Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of 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 was 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 X-Alps, but hopefully we're all caught up with our regularly scheduled programming. We'll 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, early October at the Red Rocks Fly-In, Red Rocks X. It's $5,000 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 hopefully by the time this is out, we'll have a website and more information there, but you can always reach out to me if you need anything else with that. That proves it's going to be an awesome. Event and in a beautiful part of the world and it'll be a lot of fun. So hope to see you 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 Berryessa 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 Colombe, 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 as kids and became, well, he started this in Nepal, but he came at 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 texts and his approach to SIV is just is, is awesome. It's 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 and 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. This is, it's great to have you back again on the show. And we did this before I left for Europe and this will just be tighter. We had some, 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, it's good. To see your smiling face. I know you've been doing these courses all summer. The first one was with the first one this season was with, with Ben and I, and you had a whole big gaggle of students and we'll get into how awesome that was. It ended up saving my life, as you know. And, 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.
You, you, how you, you. Learned 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, 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 everything you do, because it's just insane. 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 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. Thank you. So how this started? Well, it started in 2008 when I was taking this break or sabbatic, whatever, from my, my old job. I was working as a, as a world photographer for the UNICEF. And I was kind of losing it in a way. I was like pushing myself too, 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, 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.
They used to do walks with, with kids. And I remember I was walking this little girl on the horse and I, I looked up and I see this guy. They're coming in the middle of the valleys. You know, that valley is the, the Valtunanch in Italy where you got them. The matter and the Trevino right up top, like in between this mountain just comes up. Just
flew over it 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 glider. I didn't know how it was back then. And it was Andrew, sorry, Anthony Green, one of the Acro twin brothers from California. And he started doing alleys. Well, now I know what he was doing, but back then it was like, Whoa, what is that? I want to do that. And I remember walking straight to the owner of the horses and just with this little girl. I gave him the horse and I said, just I got to go. And I went to see Antonia Delanding. 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. I'm 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 harness.
And that's kind of how I started. It was pretty fast. Yeah.
But I probably made a mistake because I said from the beginning, I said, dude, I want to do what he does. I want to do what this guy was doing. And that probably didn't set the tone right. Because he was. He was pretty scared. And he kept me on the ground for a good 10 months without letting me go to takeoff. 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. 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.
That's it. 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. I was flying like eight, nine times a day. You know, this place is 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 height that you can burn. Like doing spiral, trying wing overs.
Trying to do everything. That performance flying. Jockey showing that DVD. They were like fixing my DVD recorder for my DVD player for months.
And yeah. And then whatever from there. This. Oh, winter came. And. And somebody said, oh, I like Morocco is flyable. And I lived in Morocco before. I speak the language. So I remember in two days. I bought the tickets from Morocco. Moved to Morocco for the winter and start flying again. 78 hours a day nonstop 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 park lighting.
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. That's 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. So Toby, when they gave me a job and that's kind of where. Where, where this started, you know. I spend, I think, a good couple of years going back and forth and back and forth from Morocco because it was easy access from everywhere. fermentation eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually I threw a reserve and 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 felt the opening and in a fraction of a second I hit the ground standing up I was like this soft patch and like freshly
worked from farmers I guess and
that yeah that day was the day where at the dinner table somebody started talking about this place in Nepal with the lake good for acro pilots and I didn't know anything about it it was like so I went to see the guy after dinner I'm like what was that place again you were Pokhara 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 pilots there and it's like it's just crazy I'm like okay and so the day after I went to Marrakesh and bought a plane ticket for Nepal and boom soon enough I was I think I went back to Italy and then then left for Nepal yeah I went back to Italy and then left for Nepal yeah and was
Nepal you were making a living there you were doing tandems yeah
well initially which actually I think it was just for two weeks and then I stayed for seven years but I didn't have I just had my acro glider with me and then staying there made some really good friends Peter Wolf and he's the one that actually gave me my first job as a tandem pilot was like
ever thankful for that because it started a kind of a crazy life you know back then Pokhara was still the golden age we were making a lot of tandems there were not so many schools there were like six structure I think now there's probably around 80 with six pilots each so six schools with six pilots each were going up and down and we were making a lot of money I mean for a country where with $500 you leave like a king we sometimes $5,000 a month $6,000 a month plus picture money it's just insane you need nothing to leave and so you can even put away money which was a first for me I was like wow look at this I have money on the side how did this happen
and yeah
yeah that's where Bella was there Jamie a lot of people that you know it was seriously the golden age it was like just amazing not that it's not amazing now but it's changed it's not the same plus with the airport coming but
your passion then was still very much acro you weren't really into XC yet like you are now it was acro and tandems well
I mean my XC glider was my tandem I didn't have enough money probably maybe I had the money but I never thought about buying an XC because when I was now doing tandem I was up and down doing acro so before tandem it was acro or if in between tandem there was a hole in the schedule and it was like they needed only five pilots instead of six I'd go up with the Jeep and do acro and it was just like acro acro acro pre-infinity so when you put in your head that you want to learn infinity it's like that's what you do you lose your brain out of it and and and and and and!
eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually with Adam Hill and Frontier Park Lining, which back then had another name, I think it was Sunrise, and then they split. But those two, him and Adam, they kind of started everything in Nepal. And David started at PPI, and he asked me if I wanted to become an SAV instructor. I'm like, well, that's interesting. So I started studying with him and following him around for SAV and slowly, slowly got me. So him and Matthew Bram, also a French instructor, really good SAV 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 SAV for them.
I was just going to say, one of the things that really caught me in watching you operate and watching your... your courses and your students was the... I mean, I remember watching Jockey with this too. There's so much happening that you guys seem to be ahead of. You can predict what's going to happen before it actually happens. And in talking to Logan, one of your tow techs and very keen pilot who's over chasing in Europe right now, he just competed in the Eiger. He talked about it that 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 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 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 doing the towing or doing the observation or running the boat, running the rescue boat. How much of it is it just watching versus you being an acro pilot and doing these maneuvers over and over again? I guess it's a combo of both, but.
Yeah, I guess it is. I guess it is. Most of it is watching. And also, like, it's true that most of the time when I tell the student that they're going to have a collapse before that happens, a couple of seconds before, you see what is going to lead to a collapse, you know. Okay, you're late. It's going to collapse. Stay in the up. And one, two, boom, collapse, you know. So that's kind of been, I always say that it's like, it's very addictive for me because I think I do get in some mild flow state when I coach. That's why 15, when I get the 15 second signal, nobody's allowed to talk to me. 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, like, and the mistake and errors that are somehow imprinted in my subconscious, that helps a lot when it comes to
watching someone doing something, 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, good, we're going to have a collapse, just go and tap. But if something that needs immediate, like, like go for a break, stop it. So like low, lock your elbow, break towards it. If you have to stop an auto rotation, then you have a different input. But you do, you do see and know what's going to happen ahead of time. Way before that happens, actually.
Yeah. I mean, it seems like you had things stacked up really quite well that, uh, I'm sure you weren't thinking about it back then when you were in Nepal practicing acro, but it's, I mean, it, it doesn't seem like it's, it's not riding a bike. It's not, 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, that means being an acro pilot to me.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I, I remember when first I came to the, to the U S I was like, and I was seeing that several people doing clinics. We, 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, I like pretty, um, Initially I thought, I think I heard you also say, Hey, you space this, like that you space 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, uh, Marty and other, uh, from the use, but were incredibly helpful.
They send letter to the BOR explaining what I do and wow, it's so vital that I'm up 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 VOC and, and also like, again, looking around and seeing people with a, with a toe and with a winch and a boat doing clinic without any acro background. It 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, it's, there's a reason. It's the way I see it is if I have to send, send someone to learn P1, P2 to learn power gliding in general, I want to send like my sister, for example, to, to someone that deed himself at least a thousand takeoff and a thousand landing. Right.
Sure. So
if I want to send, if I want to send my, my little sister to learn stalls, I will try to send her to someone that did a thousand stall himself. And that's, I mean. Yeah. Only acrobat did that many stall. You know, we're not talking about the magic number, a hundred stall, two hundred stall. No, we're talking about thousands of stall. You know, it's like we do stall to enter early, to exit infimity, to, 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 in 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. It's totally dependent on, you know, do I go to Dylan or do I go to somebody else?
I'm going to 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 in not just SIV, I'm talking P one. Everything. Yeah.
Everything. Yeah. Well, uh, I mean, it's, it's difficult. Okay. So we are in, we are with power gliding so small still in the U S. And there is an effort to grow the sports and probably because we want this sport to grow, uh, we are, we are sacrificing, um, quality over quantity in a way. Um, what happened? So what you're saying makes sense. Like I remember, uh, I heard someone probably was you, it was on the show with you. And I thought that guy was super smart. Cause you say, Oh, when he calmed down, when he 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, 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, it should not. And learn how to drive.
Exactly. So every structure, 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, uh, that's always going to happen. Now, even in 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 because, and, or people asking why the Swiss and the French, why they're so good. And obviously when. They eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually 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 U.S., now they have this drinking game on it.
But in France, to become an instructor, a power glider 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 start with. To
do that in France, you're an epically good pilot.
I mean, you have passion. You have everything. You have motivation. You have like 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 it. If they accept your application, you enter the school. And it's 10 months mandatory working in the school with no payment. Okay. 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. And every weekend or sometimes every other weekend, you have a college grade exam organized by the government. It's like the secretary of sports. You know, la jeunesse, le ministère de jeunesse de sport. It's the same thing for mountains. Mountain guide, river guide, ski instructors. They all go through the same process.
And actually, the initial part of the studying, it's the same for everybody. And then you choose your branch. You go for, again, river guide, mountain guide.
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 a totally different
thing. And at the end, what that brings is that no matter if you're the guy that wants to learn 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 going to have an instructor that has the same background and is as knowledgeable as the school next door. Then it comes down only to... Personality. Personality. You like the guy. Yeah. It goes with who you are. You stay. You don't. You go to the next one. Okay. But it's not gambling. It's not like you... When you don't know better, it turns this thing into... It's pretty...
It's gambling.
It's not Russian roulette. Yeah. I mean, here it is literally, to me, it's Russian roulette. Because you're aviating. You're playing with gravity in the ground. And you're... Literally, okay, does this barrel have the bullet?
Well, exactly. Well, then, again, depending on who you are, you might be able... And that's... So, think about it. In the US, probably, you need one week when you do your instructor clinic, your basic instructor clinic. So, you do one week, probably, or a weekend. Probably a little more than a weekend. And then you have to do a little apprentice. And you can become an instructor. And no longer after that, you can open a school. And start selling. And you can do it for a few years. 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 two weeks before, you were... Whatever. Let's not go that far, I think. Let's be nice. But, I mean... And it's not to blame them. It's not to blame this young instructor. Instructor. Just, like, passionate. And they try. And what's the reasoning behind it? It's like, oh, but if we want to grow the sport, we need to make it easy to become an instructor so we can have more. And 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 know what I'm saying? And it doesn't seem right to me. Most... I joke about it, yes, I do, with students. It's like most instructors in the United States, they probably don't have an SIV.
Never did an SIV. And so when I have a P2, we're 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 finally loved the guy that taught you how to fly. I mean, it's normal. This is like, this guy just taught you how to fly. It's 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 be getting. So, especially again, if there's a community that is being created around this, and now finally, for probably the first time in your life, you feel that you belong to something.
And... There's a lot that goes with it. You know, it's pretty... I think we should... As the fact that we say, oh, but it's so small in the US that 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,
as 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 attrition takes care of the growth. And so 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. Because I ask questions. I'm like, why is it like this? And then you hear... Oh, it's because there's some old glider pilot in the USPA board that they refuse to change stuff, to set rules. And then, obviously, you end up always hearing, which this is not just the US. This is everywhere. When you talk to old school pilots and the freedom. And, oh, then if you put too many rules, like mandatory license, then you affect the freedom of the free flight. And I always... I always answer to that with... Because even in France, I mean, France, we'd always said about France, there's no mandatory license.
In France, you can go and buy your glider on eBay and pay for the third-party insurance, and you can go fly it. You don't need... 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. Why would you do it by yourself? I mean, yes. There are those that don't have the money. And they have a good friend that is a pilot and instructor, or even just a good pilot. And they'll learn. And it's not that everybody goes to a 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.
Yeah. 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. So you're free to stop when mine starts. And if you're a dangerous pilot, probably you're affecting my own freedom. So it's like, if that's an argument that we can bring to this freedom thing, the free flight spirit, I love the idea.
I love the idea, but not really. Yeah. So
let's wrap the initial thing up. Why do we lose so many pilots? Is it that? Is it? Is it? Why? 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 kind of the same there. You learn it. You fall in love with it. It's super awesome. It's amazing. You know, you're using the wind to power yourself along. And then inevitably, the attrition rate is really high. You know, you blow a knee. I mean, the accidents are different in kite surfing. They're not nearly as extreme. It's paragliding because you're on the water typically and you're not using, you know, 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? I think part of it is just human nature. OK. A lot of the students that come into paragliding, they're just like 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. So we go through phases. We all did. And we also like when you grow up, you're a teenager, you listen to heavy metal. And then two months later, now you're you grow dreadlocks and you have a jam on your 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. And until they finally find what they love and stick with it, you know. But the other reason for it is so another another thing that I think caused people to leave is we tend to probably again for the same reason we're trying to grow a sport. So we don't want to scare people.
And we tend to keep the danger of it hidden. You know, when people first start being straight
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. I think I think. Yeah.
Like eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually tells the driver to stop it like yeah i will ask you to leave the sheep you know there's like this that that's not that's not the right place at that but when you when you have a student i think before they they invest time energy money they should be put in front of the yeah i mean this is aviation you know and um i don't know if it was bill buck or mitch macklin in that podcast that said this thing every time you take it out of the bag can kill you yeah and probably not that's not the right way to say it to a student that is about to start or there's even trying that that is thinking about getting into paragliding but i think the more honest we are and the the better you know we'll probably that will probably filter people instead of having them starting this thing of falsely believing that they're safe because if you get a low 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 oh 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'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 it's 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 that um podcast that judy judy more ahead with this guy tony he's a trained psychology and a part of it i learned a lot from him and i actually started using a lot of that in my in my classes as when you first start this um when you are novice and you don't you in a way you don't speak to any communities any community parkland community ski snowboard they all have their own languages that goes with it okay so when you just enter this community you're not absorbing you know and you don't speak the language yet and so obviously the second you start naming something or you like you don't the language around something now the reality is is a social it's more of a socially constructive one so we're not um the example that he gives and i thought was brilliant it's like a walker will walk on on the edge on the cliff look down and see a place where you can fall and die and the paragliding pilot with an experienced paragliding pilot from will walk in the same spot and look down and see you
is it's horrible is it where the trigger point is this play fly ball was like i think is there a house thermal 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 um you uh you go through turbulence for example that's what it said you go through turbulence which is terminals are turbulence for 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 acquire 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 or even worse the sky god and i'd like to talk about that once but uh say they're they're all saying that terminals 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 out of the sky and get used to turmoil until you actually learn how to use them and climb you know when uh when we when doing that i mean this there's no other way i think you you you see it like me i mean to learn you need to expose yourself to stronger and stronger condition right i mean that's how we learn we have no choice if you always stay in laminar flow and uh fly early in the morning and fly late in the day you'll never learn uh what we just mentioned and you'll never learn how to but the problem is how fast are you going how fast you're moving that bar okay back to sport psychology they often talk about the the four percent rule i remember me 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 a 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 uh same thing when it's below when it's below it's it could be boring destructive and same thing it's dangerous you know exactly so if we if we don't move that bar uh 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 a lot of experience and you know you're not going to be able to do 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 their 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 we 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 like rock climbing or 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. We all have one and actually in paragliding, I think we're, we, we top the world when it comes to ego.
We were 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 you start dealing with the old brain and it's,
it's a lot more difficult. So, so that's probably also one of the reason why we lose so many people. You know, I heard some numbers that were, I don't know what to trust when it comes down to numbers. It's like eight out of 10, they leave after three months, four months.
Yeah. Which is similar. I think it's eight or nine out of 10 kayaking. I don't know. I don't think it's that high for, for kitesurfing, but you know, the, when I learned how to kayak, it was mid nineties. And I think I went through a 13 other paddlers and we 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 in the situation, gone upside down, freaked them out. 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, and that was it. And then we're done.
Yeah. Well, I remember when, so when you were up at the lake, you had to leave cause you had your plane, but at the end of every class, I started probably a couple of years ago. So I say to all students, cause most of them, you, I mean, you were up there and you saw like, there's a lot of people with five hours, 10 hours and they do great. It's just insane how good they do. Yeah. And again, no, no bad habits, no parasite, no, like, yeah, not too much 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, go through something that scares you, there's some 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. Cause 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 hall, 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 spend probably five, six hours every week when I'm not on the SAB, talking to people on the phone and, and you, when you had your, your, your accident or compilers, even like pilots that didn't do my class, but they heard from a friend that, that I do that.
They called, say, I know I didn't do an SAB 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, go for, 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 in an elongated time and you re you remember, like in slow motion, rapid.
So we have all small details that can actually, you remember we put it, the P the pieces together. It was like, ah, 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, somebody that eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually from witnesses and with that information i called a guy or girl back and we go through the entire
understanding process you know to the analysis 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 it was 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 and 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 ma which i 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 you looking at it you go with it i mean you if you do like a little visualization and try if you look up the glider turns and you follow 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 might 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 you do you fly and 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 no it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not 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 and bracing against the the flying side is uh i love it that and that was a really awesome takeaway i'd never seen that i'd never heard that i've been practicing it in a sense since you showed that to everybody but i think that's just describe describe that real quick let's see if we can do it without without visuals because otherwise we'll we'll we'll slap a video into the end of 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 our training so uh we can do that if you want but you
know i think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's ideally
it's like this uh technique that we all learn when we learn paragliding 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 break 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 glows 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 way 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
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 way 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 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 the ground you're not going to be able to see around your reserve you know it's like sometimes in 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 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 going to take this in a different direction
um yeah why glider choice yeah so as this again it's i'm not the original i took the the the initially is the same guys that sat down um we 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 and 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 gliders not stepping down one class but probably two or more yeah
you know and yeah
exactly exactly so you're talking about safety you choose that glider for safety um but when i look at the flights you do today well you could be way safer because i do think there's nothing safety in what we do uh we we develop b or a name and looking at what you do so i think it all comes down to to these rides spurling and saying it all comes down to uh ego and unfortunately for us testosterone okay so that puts us men's paragliding pilot men's uh in uh in a worse position than women because if you if you look if you notice i said i'm not a glider pilot i'm a pilot pilot eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually a boy and a girl, a man and a woman, whatever you want to 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. She's doing better flights.
I've seen that all the time.
Every time. And then what you hear from the landing is, ah, she must be light. Oh, yeah, she's higher than everybody. Oh, she's still up because she's light on that glider. It's like, no, dude, it's not. No, 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 friendship, and even just sharing this thing that we love so much. But there's other side of it that are pretty dark. You know, it's like this peer pressure or... 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, they say, yeah, but DXC pilots, you know, like if they were the separate species, you know, they're being called DXC pilots, you know? And now some people end up wearing their gear 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 were in a hoping 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 be 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 like when you were phrasing it that way, I almost feel like this is... It's really a community problem. Yeah. I feel like... 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... Yeah. Yeah. Those should be the pilots that we... I mean, look at Josh Cohn. He comes down and kicks everybody's ass on a low-end E &D every year down in Valle because he's that good, you know? And I'm not saying... I mean, a low-end E &D is not the conversation we're having right now, 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 E &B, you got no chance of doing it on an E &C. Right. You're not going to stay in the air. And 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 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 of that. And so, yeah, I mean, it's almost... We should... 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. We are,
yeah. Because
this is not your... We've been seeing this for years now. Pilots on B, like, kicking asses. But we still have this. Because probably, again, the statues and, again, wearing the black skirt, the big pod and everything and look cool and be part of the XC, you know, you're not going to stay in the air. You're going to be a pilot now. It's more important than that, you know? And it's like... So, I think 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 students and make them understand, yes, if they... If one day they realize because now they have a new job 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, downgrade... One class... It's going to help them, you know? Because now they don't have time to be current on the glider that they're flying, you know? And it's... I have this student and a very good friend. His name is Ron Davis. He's an airline pilot and he's been coming to SAV 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... He doesn't know that he did. Last... He was up a couple of weeks ago. And he said... So he's flying this... Oh, Fusion now, I think. Yeah, he's flying the Fusion now. It's a beautiful sea machine, great glider.
And he was flying... 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 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, you know, you were flying in, like, rowdy, you were putting yourself in big air. Well, maybe you go to a winter break. You should not be, like, looking for those conditions. Don't start where you left. Step down a little. 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 on the plus 12 meters per second in the Owens that you should do your first flight after three months where you're not flying in the same condition.
But he does even better. 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 his old high B and he goes with his Kibu and he's super... I thought that was... That's great. And I'm... But it's, again, another way... But another reason why people step up often and too early and too soon is they're glad they're still in good condition and now they can sell it and make a big chunk of money to... To put into the new machine. You know? And so the thing is, if you flew... If...
This is obviously not for everybody. There's like 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. You know? 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. I like the hours too. That's about right. I think the number of hours can be really dangerous because every hour is different. You know? It really depends. Are you ridge soaring? Are you doing SIV? Are you doing acro? Are you thermaling in the Owens? You know? There's a huge spread there. But what it does come down to is... I think... I think the number of hours, even if they're good hours, you know, I'm talking thermaling and 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 we have traditionally said.
You know? There's no, you know, oh, at 100 hours or 250 hours. Man, you kind of suck until you're in the thermals. No. And I'll
close they are. I mean, that's the other thing. I remember, I mean, again, I lost my brain into this like you did and a lot of my friends did and I stopped everything. Quit everything else and just went down at first into it, single-minded, like a maniac person. And I was probably close to 1,000 hours in less than two years. But it was like seven hours a day all the time. If it's not... Eight hours a day, 10 hours a day. It's like learning how to pee in the air before I even learned that there was a pee tube available. Now I know. Now I know.
But most people don't have that. They can't quit their job. They're already responsible adults with bills, a family. And so,
I was like, when you said, how many hours do you have? Well, I have 150 hours. How many years will you be flying? Well, I'll be flying 70. Oh, okay.
Yeah, 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 preaching. 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, pushed more, I guess. Yeah. Tell me about risk homeostasis. You and I had kind of a fun conversation out in California about that, you know, safe, safest.
You give a good talk. Yeah. So that's another one that the same guy, Tony Spill, talked about it. And it's like, I had my first, my first kind of experience with it. And I was in paragliding. I was bike riding with Mitch, with Mitch Riley. And so me and Mitch, we used to live together in Nepal. And every morning at 5 a.m. in the dark, we were meeting in front of my house. Like the first person I met, my wife was still sleeping. I would go down the stairway, my bike, my bike on the shoulder. And Mitch was there in the dark, smiling, super excited. We both had shovels, like foldable shovels in our back.
We had our hydration pack. And we would climb up the mountain, Sauron called, 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, bike riding in the dark. And where I was pushing myself, risking to get a heart attack, to try to fall Mitch. And I was going uphill. And then sometimes it was the opposite downhill, but imagine trying to fall Mitch Riley on a bike ride and it's going uphill. It's just insane. But not so. Now I moved to the US and moved to California.
And here I am with Mitch on top of this beautiful trail up here in Santa Barbara. I don't remember if it was Sunny Cedar or probably Romero Canyon. But let's go, let's cut it short. So I look at Mitch and I'm like, I have, I have a full face helmet. Okay, my downhill bike. I have elbow, knee protection, probably had even a neck brace or something, you know. I was 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 on 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. I mean, 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 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 Homestays is all about. You know, all the studies out there, then you can Google, then you can Google Risk Homestays, you'll find them. Most of the studies are on autos, like on like automobile drivers. But then if you Google Risk Homestays 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 disabled the airbag and the ABS and, and you cut their seatbelt off, immediately they'll start driving in a safer way.
Okay. The way it's, the example that's, there's another interesting example is the Cirrus plane. You know, probably the Cirrus plane is the first plane that came out with the parachute and all those safety features. You know, it was the first in the fleet with all those incredible safety features. And then I don't know if it was a year or two later, they conduct the study and they realized that, that the numbers were not better, were worse. So this is how, in a way, how fucked up we are. The more we, we let ourselves think that we are safe because we, 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, he doesn't want pilots that think passive safety is going to save them. They're not right for this sport because they're, they're relying on something other than themselves. 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, and Malin talked about it, you know, there are situations where a low end B 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, pushed by the industry. If you look at it, you did, eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
so a blackout exactly you know i give it to to 10 students and probably eight out of 10 will crash on takeoff and landing and and and but at the end i'm i'm the same the one you were saying before i need to i'm safer when i fly a zeno a two-liner on a uh in rowdy condition on bar then if i fly a low b because because again all this safety is passive safety thing yes the gliders are getting better but if we do start relying like you say relinquishing 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 that's safer 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 we're joking at the clinic i say 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 your state you know and the other one is another aspect of risk of your state that it's called build up risk of your state so what is build up risk of your state is when uh for example you you're flying the excel okay well you're training for the excel and you're over in front of us 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 you
somehow you manage 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 you're going to be in a situation where you're going to get hurt and you get hurt and you get hurt and you get hurt and you get hurt and you get hurt and 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 your state and another example i can give you is the acrobat that is doing waga and it's like doing big big over very close to the cliff really close to the ground and suddenly with his harness he does a passage where bring some gravel off the ridge you know but doesn't get hurt no injure gets away with it and the other thing that gets in the way is that when you do experience something like that instead of going landing and and put your hand between your uh 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 were you remember when you were giving me we were on skyport logan was there you were giving me uh you were working on my phone you gave me um option and fly sky high to see the the airspace horizontal that by the way that was awesome thank you because i really love it and um in on the side when you were busy doing that and i was watching when you were doing this this pilot taking off forward he gets deflation on the right deflation on the left loses control of his wing logan's in logan is in the background screaming target target target he managed to jump off take off pump boom pump every tip is open he flies away and he goes well that's exactly that buzz of excitement that i was talking about so that celebrating
uh less than mediocrity but
that's that's built up risk on your stage you know i i i mean it's so now once we know things like that okay and and we experience um again it's that kind of situation maybe we don't have to go and punish ourselves and go and land in a good flying day and put and sit on the rock with your hand with your head between your hands but take a note a mental note and when you land think about it
yeah you
know to avoid that built up i
had 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 uh we did this thing called surfing the sierras it was my first big bivy it was from waltz up to the oregon border and
i was just a kid and 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 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 scary and it was really scary and i was just a kid and i was just a kid and i was stables october it was getting very into the season and i 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 or suddenly i was you know a lot of energy and gonna pound right into the hill and i went i landed
crashed right in between two big boulders you know i mean if i'd hit the boulder on one side or the other side it would have been game over or did
you spin the glider and no
no i was just spiraling i mean i was basically just circling in this thermal but on the back side 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 you know 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 about it i got to think wow that was incredibly stupid that
forced you to yeah 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 have maybe even
spun your glider and fly away from it you would have gone into 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 it was a it was a an inexpensive mistake you know and we need those those are important uh 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 the instructor told you that at the beginning 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 got it and then you're like oh my god now you do your first turn towards the ridge and you're down when you get pushed to it you see the ground 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 that's one of the more most common uh accidental spinning power gliding one is when you're termaling but that's not really common the i think the most frequent one is yeah that scenario that's why i asked you if you spun it yeah
dylan tell me about this kind of ties into what we're talking about here 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 are some places where it's not like this and in aviation i think in general it's it's never like this in other branches of it um but the final
part of the question is what is the most common
i mean so yeah so but first i want to say that i don't want i'm not judging or pointing 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 what they created to kind of get some some kind of advantage out of it i think it's weird when i look at a system that allows the same person the cell cell to be able to do the same thing and i think that's the most common thing that's happening in aviation and i think that's the most common thing that's happening in aviation you know gears glider harness reserve instrument whatever you know and i said you know too i mean
to um 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 license your driving license i mean that's that that the road will turn into a to a shit show you know 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 okay should be addressed you know and uh i think in italy when i start so basically what in other country where you do you you go into school and your instructor will say you will sell you your gears will teach you how to fly will even prepare prepare you uh for the exam so they will go through the exam with you but then you have to travel to a neighboring region or state uh to do your exam with um with a commission examiner yeah like few instructors that are being hired and paid from from the federation so the local you should probably say okay and they don't know you and that's where you do your exam you know brilliant yeah and uh again i know that in a situation where we are uh it's all like hey it's already difficult like this we don't have pilots we don't have instructors and it's it's just like out of convenience that we we're doing what we're doing the way we're doing it but again we this is a young nation and if others did better we should do better than them yeah 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 improved 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 great 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 fine and i think that's a good thing to do yeah i think that's a good thing to do 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 that was that that that was a that was a good there's some good takeaways there
yeah yeah so yeah we're going to probably scare people away from the clinics they're going to say what 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 we talk we touch the light prepare 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 um i didn't i didn't i didn't used to uh listen to podcasts as you know i'm probably almost like eight years in africa probably eight to ten 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 podcasts 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
really good lunch and she mentioned chicks in behind me hi chicks in behind and i'm flow i didn't immediately like did research on it uh i remember one day i was driving home listening to the ted talk and there he was him hi chicks in behind i'm like wow and i kind of like wow this this this stuff is really cool so i bought the book read the book and that's where it all started that's what i realized that what i was doing i was uh i was always sold out uh six months in advance with the book and i was like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh 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 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 hold that to my students you know it's no you can't just have a i was never uh and we were never an sav checklist kind of thing and probably you know that i always start my thursday briefing say this is not a checklist nobody should come here and expect to have to follow a program okay it's not you coming here and adapt to the class it's actually the the course the training that will have to grow around you who you are your face 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 think we hear a lot that the park landing is it's it's more of a mental sport than than a physical sport then the reality it's 100 neuron i mean it's all that's uh sodium going in and potassium coming out from those pumps i mean it's mental physical it's 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 so why are we saying that it's such a man that is mostly a mental sport and and not a physical sport if we don't encourage people to to to dig into it a little more recently the last couple couple of clinics i did at the beginning so students before they come to us to a clinic they fill up this form where they this they put down their experience their glider color size uh reserve it was a repack and at the end what do you expect from your SIV what would you like to um get out of it you know 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 student no one ever mentioned i'd like to know myself under this kind of condition the pressure stress and and um because because again the three the three main components i mean we fly
um one is the glider two is the harness and the third one is this us our brain the brackets 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 our life so i think that's the first thing i would encourage all our students to do 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 and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good insight now but i would i would say the same i mean i just got to 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 your two years and yeah um you know for sure and so yeah that that's great well we'll we'll put we'll add a bunch of stuff to the show notes from that
yeah okay we can put those articles and and uh and books that the only brief thing that if you still have time that i want to eventually eventually flow because oftentimes we hear talking people talking about flow and the zone but it's mostly related to um paragliding performance optimization okay it's never and what i what i after i'm not done studying again obviously i want to read more and more and more i started writing down and it's a talk that again i i'm i started using on dsiv the relation between the being the flow state and safety are we safer in flow than when we're not and uh so not just like we we're not just like performing skyrocketing in the shortcut to mastery and uh and and all the advantage from this this from the state but like are we safer when we are in flow and i think yes we are we're not just like we're not we're not just like increasing our performance we're not just like 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 on 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 know like when you start driving a car you need to think oh especially in europe with the stick you need to drink clutch brake gas gear you know and turning signs signals and stuff and you're really lucky if you can see the pedestrian crossing you're really 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 paragliding pilot at the beginning you still have to think look lean brake 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 they're they're 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 over
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually
eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually touch on is uh the takeaway from your reserve toss in santa barbara this spring that was more not even the toss and all that that was that ended up being exciting but benign it was more the reason for it uh i think is is a great you know i've incorporated this in my own life it was that was that was pretty interesting
yeah yeah i think this i hope there's something to learn from from that and even if all my friends still make fun of me for that but so um i was flying um uh before i started flying i guess so with maria my wife um we have uh we set 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 off it was not really flyable yet it was hot and uh she decided to leave because we
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 mountain this windy 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 above the ridge we start going towards the back and and i'm following chris chris and i see he's also flying a two-liner mator 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 see it's maria and um i don't answer obviously because i'm in rough rough air you know it stopped ringing and uh 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
and all this 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 i'm like what happened and and she said your in-reach is not on so i go okay and i'm like you know so i hang up the phone put it back on the put it back on the on the flight deck and this second i put stick it to the velcro i lost probably seven percent of the gladiator one and i'm still in full bar so i'm in rough air on the xeno full bar lost the 70 big cravat start going straight into an auto and i'm not that high i don't know if you're like i don't know how high i am i am probably thousand thousand friend 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 i was like oh my god i'm not going to be able to fermentation fermentation fermentation
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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 struggle with it. It's very hard. And sometimes our partners end up pouring that anxiety into us, maybe even before we fly. And I think 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, even the night before a big flight,
that's not the time and the place to talk about.
And so when we do set certain rules, this, again, this is aviation. Those rules are there to keep us safe. I remember blaming Maria. I mean, I wasn't blaming Maria. I was pissed. Yeah, I did blame Maria, actually. I did. And it's stupid because I should have just not answered the phone right now. I should have just said, right there, I should have got 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. Instead of like, I lost it. I lost the idea that something happened to my kids and my wife.
My brain stopped working. And I just dropped everything except for the bar. And I got into serious trouble.
I mean, I guess this is a very important thing. 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. And it's, you know, and it was, she just loves you. And you're worried about her. And it's, you know, it was 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. Yeah. I didn't have that rule with my wife. 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 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 opportunities for that. You know, and 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. Ben and I were going to go fly over 2K to another hill and start there. I've 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 off again. I've lost two minutes, you know, it's no big deal. 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 year?
Yeah. Well, on that, in that position was if, 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 going to be an 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 I didn't hear a ring and maybe it wasn't. My phone is always on silent. I never have a ring. I, you know, already, I told you some Maria's nuts. She's crazy. She's really crazy. You know, let me say this. Another one. One was she, she's nuts, but she, but she's, but she's just, she's the most incredible human being.
I, everything that I, that you saw the clinic and everything, everything, all of this exists just because of her. I'm the SAV instructor. Everything else. She's actually. It's actually. You know
what? She might be nuts, but it's actually 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
you're not healthy. You know, she's going to listen to this. You're not good. Good.
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 got 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 in 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 year in Somali. So, uh, thank you for that as well. And thank you for the debrief and thank you for being you, dude. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you so much, man.
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