Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloudbase Mayhem. My guest today is a friend of mine, Thad Spencer, who I met through Bill Belcourt. He lives out in Minnesota, and this year he started flying in 2004, I believe, and this year realized a dream. He'd been chasing for a long time and flying 200 miles, one of the few that have gone down here in the States, and he's just an absolutely fantastic storyteller. This will make you laugh a lot. I promise you're going to have a lot of fun with this, but in this journey of his, which is kind of unusual, he's had some mishaps, and he's had some pretty fun adventures figuring out how to tow out there in the flatlands, and a lot of travel, and some great mentoring from good people, and just having a lot of fun on the way.
So, without further delay, please enjoy this really fun talk with Thad Spencer.
Thad, welcome to Mayhem, buddy, and you sent me this wicked email a week ago that took me a while to process because I thought it came in, and I thought, okay, this is beyond my ADD just to read this, and I know we're both susceptible to the same thing there, but the title of it is How an Addle-Brained Idiot from Minnesota Flew 228 Miles. Let's start right there. And you say, I'm not being humble. I am just being, I am an idiot, and that's not just humility. I don't think so, but I've hung out with you enough to know that you're not a completely addle-brained idiot, but that's a funny title. Let's start right there.
Well, I feel, thank you, and it's good to be here. Seriously, love the podcast. In terms of, yeah, my own self-worth, it's pretty close to how I feel about things that are technical. I'm really good at the emotional stuff, like I write music for a living, and I can sort of feel things, but man, I get together with a group of pilots. Yeah. And they start talking about, I don't know, what the fuck, you know, all the different things that are in your instrument, and I just, I don't know any of it. I literally don't know any of it. I can see that I'm going up because it makes that great little sound, and the little fucking bars go up, and I don't know what I'm going down because I don't have sync alarms, but I know the bars are going down. You
shouldn't. Chrigel even says you shouldn't, so we shouldn't. No,
ever. Anything
he says we should do,
yeah. It's funny. You mentioned Chrigel. I don't compare myself on any even remote level to that, amazing pilot, but in listening to his podcast with you, it was the most edifying thing for me was how much he talked about, I feel it in my stomach that feels like the right thing to do. It's like, fuck yeah, for the first time. It's not an engineering kind of perspective. It's an emotional perspective.
I think it's really interesting, too, how there's so many engineers in the sport, so there's definitely that side of it. There's the really analytical side, but I always feel a little bit better, too, about my... My weaknesses when I hear something like that from Chrigel, because I can't process any of that stuff. Revis is my team member in the X-Hops. He's a tech... He has all that stuff wired, and I'm totally on feel. I just can't do it. I can't make that stuff work.
Well, it's good to know. You were like me then. I fly with Revis as well, and he's like flying with Google. He's got everything at his disposal. He knows when the planes are coming through. He knows the weather. He knows all the wind, downwind. Wind, where we're going. He's already got the anemometers there coming up on his screens. It's unbelievable, and he still flies well. Yeah. Yeah.
I just can't process that much stuff.
No. You put two things in front of me, I'm going to screw both of them up. You put one thing, I can get through it. I feel that that's my biggest strength in paragliding is that I've whittled down what I've needed and what's important to me doing well. Then I've just rung that out as best as possible. Yeah. I've got to get as far as I can. Everybody comes at that differently.
I'm always curious how someone gets into it, but especially, we come from a place that we're not flying locations where there's, with very few exceptions in North America, do you rock up to a place and see people paragliding? It's not the Alps where you just see people, but you're in Minnesota. You don't see anybody paragliding.
No, I'll tell you, I have an interesting start to this sport. I was actually spending a summer with my family in New Jersey, of all places, on the Jersey shore. It's a place called Avalon. I saw a guy flying over in a hang glider trike, if you know what that is. It's a big-ass hang glider, a Rotex motor, three wheels. I thought, boy, that looks cool. What's that? I asked a couple of buddies of mine and they said, oh, that guy teaches. You should go. I was like, great. I go and I took, I don't know, three weeks or two weeks worth of lessons on learning how to fly a hang glider trike. Now, if you know me at all, that's going to go badly because there's a lot of rules to flying. They fly it out of an airport, which is funny. It's like, oh, fuck. I'm not going to follow those airport rules and learn them.
You're flying off this tar strip and the thing takes off. It feels like you're going a thousand miles an hour because your ass is like four inches off the ground. It's just, bam, you're holding this bar and you get the thing up into the air. He would have our lessons because you're flying a tandem. He's right behind you and you're sort of holding the bar in front. He'd do a midday. It's like July, just fucking noon. It's just thumping out there. The thing's just rattling around like a can of BBs. You're holding on to this bar and it's like, brr.
I'm like, so this sucks, first off. If this is what flying is, Maybe I don't ever want to fly, but I kept at it for long enough that I could take the thing off and I could land it, and when it was all those are pretty
important things right
Right, and I got—I wouldn't say I got it by any means proficient at it, but I got strong enough at it that I realized, yeah, I'm done with this thing. It's loud, it's the the airstrip, the hanger, just the whole like, I don't want to be around all of that. I'm not that guy. I'm never gonna say, "Kilo niner J stroke five taking off from runway right." Like, I'm never gonna be that guy. And I knew that about myself because I had a couple friends that were pilots. They go, "Go, let's go fly." I'm like, "Okay, well, let's go fly." And it was just so much chatter the whole time. They're just talking to somebody the whole fucking time. It's like, what about this is fun? You're just communicating with somebody, you're looking around the whole time. There's just a lot of drama and technical speak.
I guess that turned me off. Um, so so the hang glider thing didn't work, and that's all I knew, Gavin. I knew nothing else. I didn't know about any other conveyances. It's a couple years later, we're in California, and again I have my family and we're um, I have an office, uh, at that time I had an office in Venice for my business, and so we were spending the winters in in Malibu. We'd get a house and I'd commute to Venice, and somebody came over in a in a powered paraglider, okay? And I'm like, "Okay, what's this? That guy's legs are hanging out of that." That looks a little more free. It's still loud What's that? And I followed where this guy landed. I said, "What do you call that?" And he said, "Uh, it's called a power paraglider." I'm like, "Okay, sweet." And I looked it up, and I got some lessons. I was taking lessons on that conveyance, probably I don't know three days after I'd seen it, uh
this guy bob
Armand, he taught me in in Ventura, and very funny training. You basically do ground handling in a park for a couple of days, and then he literally puts a radio on your head and chucks you into the air and flies you around like an RC plane, and you're like, "Oh my god, what's that?" And you're just gripped, just gripped beyond, you're so puckered the whole time. And he would, you would launch on the beach and go right out over the ocean. Whoa, you know? So I'm three days into this thing, yeah, and you're just over the ocean, and then he, you know, you hook a left and then fly up the beach and then hook another lap, and he'd have you do these rectangle patterns. Really bad sport.
to be dyslexic dyslexic right?
Dude. And I am, I'm ever, I'm all of those things. I'm dyslexic, idiotic. Uh, but the, uh, the day that I, I was, I was doing my flight, you know, It's goofing around in the park and you're learning how the glider works and and then you know, you're just chucked into the air. And the day that I was was doing that flight, um, I met this guy named Phil Russman and he showed up with a video camera. Things like the size of a, you know, it's back in the day when video cameras were big things, yeah? Because this is like 2003 and and he's videotaping like, "Oh, perfect, yeah, let's videotape me because this isn't stressful, this is, this is awesome already." So, yeah, let's videotape me too, let's add that to the whole equation. And uh, so they do and and and luckily everything went fine, but afterwards he said, uh, Phil kind of approached me on the side, he goes, "Hey, by the way, if you like this, you'd really like just paragliding." And I'm like, "What is that?
What do you mean, just paragliding?" He's like, "Well, you can do this without the motor." I'm like, "Well, fuck, really cool." And so I I but I'm from the Midwest and you know, flying a thing off with off of the flats, perfect, right? You know, you fire the motor up and you go wang around. Well, as you've aptly pointed out with my add, I I'm soon a little bored and you know, somebody with my personality, bored, I'm just going to get into trouble, which I I started to sort of do. I started to kind of find things that were more mischievous to do with the power paraglider and um, I would buzz suburban neighborhoods, you know, like I do foot drags on people's houses, like uh, I'd come A little, because these, I, I'm not a big fan of the suburbs.
I live in the city, but I would fly this thing out in the kind of, in the suburbs, and I, I would take off from this little ultralight field that I found. This guy let me do that, and he's great. And then I just kind of look around for things to do, and one of the things I like to do is, there's a drive-in movie theater about two miles away. And the movie theater, I mean, movie theater screens, they're huge. They're just these huge things. And around dusk, when I'd be up goofing around, people would start to gather to see the film right in their cars, and there'd be this big semi-circle of cars parked in front of the, the screen. Well, amongst the big semi-circle is all the different roads that they have to, you know, to bring the cars in. And so there's this big playground for a guy like me, and every, and there's a captive audience.
They're just waiting for the fucking sun to go down so they can watch the movie. So I would come, I would come low behind the screen, so I would approach from, and so I'm coming in behind the screen, and just when I'd get up to the screen, I just give a little throttle, go over the screen, and then stall it and dive down at everybody and just mayhem. I would foot drag around the circled roads. just kicking up dust and making sound, and they're like eating hot dogs and, you know, waiting to watch some fucking Disney movie. And and I got addicted to it, like I would—I couldn't go up in the thing without going over there, yeah.
And it got so bad—well, not so bad, it was probably my fifth time doing it—and people would be out laughing and waving, and it wasn't like I was, you know, terrorizing anybody, it was just fun and probably illegal. And um, uh, well, like the fifth time, there was police there when I made my diving approach from behind the screen, and the police started to chase me.
They had a big net, yeah.
Well, they kind of waved at first, and they were kind of pointing me to land, and I'm like, I would just wave back at them like, "Hi," so
Uh, they tried to chase me and I'm like, well, this is interesting. They could never catch me because I would just kind of go one direction and where there aren't roads, yeah. And then I'd get like behind a tree line or something, get lower, and then they wouldn't know which way I would go. And then I would go back towards where the hangar was, and you know, it was like, it was so easy to evade them because
and golf, too. I'd love to fly that thing around golf courses and, oh...
That'd be brilliant, you're
right, because you again...
dive bomb the golfers, yeah.
And you dive bomb the thing. Is put it at idle, it doesn't make much sound, right? So get yourself set up, idle in, and you see some poor bastard just about to tee off, and you come in from... yeah, do you see coming from behind though? Quiet, that's the trick. You gotta be quiet, coming quiet, just idle, and then you get in right over his head, and then just, and so
Golfers love that kind of thing; they love scary, loud, sudden noises. Oh,
My god, and I just, I had to, I, you know, I had to stop. Basically, if I would have kept flying a powered paraglider, I'd have been arrested or dead, you know? So, um, luckily my, the, you know, Phil, who started to become a good friend of mine, had encouraged me. He sent me, uh, an issue of, um, Cross Country magazine, yeah? He said, "Dude, you know, check this out. You, you'd be into this." And so I, I, I went to San Diego and trained with a guy named Alan Chocolat, Alan Chocolate. He's unfortunately no longer with us, just a fantastic human being and an amazing pilot, and he just trained me all by himself, just, just he and I. Um, is that a Tori? No, you couldn't even fly Tori, to you were a P something or other, like a P2 or P3?
Yeah, I think, I guess P2. And no, we would go to like Otai and Little Black and, um, I don't know, Big Black and Marshall places like that, and, um, oh, it's just fantastic because
What? What year was this when about?
2004 2005 a
while ago. Okay, uh
Yeah, and so that, you know, he was one of these guys. It's like, "Listen, before we're even going to go back to the hill, I want to see you kite your glider with no hands, do a figure eight, and then, you know, bring it down again and—and don't touch," you can't touch the risers and stuff like that. And so he gave me these just deep, very profound ground skills. And not that I. any skills um but he certainly he certainly wasn't hucking me off the hill on unprepared and that was great yeah
Awesome, and uh, and so how did that turn into chasing it, where you're not normally chasing it? And what did you call it? Glacially flat, yeah?
glacially flat. Minnesota's so flat, it's almost downhill. I, I like to say it is really flat, and so it's like Holland flat. Uh, but, but it's, it's a... okay, so yeah, I'm living here and I'm trying to learn how to be a paragliding pilot because, yeah, I'm just super into it, just like you. It fell in, so you're just taking
trips. You're going to San Diego, you're going places to learn. I'm
Going everywhere, I'm going to Utah. You know, going back to California because that's where, you know, of course, you go to where you learn. Isn't that funny? You get this kind of migratory, kind of connection, sort of magnetic connection to wherever you've learned. That's kind of your home turf. And so I'd go back to California, and I felt like I, uh, learned a lot about, you know, SoCal is a very—it's a very unique flying environment. That's—that's not common. Um, you know, like, for instance, when you go to Europe, it's like, "Oh my god, what's this? A thermal that's big and round and I can make—yeah, you can make these giant turns and just, you know, all of that." So yeah, I started to go to Europe and and South America, and a couple years into doing that, I—I realized, well, this really sucks that I can't fly where I live, and it's not really helping my marriage and my ability to raise a family either because, you know, it's so addictive.
You just want to do it all day, sure, every day. And I have a job that lets me take off, so that's what I started to try to figure out how to fly Minnesota and that—that also is a just a clown show of errors making that happen. But I—I'd been with some friends in Washington state and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm going to go to Europe," and I'm in Oregon. We were on a little trip and we ran into this guy that was towing—we were just hanging out, I can't remember where we were specifically, but I remember we just happened to run into somebody towing paragliders out of with a pickup truck, and he had this kind of nice tow system, and he had the little—the little tower that comes off the tow system was poking out of the top of the pickup truck, so it's really slick. Yeah, and so we, of course, like, "Dude, how does this work?
Will you tow us?" And he said, "Well, can you guys fly?" We're like, "Yeah, we're really good." You know, idiots, but he did. He towed us. We did fine. And I'm like, "Okay, this exists. I need one of these." Well, you can't drag yourself behind a car, right? Yeah, so I did a little more research on the interwebs and and found, uh, scooter tows. Have you ever seen a scooter tow before? I've seen
them in magazines and stuff. I've never seen a lot
Well, you shouldn't and and, uh, you don't ever get behind one or in front of one or however the hell it worked. But, but I got all into that and and, at the time that I was reading about it, the the absolute stellar scooter to own was a Honda Elite 150. By the way, a super badass-looking 80s, um, scooter, really, really retro and beautiful, and I found one for 1,500 bucks. I found one on Craigslist, went and bought it. I even rode it around for a couple days because it was so badass, I almost didn't want to destroy it. It was so great, right? But then what you do is, you take off the front wheel and then you take off the back wheel and you throw the front wheel, wheel away, you don't need that anymore, and you just throw the front wheel away. You take the back wheel, you take the tire off, and you build—you take two big saucer plates of steel and you weld them onto the back wheel as big as it'll fit, put back onto the scooter, and that's how much line you get a hold, you know what I mean?
Because there's only so much clearance, sure. And then I bought from that, from that, that guy that owns towmeup.com, who's spectacular, and and he, when he found out what I was doing, he's like, "Oh, you're making a scooter?" So he goes, "Okay, hold on, before I sell you anything, there's some rules to this, buddy." And I'm like, "Really?" He goes, "Yeah." Do you know what step towing is? And I said, "No." Well, good, don't ever do it. And I said, "Well, now I have to know what it is, right before I cannot do it." And he said, "Well, what people will try to do is they'll because, you know, a scooter tow is pulling you towards it, so you have this very narrow bandwidth of when you're going up and then when you get to an angle such that it's actually pulling you down."
right so
What people do is, they'll, they'll go up, up, up, and then the scooter will release the throttle and the pilot turns around, flies away from the scooter, tow dragging the line. Now, you know, you're pulling line, which, by the way, just the slightest problem while that's happening, a little tangle, um, something, you know, the, the fair lead in the front, that's, that's guiding the line out, you know, has, has an issue and there's tension. Yeah, your gliders just go out under you at a heartbeat, right? Right, yeah. So anyway, uh, uh, what they do is then they go back down to the end of the field and then they turn around
And they step up another level, sure. And then they do the same thing, and then they step up, yeah.
We used to do the same thing behind a dinghy on the boat with net, never successfully ever, not once. With, yeah, we would try to do it, you know, when we didn't have a really long, you know, lagoon or something, we would try and do the step thing with the boat and it never worked. The pilot would always, yeah.
water. Well, I never got to that point. Thank, thank God. But, uh, we built the thing. I had this, this guy, Dan, who was, who was working—he, he owned a little, um, field that I took to, the told you about earlier, the little ultralight field. So, it's a little grass field. It's about 1,700 feet, and Dan, Dan goes, "What do you got there?" I said, "Oh, well, it's, it's gonna, it's gonna tow me up." And he told, "You up? What are you talking about?" He said, "It's gonna, it's gonna tow me up in my paraglider." He goes, "Don't you got a motor for that?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I do, but that's, I'm bored with that, and it's fucking loud." You're
reminding me of my favorite movie of all time, Fargo. Oh, yeah, yeah.
I'm from that part of the world, so I said, "Dan, what do you think about helping, you know, run this thing?" He goes, "Okay." And Dan was a pilot; he flies ultralight, so he knew about ultralights. He didn't know about paragliders, and he certainly didn't know about towing or paying towing, but we nonetheless put this thing together. We put on a little trailer, we dragged it to the end of the field, and the first thing we had to figure out is, well, how much do you twist the throttle? Because, you know, it's 150 goddamn cc's; it's incredibly overpowered for what it needed to do, sure. And we didn't know that, of course, at first. So my, my addle brain said, "Well, how about we do this? Let's just pull a bunch of line out and I'll get, as you know, like a couple football fields away, and I'm just gonna hold on to this drogue shoot, and then you put some trial on." Yeah, let's see how.
And he literally pulled me on my face, and I got dragged like a cartoon, like going down the field, because I wouldn't fucking let go of the drogue. I was so hell-bent on figuring this thing out, and so I'm like, "Grass stained, my whole front, you know, is grass stained, and I'm like, okay, Dan, that's too much throttle, so let's do half that." And we, we, we basically bracketed back until we got to, and then I, I put this little post, I, I, I, I clamped like a little stick on the throttle, so as he pulled it up, the stick, when it got vertical, that was as far as he was to, to, to use the throttle.
gotcha okay because
You know, I'm, I'm 1,700 feet away. I'm a spat, basically, from him, and we were so far away that no, he can't really see me. So we, we would radio, and I would say, "Okay, Dan, I'm gonna get ready, so in 30 seconds, start the toe." And then I would, you know, grab my risers, and I would either, if it was a reverse, get my glider up and get ready, and then I'd just stand there like an idiot in, in reverse, but, you know, waiting. And then you'd slowly see the toe line kind of start to vibrate, then start to come up off the ground, and then you get pulled the air. And the first time he told me, I swear to Christ, I, he almost pulled me to the ground. He just, he went way past. He got excited, he went double throttle, and, uh, I luckily was able to pin up it.
There was so much downward force as I was trying to pin off that I couldn't, I could barely pull the pin because, you know, it's just being yarded on by, by all the pressure. And long story short, I couldn't get more than 300 feet off toe, and you know, 300 feet is just a horrible low save, yes.
I actually got up and got out, and it was amazing, and and but most of the days it was just a nightmare, and I I would tow like 15 times watching the clouds build, you know, and be just beautiful, and
Perfect, yeah. You couldn't get there, yeah? So...
That's when I started to abandon the that toe system, and I started looking to pay out, which you know was a different deal. What I thought I would do is buy a winch, buy a truck, because at the time I drove like a car, and um, then find somebody to tow me, because you know there's like, I can do that. There's some retired guy, or you know, some ex-Navy pilot, I don't know, but I'll find somebody, yeah. And so I start looking on the internet, and I'm about to buy one of those cloud streets from Santa Croce, um, and and that's all looking good. And then a friend of mine who knows that I'm looking for one of these systems goes, "Dude, there's a guy in Minnesota that makes one," and he sends me a link. And this is still kind of early days of the internet, um, but
You know, there's enough internet, and sure enough, this guy named Steve Serene is selling this beautiful little tow winch, and he's—he's like a half an hour from from me where I live. Unreal, yeah. And I had no idea, and so I bought—I'm sorry, I didn't buy his tow system. I went and saw it and met him, and we got along. He's—he was retired at the time. I was just obsessed, so we fit together like, you know, a hand and a glove, and we just started towing. And a lot of times we go out, and I would tell him, and then he would tell me, and and vice versa. And um, as as things progressed, we started to—that's, you know, I'm I'm answering your first question, which is, how did you get to start chasing it? That's when the idea came to me that, hey, what's the longest flight in our state? And maybe there could be, so you're
You're, you're doing some XC at this point. You're traveling, you're, you're going south and you're going to Roldanillo. Where are you going? You're, yeah, yeah, you're piecing it together in terms of like, what, what are you flying at this point? What wing and what kind of distance are you doing back?
I think back then, when we were getting that to, I might have even been still on like a a c
Um, because I remember getting the delta and then, and I was towing on that boy. I wish, I wish I had a better brain for those kinds of... I've listened to your podcast and guys of all back in '97, I was flying the adele with six cells and it's like, god damn, I can't remember what I did yesterday. Um, but I'm probably, I'm not flying the hottest glider by any means. That's okay. So you're flying a
mid-range glider, and you're—what are your distances back then? What are you doing? 50k, 100k, 200k? Well,
I was always in miles because, even though I would fly in Europe, I'm still just miles. So, back then, I remember the first good flight was like 70 miles. I remember putting that, and that took me like all day, you know, because I'm just so stupid and slow, and I'm not leaving lift early, you know? I'm making all the, all the classic mistakes, but, but, but realizing, "Holy shit, there's some potential here," yeah, you know? And, and previous to that, our historic OG pilot of Minnesota, his name is Paul Lundquist, and we have to put a big shout out to Paul Lundquist because he got it going way back in the day. He's an ex-hang glider pilot, um, and he's, you know, been around, and he had his, his record flight at that time was, was 52 miles, and probably on just one of the, you know, you can imagine the gliders they were flying back in the day probably had four cells, and you know
They're probably tugged up with twine, binder twine, you know, but, but getting it done. And, and so Paul was also a resource of, you know, I learned a lot from him just about, sort of, um, what kind of weather he found to be the best, you know, sort of days and what time of year that, that might be. And at the time I was thinking, oh, midsummer is really when it's going to be. And so I was chasing it a lot and, frankly, when the season's almost over, our season is really about early spring and it's, and that might be similar to you. I've heard you
talk about it a lot, and I've heard you talk about it a lot. You
Talk about Sun Valley booming in in the early spring, and that's when it's really great here because the fields are black, um, there's cool air giving you a great lapse rate, you know, lots of sun with really cool air.
And um, you talk about how cold it is. I, I didn't appreciate that you're, you're, you're way for those listening, uh, who aren't as familiar with the states as is those of us in the states, you're way up north. It's cold, yeah.
Canada isn't that far away, right? You know, I mean, yes, it's cold here, and I have, I can impart some wisdom about keeping, keeping warm in, in those flights. But you know what? The coldest flight I've ever had in my life was a couple years ago with Revison and Gavin was, uh, at Marshall Southern California. I froze just beyond. It was one of those tall days where maybe you're getting to 10, 10 grand, and I, my hands became frozen claws. I, I remember they were, they were unrecognizable as hands to my body. I would look at them and see that they were hands, but could not recognize them as such and be connected to my body in any way. And it was just pain and, oh
It hurts so bad. It hurts so bad. I had one last spring training here where I got pretty tall, and I had my electric gloves and all that, which don't do much, and uh, I mean, I, I lost the feeling in three of my fingers for over three months, and oh my god, I've talked to doctors about that. It's not good for you. I mean, that's no
tissue damage, yeah. Is that so? That's right, that yeah.
It didn't look like frostbite; it didn't get black or anything, but I just had a guy on the show, Justin Grisham, an ER doc, and he, he kind of laughed when he heard. He said, "They said, 'Yeah, you shouldn't be doing that to yourself. It's... we got to take care of ourselves a little better when we're up flying,' because you just keep going because you're having one, you know, but right, God, it hurts." Oh, and
And, uh, well, when you and I flew Blackhawk this year, I was, I, I went down from my hand, same thing. I was just like, "That's it, I can't take this anymore. My hands hurt so bad." That was the
same way that was freezing.
But I do, I do have a tip, and and you probably know this as well, and Revitz actually, I think, uh, gave this one to me, so I've got the best electric gloves that I can find, and I've literally, I've, I have every pair that you can buy, um, and you know, they're all about the same, as you know, but they do offer some level of heat, but you have to have chemical warmers inside the electric gloves, and I have learned to put chemical warmer on top of my hand and at the inside of my palm, so I have two
gloves, and then I carry two more backup chemical warmers in my my harness because mid-flight, regardless of how much heat they—oh, these will last seven hours. It's bullshit; they last about four, right? Yeah, I mean, they'll still—there's, they're still warm, but they don't have that hot warm, how
Do you manage the transition, though? I mean, the days that are really cold like that, I just—I mean, the thought of taking my hand out of my glove for a moment is just... it's terrifying, because you know how you get that where you can't get the hand back in and you're just like, fuck, I'm hosed here.
Well, okay. So A, you just have to bite that. bullet because, you know, I, I tell myself, "Yeah, my hands are going to get super cold for a minute, but then I'm going to warm them up." Because so what I do is, while I'm—you know, you have to do this on glide, of course. You know, you're in your—you're hawking huge bar, so you're like, you're paranoid already, yeah, you know? And and so, you know, kind of keeping an eye on the glider and you—you know, you're not holding the risers and and I grab, uh, my my spare ones and I open them up and get them out using my gloves, you know, biting them with my teeth or whatever. And then when it's time, I've got those kind of sitting in my lap or whatever, and you know, you're going to mess that up too. And so it's careful not to drop them into the harness, and then I just take one glove off, take out the chemical numbers. Now, by the way, I don't know if Revis has shown you this too, but do you have those little wrist, um, yeah, they're—I call them wrist cozies, yep.
those are yeah
And I pull those up, right? And so that's where I've tucked in the ones that are on the top of my hand, and I have one in the bottom, so they're holding the chemical warmers onto my my hand. So I go, pop up, throw those in the harness, pop pop, put the new ones in, put the glove on, and then I do the other hand.
So you do one on the palm and one on the back, yeah?
Because that's where your blood comes in; it comes in the top of your hand, I guess, and then it goes to your finger. So those two things have helped me a great deal. And then the other thing you can do—it's much more difficult with a two-liner, as you know—is mittens are the are the, you know, I've got the giant, giant arctic explorer; they're just the hugest down mittens you've ever seen. And I can grab the top, you know, on the xeno, I can. What I'll do is I'll I'll hold with on top of the toggles with those mittens, and so you kind of hang like an ape in a way. Instead of using your fingers, you have to use your whole palm, and that works. I get used to it, and by the end of the flight, it feels natural. I'm
Having some pretty good luck with, I mean, I think this is an important part of the discussion. It's, you got to keep your hands warm, but I'm having some pretty good luck with, uh, with over mitts, you know? So just take a
Look at that, and I'll see you next time.
down sleeves, cut them off. You know, you see these guys in Pakistan flying like that all the time.
Yeah, but does it work? Because it always looks like a handful of trouble to me, like, wait, that's always on my risers.
It's another thing that is problematic, yeah, for sure. What I'm doing now is because if you properly take it all the way up over the hand and do some kind of cinch off, then I'm freaked out. What if something happens, get into my reserve, can I get it all out of there? Yeah, type of stuff I really don't like. You know, a lot of people will have them cinched off above the toggles and, and so you're, you're those are on your glider, but I don't like that because you're launching with those and, you know, and I don't like stuff, and I usually don't like launching with even gloves on. It's just habit. I don't, I don't like having anything in the way. I want to be able to feel everything when I'm launching, so, so that's problematic. So now what I'm doing is, I just, I haven't rolled up on my wrist like you're talking about, you know, they're pretty loose. They don't have any cinch straps or anything, just rolled up over my wrist, so they're totally out of the way when I'm launching.
And then, and just thinner gloves, then just normal gloves, and then when I fly, I pull them up over and I kind of just hold them like that with my fingertips, so the fingertips can still get a little bit cold, but you can kind of do it in a way where you can pink and then still hold everything and then they're, so you're self-holding in the way, yeah, I'm
So okay, so instead of them being above the the your your your toggle hand is inside it, but you're holding the downy thing together over the handle with your fingers.
Exactly, because I just... they're, they can be cinched down on the forearm so you don't lose them. I'm not worried about that, but I just don't like having any cinching up by the hands because if you, you know, if you suddenly got to get out, then I like to have a nice clean to go to the reserve, and that's working pretty well again. It's... there's some fumbling around, it's not awesome on the bees, it's... yeah, you know, like you said, it's, but you get used to it. I
Also had a real hard time with keeping my torso warm. Well, my torso I can keep warm, but my legs, yeah. So, you know, even though you're in the pod and you and I find the same pod, and it, it is the Cadillac of warmth in terms of it's pretty good about keeping the wind out and it's pretty thick neoprene, but it is still, I, you know, you're, you're at those kind of, you know, I think this year on my big flight, I think it was 11 degrees at base, and you know, you got that wind and it's just really hard to keep your body. And I'm 150 pounds, so I don't have a lot of extra anything. Down pants, Bill hit me to down pants. He even sent me a link to buy these, and you look like a complete, you look like you're going to a German discotheque when you're wearing them. They're like, they're black and they've got these little squares and you're going to go out dancing in them.
They're really kind of, they're a little tight-fitting, but what's amazing is they fold into a little tiny pack. You can chuck it in the back of your kit and then just before you launch, you pull them on over your jeans or whatever pants you're wearing, and those changed everything. I at least a 50 upgrade in warmth with the down pants.
I mean, they always say that, don't you? I mean, to be warm, to keep your feet and hands warm, skiing, you got to keep your core warm. So it makes sense that we... I mean, the first my big upgrade this year was the 800 fill massive Patagonia jacket. Yep, I got it big down. Oh, it's so cozy, I'll sleep on it, but
I put that, I put, I put more down under that thing, like that's my over wrap, yeah. Yeah. But I have, I have like a multiple layer one, layer two, and then wool. And then I use, then I have one of those smaller Patagonia down sweater things. And then I put that bad boy on and then I wear goggles. balaclava goggles, a lot goggles, maybe they were... that was a huge thing. And I have bad eyes for me too. Do you have, do you have glasses? Do you wear glasses? Yeah,
Just a couple years ago, my eyes started going bad really quick and, uh, so now I'm, you know, in the X-ops, I've got my goggles with the corrective on the inside. That's
What I got, I just got those. They're amazing. They're
Great, and I, I just, I realized I, I can't see birds and stuff anymore, you know? It was my, I'm the distance one, I can't see in the distance and so
That's, that's me too, yeah.
And that made a world of difference. Well, how do you see your instruments? That's my problem now. Is I can see my instruments without them, but with with them I can't see my instruments anymore.
Okay, I got it exactly. I got a great tip for you: fuck the instrument, and by that I mean, dude, I'm flying downwind straight as I can, right? I don't need anything. I mean, the only time the instruments become an issue is when they start telling me I'm in airspace, which you know, at some points they do, and then I'm like, "Fuck." And then I have to lift up my goggles and look. It's like, "Oh, fuck, it's some municipal airport. Shut the fuck up and let me fly." And then I just keep going. Uh, other than that, no, I don't have to look at the instruments now. If I'm flying in a competition, which I don't do—I've done them in the past, but I've just really not—I'm not well suited for competition either because, again, it has rules and it... they want you to do a certain thing, and I may not want to do it that day. So competitions are great for me. So I don't really have to see my instruments that much, but it is an issue.
You're right. But boy, to see birds and to see the... topography and everything in real clarity. I start, I'm 58, so I'm a good what, 10 years older than you.
Imagine, yeah, it's pretty close. Okay,
Well, your eyes start once they start going, it really progresses. It's a downward slope, and having those, uh, so anyway, I didn't fly with goggles for many, many years because of this, because I was flying with prescription sunglasses and tons of air was getting in, and I put the goggles on and it's just, it's almost like a cockpit you
know, yeah, and it's a lot warmer. I also, I don't really like full face helmets. I went through a period where I didn't, but I don't, I don't like that. I like just a light norm, so you have to have the goggles again just for warmth. And I mean, you know, people ask, "Oh, what's your favorite bit of gear?" I gotta say, it's maybe the buff of everything.
Yeah, I know, man. I love it. I got those coming; I've got them everywhere. They're coming, they're everywhere. I got buffs.
Everywhere, but I had a day in at the Nationals where suddenly my 15 buffs didn't make it. I had one day without a buff and I just, I was so stressed out about the sun. Oh my God, I'm going to get fried. You're going to have a buff. It wasn't cold there. I didn't have to worry about. it for that, but I like them for everything—the buffs
Oh yeah, because your nose gets, my nose just gets roached, and I, I wear the nose tape, dude. I'm the, I'm the clown on launch with the, I literally make my own nose tapes. I buy this, I do, I buy this bandage. It's just like white tape. Bandage comes in a roll, it's about three inches across, and I had bought a little nose tape on, on online, and it fit pretty well, but I made some adjustments, and then I made a little cardboard template of that. I put that down on the little, you know, tape, and I draw around it with a Sharpie, and I cut them out, because I mean, you only have so many launches a year, so you know it's like, okay, well, I'll make 50 of these, yeah, and they're amazing. You do look like an ass clown with the thing on, especially like, you know, in South America, they're like, you're already the whitest thing on the mountain, and then you add white tape to your nose like some sort of idiot, um, but god, that changed everything, because then I put a buff up to it, and I don't have that burned, because there's no amount of sunscreen that will ever protect your nose from being in the air of six hours or whatever, yeah.
no that's true well hey you didn't you didn't put this in your write-up but because we both have this mutual friend, Bill Belcourt, who was the first guest on the show way, way, way back when. Yeah. I wanted to talk about that because I might be completely wrong here, but I believe you and I met in Columbia the first time. And it seemed like, you know, there was this, obviously there's this desire to fly, you're traveling a bunch, you're trying to get hours, kind of hard to get hours in Minnesota. You figure out the tow thing, that helps. But then you also, and I don't know what the timing of this was, but you decided, okay, I need a proper mentor. And you looped Bill in and you guys have been taking these trips.
And the last time I flew with you, you totally outflew me. I feel like you're this. There was. There was some connection here where you started really putting things together. And I'd love for you to just talk because you've got access to one of these brilliant minds in our sport more so than most people do. And I'd love to know what, because you have really started, things are clicking, you're figuring it out. You just had this, you know, you've had this 200 mile dream, which you pulled off the spring. We'll talk about that with the big flight. But I'd love to know some of that chronology and what you've learned from. Bill Belcourt. Oh,
well, there's a lot to learn. First off, he's probably one of the most decent human beings we've produced on this planet in a long time. My relationship with Bill goes way back. Oddly enough, I think it was my first trip to Valle de Bravo one winter. And previous to that, I had done some training with Ken Hudon-Jorgensen. I don't know if you know Ken. Yeah, Ken's awesome. Just a stellar human being. Yeah. And also a really good fit for me. Because he's also a very intuitive person. He's not all about the sort of, you know, math, mathematic reasons why it's going to be a good day. He has more. So we connected really well. And Ken happened to be in Valle de Bravo. And I'm not kidding you. I'm just going, looking for a cup of coffee. And I walk into this cafe and there's Ken.
And Ken's with this guy with like these white Oakley glasses on. And I'm like, hey, Sporto, nice glasses. Like, I don't know. I made some comment about his fucking Sporto glasses. And he laughs. And we just got along right away. And I just, you know, just giving him shit about his bald head or whatever. And every day we would meet at the same coffee shop and we'd go flying. And Bill was there with Ken that year guiding. Yeah. So they had a little group of people. And we would see them throughout the course of our time there. But we were just there, you know, solo goofing around. And then I just would run into Bill in other places. And we were always friendly because he's just such a decent guy. And he likes to goof off. And he likes to talk. And he likes to smack and laugh. Yeah. And I also would almost rather do that than anything on the planet.
So we had that connection. And then when Bill left BD after they merged and things got a little less fun to be at Black Diamond, I encouraged him to come to Columbia with a group of guys that I had together. And I'm like, dude, you should just be full time just helping people be better paragliders. And I don't care. Well, anybody. Anybody that knows anything about you will pay dearly to do that. And why couldn't that be your career? And, you know, that's kind of a it's it's pretty bad idea, frankly, because there's no cheaper group of people on the fucking planet than paragliding pilots. But but I said, I would love to you know, I would love to take this to another level because I felt my flying was getting to a certain point.
And I was having a hard time. It's really hard when you're by yourself. I fly by myself. I don't have a big flying community around me. I don't have people that I'm chasing. You know, and that's a big that's a big way to get better at anything. When I got better at music is because in this local music scene of Minneapolis, I just wanted to be the best I could possibly be. And there were so many amazing people. And you chase so much harder when there's somebody showing you the bar. Right. But when you're flying, towing here and having a few long flights or whatever, it's all built on my own sort of motivations and my own kind of skill set. And it's like a bad feedback loop. When you're not very good and you're feeding off of your own fear, not very good news. You don't get much better fast.
So long story short, Bill Bill's was like, yeah, let's do that. So we all went to to to Columbia together and and Bill was a little worried. He said, you know, what do I need to prepare? I feel like I need to prepare a lesson plan or I'm like, dude, just fly with us. It's it's going to be edifying no matter what we do. Let's just fly. And then we can talk about it. We can talk about how we flew that day and then we can talk about how we can fly better. And it was just great. Everybody on the trip, you know, first off, you get to know him better and it's just it's just a fabulous onion. You peel off layers and it's just deeper and deeper. He's not just an amazing pilot. He's just a really thoughtful human being that understands a lot about a lot of things. Engineering, he understands about I mean, he understands about my business.
He's given me fantastic advice about my business and he can tell you about cars. I mean, there's. And anything he doesn't know about, but maybe I've learned more than anything is watching him climb like his ferocity in a climb and his just razor sharp focus is is a joy to be around and it lifts you up. And that's not a pun, but it really does, because there's this great quote from Bruce Goldsmith's book. And I hope that I'm I'm quoting this correctly, but you should never be out climbed by anyone or anything. A paraglider. A paraglider is no less capable in a thermal than a bird and a bird is no more capable than we are. You're all in the same lifting air. You should all be going up equally. And so if you're being out climbed, you're a dumbass.
Yep. And
man, when I read that, that made a lot of sense because I have been out climbed my whole fucking life. And you know what I mean? Like, it's it's so easy to be out climbed if if you have the kind of brain that I do, because it's hard to have that laser focus. And if you don't have the laser focus, then you better have thousands of hours. Hours of climbing so that it's bone marrow deep in you, which, again, I had neither. I'm a you know, my my brain's like a like a tuna fish can with a BB rolling around in it. And then I've got like not enough hours under the glider. So climbing was everything to me, because let's face it, if you climb faster, you go further. Everything gets better when you can climb well. And so just spending time with him and and being just out climbed by him repeatedly to the point where it's like, wait a minute.
Now I'm starting to hang on, you know, and then just fighting it out, you know, and that was that was absolutely seminal for me. And then to be able to, you know, in the van on the way back to say, hey, you know, today, when we got to this point, it was interesting decision when we all decided to such and such. And then to be able to debrief with someone with his encyclopedic memory of a the flight, but also this deep knowledge about paragliding and free flight in general. It's. You put those two things together and yeah, you're with it's a master class. And so over the years, we've just gotten to be very good friends. And I it's just it's an amazing gift to to have him in my life. And in terms of my flying.
Yeah, I mean, seriously, Gavin, I'd be I'd be still chasing that seventy six mile flight in Minnesota and being thrilled to do it had I not made that connection and and really decided to to get out. This. It's harder. And most of the things that Bill talks about is just you already have this skill and he just brings it out of you. Like, there's so many things we innately already have if we just listen to them and we shut shut up some of the the fear, some of the anxiety and, you know, Bill, enough to know he doesn't have a lot of fear and anxiety in his life. He just he just goes at it really hard. He knows that he can do it and therefore it shall be done.
And there's no question in it. And you got a guy like me up there with my knees rattling around, you know, and and you around him enough through osmosis, you start to realize, well, wait, I do have I've got this and yeah, this launch is a little goofy and maybe the conditions today don't look as prime as they could. Maybe it's a little windy, but that's OK, because I have the skills to to make make my way through this. And that was a huge, huge step in my progression. Was knowing that I have it now. I know how to climb. I know where to get the climb. And if it's there, I shall do as best as anyone can do in this climb.
Was that was that a product of removing doubt or increasing confidence? I think it's I
think it's two things, because I said in my note to you that it felt like climbing felt like in the early days, like magic, like coincidence or luck. Wow. I went all the way up. Because it didn't happen all the time. You'd find a similar climb and you'd fall out and you couldn't get back into it or you didn't understand that. Well, actually, that wasn't a full climb. That was a bubble, you jackass. And there is no more to it or whatever it is that you've learned as you as you progress. But in the early days of climbing, you you first start thinking, OK, I can turn circles and lift. Look at me. I'm a paraglide pilot. So watch out, fuckers. And then you realize, oh, wait. But those guys are doing so much. They climbed right through us and are already on glide while we're still piddle paddling around, you know, mincing around in this climb.
There's always another there's always another level. And I think that for me, realizing that now I think that I can carry every climb to its highest potential. I can not only get to to the to the top of it, but I'll get there as quickly as possible. I will find the best core and I will stay in it because I've just been banging. My head against this for long enough that I know what it feels like. And I don't it doesn't consume my brain like it used to because it used to just it was everything. How does this work? Why is he going? What? And now it's just ship. Here it is. And now I can get on the radio and go, guys, there's a better core over here. Check it out. You know, and and flying with people, you know, and learning, learning how to see in another glider the potential of their climb versus yours.
And if they're in a better place and, you know, all of that stuff just comes from time. And you can't you can't get it right off the bat. So to answer your question horribly, was it confidence or less doubt? I think it was the confidence gave me less doubt.
Chicken and the egg thing a little bit. How I've been hearing this lately from folks that paragliding has made them a better person. This is something I've always when I'm around Bill, I always feel like a better person. Well,
he's a good influence. He makes you want to be. But no, I think that he has such a mentorial, if that's a word. Yeah. Mentorial presence. You want to impress him. And more importantly, you just want to be a better a better person around him because he's such a good person. He doesn't take anything lightly. He thinks through everything. It's not just nothing is willy nilly, you know, and as you've already perceived with me, most of it's willy nilly and just kind of falling out of my ass. Whereas with him, if he's going to speak, it's going to have meeting and it's going to have message. And so perk up your ears. I don't know if I'm a better person being I know I'm a better person being around him, but he's he sets a high bar.
And I know you've been through the rescues with with Kiwi and such. It really seen he'll just he'll drop everything to help somebody else out.
Do you do you think flying has made you a better person just going through it? Because it's I think it's kind of brutal. It is kind of a. It kicks your ass. Well, I mean, the whole metaphor being high and low and, you know, I mean,
yeah, yeah, I come from a I come from a business that's not really great on you in terms of, you know, if you want to excel in the in the in the music business, you're going to deal with a lot of rejection and you're going to deal with it early on and you're going to deal with it later. And so feeling the highs and lows of my career in that regard has definitely influenced me. But coming into. This sport, you know, it's one of the reasons I guess I didn't really excel in competition because I felt like, man, my whole life is competition. I'm constantly trying to get the best gig and, you know, propel my business into the best possible situation. And I live all of that for my recreation. I think I want to just really enjoy the love of this and the beauty of it.
So I don't know if I've been a I don't even know if I'm a very nice person to be perfectly honest, Gavin. So you're making it a huge assumption. But I. I think that I think that it definitely teaches you humility, because if you don't look at it from that perspective, you will never grow. And for me, I think I knew I thought I knew so much in the early days of this sport. Guys, look at me. I'm launching great. I'm climbing out. So come on. You know, and Jesus, what I didn't know and what I don't know right now would fill volumes. So I think that that humility and that respect. For what a deep sport this is and and what it really takes to be excellent, that's something I definitely possess, whether that makes me good or bad, it at the very least makes me at least humble in one aspect of my life.
What do you think has contributed the most to your pulling off this big flight this spring? What was the or maybe give me three things? What how did the stars align there?
I probably couldn't come up with one. But. But I'll say this, and I think that, again, that onion analogy has been used in this conversation by me already once, but it's it's apropos here in that you see this goal and you think, oh, well, I mean, you know, you just get good. And yeah, once you're good, you're downwind, baby, it's going. And so you start with that, which you need to have, just like when you're starting a business or if you're chasing a girl that's way prettier than you. You have to have. That blind ambition, right, because otherwise you won't do it. And so, a lot of blind ambition was what drove me early on, and not not seeing a lot of people around me doing it, other than when I would be on trips, was also maybe beneficial to keeping me still inspired and not know how bad I was.
And then failure is this amazing lesson, because you see this amazing day, you see the cloud streets, you know that those are cloud streets that carry people. cross country, you know, but you end up on the ground in 52 miles like that is a wonderful instructor of fuck. What am I doing wrong? And I remember there were a couple of really long flights like Bill and I would have. We had this relationship where I could call him and debrief. This is before we started to go on trips. I just knew him well enough that I could say, OK, this happened to me like the first time I spun my glider, for instance, I remember calling Bill and go, God, this weird thing happened today. I was going along and, you know, and he's like, well, that you spun your glider. Did you have a lot of break on one side?
I was like, yeah, of course I did. I was in a steep turn and he would take me through very, very kindly. And the same thing happened on flights that I felt like I had it. And all of a sudden I was on the ground and we would sort of debrief. And, you know, he gave me a little tips along the way. Some things were like, well, listen, you were under a cloud, but it wasn't pulling, but it looked like it was pulling. Do you think that? Even if you would have stuck around, that cloud could have rebooted because it was a cloud you had seen for, say, you know, three miles. You know, I might have been watching this cloud for 15 minutes before I got to it and then it wasn't pulling. And often what I would do in that case is I'd go and I'd push I'd push low downwind to try to get to something else and then eventually dirt like a like the fool I was.
And Bill helped remind me sometimes that's not the play. It's to wait. This is going to reboot because clouds come in cycles. And have you you had been watching that one long enough that it probably was cycling because, you know, it'd be one of these. I remember the day. I remember this cloud. I remember this conversation with Bill because it was a big cloud that you should have been yanking me up. And it wasn't. And I'm sure he was right because I've used that in in in subsequent flights that sometimes a cloud that looks like it's really going to work might just be at neutral or even, you know, no pulling whatsoever. And I'll stick around, I'll just wait. And even though I may be losing a little altitude, I don't get frustrated and I sit with it. And sure enough, it and it and it it starts to re-pull.
It's a reboot because whatever triggered it the first time will probably trigger it again. Right. So it's a lot of little things. But again, I'm answering your question poorly. But what I learned, if anything, is how much I had to learn and how much better I had to get. Yeah. Flying a paraglider before I was allowed to be in this rarefied air. I mean, you know, a 200 mile flight in the United States, there's like 10 of them.
Yeah, I don't
I don't even know if there are 10, you know, in terms of records in the United States. Yeah. You have to find the weather pattern. You have to be ready for it. You have to be available. You got to launch as early as humanly possible. You have to survive that horrible part of the day in the morning where you really shouldn't be flying. But you have to be because that's what's going to give you the extra kilometers to get. You have to climb. You have to climb super fast. You have to know when to leave the lift and to know that you don't need all of the base. You don't need to get to base today. Just take it to five grand and go. Because look at, boom, there's another one. Boom, there's another one.
Yeah. I like that in your write up. I think about that with my my big one here all those years back that it just, you know, at the end of the day, I felt I just thought, God, I was in sync today. And really what it was, was just that, you know, every time I was leaving a climb, something was popping. And so it was so much better to leave, but that was dictated because I was always trying to stay below 18,000, you know, it was a massive day here. And often that can be, I hate the really high days because they're, you're, you're, you can't take advantage of it if you're trying to stay legal. And it's hard to, you know, when it's, when you start getting up tall and it's just sucking harder and harder and harder, it's hard to stay low enough. But that was the kind of day where it was just go because you could see it. And then there would be another one.
And it's, I think it's important when. You're really trying to fly distance to, you got to stay in sync because when you're, when you fall out of sync with that cycle that you're talking about, it can be a long struggle to hold on and wait. And, you know, it can be 45 minutes or whatever, and you've got to, you got to stay in the game. So you got to do what you got to do, but it's, you don't, you want to stay in sync and you, and I liked how you said, you don't need to top it out on those days. You got to keep moving.
Well, and even, even push, push on the low side. Like if you can get there. Well. The formula that I like to use is if I've had three climbs and every time I went on glide, I watched, I do look at my instrument occasionally, but I look like, okay, how much altitude did I lose before I got to that next climb? And by the way, this could be on a blue day or a cloud day. It doesn't matter. Yeah. And I went from, let's say base is 7,000 feet. And when I got the next climb, it was 4,000 feet. Okay. So there's now I know. And then by the way, I, I confirm that because the next glide, yep. It's about the same 38, 4,200 feet, whatever. Now. Now I know now I've got this little clock that tells me there's a climb. I'm I'm at 4,000. Now there should be a climb around here because I've been going downwind straight, just like I've been doing, because as you know, they, the patterns do line up.
Yep. And so that was hugely helpful for me to know that, listen, if I'm at six grand and I, if I can see the cloud, I know how much altitude I need. I've learned that over the years that that's only two miles away and I can get there in such and such amount of time and how much bar I need to push. And, and if you do it right, you don't even have to circle. You just, you just come under the cloud and you just get the altitude you need flying straight. Maybe I come off the bar a little bit, just slow it down a little bit, but get that altitude and then continue to fly straight back on the bar. And at the meat of the day, that's all you should be doing on those big days. You shouldn't even have to turn. You should just be going under these beautiful clouds with just slowing down by getting off the bar, getting tons. You know, you get the altitude you need to get to the next one. And you, I believe they call it dolphining when you're, when you're flying like that.
And any big flight I've had, that's the meat of the day has been that, but like anything like music or anything else, it has a tempo. The day has a tempo, but the tempo changes. And if you don't understand that the beginning of the day is slow, middle of the day is booming fast. And the end of the day is slow. Again, you will also fail every goddamn time, which I did over and over because I would get into that heart pounding, awesome middle day mentality. And when I would get to the end of the day, when the, when the end of the day was saying, Hey, dipshit, slow down, because you're about to fly through something you need to make some turns in because your next climb is even further away and it's going to be less strong than this one. And until I really started to feel that bone marrow deep, I would fuck up every time at the end of the climbs or at the end of the day, how I was, how I was appraising the climbs and the speed that I needed to fly.
Yeah. Tell me, tell me more about changing gears. We talk about that a lot. And that's a big thing in comps and racing. You know, if you, if you just stay in that. That mode, that middle day mode, and you don't recognize boom, something's changed. You get a little bit of serious, a little bit of wind, whatever you've got to slow down. But I think especially lower hour pilots really struggle with that is recognizing it, you know, being in sync, understanding it. How can guys like us who are less strategic and maybe observant than someone like Bill, how do you, how have you learned how to figure that out?
Well, the, the climbs tell you, don't they? So at the middle of the day, you know, now, by the way, in the flats, we have very different climb strength than we have in the mountains. So when you're in the mountains, you've got mountains coalescing several thermals that might make one large thermal. So, you know, you're getting those sort of robust stout climbs that we just don't get in the Midwest in the spring. They're pretty stout, but you know, so let's say the day is, is giving me 800 foot a minute climbs. Like those are the, those are the good climbs of the day. If you're not aware enough to see that. Late. Later on in the day, the best you're finding is 600 or 500. You've really missed something important. The climbs are telling you the solar gain, the solar energy has slowed down. So it takes you longer to get up.
So by virtue of that, make sure maybe this time I'm not going to be as aggressive about when I leave, I'm going to top this out. Right. Cause the climb told me I should, and I guess I started to be more, more. I opened my, my ears a little bit more in my, my.
Climbs just tell me how fast to fly when they're booming and the clouds are really, you know, that, that they have those dark bottoms and the sharp edges and, you know, it's just like that thing's pulling, I'm going boom. But all of a sudden two things actually happened. The clouds start to have that softer kind of look to them at ladder in the day. They don't have maybe the same height. They might kind of spread out a little more. They're not as sort of and tight and kind of hamburger bunny. They might be a little bit more windblown or just a little less. You see that and you feel them. And now it's time to slow the hell down and now don't go too slow because you don't want to blow that. But man, being more conservative at the end of the flight has saved me so much pain of, of dirty, you know, I mean, last year or the year before, I think I dirted one 89 or one 92 or something like that.
It's just like, Oh God damn it. Cause there was more, there was more flying to be done.
Tell me about your concept of micro and macro.
Well, Again, this is also one of those simple things that I think is very obvious, but, but it's easy to overlook. And I just was giving a pilot advice the other day. And he said, so when we had a, it was obvious we were going to have a nice cloud day. And he said, how do you know what cloud to go for? And I said, well, depends where you're looking at it from what, what altitude I said, when you're lower, it's easier to see what cloud to go for. But when you're higher, the best way to see what cloud to go for is to look at the ground because it's shadow will tell you, you know, whether it's, whether it's solid and, and strong, or if it's starting to break apart and it blew his mind, he was like, Oh my God, I've never thought of that. And, um, I don't, I don't know if someone taught me that, or I taught it myself. I don't, I don't know, but that was a pretty big revelation that it's not always where you think you need to look to get information about what to do next in terms of macro and micro.
Not thinking what the most important thing for me is to not think micro when I'm in a macro setting and to not think. But what I mean by that is that when I'm high and at base and in tweaking my line, or I might be changing cloud streets or making some sort of an adjustment that's macro thinking. And all I want to do is look at the landscape, the clouds and the topography. Now we don't have much topography, but I call towns topography because sometimes I like to fly in a line that might align me with certain small towns because there. They're like little triggers and, um, they can be very beneficial when you're low to fly over a town that has cement and structures that are breaking, that might be triggering and such.
I only want to think about big macro thoughts. So, okay, this, this street is definitely forming and it has more length than the street to my left or to my right. I also think about, um, in, in, in, in the United States, we have very beautiful checkerboard like grid patterns when you get really high, you know, because things are usually a mile square, the roads are all set up to be that. So you have this like checkerboard that you can run. And if you're trying to make distance, the straighter line you can run, the more efficient your flight will be in the more distance you'll get. So I try to stay within at least a three mile radius of the line that I started with at the beginning of the flight. All
right. So you're trying to move around too much.
I don't want to move around too much because you see those flights where you do that and you see how much you've wasted bowing around. Um, so I, I really try to stay, if I've got a, a nice, you know, a tailwind that's, that's allowing me to do that. I want to stay as straight as possible. So that's one macro thing I'm looking at. I'm looking at the cloud streets. I'm looking at the streets on the shadowed on the ground to make sure that I'm continuing on this street, or it looks like in one more cloud, I need to make another decision about a different street when I'm down low. So now I'm sucking wind, you know, I've gotten to, uh, maybe I went for a climb that didn't happen. Or I hit a blue hole, which happens all the time on big flights. You're going to run into different meteorological settings. You're never going to have the same weather from beginning to end, at least in my experience.
So when that happens, you, you might find yourself low. And I think we had this conversation in the van going up to Blackhawk that day is that I get that fear in me when I know I'm going to have a big flight. I know I'm going to be scuttling around somewhere, scratching low. And I know that if I can keep my mental state positive, it'll be fine, but I still know I have to go through that. It's sort of like going to a colonoscopy. You know that that's happening. You have to do it because you don't want to have ask answer, but at the same time, that's going to suck, right? And getting low can kind of feel like that, like, damn, I'm low and this could be the whole day. And I've got maybe a few people like bill might be following me and Chris Galley and a couple of people that know I've been going.
I have to see you. You want to, you don't want to let everybody down that you would be, but you know what I mean? Yeah. So when I'm in that setting now, I've switched my brain. I'm not thinking macro. I'm thinking very, very, very micro. Where is this next climate? Where's just a piece I can hold onto while I'm kind of, you know, cause on any day, that's good. You've got a lot of wind. And when you have a lot of wind being low sucks and you're frisbee, you know, you're frisbee into these, like I'm in half the climb falling out of half the climb and half the climb falling out of half the climb. Yeah. And then you finally, maybe you're in three quarters of a, of a, of a circle in lift. And then finally you can make that full 360 and then you've saved yourself. But if I'm not thinking just every little nuance of me is thinking about this tiny picture that I'm enjoying at that time.
And that might be a tree line that's up ahead or the field that I'm over has some green on it, but the field just adjacent to me has more black on it. Maybe I'm going to go there and hedge my bet. You know, you, you have the old, the old it's kind of a paragraph. We're glad in wise tales. Oh my God. Look for tractors. If you see a guy out there in a tractor, that's a great trigger. I've never really found that to be the case. I mean, maybe it is, but I think you need to be pretty high for that to have impact, but I am looking for tree lines, lakes, lakes can be good. You know, the edge of a lake, uh, because it's cold and the, and something can trigger against that. But I'm really thinking small.
I found that down in the Sertow. If you got low, which you often do, there's a real wall on the day there, you know, it can often be really hard. It's hard to start. And then it starts going. And then it almost always, my experience blues out for a couple hours and you got to really tweak it back and, and it can be frustrating because you're going for these huge distances, but you forget that you've got this huge long day. So you're just, you're going into survival mode, but the, uh, the lakes would save you over and over and over again. Uh, you just go to go to a little bit of water blowing like hell. You just think how in the world is this going to work? And you just park yourself at the end of the lake and wait. And then boom, you know, if you've got, if you've got enough bar, you can hang on. You can just sit there and wait for some ripper to come through.
If I don't know if you know this, but Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. That's our, that's our state credo and it's well-earned. There's just bodies of water everywhere. And it's funny. You can go to Illinois and fly and you won't see a lake all you can fly 150 miles. You won't see any water. You might go over a river, but they just don't have it. So somehow the glaciers, the way they came across here, they deposited a lot of, of water. So yeah, they're and not only do they produce another thing to think about. When you're micro and not macro, not only do they produce lakes, but the lakes produce birds. And there's a particular soaring birds prevalent in the spring here. They're lake goals. They're giant. They look like fighter jets in the air that these giant goals, Pelicans, I'm sorry, they're Pelicans and they will always be around a body of water because they tend to soar from one body of water to another, because they want to go fish in another lake.
So they'll soar up and go fishing. What's interesting is when they fly, they fly in a line. They don't all like, like Ibu and, and tricky buzzards and stuff. When you see them, they're kind of in a big mass. These things line up, like they're queued up like Englishmen. Uh, they, they, they line up perfectly. And so they'll, they'll, you'll see a corkscrew of them showing you the entire climb. If there's like 30 birds, there'll be this beautiful little serpentine pattern going up and they're giant. So, and for whatever reason, when they make a turn, they flash white and gray, white and gray as they make three sixties. Cause some part of them is more white than another. And so they, they're almost like a beacon. And if you're lucky enough to be low and see that you're, you're safe. But my point is that when I'm thinking macro, so now I'm low and I'm pissed, I'm worried about the day.
Oh, I've lost a day. Oh my God, I lost a day. And, and, and plus I need to get to by such and such. If I start thinking about all those things, I'm on the ground in seconds. But if I can kind of clear the mechanism and let my brain just focus on the small things at hand, I win. And so that's what I literally sometimes have to tell myself, micro think micro now you switch, I switch and, and quit thinking about the day, quit thinking about what's next. Because right now, the only thing that's important is getting back to base. And I certainly with my ADD and kind of personality, the, the least amount of focus, the better, you know, just focus on the one thing and listen to the glider. You
talked about that. Yeah. And you're, you're right up that, you know, when you're climbing, that's all you're doing. And Chrigel talked about that, didn't he? I mean, he's got, he's got three, there's three things he's doing. He's climbing, he's planning, or he's gliding. That's it. And so when you, when you're, when he finds that his mind's wandering or, you know, it's this weird thing, we're trying to be in flow state, let subconscious take over. But at the same time, we're trying to be focused, focused, you know, stay focused. How does someone who you talk about having ADD, how does someone who has a hard time focusing, go 10 hours and stay in these modes? What is that? Is that been training? Is that just been just banging your head against making mistakes?
Oh, it's funny. Cause there's so many people on your podcast that do all kinds of reading and they study and they think, and I look, I listened to that and just like, man, I wish I was that guy. I wish I could do that. I I'm not, I like to learn from doing so everything that I have has been more, more or less learn because I've. Screwed up doing it prior to this. And then I figure out, Oh, and I change it a little bit and I change it a little bit. So climbing, if my brain wanders, I've realized I lose the climb. Everybody will out climb me and, uh, I've lost the day. Right? So it became this strong desire to increase my ability to climb. And the, the thing that I learned is for instance, if you want to find out about focus, ask Bill a question while you're flying in a climb, he won't fucking answer you.
Yeah. And it could be. A really important question, you know, Bill, I think I've severed my ephemeral artery. Is that life-threatening? He will not answer because he's in a climb, but
you know, that's funny. I remember, uh, when I flew with Will Gadd on the Rocky service, you know, I'd never, I had never met him. He'd been a hero of mine forever, but the first, the day before that thing started was the day I met him. And when the filming helicopter that, you know, when we were, when he was low and someone would get on the radio, whether that was me or anybody. He would just lose it.
Right. Just shut the
fuck up. I'm trying to save, you know, exactly. He didn't want to lose his focus.
No. So I think that necessity breeds focus for me. If I'm out goofing around, um, I don't tend to do a lot of goof around flights, unfortunately. And maybe as I retire out, um, I'll, I'll have more time for that. The times that I want to chase it tend to be there. They're good days. And I want to, you know, I want to do well. And so. Uh, it's easy for me to just rein it in and, and, and, and do that well. And it also helps to be with other people. If I'm flying with you and Revis and bill, and we're, we're going to, we're going to go somewhere. I don't want to be the guy dragging it down. I want to be the guy finding the next climb. Cause that's super fun. I think that wanting to do well has gives me the kind of, you know, hyper-focus about doing that. And then secondly, doing it a lot has given me the ability to not have to
do it.
To focus as much as I used to. So now I'm allowed, I'm afforded. Yeah. Yeah. I guarantee you, Chrigel is not Chrigel is two steps ahead. He's climbing that thing. And the gliders do it. He's doing it all. It's autopilot. He's just crushing it because it's bone marrow deep. Everything he's listening to in the glider is, is, is, is telling him what to do and how to stay in this climb. So he can think about, I like the way that Ridge looks over there. That's nice. You know, and he can get to it faster than the rest of, of, of us.
Dad, you had this. Yeah. You had this, uh, paragraph that is, it's quite simple, but I, I want to hit on it. Confidence in the day, uh, being really critical. Can you talk about that?
Yeah. And you know, that's something that I got. I met Jackie Sanderson years ago in Brazil. Um, I was there on a trip back when, remember when we would go to Gouverneur Valedores? Yeah.
I've never been, but I've heard it's awesome.
Yeah. Kind of awesome. Kind of also like if you get down a bad weather, it's not so awesome. You're just in a small town. Sounds, you know, uh, waiting. Yeah. And, uh, the time that I was there for a couple of weeks, uh, I met Jackie and we were talking and had, had the, had the, um, he would, he had a group of course that's, that's his profession. And, um, but there's a couple of times where we would just be on the same flight together and I, uh, sort of ask him a few questions and I got from him, his philosophy is very simple. Uh, if you've had the climb, there's another one. So. So get out and get it. And that's that if you were able to do it once, you're able to do it again. Why are you out? Why are you overthinking this? You know, just really simple that you already are the pilot that can find that and, and, and excel in that climb.
So go get it. And I think that the confidence in the day is, is paramount because if you've launched and you've got to base, it's over the day is in front of you. And, and if you own that in your heart, you and just dive in, I think so many people are like, do I have enough to leave launch? Oh, I don't know. I don't, where's my car and, you know, just all of those fucking things that are getting in the way of charging and, and going for it. And, and, and I think that. Confidence of the day is a huge one. It's very easy to start thinking negatively, right? In our sport, it's easy to, to, to let fear seep in and, and, and alter you. It's, it's easy to let input about, oh, well, that guy on launch, he didn't, he didn't think the day was so good.
I don't, I don't know. Is that, is he right? It's like, shut up. What do you think? And what does the day already told you? You rocketed debates. So that tells me there's another climb right up front. Let's go. And I think that I didn't make that transition for a long time. I would have that same kind of disbelief and I would need several climbs to tell me that the day is valid. And now I just, Hey man, if I, if I found it, it's, it's going to be found all across this day until it isn't right until. Something else happens. But I think that that also takes a lot of things off. It takes a lot of things off the table, because to me, there's this great movie. I'm going to sound like a Kevin Costner fan, but he has this Kevin costars, this movie where he's a pitcher, he's a, and he's throwing like a perfect game or something, and all the fans are yelling at him.
He's on the mound and he says to himself, clear the mechanism. And then the, all the audio in the film goes, and it's just silent. It's like his heart beating. Go, go, go, go. And he's looking the guy down and he fucking strikes him out because he's, he's hyper-focused on the task at hand. And I think that paragliding is very similar to that. I think that people like Chrigel Maurer clear the mechanism really well, and their minds are quiet and they're just using the part of their mind that gets them to where they have to be. And all those other parts of their mind that should, you know, just like meditation, when you meditate, well, you know, thinking about a hundred things, you're thinking about one thing and hopefully thinking about nothing. Um, I think that flying. Uh, affords many of those same skills. And so the less we can worry and the less we can think the more we, the better we fly.
And I think confidence in the day has to be paramount. If you don't have that fundamental thing, what the fuck are you doing out here today? Then if you're, if you're not confident that this is an awesome day, so I don't know. Sure. Some days are weird. Some days are like it was good and then it got bad. Uh, but until it gets bad and proves that to me, I'm going to have confidence that this is. An awesome day. And you know what? I got this from a guy, he's a songwriter friend of mine that I worked with when I was a young musician. And I said, dude, you're so confident about the way you write music. You do it so quickly and effortlessly. And he said, well, I got a trick. He says, I believe that everything I'm doing is amazing. And, and he says, I have a thing I call red light, green light. When I'm in green light, everything I'm doing is just magical and fantastic.
And I don't judge it. It's great. And I get a little chord progression or a little riff or whatever it is that, and then there's a time for me to look at that more objectively. And that's what you would call red light, where I would look at it and say, all right, is this valid? Is this kind of a piece of shit? No, this is nice. I like this. It's got a little hook and I got a base part idea and you know what? I've got some lyric ideas. And, and so, but if he says that if, if we always have the red light on, we never go anywhere. And it's so hard to get that creative impetus, that, that, that sort of. To be innocently. Enthusiastic is difficult. And I think innocence and enthusiasm are great things to have in flying because it gets you out there, right? Otherwise, you know, once you're at a certain skill level, you shouldn't be innocent and, and hawking off a mountain if you don't know how to do it.
But once you get to a certain point and you're trying to, to make larger strides in this sport, I think believing in yourself and believing in the day are two things that better be with you at launch right away, or you're already kind of two strikes down.
Hmm. Yeah. Good advice. You touched on clouds earlier. Uh, did you want to say any more about that? You talk about you wrote in your writeup that it's, it's really important when the day is on to not necessarily top things out. And then also the, that, that was new to me that looking at the ground, I've looked at the ground to see how clouds travel, but not to see how thick they are and if they're kind of broken up and stuff is even a lot more flatland experience. I'd like to. Well,
remember, remember the day. Yeah. When we were flying Blackhawk and we left the mountains and we got out into the flats, that's, that's what I was doing. I was, I was checking the shadows and yes, you get to see wind trajectory and you get to see, cause you know, we were kind of splayed out and, and there were, there were lots of little clouds. Okay. Well, which one has the darkest shadow? Because that's going to be the, probably the most energetic cloud. And if the darkest shadow cloud is online, then I'm heading that way. The problem is if you're having a, okay, so when we're at the meat of the day, the, the, the, the, the real booming part of the day, we're spending most of it at base, we're only losing a couple thousand feet, right? Yeah. Well, at that perspective, your judgment of a cloud's veracity or strength is skewed because you're seeing it horizontally.
And so everything kind of looks the same. Everything has a gray bottom when you're, when you're looking at it horizontally, if you're 3000 feet down, now you can see, oh, that cloud's a piece of shit, but that one looks strong. This one's breaking apart well when I'm high. Okay. So, and also it doesn't matter. I'm looking at shadows all the time, looking at the cloud and then I verify with the shadow because you can't see holes in clouds as well, even when you're well below them. So if I didn't have, I don't know where I picked that one up, but man, that is a lifesaver, that ability, because you get to see streets. Oh, I just hit my mic. Sorry. You get to see the streets in, in beautiful form. If you're at 8,000 feet, you can just, they're outlining themselves. Okay. What's the best street? Cause you know what that's like. You get to the end of a street.
You're like, oh shit, this one just ended. I should've saw that coming. Well, you can see it coming. If you're looking at the shadows a lot easier than if you're just looking at the sky, it's not that I'm focused on the ground. It's just another bit of information you can get because I don't have mountains. You guys fly to the mountains. You're like there, it's going to be right there. Sun on a hill into wind for Christ's sake, if it's not there, where is it? I don't have sun on a hill. You know, I've just got wind. Uh. This is,
this is something I really tapped into flying in Daniloquin in Australia. You'd probably love it down there. I don't know if you've been down there, but it's, uh, it's so featureless flying on the moon without the craters, you know? And, and so the, the triggers are the tiniest things. It'll be a little water trough for the kangaroos cause they die out there all the time. Cause there's no water or, or obviously they're not building for kangaroos or real cows and stuff, but there's, you just go to the tiniest little dimple and hang out. And. And it works. And it works. The, uh. Cool. When you talk about lakes, uh, or features when we're or lured, do you know what? Oh, I'm always going to be
on the up, upwind side, uh, for lakes. And the tricky part about them is that you gotta have enough altitude sometimes to go out over the water until, until you'll catch that climb. Because again, on big days, we're usually, you know, pretty stout wind. And so the climbs are all bent over pretty good. And so what might be triggering at the, at the leading or the. The windward edge of the lake might not. Yeah. And so at your altitude, you might have to get over and I'm always playing with that. It's a little Russian roulette. Like, can I go over the water safely? Because is this lake big enough that at my altitude, I won't be able to get to the other end of it and not land in the water. And that's, you have to see that sometimes I can play around. So I'm, I'm, I'm going out, but I could duck out and go to the left or right and find land.
Um, when you're higher there, there, uh, there. A much easier thing to, it's just, and even rivers, we have the Minnesota river, which often I have to cross or the Mississippi, I have to cross on certain flights and always on the, on the windward edge of one of those, it's like boat, there it is. And I get right up to it and it's just, it's like clockwork.
Have you learned anything about how cloud streets form in flying over all this terrain? Is it, is it, you know, is it, are they often more lined up? I mean, obviously. Obviously they're lined up with the wind, but are they more lined up with where there's more water, where there's more roads, where there's more towns?
Oh, I wish I had the memory to figure that out. No, I just, I just, when it's a good day, they're lined up. You know, what's weird is you'll see them. You'll see like three streets to your right and three streets to your left. You know, you're just like on a super highway, like an LA highway of, of cloud streets. Yeah. You just pick your lane and, and, and go when it's booming, you know, when it's like that, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you have maybe just four streets because you're in this nice little pocket of weather that's producing the clouds, but you know, you can see not that far over it's blue. And in fact, you can, and sometimes you'll see a hat I'm coming up on a big blue patch. And sometimes that's the day rebooting. Like I've gone in, I've dove into blue patches and this is important to this. This was big for me that when you get to a blue patch, just keep going, it's just going to be the same.
There's just aren't clouds. I don't know why I'm not a meteorologist. Thank God. I know. I don't know why I'm not a meteorologist because he gives me so much great advice about that stuff. But if I flew on my own weather advice, I'd probably never fly, but I've dove into blue holes. And sure enough, like for instance, if, as I told you that formula where I was climbing to seven grand and catching it for same thing will happen, I'm in the blue and it's doing the exact same thing. It's just not forming a cloud. Why I don't know, I don't have enough weather knowledge, but then often as I continue in the blue hole clouds will start again, you know, and then I'm, I'm, I'm back in cloud. Hmm. So I think a lot of people would get hung up and be like, I don't know, maybe I should really top this one out. It's like, no dive in. It's going to be the same experience.
Wow. That's interesting. I haven't experienced that as much, but maybe that's because I'm just going in with more trepidation. But I remember I asked Hans about blue, uh, blue holes and he said that it just like you said that the same thing is happening, but the thermals probably aren't as strong because they're not getting up high enough to hit the dew point if, if you've got clouds in other places. So he said, it's, it's more of a coin toss, you know, it, it, it's probably, there's some reason it's not working as good.
Yeah. But you ought to think about it. You're on a big flight and let's say you're, you know, 80 miles in and you've come up to that blue hole, any, any lack of confidence there, it's kind of unwarranted. It's like, whatever, just go in, dive in and fly with that same kind of tempo because it's probably there. And at least my experience has been that generally that's what I. Yeah. I have to climb a little bit more. Maybe I'm a little bit more cautious, but if I get too cautious, then I've, I've blown why I'm out there that day, which is to go as far as possible. So I don't know. I'm certainly not an expert on it, but, um, and, and to your first question, no, I don't really know why they form better. You know, if, if there's a topographical reason on the ground, that's, that's making them, I don't know.
There's so little topography where we are that I think that they can, they can maybe form with abandon. You know, when they do form, they can really form because there's really nothing dissuading them from that on the ground.
Do you think you fly better by yourself or with others?
I love to fly with people. And luckily I seem to have kind of a Robo cop ability to see if you, if I'm flying with you, Gavin, I will, I will know, and I'm not bragging. It's just, I, I seem to have this skill that I can tell that you're in a better climate. I'll come stomp right on top of your ass. Mm-hmm. You know, if I have more altitude than you, for instance. Mm-hmm.
Um,
I love when you're with other pilots, how much information you can gather from their flights as well as your own. And it, it makes it like when you're, when you mostly you fly by yourself to fly with other pilots is almost like effortless. It's just so much more simple you, you know, when we're in Columbia, we're, we're, we have a discipline, you know, we all launched together within 30 seconds of each other. We all climb out. And when, as soon as we go on glide, we fan into a perfect formation that allows us to sniff as much air as possible. And then as soon as somebody has the climb, we don't have to say it on the radio. We're all looking and you can just see, okay, Chris has got it. Let's go and get in and get up and then continue that. And so when I'm with people, my biggest problem is shutting up because I just want to fuck around and talk and like, Hey, make jokes, whatever.
Uh, and, and that's really distracting and I'm awful in that regard. People have turned their radios off on flights with me. So, uh, but no, I love it. Um, but I do tend to fly probably more by myself than anything, unfortunately, that's just the nature of, it's really hard to tow and fly with somebody we, we, if I'm with a good pilot who has a good goal, but we have a method, it's pretty simple. We just call it a double or a triple toe, where if you've got two systems, you got a pilot that says, you know, similar skill level to yours in a similar glider. That's really important because it's hard to wait. If somebody has got a slower glider, one truck is just, you know, a few 50, 20 yards ahead of the other. And you have both of them, both of the lines coming back and the guy that's in the first truck pulls up launches 30 seconds later, the next guy launches and you're both just going down the road, going up together.
It's fantastic.
Yeah. We, we toyed around with this a lot in Texas, uh, Cody and Don and I were kind of a team and we, we played around with this a lot. And what we found the best was, is we, we had, we had three tow rigs and we had two runways. And so the first two would tow pretty close to one another. Like you said. Yeah. Boom, boom. And then the, often we didn't have enough drivers or whatever to, for the third person to go that fast. And then, you know, obviously you're going to wind those rigs in, so you don't want to have the third person too close off. And the third person was quite a bit later, you know, minutes later and it's really windy. So they're going to be way off, off the back. Right. But we found, we played with, okay, one person goes and then they fly slow and two people try to run them down. The best was definitely two people to go.
They don't fly fast. The third person. They just got two people to track, you know, to look at and catch up to, and that, and then once, then you're together and then you can, then you're off and it usually be together pretty quick. That works. That worked pretty well.
Yeah. And there's a pilot, a local pilot here named Alex Peterson. He and his brother are kind of OG paraglider guys from back in the day. And I didn't know them back in the day. Alex talks about, they would put, I would call it a Y-cord where basically you've got one line coming out the tow rig and then they'd put two lines on it. And then they'd go off of that. So they would basically be side by side.
Oh wow.
Yeah. And so you've got this Y-cord. I don't know how much length we should talk to Alex about how, how, how much a line that they, they ran out. So that if you're on a dirt road, for instance, you got one guy, one guy, one side, one guy and the other, and you both pull up and then you're basically, you just have to keep apart, you know, it's sort of like two dogs on one leash kind of a thing. And he said, because it was his brother and he knew his brother's skillset and they were like, you know, tied at the hip. It was a piece of cake for them. You certainly want to, wouldn't want to be tethered to some donkey, you know, uh, going up that, you know, is going to be banging into you or whatever. But if you know the pilot and you know, their skills, that's something we, I haven't experimented with it because quite frankly, it happens so seldom that, uh, I'm flying with, there's just very few people flying here. I'm not saying that I'm an amazing pilot by any means.
It's just, there aren't many of us. And so it's, it, it tends to be something that it's not a problem.
Sick. Nick and Alex, Alex is one of the first people I've ever flew with, uh, way back in 2006, he was living out, uh, underneath Mount hood and he was doing some radical stuff back then. And uh, yeah, I mean, legend and I haven't seen that much since they've been sick. Nick was around for a bit. I did some, uh, toe stuff over the water with him and Santa way, way, way back when I haven't seen those guys in ages. He actually just sent me a Facebook message recently. That was really fun, but I didn't know that's where they were. I didn't know they're out there. They're out there.
Well, Nick has passed away, right?
That's right. I forgot about
that. Yeah. And Alex, uh, is just a fantastic guy. Uh, Alex actually told me on my flight this year. No way. Yeah. He, I bought my, I have my own till rig and my biggest challenge is finding people that can at the drop of a hat, cause you know, you get a day, you get 24 hour notice on a big day that it's going to be, you might see it three days out, but you can't call somebody three days out and go, can you drop everything and told me possibly on Friday, you know, usually it's a 24 hour notice thing and, and Alex was able to do it. And it was, it's so great to have a pilot towing you because it was a burly day. It's hard to pull up in high winds tone, you know, you're tied to the damn line and your gliders yard up and you know, it's two liner. So it's fussy. And it was great to have a guy that understood that.
And then chasing me, it was fun because he'd be, he'd actually say, Hey, what do you think of that cloud to your right? And I'd be like, God damn, I was just looking at that. I think you're right. It's time to move streets or whatever. It was super fun.
Yeah. Cool. Tell him. I said, hi, Hey, we're going to, we're going to get to a mishaps here. I know you got a way more than one funny story, but I know you're going to tell, tell one before we do, uh, the great thing about goals and also the worst thing about goals is you hit them. Uh, you know, so they gave you something to drive towards and they also, you know, just experiencing this in, in deep right now with the X-Alps, uh, so you went 228 miles, you were, you know, shooting for this. The Vaughn and 200, uh, congratulations, but you did it. Now what?
Yeah. Where's the lead? It's funny. Cause Chris, uh, Chris Galley is, is, you know, you know, like with the X-Alps, you have all of this help. You're not just running around by yourself. You've got support. And I've definitely had amazing support of mating, amazing mentorship and, and guidance. Chris has been somebody I've known for many years and on a good day that I, at least the day that I feel is going to be good. I get. Confirmation from him and I'll call him up and say, what do you think? And he quickly looks at it and he's gotten pretty good at the, the weather systems in the Midwest, which is great. And his wife is from here. So Sarah's from the Midwest, so it's not completely foreign. Right. And he gives me. Uh, advice. Well, at the end, when I had got it, of course, one of the first calls I make is to thank him for, you know, helping me see the day.
And then he's like, so, cause you know, he's had the 200 for a long time.
Yeah. And when I
would fall short on flights, you know, I'd be again, calling to thank him for weather advice. And, and he said, it's okay, buddy, just so you know, I think he said he was at one 96 for six years, trying to break too. And I, and that always made me feel good. It's like, okay, okay, good. So somebody else has also failed as miserably. And for as long as I have, because it isn't just, it isn't just being good enough to stay in the, for the day. It isn't just enough to, to quiet your mind, to stay in the saddle for eight or nine days. Nine or six hours, whatever it's, you have to find the day and the day is rare. You know, it's, it's so rare to find a meteorological setting that you can enjoy for that amount of distance, you know, that will stay consistent. It's just a really rare thing.
So anyway, I'm talking to him after the flight and I, and he said, so just like you, he's like, so what do you think? And I said, well, dude, I'm stoked. He goes, I know what's next. And I go, well, two 50 for fuck's sake. He goes, yup. Good man. He's like, yup. Yeah. You've got the bacteria. Yeah. It's two 50. Yeah. And
will you do it there?
Yeah. I like doing it here. I could have gotten, I don't, I'm not, I maybe I couldn't do it, but I think I could have gone to Brazil and got a 200 mile flight. There's places you can go and almost be assured of a 200 mile for me, it wasn't about flying 200 miles. It was about flying 200 miles in my state from this place and, and, uh, and it's hard. It is really hard to find the day. And so it had value. It gave it a lot more value. And by the way, chasing it, I didn't have to leave my family and I didn't have to, you know, post up in some cruddy hotel in some small town, you know, chasing it's right here and it, it's, it's convenience and fun and reward all kind of, so yeah, I want to do two 50 here. And I think it's probably quite possible again, finding the right day.
Hmm. You, uh, you tossed the laundry in, uh, in the, in the house. I think they call that the battleground between St. Vincent and, and San Andre. That's very deep Maritimes, France, uh, it's that that's one of the, one of the first places I did a big XC and I got in deep trouble in there too. I didn't toss, but man should have, uh, way, way, way back when I was doing a trip with Toby Cologne, you know, he does those little, you know, from Nice to Annecy kind of thing. Oh yeah.
Yeah. The, the, the, the Safari kind of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. I did a couple of those with him at two years in a row and, and we flew that to battleground it's a hundred K and it's radical. Uh, so what happened to you?
Well, okay. First off you had guidance, which, you know, if I had half a brain, I would have had to, but my buddy Phil and I were just in France, the two of us banging around, chasing weather, you know, finding, finding good places to, to fly. And for whatever reason, we ended up in St. Vincent, uh, St. Vincent and, and enjoyed that.
So one
day we enjoyed just kind of, you know, you'd look at the water and yeah, and you go across and you go to that other mountain and you can go down that Valley and whatever. Um, and that was fun. And then another day we ended up going, you know, from launch hooking to the, to the left, you know, you bench up that mountain and then you've got that Valley to run and, and we got pretty far and we thought, huh, maybe this is something. And then Phil, he's an engineer type and he's smart as a whip and a great pilot and a fantastic. Human being, by the way, that needs to be said. And he figures out, oh, well, there's, this is kind of a milk run going to San Andre from here. I'm like, okay. Milk run. I like the sound of that. How do you do a milk run? Fuck. Yeah. And the next day it's windier first big bonehead mistake.
And, and we know, we know one person cause we've been hanging around here for a couple of days and we're staying in a sheet that isn't too far away. And there's a pilot there who's training and his instructor is somebody we met. And it's just. Very kind, intelligent French man. And we're about to launch. And he says, what is your plan? What's your plan today? And I'm like, well, I think we're gonna, we're gonna go to San Andre, buddy, you know,
what's your plan?
Yeah. With blind fucking stupidity and competence. And he's like, he pats me on the back and he says, but windy today, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't say it's not for you to, no, no, but he's be advised it's, it's windy today. Hmm. And, uh, I was like, not too windy to launch bitch, look at this, you know, and go, and we start going and I'm so bad. I mean, you can't imagine there's nobody that can tell you less about anything that I can in terms of wind direction. And like I've well into the flight, not that far into it, I have lost track of where the wind is. Cause you know, you get in the mountains and it can, and I think it's one direction and Phil clearly much smarter than me knows that it's, it's another.
And he approaches as I'm a little bit behind him and he approaches this mountain from what I think is in the lead. And I'm like, dude, what are you doing? And we're sort of squabbling on the radio about which way the wind is. He goes, what do you mean what I'm doing? I'm, I'm, I'm getting a climb here and I was like, fuck dude, it looks like you're going to be in the lead there. I think you need to come a little bit more to the, you know, and, um, he's like, you're an idiot. No, no. And I follow my instincts and I, I get, first off, I get deep and low and I'm in wind and, um. Long story short, I ended up in this like box Canyon low, starting to get just on the precipice of getting below the rich level. And it's high, you know, it's like 10,000 feet. So the rotor is just going to be magnificent and, um, Phil's like, oh shit, oh shit, shit.
You know? Cause he's climbed up already. He's up. He's up maybe 800 feet above me or whatever. And, and I'm getting low. And I started to realize how bad this is because I'm going backwards and we're going against this rock. Face. And I'm so scared that tears are coming out of my eyes. I'm crying. Like I call it a dry cry because I'm crying with fear, but I'm not crying. I'm just, I know I'm fucked. Right. And he, Phil tried, he, he actually spirals down to try to sort of help me find, um, maybe I can help. Yeah, I know. By the way. Yes. And, and he pays a high price for his kindness. Okay. As you well know, when you're gripped, you don't climb well, right.
And I'm just beyond gripped and we do find this little piece and we're starting to get above and it looks like we're going to get out, but I screw it up and I fall out of it. And pretty soon I've gotten, I'm now going into this box Canyon and Phil is, has had enough altitude to sort of fall off the other side, the safer side. And he says to me, he's scared and it's in his voice on the radio. He says, Thad, do the best you can. And his radio goes out. And, um, cause we've, he's gone below and I've gone below and my glider, by the way, I'm flying a, uh, I'm flying a S the Sigma five advanced Sigma five, I think was what it was. Yeah. And so you get an idea of where I was in my progression, and that glider starts to do things that I didn't know a pair of gliders to do.
It literally went from flying to under my feet in, in this, this amount of time. And it was under my feet and I'm falling down towards it. And I remember I had to pull my legs in sort of tuck them up like a, to not get in the lines as I passed by my glider, but then they flew again and I'm flying and, but it's still making a lot of sound. And sometimes it would, it would be in front of me and then it would be back up and you know, my little brain's going, okay, well it's flying half the time. This isn't all bad. God, we're doing all right. Let's we get out of this. There's no way on God's green earth I'm getting out of this. And at one point it did something horrible, like way down below me or off to the side below me.
And I, and I get my reserve out, you know, I, I, and I pull it out and it's hanging, you know, from the, from the thing and I'm holding it and my glider starts flying again and I'm like, oh, I still have this. So now I'm flying the pair of glider with the dangling reserve kind of dangling in my lap. Kind of hitting me against the chest, kind of thunk thunk as I'm flying. And it does something else, you know, I mean, it was do I swear to you, I've never seen anything like it. If people talk about big rotor, I can tell you firsthand, it's unbelievable what it does to your pair of glider. And finally I pulled my head out of my ass and tossed his, you know, and it, and it worked, it worked beautifully. I remember it opened up. It was one of those gin yetis, it was yellow, round yellow, and it just was like this magic,
beautiful thing. It was like this thing above my head. I got a quick glance at it. And then immediately you look down like, okay. And it's just scree like 90 degree angle of stones and boulders and scree and, and tall pine trees, like shitty little tall pine trees. And I'm like, well, I wonder what two broken legs feel like. Cause I'm sure I'm going to bust, you know, get busted up because you know, you're going down fast and
I was
able to pull the glider in a couple of handfuls and bam hit and nothing happened. I just kind of did a natural pilot. What is it? PLF. Yeah. I think I did just a, like a, like if you dropped a dummy out of a helicopter, it'd probably PLF about as good as I did because I did and I was okay. And the wind is still just charging up the mountain and it's dragging me by my, by my glider and my, um, my, cause I've got the glider stills open and, and the goddamn, you know, parachute is up. So I'd be kind of face first drag. Yeah. It's up this scree field. I remember that you're supposed to grab the middle thing and I put, you know, I get the thing and long story short, I pack all that up. This isn't short. I apologize by pack all that up. We're getting to the good part, by the way, this is all just stupidity.
I pack up and I'm like, okay, well I can walk down because I know that there's a Valley and then, you know, the road and it'll be a long hike, but I start walking down the mountain slowly and I got to a point you can't, it's just sheer, um, granite for like 3000 feet. Oh, um, you can't, you can't walk down from this mountain. And I spent a fair bit of time circumnavigating, trying to find a way down and there's none. Now I should mention, I've been on the radio repeatedly looking for my, my friend because I want to know that he's okay because he was also in the shit. Right. Uh, and he's not coming on the radio. And so I realized, well, all I can do is go up. I can't go down. I can go up though. So I start climbing up this mountain and it's a long time. There's parts of it where I'm literally on all fours with my big, you know, fucking backpack, like a turtle climbing with crawling and using like little scrappy trees to help me find my way.
And I finally get above the tree line. Now it's just, you know, the stone and I find a way up and I finally, finally, finally make it to the top. And just as I get to the top, Phil comes on the radio. Cause I, I keep checking like every five minutes, Hey Phil, Phil, Phil. And he comes on. I'm like, Oh my God, he's alive. Cause he's alive. He's dead. He thought I was dead. And I assumed he's dead. You know, we both kind of, so we have this great, like, like, no, no, no, I'm fine, dude. I'm up on top now. Where are you? And ends up, he's about three spines over and we find, I find him by, he says, see the shadow. Cause he could tell, he could see a shadow coming in when the shadow got to him, he said, I'm right here. The shadow just hit me. And so I kind of knew where he was, but he even took out his glider to show me like he popped his glider out and I could see, cause it was quite a ways away. I'm like, okay, well, what the fuck are we going to do?
Cause he tried to get down to, he's like, there's no way off this mountain. I said, yeah, there's, there's no way I said, did he crash? Yeah, he didn't crash. He just had a really hard landing and was in a lot of, a lot of rotor, but was able to manage it. And he had, you know, he wasn't in this boxed in thing like I was so, but he put himself there for me, for God's sake, you know, I mean, he was well out of this and he came down to this. I mean, that's just incredible. He's an incredible guy. So I decided by the way. The gear that we have back then, remember the Garmin, I think it was called the Garmin 76. It was that little rectangular. Yeah. That's all I got. I got everybody
had. Yeah.
Yep. I got that thing. And I got a little fly master Vario and I got a Motorola flip phone and flipping it open. I have no bars, no fucking bars, but I know the Valley is that way. And I'm on this kind of spine and I figured it's about a half an hour, 40 minute walk out to get me as close as I can to the Valley, which is at least close to civilization. And so. And so I take a GPS reading of where my kid is and I leave my kid here and I tell Phil, Phil's Phil's looking for water because if we, if we need to stay the night, we're going to stay up on the mountain. I'm going to walk to him. And so he's going to find water and I have one phone number in France and it's that instructor that told me it was too windy. We got his number and I don't know how, but we have his number and I'm like, okay, well, I know that. Oh no, no, no. I'm sorry. I have the student's number.
Okay. And I know that he could probably get us a helicopter from that guy. Right. The student is just this lovely guy that's from Paris and he's just training to be a pilot. So he wouldn't know how to get a helicopter, but I knew that guy would, and I have his number in my phone. So I take my ancient, you know, ridiculous Motorola flip phone and I've got the GPS location, you know, written down and I walk out on this spine and I get a bar, maybe a bar and a half, you know, it would go like one bar, bar and a half. And I start dialing this number and of course it fucking doesn't go through. And it doesn't go through, it doesn't go through, you know how you get that beep, beep. No, I keep doing it. I keep doing it. I keep doing it. I keep doing it. I keep doing it. And finally it, it, it rings and he answers.
Wow. And he's, he says, uh, we, oh, Hey. And I, I'm, I apologize. I can't remember this guy's name, but I wish I did. Cause he was, it was so great. And I said, Hey, let's say his name's Pete. Pete, it's Thad. I'm sorry to bother you, but please listen carefully. I need a helicopter rescue. And I need a helicopter rescue. I need you to take down some information to organize it. We're sort of in a, uh, we've got a problem here. And he goes, oh, you please quit being such a jackass and don't bother me. And you know, cause he thinks I'm fucking with him because we've just been screwing around all the time when we're having meals and stuff at the G. So he thinks I've called him to make a joke and he hangs up on. Yeah. And so there I am. I do it all over again. I call a hundred more times until So Finally, It fucking rings, and he picks up again.
He goes, "Quit bothering me, you jackass American," and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, do not hang up, do not hang up, please do not. This is for real," and he starts to believe say, okay, um, here are the coordinates. He goes, okay, just one minute. Let me write this down. And he writes it down. And then I gave him my radio frequency. I said, we've got our radios on up here. So if you need to give that to the helicopter, that would be great too. So once again, because he, you know, his English wasn't great. I said, once again, it's a helicopter rescue. Super important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. And I go back, I marched back success to, to my gear and to Phil. And I'm like, I did it, buddy. We are set looking for a helicopter ride. I got us covered, buddy. No more need for water. Daddy took care of business, right?
And so we're sitting there and on, I've left my radio on, uh, and all of a sudden it starts to kind of start to hear that somebody's trying to come on the frequency and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. So I start listening and Phil can hear it too. And lo and behold, so it's been maybe an hour and a half since we've had the call and I'm sort of looking at the sky for a helicopter. And finally they come on and it's the instructor, um, of his, and he says that Spencer, we are looking for you. Where are you? And finally I, so I get like, Hey, Hey, where, where are you guys? You've got good radio here. Yeah. No, I'm, I'm still up here on the mountain. And he goes, yes, we are at the mountain. Where are you? We are ready to pick you up to drive you back. And I'm like, no, dude. We're not on the ground way up on the top of this thing.
And he's like, what? And I'm like, and, and so Phil speaks French and Phil helps him realize, dude, you're we're on the top of the mountain. We need a helicopter and it's kind of getting closer to dusk now. So maybe we need that quick. And he, he totally gets it and he calls the helicopter now, now I'm getting excited because you know, it's going to be fun and, and I'm sitting there now, the biggest thing is they're going to come to my coordinates. And so I have to bring the helicopter to Phil and he's three spines over. He's a world away. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But I know where he is. Cause he's shown me. And And so I'm standing there with my gear on because I start to hear the helicopter. You hear it. You know, it's like a half an hour later. Because it's a big valley. And then I start to see the blinking light.
And I'm like, oh, this is so awesome. And, and, but I'm like, don't get too excited because remember you got to take him to where Phil is. So I'm looking and there's, you know, Phil's there. Helicopter. Oh, really excited. Oh, Phil's over there. Don't forget where Phil is. And finally they show up and they don't just come over to you. I don't know. You probably know this. I didn't, they don't just come over to you. They sort of hover nearby and a guy jumps out and he's got the awesome French fucking helicopter rescue uniform on. And you know, everybody there's so fucking handsome anyway, and he's got the cool helmet, you know, and I'm like the fucking buffoon American with fucking nose tape on and his head up his ass standing on top of this mountain. Just trying to remember where my buddy is and it's exciting. And he, she comes trotting over the helicopter, just goes boom's up into the air and he comes running over and he's like, are you okay?
And I'm like, oh yeah, dude, I'm fine. I'm great. So great to see you. Good. And he just pushes me to the ground, you know, like kind of manhandles me down to the ground. And I'm, so now I've got my pack on, I'm on all fours and he makes this little, little, little hand signal with his, with his hand and the fucking helicopter just appears out of nowhere. And I'm laying. And so I'm on all fours. Imagine just kind of doing like a cat cow in, you know, yoga and like looking at the ground and the fucking loudest thing that's ever been near me just comes and you see this big black skid just kind of go and it's hovering like inches from me and they, there's a whole crew in there. They just grabbed me by my pack, threw me inside the helicopter, which is, and they're like, okay.
You know, they, they stripped me of the bag, they throw the bag and they're like, sit over there, you know, and they've got this, this little sling chair, you know, kind of thing like military style and boom, they're in the air. They're just fucking in the air. Now I don't know where we are. We rotated. So I have no earthly idea where to find Phil and they say they, they're, they're all looking at me and they go, miss you. There's Phil. There's one other to pick up. We, and I'm like, and there's four guys, just two pilots, you know, two guys in the pilot's chairs and two other guys. And they're all, we're just in this loud fucking thing, the loudest thing you've ever been in, in your life. And they're all looking at me like, where's your buddy shit head. And I've got this little window.
So I started, I poked my head out the little window and I period like kind of fucking spazzly looking out. And I'm like, I, it all is just mountain. I don't know. And so I get up and I'm running towards the door because the door is the biggest open. It's an opening in the helicopter. It's an open door. Right. And, and you know, they see that and fucking guy just tackles me before I get close to it. And he's like, dude, you don't go near the door. He pushes me back in my little sling seat. And they quickly, the crew has quickly realized this idiot has no idea where his friend is. Why don't we try to find them? And so they start doing this circular pattern around the top of this. Yeah. And I'm just standing there like a fucking I'm sitting like just humiliated. Humiliation. I'm just sitting in my little sling chair.
They're not paying any attention to me.
No, of course not. And one of them comes over to me and he's got this little pad of paper and a little pencil with a string attached to it. And he goes, miss you. What is your name and address please? And he hands me the thing to put his, and I'm like, oh yeah, it's just for the bill, you know? Fuck. Yeah. They need, they need, but they probably want my driver's license and I'm just thinking, and, and it'll half of me is thinking, you know?
Gavin, I live in, you know, you know, Wisconsin, whatever it is, but I'm like, no, no, no, I all own this. And so I write down my name and address and I give it back to him. He goes, thank you. And lo and behold, they of course find Phil. Now Phil's been on the ground for a long time and he's realized what's happening that, you know, there's no way on earth that's going to take him to me. And he's just like, fuck, I may never get out of here, but he's jumping up and down and Phil's not very tall. So he can only jump so high, you know? Yeah. And he's jumping around and they, they find him. They pick him up. They throw him in the helicopter, just like they did me. And I'm just laughing because it's so great. I'm so relieved. And in, and he's looking at me like you fucking idiot and you can't hear anything right. And the, the helicopter immediately goes up and it just hovers and it waits and, and, and they go to Phil and they're like, miss you, your name and address, please.
And Phil looks at me like, motherfucker, I ain't paying for this. So this is on you. And I, and I've given him the hands. It was like, oh, it's all good. This is your dad. Write your name down. I'll pay. It's fine. I'll pay. And, uh, he does that. And then the two pilots, um, who realized Phil can speak French. They asked Phil in French, where would you like to go? And Phil's like, where would we like to go? We assume we're going back to your, the field you took off from, you know? And they're like, no, where would you like to go? We will take you. And so they took, yeah, well, we just wanted to go to our friends who had driven all that way to come get us. Yeah. To
the town
below and, and, uh, they just spiral down to that town. Uh, we, we write where our buddy's car was and they hovered through us. They threw our bags out, asked us to jump out and, and, and, and we did. And then they, they all stood at the door. The two guys stood at the door and waved as they took off. And we just laid in the grass. And I, I mean, I was like one of the deepest laughs I've had in a long time. We just belly laughed about the absurdity of what we just went through because they saved our lives completely. Yeah. And the, the instructor came up and he's laughing too, cuz he knows what ass clowns we are. And he's like, I can't believe they just dropped you off in that beautiful $5 million helicopter. And I said, I know, dude, what is that gonna cost me? And he goes, cost you what, what, what do you mean?
I said, well, I mean, I think in the States that's like 20 grand and he goes, oh no, no, no. It's France. It's all free. It's all free. You're good. They, and I said, no, no, no. They took my name and address. He said, no, no, no. They wanna fly that helicopter. They need your name and address to justify the jet fuel they needed, you know, to get to you. So awesome. So he, he said, he said, I said, I know, but they really thought I was a clown. He goes, no, no, no. They like you. They, they think pilots are cool and they, they wanna fly that thing around all day. So you just gave them a great excuse to go fly their fancy helicopter.
That's awesome.
So, so two things, a, if you ever have problems in France, the helicopters are free little tip from me. Yeah. Yeah. And, and secondly, I mean, think about what, I mean, if, if anybody could prove their friendship to me, what Phil did that day, you know, coming down into what I was struggling in was just
monumentally kind. So just a really, it was a really interesting moment in my life and obviously gave me kind of PTSD flying for a while after that. I don't think you go through something like that without kind of re refiguring. But the next thing I did, I think the next day we went to Telwa. And I bought, I bought the fly masters, 60, 30 fly tech, flight tech, the 60, 30 that still my, yeah, I love it. Still mine too. Cause it had the wind sock, you know, which I definitely need the wind sock.
Uh, Jeff Shapiro calls that an inexpensive, uh, lesson. You know, we, we need these, we need these inexpensive mistakes that teach us a lot about surviving the next time we fuck it up.
Well, it changed everything. I mean, I, I definitely, it definitely was a. An arrest. You know, it arrested my progression for a little bit because I reconsidered everything, my glider, my skills, my progression, you know, and I flew very timidly and flew very seldomly after that. And it took me years to really build back up, uh, the confidence and understanding that, you know, that was an isolated incident that you really did screw the pooch on. I mean, I couldn't have made more mistakes. Yeah. Have you been rescued off the, off the cuff here? Have you ever been rescued by helicopter?
I never have. I've never had a helicopter. You know, my only real accident was the one I had right before the race, um, you know, two weeks before the X ops, I, I pounded hard and it was, uh, I
heard, I heard your whole appraisal of that and surprisingly, Gavin, I had a similar thing happen to me at the same time. I, I'm still recovering from my injury. I tore, I tore a rotator cuff. I've probably towed, well, let's say at least 500 times. Maybe it's in the thousands. I don't know how many times I've told, but I've told a lot and I was strapped in. I got the line connected. Driver was pulling out. They always pull away with light tension and great day. Alex was flying with me. He had already, he'd already got up to 10 grand, 10 grand days in Minnesota are very rare and extremely fun. And he went, uh, I let him till first, uh, he got up, he said already at 10,000 feet. So I'm super stoked about the day, but it's, it's kind of a, it's pounding. You can tell there's a lot of energy in the day.
And I pulled up a reverse in a nice wind turn. Started to make my run. I had a little cravat on the, on the left side of the glider, which is very common with the two liner, as you know, and it's the kind of thing you just sort of tug out on the run. So I'm just tugging out that, that, um, left side is I'm running and the driver's on full tension now. And I get picked up as I get picked up to the right, just picked up like a, like a Marionette and slammed to the ground. I probably went up about 15 feet and then just could cut Joe on my side and it's never happened to me in my life. And we've, we, we think it was a dusty, basically I got hit with the dust because we saw dusties that day that I've never seen before. We saw one that went up about 7,000 feet off, uh, off a dry cornfield.
So it was a really, really, really pungent day. And I just happened to, there was no sign of it. I think it came across behind me and, and I probably got in just a little tip of it and it picked me up and just slammed me down. And so I'm laying on the ground and I'm hurt so bad that I don't know if I'm hurt and I'm humiliated too. Cause you know, you think you're pretty good and you don't screw up launches for God's sake. And I'm laying on my side and I slowly get up and I'm like, okay, I can move. All right. And I, nothing feels great, but nothing feels broken. And I said to Neil, the guy told him, I said, let's just hook me up and get me off the ground before I start to hurt. Cause this looks like a great day. And Alex and I went and had a nice hundred mile flight. And when I landed, I was just beyond painful. I thought, I thought I broke my hip. I think you said the same thing.
You thought you might've. For
sure. I broke my hip.
I broke my hip too. And I went to the hospital. They, we got a guy, we hitchhiked cause our driver was quite a ways out and we hitchhiked to a hospital and I had a CT done. It was fine. I didn't, I just, I think I just strained all of those ligaments and stuff. But the lesson there, a other than, you know, I, I'll, I will be an idiot for the rest of my life is that no matter what you can, you can, you know, you can have a lot of judgment and a lot of sort of wisdom, but you can still get, you get tagged, you know, it's still a dangerous sport.
Yeah. Mine was, you know, there really weren't any red flags. It was weird. I mean, other than just flying a big day in Idaho, you know, that's always, but yours was early too. You said it was in the morning, which made it 30 in the morning, 11, maybe it was, yeah. I mean, it was just turning on. I mean, it was more on than I thought definitely because where, you know, where I was is in the trees where I crashed was in the sage. Just, I mean, it was a four minute flight. I launched, flew down this Ridge, didn't get anything turned left. I was going to top land and wait for the day to turn on more and then boom, bit the dust. You know, when I, when I landed. Yeah. When I landed, well crashed, there was nothing, no landing, it was just boom. You know, the, the, the reserve stayed over my head until I was, you know, I sat there for quite a few minutes with it, just tugging on me, just kind of going, holy shit, that, that wasn't good. And then, you know, okay, maybe I'm actually, you know, I might be all right.
I kind of crawled out and then I had to bring it in. You know, my, my main wing was on the ground cause it had come down, nose down, but the reserve was, you know, so it was more on than I thought it wasn't windy. It was just. I was just, I was on a Southeast facing perfect slope to start a day on, you know, so it was just coming up, but it wasn't, you know, an hour later was ripping, but not when I was going. So yeah, I think I, same thing. I get hit by something weird that I couldn't see and just boom. But what was the issue? What was your question? No. So I've never been rescued. I've never had, I've never had a heli, but you know, in France, I think there's an average of one helicopter rescue a day in Annecy. Oh yeah. 360 a day.
Yeah. Yeah. If you've flown anywhere near Annecy, they're under you all day, there's a, there's a helicopter under you at least 15 % of the day when you fly anywhere near Annecy, it's just part of the deal. Crazy. Yeah. You always think about getting a collapse and spiraling into those blades or whatever, but it seems to work out. I had actually heard they're getting more, they're, they're actually going to start maybe charging people because it's becoming such a burden on the municipality. I heard the
same thing. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense or some kind of, they probably should just have like a life flight membership or something like we do here. At least you're, everybody's paying into some kind of system, but that's amazing. That's, that's so cool that it's free. Yeah. That was awesome. We've been, we've been at this for two hours. I think we can go for a lot longer, but in the interest of our protecting our, our listeners, we'll call it and great stories. Great mishap. Glad that all worked out. Great, inexpensive mistake. And can't wait to share some more sky crack with you here, Sam buddy.
Well, thank you. This has been a true honor. I don't believe I'm worthy of the time you spent talking to me and even the recording devices used for what I had to say, but it was serious. It's a real thrill. Thanks buddy.
That was a lot of fun. Appreciate it.
You bet.
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