161. Peter Zaccagnino and Adventure, Aviation, and taking risk - Peter Zaccagnino

Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem and happy holidays. Closing down on Feliz Navidad here and hope you're all having a good one. I've got a great and very different show for you today with a guest whose resume is just unbelievable and not a paraglider. So very different and I think you're going to really enjoy it. Stay tuned for that. I've got a couple bits of housekeeping before we get to it. The first is insurance. I understand a lot of people utilize my article on insurance that I try to keep really up to date on the website. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com and just put the search term in insurance, the article is called Unscrambling Insurance. And I've just recently updated that again, as GEOS is not going to offer most of their policies in terms of getting you home if you have an accident or repatriation and a lot of other things.

They're only going to still provide the high-risk benefit in case you hit your SOS on your spot or your in-reach. And they were kind of a one-stop shop there. So now you really have to go back to another, you need kind of three different things. You need the insurance in case you hit your SOS, which you can still get through GEOS. And then you need repatriation insurance. What I suggest is through Global Rescue. There are a couple others like Medjet. And then you need a really good travel insurance that covers medical in-country in case you get hurt and you got to have surgery or something before you get home. So three different things. There are others out there that are not in the article, but these are the ones I really know of, and I've done a lot of study on them, and I know they work, and I've had many friends that have had to utilize them, unfortunately, and nobody's had any trouble.

So check that out if you're traveling. I know a lot of people are getting ready to travel this winter for various flying escapades, and don't go uncovered. Don't think it's not going to happen to you. you can put your family or your friends or our community in a big bind if you have an accident and you're not covered properly. So check that out. Second thing is I usually have this at the end of every show just about contributing, but we've been putting out a lot of bonus content lately and that's for subscribers, but we don't put anything ever behind a paywall. I kind of figure that everything we're doing here is a public service announcement and we're just trying and to help our community and help everybody get better and fly better and fly more safely. So that's the purpose, and so that's why I don't have anything behind a paywall.

But for those of you who do support the show, obviously we really appreciate it. There are a ton of costs here and a lot of time and editing and doing the interviews and all that. So if you can, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. We really appreciate it, and there are various ways to do so. They're all spelled out on the website, cloudbasemaham.com. And I know I've sent you back and forth on this a few times, but for those of you who especially contribute just, you know, a dollar a show, which is great, if you do it through the website or through PayPal, that kind of thing, they take a lot of fees there. And it's better, I've learned now through patreon.com forward slash cloudbasemayhem, and you can find that link on the website. Website, they're the best in terms of fees, and they can also set it up so you can just calculate it out for the number of shows per year and paid in one go, and then the fees are a fraction of what they are if you just do it one dollar, one dollar, one dollar.

So all that's on the website. Again, we really appreciate it; if you can't afford to support the show, send me an email, I'll get you all set up with a lifetime account. You can always access all the content we put out, uh, whenever you want. So, thank you. All right, my guest today, Peter Zaccarino, he is—when I googled him initially, it came up as actor and—but he is everything. He's a philanthropist, he's basically a common modern-day Chuck Yeager. He's flown over 23,000 hours and more than 250, 270 aircrafts. He's flight tested over 685. He's built his own airplanes. He's been around the world a bunch of times on private, private airplanes. And he's a four times air racing gold champion.

He's in the Aviation Hall of Fame. This guy has done it all. He's been at gunpoint in Pakistan. He's been to every country but one. And I think you'd be surprised on the one that he hasn't been to. Anyway, had a blast with this. Really fun. Oh, and he's also an author. He's doing a whole series of books. His first two are out. First one is relevant, and the second one is the new Cold War. These are kind of, uh, military fiction spy novels that are doing really well, and people love them, and super exciting stuff. So we talk about his documentary filmmaking and Bush Klein's "Up in Alaska," and he was part of a big Discovery series called "The Most Dangerous"—I don't have that in front of me, but he's, yeah, the most most dangerous flight series.

So yeah, incredibly productive person and has had a very, very interesting life and he's not slowing down. So we really enjoyed, we had a blast with this. It was super fun. I think you're going to enjoy it as well. A lot of great takeaways. Happy holidays, everybody. And enjoy this talk with Peter Zaccarino.

Peter, this is very cool, man. We didn't meet in a traditional way, but welcome to the mayhem. And I'm really excited to talk to somebody who's had a very different resume and life than I typically talk to. I talk to a lot of people that take a lot of risk in free flight, but it sounds like you've taken some pretty big moves in jet airplanes and the power side of things. And you've got some fantastic stories that I can't wait to get in. But where I thought we'd start is close your eyes for a second and And imagine you're at a party where no one, surprisingly, no one knows you. And they say, hey, Pete, I'm so-and-so. What do you do? How do you answer that question? Because when I Googled you, it came up that you're an actor.

I've done a little Discovery Channel work too, yeah. And it's funny. I guess Google has algorithms because I really – a big compliment I got a few years ago was someone I was working with said, said, you know, I Googled you. It was really fun to Google you. And I was like, wow, that's a heck of a nice thing to say, I guess. That's a good

compliment. Yeah. I really,

I dug it. It was cool. But

how do you answer that question? I mean, my gosh, your resume is impressive.

Yeah. I, you know, I definitely pursue the adventure. I, when I'm given a talk somewhere and they're like, okay, my concern always is, well, The venture means you got to do something that's scary, right? I'm like, no, no, no. You know, an adventure could be just—you've never played chess before and you're going to chess camp for a month, you know? Because that's an adventure, right? Sure, you're challenging your brain, you're doing something you haven't done, you're getting uncomfortable, you know, you're gonna look bad in front of people, and all those risks. But yeah, I really just pursued the adventure. It's, um, you know, I want to get out and see the world. Um, that was a motivator. I love to learn, I love to teach. I'm always teaching at some capacity. I never get away from teaching, whether it was at a college I taught at or, you know, teaching some flying aspect or whatever.

Um, and you kind of put that all together into this Venn diagram where you have all this overlap, and I look at that overlap, and that's—that overlap is me. You know, it's—it's the adventure, it's all things flying. I'd like to try some of your flying that I haven't done. I've done some other free flying, but, uh, it just adds into the adventure and and the challenge, and I'm a—a big believer, anything you learn helps everything. I mean, it just helps everything, whatever you're learning, it's going to help some capacity. Right. And, uh, so that's kind of the short answer.

So you would, so if somebody came up, you would say, yeah, I'm an adventure. That's the, that's the number one thing, or would it be, you know, are you a racer? Are you a, are you a were a test pilot uh could you give me a single one answer uh

renaissance ah

That's probably the best

Single word answer, I mean, it's definitely all things aviation, right? You know, test flying the racing, uh, traveling the world, taking customers around the world, and really lighten up their, their daily grind a little bit. It's definitely all things aviation, but I really the whole renaissance concept to me philosophically aligns with my like ideals, and a pretty ideological person, probably to a fault, actually. But, uh, yeah, and that's why I got into the writing. It was, it's really hard for me because I'm an engineer by study and by practice that parlayed into my test flying as an aeronautical engineer, and so I write like an engineer. The door is open, go through, through the door. What's so hard about that? Right.

Right. Yeah. You know, and it was really hard to write for me, but I really enjoyed the process. And, um, so yeah, you know, all things flying for sure. Um, taken some, uh, personal risks, you know? Yeah.

So author pilot, uh, and you're, you're kind of aviation expert. I mean, you've flown over 23 in your bio, You've probably got more hours now, but you've flown over 23,000 hours and more than 270 aircraft, um, flight tested over you. I mean, you're, you're Chuck Yeager, man.

I used to harass Chuck Yeager actually. But, uh, yeah, I, I, I fly all things as I can get my hands on. If you let me fly a Pyroclire, I'll be there, you know?

Nice. We can arrange that.

All right. I'll take you up on that. I really will too. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

you're in a good part of the world for it. You know, living in the Wasatch there, you know, just on the other side is one of the greatest places to learn in the country. And then, you know, you can get up in the big mountains that right after that. So yeah, for sure. We'll do it. Cool. Cool. Your new book, uh, just came out. We were, we wanted, I wanted to start off talking with your first one. You and I both published our first book in 2020. Uh, mine was all about paragliding and yours was fictional military and hats off. I, you know, is, is this a fiction I think is much harder to write than nonfiction. Is it typical fiction and that, you know, this really was much of it is based on your own life and experience and you just, you know, got a little whimsical or how, how did it, how did it work writing it?

Yeah. Um, The first book, Relevant Relevant, has a lot of, uh, factual stories in it, okay? But I put it, I put it into a narrative so that it was as readable as my skill levels allowed, basically, and made it into a story that would allow me to continue the story into book two, book three, and I've outlined five books for the series. Wow, what? Long as people buy them, I'll keep writing them and, uh, and so yeah, there's a lot of, um, real-life story-based stuff in, in Relevant Less, uh, probably about 50 percent of the second book, about half of it is real stories. And like, in the first book, everybody thought I was picking on my brother and, and he's not my brother.

I mean, there was no representation of him being my brother, but everybody's like, well, you know, Pete was raised by a single mom and has one brother, and I use that context, and they're like, "God, you were mean to your brother in the book." I was like, that's not my brother. It's just backstory, you know. Right. But so, yeah. And, you know, I've lived around the world in a lot of different places. So I drew on a lot of those experiences and some close calls and being detained in Nigeria and roadblocks in Pakistan, stuff like that. Was that all military? No, just, boy, how do you answer that? No, not military. I'm not prior military just to be setting the record straight and clear. I just did a lot of different jobs and flight tests and some other types of work.

And it had me in a lot of strange places, you know, over the years and got to see some, how we politely describe it, unique things.

Yeah, unique things. I'll say it that way.

Yeah, I spent a bunch of time sailing around the world, two certain navigations. There were a few times we went into places that I would describe for sure as unique.

Yeah. It's nothing like you see on the major news outlets, is it?

No. No. Definitely. Yeah. Let's rewind way back. Tell me about your family a little bit. How did you become an adventurer? Where did that spark – where did it hit?

I give a lot of credit to my mom. I was raised by a single mom, raising two obnoxious kids in New Jersey. And, uh, she really instilled a sense of confidence and a, "a just go get after it," whatever that is again. Doesn't have to be scary stuff, it can be whatever, just get after it. And, um, my mom was awesome in that spirit. I think it's the best way and definitely out of the box, you know? Not, um, doing things that are kind of the standard, and nothing wrong with that. Hey, I could have been on a standard career path and that would have been great, but she definitely said, "You know, whatever you're doing is going to be great as long as you're enjoying it." And, and it helps other people, that's good for other people, it motivates other people.

You know, just be that person. And, you know, we all stumble and fall, but get up, fix it, own it, be accountable, and keep going after it. And I got a lot of that from my mom and, um, you know, it was just growing up. It was my mom, my brother, and I. I'm the youngest and, uh, you know, my brother is, uh, always pounded on me until I got old enough. I could pound back and, you know, that was a big part of it. He's a great supporter as well. My brother's awesome. Is

he also a pilot?

No, I'm the only pilot engineer, crazy guy in the family. No one else, you know, has any flying in my family.

And how did the aviation, it was an engineering and then aviation or aviation and then engineering? engineering

No, I mean, uh, a lot of my life was in parallel is the best way to describe it. If I did it in series, I'd be, you know, 120, and um, and I can get away without a lot of sleep, usually not always, but usually. And, uh, so I, I did my undergrad in aeronautical engineering, and, uh, to come back to your primary question, though, I, I don't really have a good answer. I just wanted to, I wanted to design, build, and fly airplanes since I can remember. And, um, I had an older brother, Mike, who passed away when I was pretty young, but we would go do the classic, you know, three-year-old thing where I'd run around the house with a toy airplane, making it fly. Right. And, uh, he was pretty awesome about that, but it's really the only thing I can point to in my aviation drive.

And, um, but again, since I was walking, it was design, build and fly airplanes. I'm like, so I think I think I have to become an engineer. I think I have to become a pilot and I think I have to become, you know, a repairman for aircraft. So I did my engineering degree in Florida, a great school, really happy with that. While I was doing that, as the poor kid from Jersey, I was getting flight lessons. I had some grants and, you know, stealing money, borrowing this, that, whatever it took. And, and then that was a joke, by the way. But anyway.

Yeah, what are you, a bank robber too? Yeah, right. It doesn't say that on the bio.

I cannot confirm or deny, no.

What flying during my engineering program did for me was I got enough of the pilot licenses very quickly so that I could start making money doing it.

okay my

First thing I did while I was at my, uh, late in my freshman year, I, I started flying skydivers. And so they, I went down to this place. The owner was this classic grumpy guy and piece of garbage airplane, and I didn't know any better. I was like, "Oh, this plane's awesome. I get to fly. He's paying me three dollars and ten cents, you know?" But the whole deal was, every time I took a load of skydiver skydivers up in this little plane, I got paid per load. So I was pretty motivated to get people into the airplanes. And, and the owner loved it because I would go around be like, "Hey, aren't you ready to jump? Let's go!" because I wanted the flight time and the money. And so I would pile them in the plane and do as many loads as I could. And, you know, the time I had between school and college and everything, and it was awesome.

So I was, I was making way more than flipping burgers triggers, plus let's get flight time, which is everything for pilots. You know, you need, you need that valuable flight time to advance your career. And, and it kind of worked. And, you know, it rolled into becoming an instructor. And it was basically, I became an instructor when I had enough money to do that and find planes and people to teach, and got me into aerobatics. And I knew I wanted to be a test pilot. I was like, well, I better go, you know, chasing after people to fly goofy airplanes. You, it's kind of my little phrase, the goofy airplanes. Why did

you know you wanted to be a test pilot?

Because I really like what it embodies. It embodies the technical academic engineering part, high level of accountability. You're responsible for a prototype that a company is banking a ton of money on. And of course, advanced piloting skills, you can't suck.

you know, you've got to deliver. And when emergencies happen, kind of Zen-like is how I describe it. It's not a adrenaline thing for me at all. It's very Zen-like and, you know, you got to adapt to the emergency, make it work, survivals first, safety second, aircraft safety third. And, um, uh, and then you get to fly really high tech planes and work with super smart people. people and it just was very appealing to me. And so I chased after it. And, uh, when I was told, no, I asked why I learned that skill of asking why early on, you know, and I just kept chasing it until it kind of worked out. And, um, so here I am.

And you've done, but you've done all the hours. I mean, typically for, and I don't know anything about powered aviation. So correct me me if I'm wrong, but typically someone who's gone down your, you don't have a path. It sounds very, it's very adventurous, but for somebody that's that goes into test flying, and that kind of hours is usually done with military, and so you've been able to do all this kind of on your own gumption sounds like, yeah

the military, when I've flown with military contracts and jobs, most people... People thought I was a military pilot. So your assessment is absolutely correct. I was the abnormal one. And, you know, we're in flight suits and survival gear and all that stuff. And so it looks very military. And for good reasons. I mean, they have great gear. That's just the truth. It's very safe, very good quality. And I was flying some military aircraft. So absolutely, that was a likely avenue. But what I did, there was a couple of things that happened. And being an aeronautical engineer, I don't think I could have pursued my flight test route early on without being an aeronautical engineer. I think that was one of those bridging things compared to my peers that were military and went to test pilot school and things like that.

That was definitely a big one. The other one, I had a really big break. I had a customer that's a large aircraft manufacturer, starts with a B, based in the Northwest. West, uh, you know, and they put their trust in me on a pretty cool project, and it went really well. And when the Air Force got involved, I had to go and get prerequisite Air Force training, and they were like, apologizing to me because I... we paused the program. We're in the middle of an SRB, a safety review board. They're like, "Uh, he can't fly until he has the prerequisites," and the guy in charge was like, "He's the only guy's flown until now." You know what do you mean? He can't fly it, so... So it was just politics. Yeah, it was awesome because they went and sent me off to various prerequisite training after the fact.

And it just added to the resume, especially early on. And now my dossier was getting fatter and thicker. And they kept apologizing. Now you've got to do this. Now you've got to go to McCourt Air Force Base, et cetera. And that was one of those breaks or building moments. And then I started testing some small planes. That was another kind of turn in the path, and that opened up into the air racing. I started working for this company. Again, it's all on contract, so we come and go all the time, but the small company was making these really fast airplanes, and a lot of people were racing them. I was like, wow, that sounds like a great idea. What could go wrong? Yeah,

sure.

So that's how you got into racing, was testing these? planes for the company that makes them yeah

And and it's, it's a just a, you know, enthusiast airplane that goes really fast, made of carbon fiber and, well, in some cases, fiberglass too, but is this

the Red Bull Air Race type plane.

No, this is the pylon racing that is really high speed, so we're all about speed. And our track, just to keep the story from getting too long, is about an eight-mile circumference. It's not a circle, but it's also not an oval; it's kind of a blob, a roundish blob shape. And, um, and what the pylons look like, they're not, but they look like a telephone pole sticking in the desert with a can on top. And okay, and then they're painted, and and they mark the courses that we're on, and uh, off you go. And so I, because I was flying that type of plane, called a Lance Air, um, I got a call from this guy, Rick, who's now one of my best friends. I don't know, this is like 18 years ago, I think, something like that.

And he's like, "Hey, you know how to fly a 4P?" I'm like, "Sure." And he's like, "Can you be our pace pilot?" I was like, "When?" September, like, "Can you come to the championship air races?" I'm like, "Great, let's go." Right? So I flew that plane and his pace, and um, I was like, "Oh yeah, I'll be here next year racing." There is no questions about it. And that's how it got started. You

Had quite a bit of success there, yeah. You a couple? It was a goal. I don't, I don't know how this works. Is this a circuit that's all over the world? You know, do you do a lot of traveling for? Do you ship in airplanes, or is it mostly in the states, or well...

Well, it is. It's such a tough sport because it's gone all over the place. We've had races in foreign countries. We've raced in Portugal. We've had races in China. It used to be a circuit. And for whatever reason, when there's an aviation fatality, it has such a different perspective on it than if car racing has a fatality. I don't know why, it's just... it is what it is. But, um, and there was a fatality a long time ago and it really changed races. And, um, and then we had another one in 2011 that almost ended racing. So I'm giving you a longer answer, but it's the championships have always been at Reno in September. There's been other races, depends on the year, depends when you ask.

It's... it's been Unfortunately, inconsistent. It used to be very consistent and, um, but it's hard. I mean, it's the fastest sport in the world, right? By far. I mean, my fastest lap was 560 in 2019, you know, 560 miles an hour. There's no sport that touches us in speed, and but it doesn't get the exposure you would think it would get, right? And I mean, look at someone flying a paraglider around the world; it doesn't get the exposure it should, yeah.

Well, geez, not even close when it comes to that. But is that, yeah?

I mean, it's cool stuff, but for I don't know why, it currently is a little bit on the downside, I guess is the best way to put it.

Is that how you got into the aviation Hall of Fame, or is that just everything is that is that at all coupled together, but

I didn't even know I was nominated. They told me I was nominated one year and I didn't get in, unbeknownst to me. But when I... The year I got in, they called me up to interview me. I got past that first barrier. They were interviewing me. It was really a lot of things. It was from the charitable work, the lecturing I do pro bono just to try and mentor people. They're looking for well-rounded aviators, I think. The racing, winning at the championship and setting records. I've set a bunch of records over the years. I don't even know which ones stand anymore, but um, that all, it all just fed into it, I think is the best way to put it.

What kind of records? Speed records or what? Yeah.

I did a couple, um, like crossing the Atlantic set up, for example, a speed record. Sometimes I've done some pretty funny city pairs; I say funny because there's these city pair records and they're not that hard to do, but they're funny because you can get this silly plane that is just used for training and we kind of made a parody of it and a joke about it. And so I did this record in Florida, you know, it's a city pair record from, you know, St. Pete, Florida to Daytona beach in this a hundred mile an hour airplane. And, uh, so there was some of that and some course, uh, leadership stuff, things like that.

Let me ask you what's I'm sure a ridiculous question for in the power world. But again, I don't know anything. I've never flown an airplane. I've been in on a lot of airplanes, But you flown 270. My daughter came home the other day and said, Dad, can you drive? She's four. Dad, can you drive any car? And I said, yeah, I can drive every car. My job was valet parker back in my teens at Caesars. You learn how to drive every, I said, yeah, I can drive every, can you fly any airplane? Can you just get in and fly it? you

Know, skill-wise, I'm comfortable. I could safely get a plane up and down again. Um, but there's legal requirements. So like, say let's say you're an airline pilot and for the last 10 years you've been flying the 737 and you get upgraded or side-graded or whatever to a 757 and you've never flown it, you would have to go to school for that specific airplane. It's just about that plane, plane.

right and

That school is anywhere from, depending on the jet, you know, a month to three months. It just depends, but

Let's take away, I get that. I mean, this, you guys have all kinds of regulations, so the, which is good, uh, but um, but could you just—let's just say there are no regulations and every single plane is lined up on the runway, could you just get in and figure it out? Yeah.

i'm pretty comfortable

really get

in, and geez, that might be a little reading, right?

But yeah, I don't want to take anything away from the, you know, that requirement of training, but yeah, of

course, you

know, if some crazy thing was happening and I'd get in a flight of plane and save a baby, I don't know. I would be happy, you know, I'd be happy to do that. You can do it.

The principle is the same. It's just different speeds, different computers, different and everything. Pull back.

The houses get smaller, push forward to get bigger, you know, push the throttle up, you know.

Okay. Okay.

Uh, most, if you could step out of your house right now and walk into the plane of your choice, what would it be? Ooh.

And I just had to pick one. Didn't have a choice. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's just the, the, the, uh, the one that you dream about still at night is sitting right there, right on the runway, ready to roll.

Probably an F 20.

Oh, okay. It

Never got out into production. Um, it's a lot like an F5 and has a great performance, and it's very intriguing to me. It'll never be in production, I mean, you know that, probably high on my list.

What do you love most about aviation, oh?

Definitely the freedom part. I mean, it's, it's pretty cool not to be constrained by lines on a road and pavement and, um, I never tire when I'm flying anything, a slow plane, a jet, 50,000 feet or 500 feet, I never tire looking down, just watching the world go by. It, it's not like I'm doing it, you know, non-stop, but it's, I can always look down and just dig, I dig it, you know? But definitely the freedom is probably the biggest, guess the answer and, but learning all the different planes is a challenge and I do enjoy that. I could go to school once a year for a new jet and I would, or, or a new airplane for that matter, I would love it. Like, there's, there's a plane right now called a beach 18 and it's not that, it wouldn't be that

Uncommon for me to fly that plane; I just never have. It's just no reason. It's a twin-engine radial, radial engine, uh, old school. It's kind of a Harley of the skies from the fifties, you know, and it's a cool airplane. I'm going to be flying it soon, but I still kind of look forward to that challenge of that airplane because I've just never flown it. And yeah, I've flown hundreds of hours and thousands of hours with radial engines, bigger, smaller, blah, blah, blah, tail draggers and all that stuff, but it's different. And, uh, that is, that's intriguing to me, um, to go out and find the challenges, find out what you don't like about that ride and what you do like about it. That's all.

This is something that I haven't seen in anybody's, uh, resume. I've been to a lot of countries, I think 105 or something now with all the sailing, you've been to every one, but one. So what's the one country you haven't been to and how did you pull that off? What's, what was the, is, and is that still going today? Are you still just traveling constantly or tell me about the travel sure

As test flying was, let me give you a little bit bigger answer. When I, when test flying was changing, the market was changing. You know, I have to make a living, just like you do and everybody else, right? And um, I pivoted a little bit into more of the um corporate jets, and so I've done some ferry flying where I would take, you know, customer bought a plane, it's in France, I gotta go get it, bring it across the Atlantic, and and I enjoy that. I, I love crossing the Atlantic, especially, especially stopping in Iceland. It never gets old. Um, but anyway,

so, so it's, I mean, so you have deliveries of aircraft just like you do a sailboat. Yep. Same thing. Okay. Yep.

Very similar. So that was a part of it. Um, and that's led to some things. And then I've also been hired to help, um, a new jet company there. They've made a new airplane and there was this This little jet I got involved with in 2008. And I literally, between the company and some of their customers, took that one little jet to over 90 countries. Jeez. Yeah, because some of it was I was helping their sales team. Some of it was deliveries. Some of it was I got a new customer that had one. And I was his tour guide around the world. I had one customer that, like one year I took him all over Europe, for example. and then um then one year we did east africa and is this

A little tail dragger? Is this a jet?

but it's a very small jet; it's a good shorter

runways yeah

Yeah, okay. So, um, but a really good little jet I enjoy, it's called an Eclipse, and it was really fun to fly. And, um, heck, I took him on an around-the-world trip in that little jet, you know, 700-mile legs at a time or whatever they were, and, uh, seven weeks just surfing around the world with this little jet as our transport. How

Do you so, how do you cross, how do you cross the Pacific when you can only go 700 miles? What are you hitting on the way? Yeah, give me that route. That's pretty, that'd be pretty sure.

I'll bang the rat out for you in that little plane. We went from Albuquerque, New Mexico, uh, to Montreal with a favorite restaurants, of course. You know, gotta have the good food. Then we went, uh, Montreal to Goose Bay, Canada. Okay, Goose Bay to Narsarsawak, Greenland. Landed in Narsarsawak, which is a another really cool spot. Um, Narsarsawak to Reykjavik, Iceland. Overnighted there, did some trips, and other things I recommended around there. Some trekking, and then, um, there to Wick Wick, I picked up some scotch for them and put that in the back of the plane. It's a scotch you can't get outside of – well, you can get it outside, but not –

Oh, you and I need to become better friends. We have a lot of scotch. No problem.

Then we went Wick to Milan, Italy. I wanted to take his folks to this seafood restaurant there in Milan that's spectacular. year, then we went from, uh, Milan to southern Italy. Where did I stop in southern Italy for?

fuel boy, I usually don't forget things like that. Anyway, and then we went to Crete, Heracleon, Heracleon to, uh, Cairo. We got, um, a couple days there, hung out with camels, and went to pyramids and all those things, plus Luxor. Flew down to Luxor, and that's pretty cool place, the Valley of Kings, and we did, um, from there I went to Riyadh. Um, his passenger got yelled at for using the royal bathroom, that was hilarious. And we went from Riyadh, and we went down to Oman to Muscat, stayed there for two days. We went and sailed in the, uh, in the Gulf there, you know, hung out with the pirates and, you know, all the bad guys, it was hilarious, yeah.

just right there in Somalia, yeah. Then

we went to Pakistan. We didn't stay there. I have a lot of friends in Pakistan, but we didn't stay. We just fueled there to Varanasi, India. So some of these are more than 700, FYI. Um, then we went from Varanasi to Mumbai, Mumbai to, um, Calcutta, Calcutta to Chiang Mai, Thailand, Chiang Mai down to, um, Phuket and the airport's name escaping me. Then we went to, um, Singapore for two days. Then we did Bali cause we were surfing at a lot of these stops. So we did Bali, we surfed Bali. And then we went, wait,

hold it before you keep going. Cause this is awesome. What have you got in the plane? What's in there? uh

Just, you got surfboards? No, we were renting surfboards all over these places, okay? Um, and we just had our change.

clothes yeah

change of clothes. I had my technical stuff for, you know, this big of a trip, for the airplane charts and nav stuff. And are you the

mechanic no

No, I mean I'll facilitate and assist, but I'm not the mechanic, okay? We did have some things break, and we did, you know, assist the process, you know, with other mechanics, but

Okay, okay, keep going. Sorry, yeah, no, that's

all right

How big is the plane? Yeah, the one more quick, because I'm used to—I'm used to just flying Super Cubs in Alaska, where you know you can't bring a handkerchief without pissing off the pilot.

Remind me, I'm gonna make a note. I'm gonna send you a DVD about super cubs in, uh, Alaska. If you still have something that'll play a DVD, it's pretty cool. We made this film, about a 50-minute film about bush flying. It was awesome, but, um, yeah. So then we, we hung out in Bali. We surfed in Bali and all that in Indonesia, uh, had great food. And then we went from there into, um, uh, Australia, where, oh my goodness, I forgot about that. We, we landed up in Darwin and we're going to go to like their version of a big state park. Like, yeah, we were going to go to their version of a big state park in the north part of Australia. They said, "Don't drive at night." Like, no problem. And we're driving down the highway in the middle of nowhere, and this poor little kangaroo, big kangaroo actually, jumps in front of us, takes out the whole car, totaled.

Yeah, and I've spent a lot of time in Australia. Holy cow, yeah, it

was quite

gray that's

an hour story at the minimum, but anyway, we we walked out of there, hitchhiked this and that, it was nuts. And then we got to the east coast of um Australia, surfed there for a couple days, then we went to a place I've never been to, which was really cool. It's called Lord Howe Island, yeah. And um, I've never been there, and it's got this little runway. They only allow a few hundred people on the island at a time. We landed there, we found this guide, and we want to go hike up this volcanic uh mountain, and because the surf was terrible just on that particular day, and he's like, "Oh, you can't do it." We're like, "I'll I'll just set the pace and," uh, if we're not making pace, you know, we'll just turn around. And we got up to the top of this thing where these birds, I think they migrate there periodically.

I'd have to check one of my notebooks. I write everything down. So I have like 80, no, 40 volumes of notebooks with all these little notes. But anyway, this bird, we're up at the top of this thing. We're just taking a break, chilling out. And there was just hundreds of them and they would fly by and drop at your feet. I have no idea to this day why I've asked. I never got a straight answer, never really followed up further than that, but they just dropped to your feet and and they were all doing it and, uh, it was just wacky. It was totally wacky and, uh, so anyway, we left Lord Howe, went to New Zealand, did a bunch of stuff in New Zealand and, uh, you know, a lot of trekking. Uh, we surfed a little bit, it wasn't that good. Then we came back to Australia, we went out through, uh, PNG, Papua New Guinea, uh, that was just a fuel stop.

Then we got into the Philippines and we went to this island called, um, Sagora, I believe it's pronounced wild awesome great stop. There was another place I've never been to and it's on the east side of the Philippines. They had three different surf breaks. They had this boat break, we went out on a great pier break is

That Sargao, yeah, yeah, we had, we had the boat. I haven't been there either. Our boat went there, uh, yeah, I have this kite surfing expedition thing, but, uh, it went there, but I've never, I haven't been there either, oh

you put that on your list if you, it was fantastic. It was one of my favorite stops and, um, it was just the people were great. It was some really nice surfing, which you know, it doesn't have to be a big wave and, you know, we're old, so so let's just ride nice, safe waves, not big killer waves, you know? And so that was a blast. And he's like, Peter, can you extend? Because, you know, I'm always on a tight schedule. And I go, I'll figure out a way to extend. We'll stay here a couple more days. So then coming into your answer to your question, we left there, Manila for a fuel stop, Taiwan. We surfed Taiwan. It was pretty good, actually. And we hopped over to Okinawa, had some really good food, surfed Okinawa. not bad it wasn't just really up while we were there just while it wasn't building

And then we went up to, um, Sapporo, Japan. Great food again. And then out of Sapporo over, uh, Camp Chotkin to Petropavlovsk-Peter and Paul.

and um

We did a volcano hike. Oh no, no, that was a different trip. Sorry. Anyway, uh, Peter and Paul got a bite to eat and then into Anchorage and back to the U.S. So that's how you'd get across the Pacific in a full plane. So up through

the Aleutians. Yeah. Fantastic. And

hop over and back to the US, which you always feel good coming back home.

How long was the trip in total?

Seven weeks on that one.

Why were you on a tight schedule? What's that all about? Why didn't you take more time?

I don't know. That's me living in a - Is that

the owner?

No, me. It's always me on the schedule side. i uh

okay i

Uh, I always have a lot going on. I guess, you know, the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, I'm just... I got always constraints, and this plane's waiting for me to get back and flight tests. You know, my editor's waiting for chapters from me, and you know, my race plane needs work that I gotta do or design. You know, it's just I'm always on a very flexible as... uh, well, it has to be. You can be,

but it's hard. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Huh. And so you talk about what's the kind of main thing that pays the bills these days? Is that the company that handles the corporate jets?

Yeah. I pivoted from flight test and the market just changed. It's just different structure nowadays for contract flight testing. And so it was pretty natural pivot into the corporate flying because I've done test flying on corporate jets, and I really like corporate jets. It's a different adventure, and we started acquiring customers and turning it into a full-time business of managing private jets for people. Okay, it's, it's everything from staffing them, managing the maintenance, um, managing their trips, especially international trips, uh, hangars, insurance, you name it. The whole, the whole thing, and that's, that's PC aviators. That's, that is what pays by bills and allows me to write books and still race airplanes and all that silly stuff, scariest

airplane or flight incident you've ever had? Or you've probably had many. I, I don't know, you don't, don't, don't leave it to one if there's a bunch. I

mean there's a bunch I, I, you know, I've had over 23 or four engine failures in aircraft. Most of them gone very well back to runways. I had a race jet that, that I had to put into the desert in 2016. And in fact, it's on YouTube. NBC was there filming. And that one was intense. I mean, again, when things are happening, I don't want to sound macho because there's no place for that. But you really, I get very focused. I get very kind of quiet. I'm thinking very rapidly and, you know, life preservation first, aircraft preservation next, and all that stuff because they don't always go hand in hand. And I had to put that plane in the desert and it's totaled, but I've walked out of it and I've had some really great mentors that I give a lot of credit to for being able to walk away from that, you know, that crash.

Were you the

only one on board?

Yeah. When we race, there can't be anyone on

board. Oh, this was in a race.

Yeah, this was during a race in 2016. I was trying to retain my championship from 2015. And it's a very complicated series of events, but I had to leave the course because I had a loud bang in this jet. And I was climbing vertically. I pulled the power about halfway back because until you know the problem, you don't want to go to idle and you don't want to leave your power full. Full, so mid-range is a is a good thing to do, so I pulled the power to mid-range and I was zorching on up, going up to um whatever altitude I could get and intercepting my best glide speed, and that plane's 160 and um, again, a lot happening at the same time, but um I had uh the side canopy, which is still baffling to me, had a big hole in it and a crack propagated through it, and this is bullet bullet resistant, uh, I'll say plexiglass.

It's not plexiglass, but really thick stuff. And, and it was on the side though. If I hit a bird, it would have been in the front. Right. So I had this, had the lab bang, realized I had this crack in the side canopy. So what, you know, plenty of flies just fine, except until I was on my way to get altitude, you know, altitudes, life insurance. Right. So I was getting altitude and then my, my pitch pitch controls were jammed in the trim and I couldn't budge them. So I'm like, oh, if I don't have that working well, it's time to bail out of this airplane. If you can't control it, you got to get out. So I was headed northbound away from all the crowds and stuff. I got that freed up. I did a functional check, patrol sweep and all that stuff. I was up there floating around doing 160 at this point. And the plane was now flying fine.

And then I looked down and continued to evaluate what happened. The chase plane never found me. It would have been helpful for him to tell me, hey, you're missing a part here. You got smoke there. He never found me, and things happen. And so I set up to come back down and recover to runway eight, and I believe in treating emergencies as normal as you can, depending on the type of emergency. So I came in overhead. I hit high key, and I started to turn. Turn, and when I hit low keys where I gotta add power, and I, I went to add power and there was nothing, and I was looking at the gauges going, but the gauges look good. They're like, "Yeah, well, dumbass, better accept what's in front of you because it may look good, but it's not good, right?" You know, if I, if I made a turn to the runway at that point, no way I would have made it.

And so I had to turn 90 degrees away from the runway because I wouldn't have made the 180. I was, I was losing too much altitude and speed and all that stuff. So then I aimed north, and I started – now I've got to shut down the plane mode and reduce fire risk, reduce flipping over risk, get ready to get out of this thing when I touch down. And so I was lined up for this road, and it was looking pretty good. It was a dirt road, dirt like a G-path, but it was flat. And I made my last Mayday call. Um, I shut all the electrics off, shut the fuel off, and started unlatching things so I could get out as quick as I could. You know, on there's a secondary latch on the canopy and things like that. So, um, as I'm getting down low, right in front of me, between myself, well, the aircraft and the dirt road, was this three-foot-wide, roughly concrete pillar.

I guess it's about two feet wide, about three feet beat tall, right in the height of the sagebrush in the desert. I was like, I think that's bad. If you hit that, that's in the bad category, right? Yeah. So, because I want to keep the plane level when I was contacting the ground, so I minimized flipping it over and, um, so I just ruddered off to the left, very little, um, popped the nose up, went into the desert on a 345 heading. touchdown, and then the entire Nevada desert went into my face. I swear, it was horrible. I have a mask on my helmet and goggles and all that stuff, and I couldn't get over how much dust came into my face. It was terrible, but I think it was a big factor in because a lot of fuel, like you could see it in the video, there was a belly feeder tank, so that just ruptured immediately and jet fuel spraying all over the place like a perfume bottle on steroids.

But I think that dust actually was, um, suppressing any spark turning into a flame. I think it was a added value, and so I, uh, I was just flying it instead of, you know, sliding on the belly, because you don't want to put the gear down into a soft surface and, uh, sliding to and it came. I plowed through it, literally made this really nice pharaoh's plow line for about 1200 feet, and then right at the end, it just made a gentle right turn. I popped the canopy off, I got out. Then there's rattlesnake marks and holes all over the ground like, you guys are kidding me, that's not cool. And, um, and then I just figured I'd walk over to that dirt road because at least I'm not in the desert proper and, uh, and it was like a scene in a movie. I was just, I had my helmet, my parachute, my gear, I'm just walking to this, and I was all by myself.

There was no rescue folks for like five minutes. It took them a little longer to get out there and, uh, and yeah, and I was like, hey, how about

Nevada stand, I, yeah, we did a big search and rescue for a very good friend who disappeared out there last year paragliding, and I know that dust you're talking about, it is unbelievable. It's a foot and a half deep, and it's just, oh man, it gets everywhere. Um, wow, I'm glad that one ended up okay. Have you had any other there? Have been times you've been in an airplane when you thought, "Yep, this is it, not gonna get to the ground." I

Never, I don't allow that to enter my head. It's, um, we had a really bad, bad fire on this, uh, vintage airplane—really large vintage airplane—a few years ago, and it was bad. The, uh, the entire, and this is a big airplane, 90-foot wingspan, the entire cabin, cockpit was full of smoke, smoke, and lucky in that plane, the side windows can open in the cockpit, and I had a couple guests on the plane, and I had them up breathing that fresh air because it was that bad, and the the flame was coming out of this massive junction box, bigger than your home's circuit breaker box. And I was just, you know, it's a two-pilot airplane, so I got out of my seat, and he was doing a great job flying the flame.

Like, go towards that water, because if this goes bad, we're going to go land in that water. You know, if that flame doesn't reduce, it's just going to get worse, and then aluminum doesn't do well with flames, and then parts start to fail, and failing parts in altitude don't get along too well. else. So I was like, go towards that water. And if we have to, we'll ditch into water near the shoreline and get out. And, um, so I, I shut off all the electrical power and I started pulling every single circuit breaker. There's about 110 circuit breakers in that plane, trying to find out what the electrical fire source was. And then I saw the flames were, they were reducing and then they stopped. And then we did a bunch of emergency stuff to get the gear down and pump down. And then, then we landed without our power on and, um, back at a runway, and it all went really well.

One guy got smoke inhalation really bad and, uh, so we had to take him in for oxygen, but other than that, probably was back flying a few miles later. But that was a pretty intense fire. It was, it was bad.

What happened in Pakistan? You said you had a lot of friends in Pakistan, but you had some gunpoint stuff and, well...

I was just sharing the story; I forgot about this story, and it's—it's a really, really good one because it—it deals with the empathy of humans and finally, again, finding where that Venn diagram overlaps with very different people in very different worlds. And it was four in the morning, and—and I had a driver, and we're driving through Pakistan. We went through this one section has roadblocks, and we knew that, and we get pulled—you know, we stopped the roadblock. You know, the scene is just right out of Hollywood, right? You know, everybody's pointing guns at the car, and they're all acting angry, and I'm like, "Why are you so angry? I'll—I'll give you a chocolate bar," you know? So they pulled the driver out and they took, they took them away. I'm like, huh, that's probably unfavorable, you know? So I get out of the car, they're telling me to get back in the car and they speak about eight words of English and my Urdu is about less than that.

And, and so I'm trying to do hand gestures and I'll, so I'm hanging out inside the back seat of the car, just chilling. And I don't know where I came up with this idea. And uh, and subsequently I've used it ever since in several heightened experiences. I had one of these little Sony, you know, cameras, you know, the little little ones. I pulled it out and I was making the gesture, "Can I take a picture?" He's like looking at me like I'm nuts, you know? He's like, "Why is this cuckoo want to take a picture?" you know? And he's being all mean and angry, and I'm like, "No, no, I want to get a picture with you," so you know, through sign language and everything else, I'm—I'm taking a selfie with him, the guy with the most stripes on his arm, and he's like, okay, okay, and we take a picture. And then I asked him if I could hold his rifle while we take a picture.

He's like, okay. So I'm holding his rifle. He's taking a picture of me while I hold the rifle. This very surreal moment, and he actually cracked a smile, and then he had one of his subordinates come over and take a picture of he and I together holding these rifles.

Fantastic. And

he was like, okay, you guys can leave. I'm like, oh, where's my driver? He'll be back. He'll be back. It's fine. And his English actually improved slightly as he de-escalated.

I learned that sailing around the world, we were places that were potentially a pirate area, Malacca Straits kind of thing. We always had cigarettes and a Polaroid. Those were the two things that, you know, you know, a, you know, don't get the guns out, invite them on board, offer them some cigarettes, and start taking pictures. And a Polaroid was, you know, now you could just do it digitally, but back then that was terrific because you could literally go think and then they, you know,

yeah it

just diffused everything, yeah? No, it couldn't mean I

Couldn't agree more. Coca-Cola goes a long way, and I drink soda. The other one is newspapers; if you give them a current newspaper, they love it.

Totally magazines, yeah, absolutely. Sometimes magazines that have scantily clad women, some parts of the world tend to work pretty well.

Yeah, Sears catalog will work for that.

Exactly, exactly right. Uh, too much. Um, any other scary, you know, when you think about a long career in the air, uh, I don't know why I'm centering on scary. It just seems like, like, you know, with all the racing and all the test flying, you know, there must have been some moments.

Well, I mean, like 2011, I lost my engine racing, but that was easy. I knew the engine failed. I came off the track, got some altitude. I recovered to runway 14.

I don't know. Again, I don't want to sound like I'm being macho, but it wasn't scary. I just had a job to do. At gates I had to pass, so that the job came out successfully, I had to pass those gates. You know, I needed this much altitude to make runway one four. Don't turn this way, turn that way. You know, you just, you know, training and rehearsal and stuff. Um, it has an intensity to it. I'm always more concerned about my team. You know, my team's awesome, you know, uh, people very close to me and all volunteers. It's already too expensive to race, you know, and uh, and I know they're nervous when, when they see and hear a mayday called because they have radios for lots of reasons, but you

know, great

outcome. And other times like that, I think weather can be one of those moments that really get you the hair in the back of your neck going, because I had one that was pretty intense. I was taking one of those small jets, the eclipse, um, I was delivering it in England. Uh, I never cut fuel tight. Never. That's just a fool's errand. And, um, I left Reykjavik on this leg going to Wick, Scotland, um, really up north. And I went missed approach because the weather was bad. And I started climbing out and I said, my alternate was Aberdeen. They have an ILS there, which gets you down to really low weather conditions. And I said, I'll go to Aberdeen. So I turned south to go to Aberdeen and plenty of fuel for that. No problem.

And I don't know, it seemed like hours, but it was probably 12 minutes going towards Aberdeen south. And he said, Aberdeen just shut down. I was like, well, that's unfortunate. And I was like, so what's my closest ILS that is still open weather-wise? And they had me go to the Orkney Islands. I'm like, oh boy, islands and weather not good. Now I'm getting tight on fuel, and the Orkneys are north, and I was going south, and I'm like, this is bad. But this is why you have reserve fuel; I mean, it's there to use if you have to. And and so, so I was coming into the Orkneys, and it was blowing like 35 knots and rain and all that nasty stuff. And they're like, hey, you're going to be number two. There's this life flight, you know, someone with a medical thing.

Inbound, I go, hey, that's great. I promise I won't get in the way. You can turn me early onto that ILS, but I'm landing like right now. I'm critical fuel. And they're like, okay, can you keep your speed up? I'm like, whatever you need, but I'm landing right now and I will not get in the way of the life flight. And so they did turn me early. And the wind was so much that the plane was offset about 30 degrees to the right. So you're looking at the quarter view window and rolled out, you know, uneventful. But the weather, I think, is intense. And I was really tight on fuel. I was landing there no matter what. Let's put it that way. And it worked out

fine. That was part of the world tour that you took us through earlier. is, is the flying part of, of something like, you know, when you're in a jet and, you know, you're not, you're not, you're not flying in Alaska right on the deck, you know, looking at the most you're, you're, you're up tall. Is it, is that still exciting for you? It, you know, I wouldn't imagine it matches the racing and stuff, or is that, is it, or is the beauty of that kind of a trip really all the places you get to go?

Yeah. I mean, it's, uh, it's a great great question because absolutely racing is one type of flying. It's really intense. You have eight planes with you, feet apart, bad things can happen. You're asking the most out of an airplane. It's super intensity. You get out of the plane after racing, you got to slow down back to what the world is moving at. And I know you get that. And if I take a beautiful Falcon over to Oman, which I just did. I just got back from there a few weeks ago. It's different challenges. The flying, you know, it's a ton of straight level flying. I personally enjoy it. It's very opposite to use the racing example, but I know I'm going to get to another adventure.

In this case, I played on the—I played golf, which I'm very bad at, but I like it. On this golf course where you could not putt on the greens, it was impossible. There was no putting greens, but there was a hole. There was hilarious. But, you know, it's another tiny little paragraph of an adventure. Right. You know, sure. You know, there's not a golf course that bad here in the U.S. period. And it was hilarious. And we laughed about it. My dutiful pilot that went with me. But so, yeah, it's absolutely different. It's not your hair on fire, but it's very enjoyable to me. And those chip trips, the international trips in a large corporate plane, they're full of challenges, but they're different challenges. There's permits, there's landing rights, there's all kinds of stuff. And now throwing COVID, which is a whole nother layer of enjoyment, and that makes it even more, more difficult and different, you know.

I,

uh, we didn't get to hear what country haven't you been to? There's one.

Oh yeah. Madagascar.

Oh, you got to go there. I know. That's a place I've spent a lot of time in. Madagascar is pretty amazing. We've been watching all the, uh, the cartoon films with my four-year-old the last few nights too. Yeah. Gotta love, gotta love King Julian. Um, yeah, that's a crazy place. You'd love

it. Absolutely want to, no reason. It's just built for adventure. Yeah, exactly. I've heard great things about it. Like you're another person telling me, you know, with a great background. It's wild.

You're really going, I mean, it's very, very, very poor. Uh, I think it's fourth poorest in the world or something, but it's, you know, the flora and fauna there, mind boggling. It's very unique. Sounds awesome. Yeah. What, uh, what happened in Guatemala?

Um, well, I got involved with a group that is informal and, um, it's not some large organization. It was just, Hey, let's go help some people that need help. And, um, there, there are three orphanages down there that we decided, um, to make better for them. And the one orphanage was they, their kids get stolen. It's horrible. And so we got some friends to help with that whole security thing that are very well experienced in that and well trained in that. And then the big thing was to put in a cement floor, so we did that because that stopped a pathway for the snatching to occur. And god, they

dig, they come up through floors, they

come up underneath the wall through the dirt and if the windows are protected and we we did that.

Holy cow.

So we just helped these orphans and it's been really successful. We helped them with school supplies and other technology. Obviously the security was first and foremost. We did several trips down there and then COVID happened. So a lot of doctors and others weren't comfortable going there during COVID. I was like, well, give me a plane to take. I'll head down and we'll see what's up. But we've had favorable correspondence with them even during during COVID that all of the measures we applied have been working now for several years. And, you know, it's kind of like the teach a kid to fish story. They get to eat for life, right? It was kind of that approach. We don't want to just give them things. We want to make them better contributors to the community.

And it's been really rewarding.

Has most of your philanthropic work been oriented around kids?

A little bit. you know, I, I, I have this phrase I've used for years. Kids don't have a choice. You know, all of us adults have a choice, right? We can do good, do bad, whatever. And kids are just born and they don't have a choice. They're just there. And so, yeah. Plus, you know, raised by a single mom that, that whole type of, um, outlook definitely has some influence on me. So, you know, a fair amount with that fair amount with our veterans. And, um, and again, people that don't have the choice, people that were born with a genetic issue. We help with an organization here in Park City called National Ability Center, and we donate it. We call it "Fighter Pilot for a Day." We take them up in a military fighter. It's just an auction item that raises a ton of money for their, for their, uh, group, and it's really terrific to see how well organized that NAC is.

And you know, helping these people there again, they don't have a choice, right? They're just born, born and, uh, we have choices. You and I have choices. Um, the kids don't. So,

yeah. Good for you, man. That's, that's awesome. I was kind of caught off guard there when you said Madagascar and I just kind of, I just kind of ate that, but that means you've been to places, um, North Korea,

Syria. Um, have you, have you been into a lot? Have you been a lot of the countries you've been been in, if they've been in, you know, active conflict times or?

Yeah. All kinds of reasons. Yeah. North Korea was a diplomatic deal that I was pilot for and a couple of different times. That's funny you keyed in on that because when people hear that little factoid, they ask like, well, what about Ukraine? I'm like, well, That's, that's easy. I mean, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, Cuba, North Korea, Cuba now is semi-open, but uh, yeah, you know, just doing different tasks and jobs and lived in Turkey for a while, living in South America for a while, and so, yeah, what's

Your, what's the favorite place you've lived or been, um?

If I, if I did it by kind of like topic or region, a huge Italy proponent. Love it, love the people, you love food? Yeah, I'm a foodie. Um, yeah, and I love the history there, but the people are awesome, right? Yeah, and I think when there's awesome people in a location, there's usually awesome food. Iceland's another one, that's another one. I'm never tired of going to Iceland. Great food, you know, whole different scene. Uh, really nice people, um, welcoming. Um, Thailand, and the same, same thing, you know? Yeah, hiking. Thailand's awesome, and doing a jungle tour on my friend's elephant is awesome. Um, but you know, the food and the people, right, there, and it's different.

The one common thing among food is everyone has their version of a burrito, some rolled up flour thing with food stuffed in it, every single place, sure, some form of a flour rolled up thing with food in it, right? And, uh, yeah, but Yeah, I really, really like Thailand a lot. I've had a lot of great trips there. Um, yeah.

Is there a place you've been that, if you had to go back, you'd go? Not that excited about it.

Yeah, oh yeah, DRC no.

yep okay

That wasn't fun. Um, I was in Somalia. I had a few different times, you know, young boys in horrible situations, pointing an AK-47 at me. Not cool, because they—they don't have a value. Sure, they're in a horrible life, means nothing. Life means nothing, and if they make it to 18, they're like, "Wow, I'm old." Yeah,

Liberia was, was like that. I went into port there to get fuel in Liberia and I just, it was, you know, there are a lot of countries—Madagascar is a perfect example of this, you know, that are really poor, yeah. And you just, you know, the the people, the people, the community, the friendliness, it just blows your mind. And there are other places that are really poor that are just scary, in my experience, just terrifying. And Liberia was one of them.

Yeah, there's several African countries that are really tough. West Africa is full of some sketch.

Yeah, it's a tough place.

I was in this Ebola village for this experience, and I didn't go there intentionally. But we were trying to help out a little bit. It was horrible. And then there's bad guys there on top of it. So you've got this horrible disease-infested area, and then there's bad guys. A

lot of corruption.

It's just sad.

I wanted to ask you about this Discovery Channel, the productions you've been doing there, the Dangerous Flight series. I don't know this one. What's this about?

Well, thanks for asking because that was super fun. I almost didn't do it. Um, but the whole premise is a broker sells an airplane to somebody in say the Philippines and the planes in Florida. And then Discovery Channel followed us around and did interviews with us and the goings on and the happenings and the risks. And the planes were, you know, smaller, they weren't tiny, but they also weren't a corporate jet. Um, so we had to stop a fair amount and, um, um, have the adventure on the ground too, so to speak. And so, they would each episode was following two different, uh, trips, and it was great. It was really good.

It was doing well. And then we had a tragedy, and that's why it got, uh, canceled. We had had to directly die and, um, he crashed. Yeah, he crashed in Kenya, um, after I completed a four-week trip with them and I left, and he wanted to fly around Mount Kenya, around this spot called Dead Man's Curve, and I told him, "Do not go there." And I said, "I won't go there, and I'm not taking you there." And I was, you know, it's about a 24-hour trip home. So, I, I went down Nairobi, flew to, I think, Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam, the salt lake, and finally get home. I was literally driving up the mountain going home, phone rang with this foreign number, and I knew what happened. I knew before I picked up the phone. I'm sure enough, John died, and he's a great guy, great, great shooter, um, you know, film shooter.

And why was this

spot the dangerous whatever... what, well, is it called?

It's called Dead Man's Curve, but um, it's on the east side and there's a big draw in there. Like, there's a big deal for paragliding because if there's a big cold draw, air draw, it's always there. It's almost, almost always there, and that down current can get up to 60 miles an hour easily, and in some cases more, depending on where in the world you are. And this one has a really bad current that draws you down because of that cold sinking air that goes deep into this, uh, you know, volcano that goes up to 18,000 feet. And um, sure enough, they crashed within, you know, feet of where I said, "Don't go," because he wanted the shot. He was a consummate, you know, cinematographer, and he was great at his craft, and uh, found this local guy that took him up in a small plane, and both of them were killed instantly.

It was real shame, and that's why we didn't continue with the next season, and uh, but it was, it was um, it was a great little run, though I can tell you that. And the people love—they still air it, they still play it around the world. And, uh, you know, we get questioned, "Are they going to do it again?" And I think Discovery Channel got a little, you know, gun shy, right?

Have is there been a lot of, uh, tragedy in your career, given what you do? You lost a lot of friends along the way, yeah.

Unfortunately, I've, I've lost a lot of friends. Um, test flying has some hazards in it, uh, racing does, and then some of the international trips, just people, you know, bad, bad turn of events, bad luck and, um, they don't, they don't go home. Yeah. It's unfortunate.

Do you chalk up your own survival to any kind of a approach more than luck? I mean, I, there's the obvious stuff, but I'm looking for something more, you know, um, I don't know, you have a, you have a playbook, you know, listen to your inner self, anything that just. I

do. I never allow outside or external pressures to affect my decisions. And I think a lot of people that have bad outcomes, they didn't realize they were pressuring themselves from the external forces. And we call it get-home-itis. That's a classic weather. Oh, they'll be fine. I've done this before. Um, and then some of it is just not enough planning or training in a certain area, and um, you know, treat it as carefully as they should in cases. And then, of course, bad luck. So, I, I, I definitely plan. I've taken some single-engine planes across the Atlantic, hopping across the different islands and everything, and um, and I get done with them like, "God, that was a bad idea.

Why did I do that?" You know, going across the Atlantic at 5,000 feet, um, and but I'm very conservative about the weather. I mean, I was a professor of meteorology, and I still don't think I know enough about weather, and I, I'm just, uh, very conservative in lesser capable planes in certain environments. You know, the satellite picture is not good. I'm not going see ya. That's when the schedule does does not bother me at all, because I promise I don't want to hang out in Kujuac, Canada, eating, you know, the same food every single day, which I've done, right?

But that is what gets the bush pilots in Alaska. It's, you know, it's usually when they're flying for the lodges or the fishermen or, you know, or something, and they're, and there's pressure. You know, there's pressure to fly

in the weather and they got they got the bad weather scenario they got the pressure they got planes that are, you know, they're not super well equipped. I've flown a bunch up there and they can only do certain things. Bottom line.

How do you, how do you think about, you know, six months, two years, five years? Are you a real goal oriented guy? Yeah. Okay. Do you, how, how do you, uh, you've had all this adventure. How, what do you, where do you go from here?

The next immediate goals are definitely, uh, part of it's the books. I want to, I'm going to, to interrupt the series with a book about my flying stuff and things related to the flying stories like some of them we're talking about. It's mostly done, but I've had to transcribe my notebooks, and that is a daunting task. I now have a solution for that. So maybe by January, I'll be able to release that third book, but it's not a part of the series. It's just the flying adventures of my first 30 years of flying. So those are some immediate goals. I really want to see the relevant series, at least relevant the book, turn into a movie. I don't know anything about it. I'm trying to learn and I'm trying to find the people to get some mentoring from.

It's been hard. We wrote the screenplay and I'm like, oh my God, this is awesome. I'm like, doesn't anybody want this?

That's tricky. It's all who you know. So can I just ask a way too direct question? Has it been quite a successful book, Relentless? And is The New Cold War, which was just released, is that part of that series? Is that the second one?

Yeah. So the series is the title of the first book, and that's Relevant. And relevant is a term I think that's relevant to a lot of people and professions. But anyway, so Relevant is the series, And the second book in the series is called The The New Cold War, but it is a standalone story. It'll make references to the first book, but you can pick it up and just read the second book, and you can, and it will be a story in and of itself, and

That's also military fiction, yeah.

It's a spy thriller. It's a CIA asset, um, dealing, so a lot of my book is about the metaphysical side of the world. If I can get people to think a little differently, maybe, or just challenge things—and I don't mean challenge like, you know, like maybe maybe your daughter at four years old does like, why do you want me to do that, dad? You know, I don't mean that way, but I mean, like, you know, genuine asking questions why instead of just Googling stuff and listening to the media, maybe find someone to actually live there with success and experience and learn from them about a certain region, Somalia, right? Or something like that. And so in the narrative in both of these books, I really pose a lot of philosophical optical questions, a lot of "why" questions, uh, historical references.

So, you know, everyone right now wants to rewrite history, and I get it, it's—that's all cool. But, however, there are things that happen in this world and you can't look at it from our perspective in 2021, no. And so, to gain the right perspective, and or the time perspective, is super hard. It's extremely hard, and to really, really understand the perspective that was going on in, you know, 1855, in 1772, you know, blah, blah, blah. And really understand why did someone rally people around a city in the Middle East? And is it good? Is it bad? Is it different? And is it good and bad from 2021 perspective, or was it good and bad in, you know, 700 AD or whatever the case may be?

I'm just using one example, but really have that understanding. I mean, You don't have to become this scholar in history, but maybe just a little bit more, um, common ground among different cultures and people, and not just, you know, the people live at the end of the runway, they hate airplanes no matter what. Well, why aren't they at the end of the runway, folks? You know, I mean, there's a reason your house is 20 under value compared to the rest of the county, you know, because it's at the end of the runway and now you hate airplanes. Well, maybe go meet a pilot and really talk about what's going on there, right? Um, you know, so throughout those two books, even though it's a, a story about a CIA asset and, um, what he does, for example, in the New Cold War, we're really, I, I, I'm challenging the whole quantum computing that's emerging because we've had times, in my opinion, the last big topic we had to deal with was when the world started getting nuclear weapons.

And we had to deal with it philosophically because a weapon could take out an entire country in some cases. And I'm not here to get on a platform about good, bad, or indifferent, but the world had to tackle that philosophically. And they did. And of course, people made mistakes. It's just, we're humans. And the idea is that the mistakes can't be catastrophic. Make some mistakes, learn from it, own it. I know not everybody owns them, but when quantum computers, you know, if we had a proper quantum computer, I mean, full up running with the proper bridging to allow humans to interface with it, it may, it could, it is possible that it would be able to make a cure for cancer in seconds or hours.

And we don't know. I mean, we don't know what we don't know, but what they can do is unbelievable. The potential for what they can do is unbelievable. However, there's the downside. And everything we use, our phones, our computers, our banking, our credit cards, is all based on integer security measures. A quantum computer will hack that in a second. And the entire world security will be gone, absolutely gone. And as a world, you know, because we're citizens of the world, we're not citizens of the U.S. We live in the U.S., but we're citizens of the world, and we're not philosophically ready to answer that question, or that complete change in our civilization where nothing is secure, because there's a lot of bad guys out there.

There are a lot of bad guys out there. People like, oh, people want to do the right thing. I'll take you on a few trips and we'll go meet the people that are the bad guys, because they exist. They just do. And you know, it's human nature to try and get things easier for some people. It's human nature to progress towards a, a bit of a chaos. You know, entropy is a reason in science. There, there's a reason we have entropy existing, the term entropy. And so anyway, a long story, a little bit on my soapbox, but we broached the topic of quantum physics and quantum computers. Computers in the second book, it's part of the plot, and, uh, I had some—I say we, because that's really good—advisors on quantum physics and quantum development, and, uh, and other good advisors too, but it

Sounds very Bond tenant. It's, uh, yeah, fantastic. I, I can't, can't wait to catch up on them. Was there a need in you to write a book? Was this something that was just brewing all along, or, or because writing books is hard.

It's really hard, as you know. It was harder than I thought. I enjoyed the creative process, doing the filming for TV. I made a documentary, and it was terrible. It was absolutely horrible. But I learned a ton from it, and then I made some good documentaries. The bush flying I referenced in Alaska. I kind of made it for fun, but it was very professionally done, good cinematography, good production value. It was great. And I really enjoyed that. So the books were just another creative extension. You know, I wanted to use the right half of my brain a little bit more, you know, getting a book done in 12 months was hard for me and I got it done. It's not perfect, but I'm, you know, I really like it and they're doing well to answer your aforementioned question.

Yeah. Right.

So, you

know, they're doing well and, um, I hope they continue to do well because you don't make any money from it. I, I, I just want to go and talk to authors that are doing this for a living. I'm like, Holy cow, you just don't make any money, but the sales are important because it creates the momentum for other things to happen. And so the numbers are important. Like my brother, you know, I just shame him into, I'm like, John, go buy the book. And, uh, and you know, my spouse and my friends, but you guys have to buy the book. I'll give you the money for it but it's the number game right it's not the right it's not the earnings you know it's

A, it's a trip. It's a weird world, too. And you know, I, my book is not something that you would even put on Amazon. It's, it because it's, it's a very niche thing, you know? If you're a paraglider in the world, you know about the book. And it's, that's what's terrific about it. Was like our kite surfing business; if you're a kite surfer, you know about the business because it's pretty easy to reach all those people, yeah, you know? But when you're writing a spy thriller, you want to sell it, but to the masses, it's a trip because it is a numbers game, like you said. And a New York Times bestseller is 10,000 books. It's not that many copies. And so I'm with you. How do these people – yeah, it's a tough game to make money in, period. Yeah, it's really a lot of

money. And I've been stumbling and I've been getting help to get the message out there and sell the book. And I'm really happy with the amount of people supporting it. I'm super happy and thankful and hopefully that plays into the third book you know and getting that continuing the momentum you know Peter

Good for you. Well, uh, what a joy it is to hear about a fraction, a tiny, tiny snippet of your history and your adventuring and your love of scotch, which will take up some point, and congratulations on writing Relentless and and the new Cold War. And, uh, those of you listening, go out and grab it. And I'll have all the links up in the show notes for the books and your videos. I'll put on that. I think I've seen the bush plane documentary you're talking about, but we'll, uh, we'll have to put up some links to that as well. I've seen all those up in Alaska. I'm an Alaska freak and, uh, but thank you very much. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate your time and sharing some of these stories.

We'll have to do a part two here at some point. Well,

Gavin, thanks for the time. Super appreciate it. Eager to do part two. If

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