoulder. And Mitch was there in the dark, smiling, super excited. We both had shovels, like foldable shovels in our backpack, in our hydration pack.
And we would climb up the mountain, stop in the middle, build jumps and keep climbing and build another jump and keep climbing and then go down like maniac, you know. And we used to do that like every morning, basically. but probably not the jump building, but every morning we were going a bike riding in the dark and um, where I was uh pushing myself, uh risking to get a heart heart attack to try to fall Mitch uphill, and then sometimes it was the opposite, downhill. But yeah, imagine trying to fall Mitch Riley and on a bike riding, it's going uphill, it's just insane. But um, and not so now I moved to the U.S. and moved to California, and here I am with Mitch on top of this beautiful trail up here in Santa Barbara.
I don't know if it was Sunny Cedar or probably uh Romero Canyon, but let's go, let's cut it short. So I look at Mitch and I'm like, I have a full face helmet, okay? My downhill bike, I have elbow uh knee protection, probably had even a neck brace or something, you know? I was fully, fully covered, you know? And I was ready to send it, to go as hard as possible, you know? And I look and I turn my head and Mitch is next to me, big smile, his face, he's wearing a helmet, obviously. He was already training for the XL, when I look at him and he's like to me, naked. Like, I mean, yeah, yeah, obviously he's not, he's wearing shorts, and but he has no protection. And I'm like, dude, why are you not wearing any protection? And Mitch goes, well, because if I do, then I feel safe, I'll go go faster, and that's when I crash and get hurt.
I'm like, huh, that Makes sense, yeah. And that's kind of like what risk homeostasis is all about, you know? All the studies out there, then you can Google, then you can Google risk homeostasis, you'll find most of the studies are on, on, on autos, like on, like automobile drivers. And but then, if you Google risk homeostasis in aviation, you get some really interesting article, and basically it's like all studies show that, that, if, if, if you tell the driver that you disable the airbag and the ABS and, and you cut their seat belt off immediately, they'll start driving in a safer way, okay? The way it's the example that's this. Another interesting example is the, the Cirrus plane.
You know, probably the Cirrus plane is the first one that came out with the parachute and all those safety future, you know, it was the first in the fleet with all, all those incredible safety features. And then I don't know if it was a year or two later, they conducted a study and they realized that the numbers were not better, were worse. So this is how, in a way, how fucked up we are. The more we let ourselves think that we are safe because we're driving, flying, something safer, the more reckless we become. So
this is the Alex Roby, the other end of the pendulum. that he talked about, you know, that he, he made a pretty solid argument that, and this is going against wing choice, of course, but he made a pretty solid argument for the, the safest wing for him to fly as an enzo. You know, he, he doesn't want pilots that think passive safety is going to save them; they're not right for this sport because they're relying on something other than themselves. Ourselves, and we all have to be pilots in command, and we've got to, you know, like, you like, I think you're going to say, uh, and Malin talked about it. You know, there are situations where a low NB can get in a really bad scenario, and yeah, this, this reliance on passive safety is dangerous.
So that's what it
Is it is, and it's been in a way, uh, pushed by the industry. If you look at it, the advertisement, and that's that's that's what I think we should change. We should try to be more vocal about it.
wing, this is a safe, yeah.
Exactly, exactly. I mean, you saw me flying. I fly a Blackout 17; it's a U-turn glider. It's a—it's an acro glider. I love that machine, okay? It's just an incredible glider. My riser bag for that glider says "Safe and Fun," so
a blackout exactly you know I give it to 10 students, and probably 8 out of 10 will crash on takeoff and landing.
But I'm the same, the one you were saying before. I'm safer when I fly a Zeno, a two-liner, in rowdy condition on bar, than if I fly a low B. Because, again, all this safety, this passive safety thing, yes, the gliders are getting better. But if we do start relying, like you say, on relinquishing responsibility, responsibility on this piece of plastic that then we're done, we're done. What Mal says, I agree. I, I've been saying this for years and they, it's not safe. It's safe her, I want. I'm trying slowly to try to like not use the word safe anymore, and I realize that sometimes I use it, that's safer. The safer, it's correct.
Okay, but it's not safe. There's nothing safe about what we do, and the sooner you realize that, probably the sooner you start treating this as aviation and with the right amount of respect that it's due for it. You know, I was joking at the clinic, I said I want to make a t-shirt that says Tia and this, this is aviation. Then we became Tifa because we throw an F in there because to make it more fun, you know, people like the t-shirt better, you know, if you throw an F in there once in a while. But, but, but, but, but yeah, so we should, we should probably like, "Oh, this is the safest. This is safe. Oh, you're flying a low beat. Oh, this is safe. Here's your bag." No, no, no, no, it's, that's, that's not, it's not, and that's risk of misstating, you know?
And the other one is another aspect of risk of misstating, but it's called build up risk of mistake. So what is build up is when, for example, you're flying the XL, okay? Well, you're training for the XL and you're hovering in front of a place, a spot where you would like to top land, but you see that it's a sketchy one and it's a dangerous one. And you're like, oh, that's dangerous. But at one point you decide to go for it and somehow you managed to put it down. And you, boom, done. You top landed. You're not injured. You got away with it. Okay, the next time around, when you fly in front of that place, when you look at it, you won't see as sketchy as dangerous as the first time because you got away with it.
Yeah, you know, so that's build up risk of misdemeanor. Another example I can give you is the acropita that is doing waga, and it's like doing big. We go very close to the cliff, very close to the ground, and then suddenly with his harness, he does a passage where he brings some gravel off the ridge, you know, but doesn't get hurt, no injury, gets away with it. And the other thing that gets in the way is that when you do experience something like that, instead of go on landing and and put your hand between your between your hands and say, "Fuck, what did I do? I could break my back, I could kill myself doing that," you actually get a nice squirt of dopamine and a buzz of excitement. If you remember when we We were, you remember when you were giving me, we were on Skyport.
Logan was there. You were giving me, you were working on my phone. You gave me this option on fly sky high to see the airspace horizontal. That, by the way, that was awesome. Thank you. Because I really love it. And on the side, when you were busy doing that, and I was watching what you were doing, this pilot taking off forward, he gets deflation on the right, deflation on the left, loses control of his wing. Logan is in the background screaming, target, target, target. He managed to jump off takeoff, boom, boom, every TV is open. He flies away and he goes, well, that's exactly that buzz of excitement that I was talking about.
Celebrating less than mediocrity.
But that's built up risk of misstating. I mean, so now, once we know things like that, okay, and we experience, again, that kind of situation, maybe we don't have to go and punish ourselves and go and land in a good flying day and sit on the rock with your head between your hands. But take a note, a mental note. And when you land, think about it, you know, to avoid that buildup. I
had an incident. I don't even know if I ever told anybody about it. It was the very last day of the Sierra. We did this thing called Surfing the Sierras. It was my first big bivy. It was from Waltz up to the Oregon border and Antoine Laurence and Nick Greece and Eric Reid and Oriol Fernandez, all these pilots that were just Brad Sander, all way above my level. And I was just a kid in a candy store with these guys. It was just, I was, it was amazing. And, and as the expedition went on, Brad got hurt and Oriole saw a bear and got freaked out. And, you know, so we, it, it thins out as we, as we head North. And at the end, it's, it's just Antoine and Eric Reed and I, and it was really stable.
It was October. It was getting very into the season. And I can't remember where they were, they were, but I was trying to dig out. It was really light and, and, uh, but I'm still pretty new pilot. This is 2012, so I've been flying six, seven years at that point. And, uh, I made the mistake of turning too tight to the hill and, and in the back end of the turn, hit a bunch of sink and I had that nightmare scenario where suddenly I was, you know, a lot of energy and gonna pound right into the hill and I went, I, I landed, crashed right in between two big boulders. I mean, if I'd hit the boulder on one side or the other side, it would have been game over.
Did you spin the glider? No,
no. I was just spiraling. I mean, I was basically just circling in this thermal, but on the backside of the thermal, I hit more sink than I was expecting to. So instead of doing figure eights, instead of doing what you learn and what you teach and what you should have done, I'm with the big boys now. And uh, and I, I crashed, hit the ground. I was so embarrassed, I just—oh my god, I was so embarrassed and just couldn't believe that I'd done it. And I don't think, I don't think I told those guys, but it was, but it was the shot of adrenaline was real. It was like, "Whoa, I got away with it," you know? Only because I was on the ground that I, I got to think about it. I got to think, "Wow, that was, was incredibly stupid." That
forced you to, yeah.
and for years after that, I didn't. I was so careful about turning close to the hill, you know? It was really one of those things, if you would maybe even
spun your glider and fly away from it. You would go maybe to... whoa, yeah, that was great! Nailed that, you know? Yeah, exactly.
It was, it was, uh, it was really nothing behind
to learn where they're from. Sorry, yeah.
And like you said, I mean like, like Jeff Shapiro always talks about it was, it was a, it was a, an inexpensive mistake, you know, and we need those. Those are important to get, you got to get some inexpensive mistakes because you learn it and you go, that makes sense, you know, but how many people have pounded really hard doing that, you know, in, in all these, in all the years, a lot, a lot of people have done that and, you know, and you don't walk away from it and, you know, So I got lucky, and but yeah, it's that, that it was definitely that, you know? Oh, I got away with that, you know, we
We talk about a lot in SIV, um, after the the spin briefing, because in your case you didn't, but um, and probably most, uh, most cases, and it's, it's, uh, end up in an accidental spin because you again, you're supposed to do figure eight, and the instructor told you that at the beginning, you, you should do figure eight until you clear the ridge, and then you can do your 360. But then one day, bam, you think you've got it, and now you do your first turn towards the ridge, and you're down. When you get pushed to it, you see the terrain coming fast, and now you try to turn away from it, then go more on the brake, more on the brake, and you end up spinning the glider. So that's one of the most common accidental spinning power gliding. One is when you're turmoiling, but that's not really common.
I think the most frequent one is that scenario. That's why I asked you if you spun it, yeah.
Dylan, tell me about this kind of ties into what we were talking about before, but the con well with instruction and and instructors at varying levels, but tell me about the conflict of interest in the system, and I don't I don't know that if you can speak to it too. In other countries, is it is it universal, or is it no
it's it's it's not there There are some places where it's not like this. And in aviation, I think in general, it's never like this in other branches of it.
Define it first. I mean, so, yeah. So, but first I want to say that I'm not judging or pointing a finger or attacking anybody. I think there's a system that it's like this. And I'm not saying that the people that are doing it are responsible for it or they created to kind of get some kind of advantage out of it. I think it's weird when I look at a system that allows the same person that sells you, you know, gears, glider, harness, reserve, instrument, whatever, you know, and I said, you know, to release, to give you your ratings.
I don't think, I don't think that makes any sense, you know. So I gave you an example. I mean, so what if you go to a Ford dealership and the same guy that you buy an $85,000 truck from gives you your driving license? I mean, the road will turn into a shit show. And again, it's not to point a finger. It's not to judge anybody or attack anybody. But I think it's something that in the future with time should be addressed. And I think when I start, so basically in other countries where you do, you go into school and your instructor will say, They will sell you your gears, will teach you how to fly, will even prepare you for the exam. So they will go through the exam with you. But then you have to travel to a neighboring region or state to do your exam with a commission examiner.
Yeah. Like few instructors that are being hired and paid from the federation. So the local Yushpa, let's say. Okay. And they don't know you. And that's where you do your exam, you know. Brilliant. And again, I know that in a situation where we are, it's all like, hey, it's already difficult like this. We don't have pilots. We don't have instructors. And it's just like out of convenience that we're doing what we're doing the way we're doing it. But again, this is a young nation. And if others did better, we should do better than them. You know, because looking at them, we can take their system, uh, uh, they start to start with, we, you can do a copy and paste, you know, and then make it better, you know, because that's that's what younger generations are supposed to do.
That's that's improve it's, yeah, it's our duty to do that.
Telling you're a fan of you're a fan of flow, and me, hi chicks at me, hi, and you, and I've had some talks about about psychology and flow state. Uh, you're incorporating psychology now into your courses as well, which I think is kind of nouveau and fun and uh, and important. Let's let's let's touch on that, and then I wanted to end on your recent reserve toss that you had, because I think I think that was a good – there were some good takeaways there.
Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, we're going to probably scare people away from the clinics. They're going to say, well, this dude, instead of telling me to teach me how to pull strings, he's going to keep me there and he's going to start talking about psychology. Yeah, well, yeah. So if you're about to come to a clinic, yeah, get ready for that. There's going to be a few hours where we do talk about that. We talk about decision-making process. We talk about dealing with fear and power gliding. I think we talked, we touched the light, prepared this new talk about flow and safe in regards to safety recently. And I try to throw it out there and it all actually started with you, with your podcast. And it's a couple of years ago, I think.
I didn't, I didn't, I didn't used to listen to podcasts. As you know, I lived probably almost like eight years in Africa, probably eight to 10 years in Africa and seven years in Nepal. of never good internet connection, I didn't even know what podcast is. Logan and Chris Garcia made a lot of fun of me. Oh, Dylan's just discovered podcast, like, well, yeah, so, but when I did, uh, and especially the good ones, like Logan said, the turn to begin. Oh, yeah, yeah, listen to Gavin and listen to to the episode with Adele, you know, that's the first. Yeah, that was, that was insane, that was. It was really good. And she mentioned Chicks and Me High, Me High, Chicks and Me High, and Flo. I didn't immediately, like, did research on it. I remember one day I was driving home, listening to the TED Talk, and there he was.
Him, Me High, Chicks and Me High. I was like, wow. And I kind of like, wow, this stuff is really cool. So I bought the book, read the book, and that's where it all started. That's when I realized that what I was doing, I was always sold out. Six months in advance, we had like a lot like good success with the school. Everything was going great, but I suddenly wasn't happy anymore with the way I was doing it. I'm like, I cannot. I thought it was just like, it was limiting. It was like I needed to do more, I needed to keep changing, I needed to keep learning something new, I needed to keep throwing new stuff into the mix, and because I, I hold that to my students, you know, it's, you can't just have a, I was never, we were never an SIV checklist kind of thing.
And probably, you know, that I always start my Thursday briefing and say, this is not a checklist. Nobody should come here and expect to have to follow a program. Okay. It's not you coming in and adapt to the class. It's actually the course, the training that will have to grow around you, who you are, your pace, your rhythm, your skills, and your comfort zone, you know? And and that's what I tried to do, but still, that was not enough. And so I started studying more and more and more and and podcasts and pieces of your show and pieces of Judy and articles and and which thanks to citation in the show, and I put together more talks and and start talking more and more about psychology because I I think we hear a lot that the parklanding, it's more of a mental sport than a physical sport.
The reality is it's 100 % neuron. I mean, it's all that's sodium going in and potassium coming out from those pumps. I mean, it's mental, physical. The reality is 100 % neuron. There's no physical or mental. But it's true that we hear that a lot, but we don't talk about it enough. We don't encourage students to dig into it, you know? And some people, some people do, like Mitch does. Mitch is always like, Mitch is into a lot, and I heard him many times like, "Uh, Logan will do it too," obviously. And, um, but probably not all instructor, you know? They don't. Well, so why are we saying that it's such a man that is mostly a mental sport and not a physical sport if we we don't encourage people to dig into it a little more.
Recently, the last couple of clinics I did at the beginning, so students, before they come to a clinic, they fill up this form where they put down their experience, their glider, color, size, reserve, what's it going to be packed, and at the end, what do you expect from your SIV? What would you like to get out of it? And they're all like, oh, I want to become a safer pilot, an active pilot, I want to get to know my glider but no one no one, and this is what I've been telling my students, no one ever mentioned I'd like to know myself under this kind of condition, the pressure and stress and
because again the three the three main components, I mean we fly
one is the glider, Two is the harness, and the third one is this—us, our brain, the brackets, this. And so, I think the basic understanding of the human mind and the way it works is can go a long way when, when it comes down to power line, and we should encourage all our students to at the end of the clinic. I put in the in the group chat that they use the before, before the clinic to carpool, share camps. That I always post at least four or five books and articles and podcasts, and then to encourage them to like keep digging into what we just scratched the surface from. Let's put those, let's put
Those what you suggest, and all those in the show notes, and I remember from the talks that they're—that's a talk in itself. We don't have the time to really dig into all that now, but I would, I would say the same. I mean, I just got to who experience it in the ex-ops, you know? The, the, the physical output is insane, but you know how you do well in that race is, is between their two ears. And yeah, um, you know, for sure. And so yeah, that, that's great. We'll, we'll, we'll put, we'll add a bunch of stuff to the show notes from that.
Yeah, we can—we can put those articles and and uh and books. Did that? The only brief thing that, if you still have time, that I want to mention about flows, because oftentimes we hear talking people, people talking about flow and the zone, but it's mostly related to um power gliding, performance optimization, okay? It's never and what what I after I'm not done studying again, obviously I want to read more and more and more. I started writing down uh and it's a talk that again, I I'm I started using a dsiv, the relation between the being, the flow state and safety. Are we safe for in the flow, flow than when we're not?
We're not just performing skyrocketing in the shortcut to mastery and all the advantage from the state, but are we safer when we're in flow? I think, yes, we are. We're not just increasing our performance. We're not just improving our performance. us, we are safer, sure you know. And so obviously, when you talk to people, to students, they don't have much experience and they're still, they're still in this like small bubble. There's, there's fear of understanding going back to the, the young pilot that still doesn't speak the language. And you know, like we often make the mistake, we tell people, "Oh, you have to look around, you should look for a sign for birds." Uh, and sometimes we don't stop and think, is he ready for that?
Because you, you know, like when you start driving a car, you need to think, oh, especially in Europe with the stick, you need to train clutch, brake, gas, gear, you know, and turning signals and stuff. In the beginning, it's not natural. And you're only lucky if you can see the pedestrian crossing. You're only lucky if you don't kill someone in the first few months, you know. Then it becomes like muscle memory, and now you can still look around. You can still kind of multitask while you're driving, whatever. Same for a pilot gliding. Pilot, at the beginning, you still have to think, look, lean, break, when you want to turn. You know, you still hear the voice of your instructor saying that. And so, when you tell a pilot to, to look for birds, when their, their bubble, their sphere of understanding is so small, it will expand your time and experience and they'll be able to see the bird, to see the butterfly, trapping a term and a terminal.
They'll see the other pilots climbing faster than that. But at the beginning, when we tell them that, again, we move that bar too fast and now we might put them in a position where everything becomes overwhelming and therefore dangerous. You know, um... that there's being being, I, I think, well, it's, I guess it's a long one. That, that flow disco, we'll have a discussion about for another time and, uh, I know you're a fascinating
subject there's so many books and stuff on it and they got the flow lab and everything else Dylan, last one that I want to touch on is the takeaway from your reserve toss in Santa Barbara this spring. That was more, not even the toss and all that, that ended up being exciting but benign. It was more the reason for it, I think, is a great, you know, I've incorporated this in my own life. That was pretty interesting.
Yeah, yeah, I think this, I hope there's something to learn from that. That, and even if all my friends still making fun of me for that, but so, um, I was flying, um, before I started flying, I guess, so with Maria, my wife, um, we have, uh, we said we did set some rules when it comes to the flying. If I'm flying, and one of them is, um, the phone call. So, if she calls me, I have my phone on my flight deck like everybody else, and I, and I use it also as an instrument with others and stuff. But if she calls me and I'm flying, I will answer the phone, and if I don't answer, she knows that I'm flying. She doesn't call me again unless it's an emergency, okay?
So, if something happened to her or the kids, then she'll call me again, and if I see the phone ringing the second time, now I know it's an emergency and I have to answer and deal with it, okay? So, that day she drove me up takeoff with the kids in the car, and, um, and I was there with Garcia. We got to take it, was not really flyable yet. It was hot, and she decided to leave because we said that we were probably, we were probably gonna have to wait an hour or 10 minutes, we don't know. So she left. Now she's driving down the mountains, winding the road with the kids. 10 minutes later, probably, we're in the air. Good cycle, boom, boom. You know how that works? You know, it's not working, it's not working, and boom, suddenly it works, and everybody's like, "Let's get out, we want to go as far as possible." So now I'm flying and we
climb up above the ridge, we start going towards the back, and and I'm following Chris. Chris is in front of me, and I see he's also planning to line their manner, and he's going through some pretty good turbulence, you know? He's glad, it's kind of all over the place, and it keeps going and goes through it, and I know that I'm gonna have to deal with the same thing. So I'm full bar, all my bees, and the phone goes off. The phone goes off. The first time I look down, I says, "Maria," and I don't answer, obviously, because I'm in rough, rough air, you know? It stopped ringing and immediately started ringing again. Okay, so that's when I—I forgot everything I teach, everything I preach or teach or whatever, and I stayed on bar.
I didn't—I didn't release my bar, I just let go of the bees. I had battery, the gloves on, I was not using, obviously, because it was not that cold yet, but I—I could not swipe the phone open to answer. Now in my head, she's driving down the mountain with the kids in a windy road, that all those crazy images are starting to like, like going on, going on in my head, and I managed to take off my gloves and I answered the phone, and when I answered the phone, what happened? And and she said, "Your InReach is not on," so
I go, okay, and I'm like, fuck, you know? So I hang up the phone, put it back on the, put it back on the on the flight deck, and the second I, I put stick it to the Velcro, I lost probably 70% of the glider. One, and I'm still in full bar, so I'm in rough hair on the Xeno, full bar, lost the 70% big crevasse, started going straight into an auto, and I'm not that high. I don't know if I like, I don't know how high I am. I am a thousand, thousand. I started trying to recover the auto. It was a big one, so I brought it out of an auto rotation the first time and immediately went straight back into it, and that's when I saw the ground coming and coming fast. So I grabbed it, I tossed the first one, he went into the line even if I tossed really hard, and the second one opened and saves me basically, so with
That one as again, we all have it's difficult when we do stuff like what we do. Is it's tough on our partners, it's tough on people we love, and then again this year we had again accident and we lost people that we love, people that we know, people that we just heard about so when you're married to someone I guess and you have kids with him knowing that he flies and he can die every time he does this thing it's normal to be
anxious and and struggle with it, you know, it's it's it's very hard and, uh, and sometimes, um, our partners and end up pouring that anxiety into us, maybe even before we fly, and I think that's that's toxic. I know we can do everything to try to understand and to be there and talk about it, but I guess for that one too, there's a time and a place. It should never be the, even the night before a big flight, uh, that's not the time and the place to talk about, um, anxiety and let it pour into us right before a big flight, or on your way to take off even more, and and so when we do set certain rules, this again, this is aviation, those rules are there to keep us safe, you know.
I, I remember blaming Maria. I mean, I was, I wasn't blaming Maria, I was pissed. I probably, yeah, I did blame Maria. Actually, I didn't. And it's stupid because I should have just not answered the phone right there. I should have get off bar, spiral down, top land or put myself in a safer position, answer the phone and then get really mad because now my flight was over. But that would have been the right reaction, you know, instead of like I lost it. I lost the idea that something happened to my kids and my wife. I my brain stopped working and I just dropped everything except for the bar. That, and I go into trouble, so I
Mean, in another, I mean, I guess this is blatantly obvious, but just to make sure it gets pointed out, is it's also really good to have a very specific rule about very specific things. You had the rule, it got broken, and it had consequences. Um, and it's, you know, and it was, she just loves you and you're worried about her, and it's, you know, it's all, all totally innocent, but it was, I'm sure led to a conversation like, Hey, we have to have these rules because they're important. And I didn't, I didn't have that role with my wife. Uh, you know, I didn't even think about that. That's a real, but it's a really good rule. It's a really, it really makes sense. And, and the other thing you just mentioned that I hadn't thought about the first time around was, you know, missing a big flight who gives a shit.
We've got a million brilliant opportunity for that, you know, and I mean, I actually did that in the 2019 race to my great detriment, you know. All I had to do, I took off without my jacket and my stuff because Ben and I were going to go fly over 2k to another hill and start there. I launched and it was on. We didn't think it was going to be on, and I ended up freezing to death and blowing my flight. All I had to do was land. I mean, all I had to do was just top land right where he was, get my stuff, and take take off again. I've lost two minutes, you know, it's no big deal. Um, yeah, so I mean, it's it's good to think about. Okay, well, this might take a little bit longer, but what's the safe way to play this here? Yeah.
Well, on that, in that position, was if go and even, and it was actually Maria said that she didn't know I was flying, and which like at the beginning I was like, "What do you mean you didn't know I was flying? You drove me to take off." But she heard, probably us saying that maybe it's probably gonna be another hour, you know? So in her head, says I was not flying, and that's why even if maybe she thought that my phone was not nearby and and I didn't hear a ring, and maybe it was my phone is always on silence, I never have a ringtone. I, you know, already I told you, so Maria's nuts, she's crazy, and she's really crazy now. Let me say this, another one, one, she's she's nuts, but she's but she's but she's just she's the most incredible human being.
Everything that I bet you saw the clinic and everything, everything, all of this exists just because of her. I'm the asaf instructor, everything else she's actually the company, you know.
What, she might be nuts, but it's you, your fault. You, if you would have had your image on you, would have been fine. You know, you made the mistake. It was your fucking fault, but
Uh, you're not, you're not healthy. You know, she's gonna listen to this. You're not good, good, well...
You know, our our significance others are always right. We're the ones that are wrong. We're the ones doing this dumb sport. Dylan, I appreciate it. Your your time is awesome. You're great at what you do. I get so much out of your your training and your acro training and and watching you teach these students to go have fun in the absurdity and uh I can't wait to come back out with you with Ben and Benny this fall and do more acro training and uh truly your training really came in handy just very short time afterwards when I had that crash here in some alley, so thank you for that as well, and thank you for the debrief and thank Thank you for being you, dude. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you so much, man. If
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