Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. This is a bit of a double show with Calef Letourne. Calef is an instructor in the Northeast. He got into flying about the same time I did in the early 2000s. He and I have a very similar background, not only where we went to school in Boulder, but with paddling. He was a very serious paddler and a professional freestyle kayaker and got into flying very early on, just weeks after he started flying. Lost a very good friend and mentor, and that shaped how he has gone about his progression very interestingly and became an instructor when he moved out to the Northeast.
He's also a very successful businessman in the Land Rover parts industry. And he moved out to the Northeast and was challenged to find people to go fly with and didn't have much of an XC scene happening out there. So he became an instructor really just to build a community. So this is a really inspiring story about how you can build up a community to have good pilots to go fly with. And he obviously wanted to be a good pilot, and to be a good pilot, you're going to surround yourself with other good pilots. So he became an instructor and an SIV instructor. And he's had a huge impact on flying in the Northeast. He frequently guides in other parts of the world with a guest we've had on the show several times, and you all know well, Nick Greece.
And so he spent a lot of time in Valle and spends a lot of time thinking and talking about flying. He's very articulate when it comes to that. So we also talk about heuristics and the kind of low probability and high consequence of accidents. the nature of accidents and the psychology of decision-making, and yeah, it's, it's all just really fun to go through it. And then, of course, when we end, it is what, what happens many times is the guest I have on the show will reach back out and go, "Oh, I wish we talked about this," or "wish we talked about that." And one of the things, because Caleb is an instructor, is he really feels like the one of the riskier places we have in our careers, flying careers, is when we're first kind of pushed out of the nest.
You know, you get your, you get your intermediate, you get your, sorry, your novice license, your P2 here in the states, and then you're kind of on your own, and it can be a tricky time because you don't know what you don't know. So we got back on and recorded another hour-long show Really focused on this stage for people, so if you're brand new, you just got some equipment and just done your first lessons, this is a show for you. Releasing it as a bonus episode, you'll find a link in the show notes for this one. We talk about launch techniques and what Caleb calls the pro launch, how the constantly varying wind factors in foot movement, first moments of flight, and getting into the harness, picking soaring distance from the hill, locations to look for lift, and what he calls the honey model.
We talk quite a bit about Kelly Farina's concepts in Mastering Paragliding, which were great to for me to even review. Has it been a while for me? Talk about shapes of thermals and yaw and roll and pitch, and all these things that are hard to grapple with when you're first getting going. So if you're at that stage, or just beyond it, and want a little review of a lot of great concepts, check out the bonus episode as well with Caleb. And in the meantime, enjoy this talk. It was a lot of fun. Cheers.
Caleb, good to have you on the show, man. We've been, uh, I was just going through my email stack from you over the years. We've been talking about doing this for years, literally a long time. So, I know a lot of things have changed since we first started chatting about doing all this, but let's go into—you suggested this and I dig it. Let's go into your origin story. How did you get into all this nonsense of flying around in the sky? Well,
Thanks for having me on the show, Gavin. It's an
Honor, so it started in college, uh, I think 2005. I was at a kayaking party, hanging out with some of my whitewater kayaking buddies, and one of them was telling me about, you know, this thing, paragliding, which I'd never heard anything about, and how cool it was when the sky got, you know, when you got tall and everything got really small, and the school buses and the people and everything was small below you, and you know how it's a lot like kayaking in the sky, and the air currents and, you know, very similar to water, and and I started learning in college, and I spent, uh, so in Colorado, I learned in Boulder, Colorado, and I spent two seasons out there, and pretty quickly, are you a buff? Yeah.
That's same, all right. Yeah, very cool, similar histories. Yeah, so I started out University of
Richmond in Virginia, and you know, looked around was like, "All right, this place isn't for me." Moved out to Colorado. My brother was already going to school out there, so we were rooming together, and I was kayaking as much as possible, getting, getting a degree in economics, and um, pretty quickly found paragliding, and it just grabbed me like, like nothing had in a long time. I had been kayaking pretty seriously all through high school. One of my friends likes to describe it like going to the Hogwarts of kayaking, so I was in one of those kayaking academies where we traveled all over the world and competed in whitewater kayaking and all that, and um, I was just looking for, you know, I sort of had burnt out at that point, having done a lot of competitions, and um, then, you know, they call it professional, but you know, making some money whitewater kayaking for a couple years, and
Was your thing kind of creaking? Was it hair boating? Was it, was it slalom? What kind of, what were you chasing? Freestyle?
Yep, okay. Yeah, I was like, three-time national champion and I won worlds the year it didn't count, uh, in the under 18 category, so it's pre-worlds. Like, they have that competition every other year and then, um, yeah, uh, I was at one point traveling around with a friend in a company vehicle. They gave us, uh, Chevys. I was piling for ways for at the time and I was, you know, with this guy who's his mid 30s and beating him. He was starting to have shoulder injuries and I looked around, I was like, all right, now's the time to go to college while they're going to college.
So I went to school and then fell in love with paragliding and, um, eventually got talked into moving back to Vermont to get involved in the family business, which is selling Land Rover parts just for the old classic Land Rovers. And having learned in the Colorado community, where there was just incredible mentorship and instructors all over and SIV readily available and, um, fantastic regular conditions with good soaring, you know, flying a lot at a lookout and Boulder and, and taking trips to Salt Lake City and having access to all these incredible pilots, moved back to Vermont and there was some good sites. Um, but back in this is like 2007 or so, there wasn't much of a community or much flying, so they were teaching me where to get to launch and then the new kid shows up and I'd soar for hours and they'd be kicking stones in the LZ like, "How'd you do it?" You know, so
I started by training the guys that were already there who had, you know, some, some 10, 15 years of experience, but weren't, you know, hadn't been taught the way I had been taught. And that really helped.
Fascinating. So, I mean, they had, they had a lot more years than you did, but it just, is it that much tougher of a place to fly or was it just the lack of instruction? They just, you'd think they'd come out and get some hours in a different sky, but that's interesting that you, you were able to, you know, come out there with relatively less experience from Colorado and have more ability.
Yeah, I think if you have to learn these things and figure them out yourself, it takes exponentially longer than if you're able to have mentors whispering the little secrets, you know. Dale Covington and Chris Santacroce were some of my early instructors and the tips they taught me about how to feel the glider and, you know, everything from what you're doing with your outside hand and where you're looking and all that stuff. You know, it's hard to come up with. On your own. And I think the conditions. I mean,
Lookout was also a pretty good place to, I mean, I've never flown Lookout, embarrassingly. I've done very little flying in Colorado, but I understand it's, it's pretty low, right? It's kind of tricky to get out of.
Yeah. And interestingly enough, I had the same mentor as Will Gadd, which we connected on a couple of years ago. This crazy guy from Arkansas, MR, who's just got the most, biggest heart, but also can be kind of hard on the rookies and kind of runs it a bit like a drifter. He's
a drill
sergeant. It was a, it was a great place to learn how to fly. Yeah. They really took me under their wing and I received a lot of help from observers out there. Just kind of, they had a great community, you know, and when I came back to Vermont, it was like, all right, we need to help people come up through the ranks so I can, we can have some folks to soar with. Because back in the day, you know, it was a handful of us in Vermont. And so on a weekend, there could be nobody to fly with, you know, and so far, you know, it came down to. So somebody had to do it. I didn't feel like I was the most qualified, but there needed to be somebody around sort of taking the P2s out of the, there were some schools, but they just stopped at P2. So they'd get folks in the air and it was kind of scary because, you know, there was some P2s that didn't really know what to do after that.
And I think this is a challenge that's pretty much everywhere in the country faces. That's a sort of a critical part in pilots careers is fairly well defined what to do as you go through your training and your progression. And then you get to P2 and a lot of schools wave goodbye to you. And then you got to make the transition to mountain flying. Buy the
gear. Good luck. Yep. Yeah. Right. Was your, just curious about paddling is because it sounded like that was, that was a big part of your life. Was paragliding the end of your paddling or did you still keep paddling?
Yeah.
So after I graduated college and was definitely flying at that point, I taught for a traveling kayaking high school. For a semester teaching video editing and coaching the freestyle program, which was, you know, like a video productions course and coaching freestyle, which was fun. But yeah, I was definitely dragging a paraglider around with me in addition to the kayak. And it was clear at that point that I was more interested in flying than kayaking.
That's pretty interesting. Because you maybe heard my story of kayaking down in Mexico. And I was, you know. know, same, very intense. I was never very, a very good play boater; I was more creek stuff. And without going into it, because I've told the story before, but basically died in a waterfall and should have definitely died, but basically died. And you know, one of those miraculous kind of, "Holy cow, I got to survive." And I never, I got right back on the river that day. And then, you know, and I've paddled some fun stuff since the cell way in the middle fork and Grand Canyon and fun stuff, but I was never able to get back on the horse. And it was, which is interesting to me, because paragliding to me is, you know, I'm sure like yourself, I've lost some friends boating, but nothing compared to flying, uh, in terms, especially in terms of the injuries you get, the shoulder injuries and stuff, but it seems maybe that's a numbers thing.
I don't know, but the, it seems that that paragliding, if anything, is even scarier, or it can be. And but that's been something that's held my attention for a lot longer than than kayaking did. I'm always interested too with the relationship with kayaking and flying. It seems to be a common one that that people who kayak, Will Gadd talked about this a lot, very, they get it. They, they get really good at paragliding really fast. Yeah, it's the hip movement, it's the, it's the flow, it's all those things that the
Fluid dynamics, I'm often building mental models of what the water would be doing as it's moving through the mountains. Absolutely, it's interesting you mentioned the risk. I always sort of thought paragliding was significantly more dangerous, and then I saw the whitewater deaths this year in the U.S. There were like over 30. Now, granted, they're counting people who were like, you know, tubing with a cooler beer tied to their foot and that sort of, sure, you know, stuff, but I guess the big, big water year out west and a lot of people getting after some flood stage stuff. But yeah, we definitely lost friends in both sports over the years. Unfortunately, a big part of my origin story is that two weeks into my paragliding career, that guy I was telling you about, that was at the party who convinced me and who's actually a good paddling buddy of mine, he had the flight of his life and then attempted wing overs and pounded in and died on the scene.
So like, right in the beginning of my paragliding career, I was
like, oh my god, I'm gonna die in the water. I
had this big loss, which really sort of informed, you know, how I learned and how I thought about the sport. And then I had a pretty, pretty exciting intermediate syndrome because I got good fairly quickly, and at the start of my second season, was like right away out soaring, march thermals, and you know, so I had some exciting moments I'm happy to tell you about later. And that sort of all factored into how I think about flying and the work I'm doing now to help progress, hopefully without any setbacks. Because like you said, you know, you're sort of touching on the fear, injury stuff. A near drowning experience kind of ruined the sport for you, um, and you haven't been back much. For me, uh, I was just competing in freestyle a lot, and every weekend we'd go creaking and whatnot, so I really enjoyed, uh, you know, waterfalls and challenging white water.
But, um, you know, I was one of the guys who, you know, I was almost never swam. Like the last time Was actually that guy Max. He used to be the guy who would run the worst lines intentionally, and his nickname was Chunder Boy, and he just loved to get hammered. And so after he passed away, I did some memorial Chunder Boy lines until one time I just got stuffed down below a waterfall and had to swim out, and that was my homage to Max. But we had these conversations where I was like, "He kept saying, 'Yeah Caleb, you're gonna be a great paraglider because you never swim and you're always so calculated with your kayaking and you always nail the line.' And, and you know, I'm like, 'But Max, what's that say for you?' You're like the worst, like, you know, we all laugh about how like your reputation is for just getting spanked at all times, and you, you're the guy who can just take the beating the hardest." And he was like, "Oh, I'm afraid of flying.
It keeps me safe." And then he gets to 14,000 feet in Aspen one night, you know, and the fear goes away. So, you know, a lot of it's really challenging because a lot of this sport is, you know, you're as good as your
convincing yourself to be afraid of things you you don't quite understand, you know; and maybe that the old guard are telling you you should understand or be afraid of it's challenging, um, because you know there's a lot of bad decisions that result in excellent paragliding, and it's really the feedback system is all wrong, you know.
We, we had a good discussion via email a while back about a avalanche podcast that you really liked and put me on to, and where they talk about heuristics and just that bad decisions being, uh, being granted terrible results, you know, bad decisions just ending in an epic pow day and making good decisions ending in a bad day because you're, you're not skiing the steeps, and so it's rewarding all the wrong things, which I think we find, you know, Will Gadd talks about that a lot. We find that a lot in flying, don't we?
Yeah, I was actually having this conversation just last night. Um, we have a WhatsApp group with all of our graduates and soaring students that are continuing, um, you know, soaring practice with us, and um, one of the pilots was saying how she felt bad that she had driven down and kind of had kind of left feeling bummed. And I let her know that I had been talking with one of the instructors and thought she did the best piloting of the day because it had gotten clearly kind of windy, and we saw some, you know, challenging launches, and she just made the responsible decision that she didn't, she didn't feel like she was going to be able to do it, and she went home. And, you know, unfortunately, that feels negative in the moment, but avoiding having, you know, one of those career-changing experiences, or at least a bad enough time that you scare yourself, is, is crucial to having a long career, you know, because it's not a particularly physically demanding sport.
We can all do it well into our, you know, mid-70s, or until you pound, right?
Yeah, yeah, and it's a long time, pound long time, hurt or, yeah. Uh, you, you seem to keep gravitating towards instruction. You, you talked about you instructed in freestyle, and then you, what, what makes a good instructor, and what makes you, why do you think that's been the case? Well, why do you like instructing? What, you know, I've never instructed anything. It's just, it's an interesting personality trait, yeah.
That's a great question. I guess I never really thought about it, but I was instructing fairly early in paragliding. I remember when I was in Via de Bravo in my second season and I just discovered this place and was like, "This is the most amazing thing in the world," like, you know? And then when you know new pilots would show up, right away I'd start teaching them like, "You know, from here's a good place to get your breakfast quesadilla, to here's how you get to launch, to you know, here's the route we've been flying to get back to town." And it was a little harder to get back to town back in, you know, 2007 when the gliders weren't quite as good as they are now. Uh, but yeah, I don't know, I don't know that I'm a particularly
natural or talented instructor, um, a lot of its need and ability. I keep saying, if there was somebody better at it around me, you know, near me, that I would let them take the responsibility. In some ways, it kind of, so it's a lot of work, um, it's sometimes feels a bit like responsibility more than, um, something that I'm doing out of enjoyment, but you, you know, for me, the goal has always been to build the paragliding community locally that I want to make the flying buddies that I want to have. Because otherwise, um, you know, we'd have good pilots moving to town and they wouldn't see anybody flying because there's nobody out flying. And if there's not a community, there's some excellent pilots passing through that don't hang out with you, and and and it all sort of builds.
So it's not like I'm responsible for training all the pilots from beginning to expert, or even, you know, the ones that show up from other schools from having the novice P2 rating up to expert, or even, you know, the ones that show up from expert, um, but just helping foster that community so that when people, for wherever they, however they come to you, they, they show up and they see this vibrant flying community, uh, you know, people helping each other and talking about, you know, when and where and how to fly, and then, you know, afterwards hanging out and grilling and and and all that. That community aspect builds on itself and it attracts more people, um, you know, and I'm also really conscious that, um, I think maybe whitewater seeing its heyday, we certainly recognize hang gliding seeing its heyday, and I just love paragliding.
And so if I want to keep paragliding and have people to do it with, because we all know it's a lot more fun with other people, then it's sort of on all of us to latch on to that next generation and and help make them into our future flying buddies, I think. Um, and this is a bit of a generalization, but I think some of the hang gliding, they started eating their young rather than fostering their young, you know. I think there was a bit of a like, the new guys show up in some places, I've heard, and they were sort of forced to drive for a number of days and kind of not really accepted because there were some really cool pilots and the sport was really cool and it was really going places. And that's not really the welcoming atmosphere that gets people coming back, you know, and and there's many many factors involved, but, um, you know, I think we can all play our part.
You're certainly playing your part, you're certainly playing your part here with this podcast, you know, it's up to all of us to keep the sport going, yeah.
You're making me feel bad about our own community. You know, in Sun Valley, we've had this big issue in the states with all the lift access places with insurance and and not being able to fly a lot of these, a lot of the, you know, famous lift access places, lift access places that we've had for a long time—Jackson, Telluride, and Sun Valley, and Utah, all over. And and back east where you are as well, and it's really crunched our scene, and it's, it's become, you know, much more of a hike and fly club, which is great, and that was kind of the direction it was going anyway. But it really does need a lot of fostering, you know? The the speed community has been has done a really good job with that where I live, where there's there's there's events and there's barbecues, and they're getting people into it, and especially young people into it, and which is terrific.
But yeah, you're right, I mean, it requires effort. You gotta put some effort into it. How much of your instruction has been informed by the the death of your friend Max? Because you you said in your your emails several times that your own approach has been pretty conservative. Your approach with instruction is is pretty conservative. Was that was that a direct result of of of seeing that X? I guess you didn't actually see it, but the it was in your neighborhood, but uh, or is that just the the natural flow of of what you've seen in the sport?
You know, it's really interesting. Um, conservative is extremely subjective. Uh, some people think I'm crazy, you know? And I've even had other pilots, instructors, saying I'm going way too fast because, you know, in short order, sometimes we have pilots go from a trip or two to Mexico and then a couple months later we're going to cloud base and we're flying cross country together and accomplishing things that seem really dangerous. But in my mind, it's like, well, you know, cloud base is thousands of feet off the ground, the conditions are lovely, so it's perfectly safe. Um, you know all about maximizing safety margins, of course, and and thinking about um decision, decision-making processes that are going to create long-term success rather than short-term satisfaction.
Um, yeah. A lot of it for me is also what's going to be fun. Like, you know, there's a lot of logistic flights that you could take to get you down where you're going to be pointed into the wind for 30 minutes, and I don't find that enjoyable. And, you know, having done it for, you know, a couple seasons now, I'm not really interested in doing that as much as I was when I was, you know, more horny for air time as a younger pilot. That sort of seemed like a good trade, and I'm, you know, maybe getting a little older, I guess, turning 40 next year. Yeah,
You know, the first time I saw you was, you know, one of the board meetings we had recently. I thought, "Oh my god, he's a lot younger than I thought." For some reason, I thought we were closer, but you, you seem—you seem wise for your age.
You must have been been through a lot. Let's switch to that for a sec. Uh, you, you had some, you know, engineering background. You got into the parts business, which I think you're still doing, right, with Land Rover? Yeah.
Are you still kind of
running that for the family
Economics, yep. And then later I studied business and got an MBA, and uh, it's been really challenging, of course, working with Land Rover, and I think it's been incredibly, um, fulfilling in in a lot of ways. And it's just this really cool niche industry; we sell parts for old Land Rovers, and we've just gotten lucky in so many ways that, um, these old Land Rovers have continued to get cooler and cooler, and people keep bringing them into the U.S. Uh, if it's over 25 years old, it doesn't need to meet DOT or EPA requirements, and so we're getting into the years that they built a lot of Land Rovers, and so all these old junk trucks are
going to be built, and so we're going to be building a lot of Land Rovers, but you know
What future products are
going to come
out, and I'm—I'm still thinking about like things that I could, that I could do, even though I don't think I ever really want to. Um, but we've been get to where we deserve it, like I mean, where would I even think about like that, like you know, seeing like the real deal? But you know, the far future doesn't exist, like I don't know, right? So a lot of the ways life has changed over the years, and like it's been, you know, the time for armor, so I'll give you the ports go along with it. I'm—I mean, when the time for armor comes, um, like decided he was gonna create like a, uh, like a dis Goldman fan, like a, uh, snow and fix their car, and um, you know, we sold off the mechanic part of the business in the late 90s, and I joined in 2007. Then we had 15 employees, we're up to about 38 now. Um, yeah, I've been working really hard to sort of think more like a manager and an owner, uh, and creating efficiencies and processes and keeping myself out of the day-to-day.
So when I go teach paragliding in Mexico for two weeks, you know, there's a lot of emails happening at night and stuff, but I'm not doing the daily work; I'm more leading projects to create growth and efficiencies and stuff like that, okay?
You and I walk into a party, we don't know anybody, and uh, and we're trying to make friends, and somebody comes up and says, "Hey, uh, who are you? What do you do?" How do you answer that question?
Uh, I sell old, and for fun, I teach paragliding. Okay,
So, it's basically those two. What would be the percentage of car parts versus teaching paragliding? Well, in terms of your—in terms of your bandwidth and your time, I'd
Say it's about 50/50, but we do—I do a lot of working, um, so like, fortunately, paragliding often feels a lot like fun. So, you know, it doesn't really feel like working when you're coaching from the air. I try to do a lot of coaching from the air, you know, after I get everybody in the air myself, I launch and soar with them and we're talking techniques and whatnot, um, but I, yeah, you know, about 50/50, I'd say teaching
From the air guiding, okay? So you go down to Vaillé. You and Nick have done some stuff together, and you—you got, you know, Vaillé is pretty spicy. A lot of accidents go down in Vaillé. How nerve-wracking is that? That's always been something I've thought about doing. I've thought about doing, you know, trips in the Alps. I know the Alps really well now after all these races, and it'd be fun to do a kind of, uh, you know, high-end—you're going to really cool huts and, uh, doing and, you know, and you could use—you don't have to hike all the time, you could use—there's lifts everywhere there. But you could do a really cool tour of the Alps for, you know, a week. Toby, Cologne, that's kind of how I got into it. I used to do trips with him in the Alps from kind of Nice up to Annecy, or Annecy down to Nice, and but they
You know, you could do... there's some pretty rad places you can go in the Alps with great food and good flying and all that. And, and I know it really well now, so I've often thought about that. But then I always think, "Yeah, I don't know if I can handle the stress of just..." No, don't go in there. No, don't go in there. Don't go there. Don't, please don't do that. You know, yeah, you got these people on radio and stuff, but it makes me nervous. Yeah, what is that like?
um don't
Go behind the pinion, please. Don't, there's a lot to it.
because like, like we were talking about, I think, before I
was like
We started recording, you know, as soon as pilots are in the air, it's like amnesia. Like the stuff you told them 30 seconds ago, they just—they, they're, they're hungry, you know, they're out chasing it. And it's really, uh, you know, there is definitely some shepherding from the air that, you know, you gotta have the radio quick and be comfortable piloting either with one hand or have the microphone away that you can be talking while you're doing it. Um, but I also try really hard to make sure that it's really safe for the pilots to be able to do everything and, you know, challenge. But I think it's a good situation. I'm not going to vie in middle of January or February; I'm going early December when it's a little mellower. There's less people. We are—I really like to have a mixture of pilots so that we've got some newer pilots and some more experienced pilots, and the newer guys are getting out a little bit earlier and we're, you know, remote controlling them for a while, and then naturally they sink out.
And so, you know, when you have a mix of, of, of students, then you know later where I'm up in the air doing a little more cross country and maybe doing tasks that land at the lunch spot, and and the vans running around picking people up, um, and so then we all debrief over lunch and then go back for the afternoon, that sort of thing. Um, really like, uh, doing trips to Yukike, Chile, we got one coming up in the fall for that, another great destination. So, yeah, there's definitely some stress involved; it's not vacation, uh, you know, you're really trying to build people up and give them awesome piloting experiences, but also sometimes you need to, you know, be firm when something's going on that's not safe, that needs intervention. And and sometimes people don't understand, and and you need to try to explain in in various ways, you know, to break through whatever's going on, um, to get folks piloting more safely, you know, building in bigger margins, you know, trying to get them to understand that just because nothing bad happened this time doesn't mean it's a good idea to fly that far over the back and park yourself in the wind while you go up and down.
You know, there's, we've seen some people put themselves in fairly precarious situations that if it weren't for having, you know, somebody on the radio, could end badly. And and I guess there's a bit of a, an awareness that you have to, it takes practice, so that you can do your own piloting as well as keeping an eye on, you know, eight people. Um, right now I'm trying, I'm trying to run smaller trips. Last year we'd gotten up to running trips of 12 people with four instructors, but I think we're going back to one van tours, which is just less stressful.
What, what have you seen change for the good and maybe for the bad since you, you know, got into this in the early 2000s and then started instructing mid-2000s? It sounds like, and you've been at this for a while, there seems to be, you know, a few years back we were all pretty worried that we were heading in the same direction as hang gliding, and that doesn't seem to be the case. You know, I think COVID helped in a sense; it got everybody outside. Hike and fly has taken over the, the scene in a crazy way. Uh, you know, it's not just the X-Ops now, there's dozens and dozens of others, including my own, the X-Red Rocks, which is really exciting. You know, so the gear has, is certainly helped with this.
You know, we're not lugging around these huge packs. You know, there's a compromise there, which we've talked a lot about on the show, but the, what I guess what I'm saying is that, you know, the numbers are, are looking maybe better than they ever have. Right now, there's a lot of people. You know, the scene in Boulder is insane, the scene in at Tommy and Simone's place in Austria is insane, the, the scene in Santa Barbara is crazy. I mean, it's just, you know, it's in a sense there are more young people right now. I was just in Chelan for Nationals in June chasing it, and chasing it hard, and flying well than us old-timers have seen in a long time. It's, it's, it's a really exciting time for the sport, also a little bit scary. Uh, you know, because they're, they're chasing the heart and they're, they're new to the sport, so it's great to see, but it's also, yeah, you know, for, for those of us have seen a lot of accidents, it is a little bit scary.
But I'm just curious what you've seen and what, you know, what, what are the trends? What are you excited about? What are you worried about? Well,
I think some of it is regional as well, um, but I do agree that there's, I think, globally, paragliding is enjoying a moment. I think the GoPros and 360 cams have made it look really cool, and the speed flying is especially captivating for people, you know? I, I bumped into somebody a couple, uh, months ago who started telling me that he'd never paraglided, but he watches this guy on Instagram. It turns out, it's a speed pilot I know really well, and it's like, you know, random people love speed flying. Okay, cool. Um, so that's really cool, but I think the sport's really progressing in terms of technology, for sure. Uh, the glide ratios keep getting better, and they keep getting a little bit faster, and they keep getting safer, and the pack volume is huge.
Back in the day, we were traveling with like the size of equipment that's now my tandem gear, you know? And I'm about to go on a work trip, and I'm gonna sneak in an xe wing, and a speed wing, and a mini wing, and, you know, another harness, and it's all going to be great. And I'm going to be able to do a lot of smaller than the one glider I used to take back in the day. I'm gonna have three wings, two harnesses, you know? So, uh, it, that, that really helps, for sure. Um, but I think Covid really put things in perspective. I had a lot of people say, you know, I just want to do something with myself. Like, we were stuck at home and faced with this crazy upending of the nor, you know what we're, what's normal, and, and faced with our own mortality, and let's just go send it. This is really cool. Like, I've always wanted to paraglide, now's the time, and I really benefited, um, from, from Covid, because, um, I had some great instructors.
I had nothing else to do but hang out in New England and teach, and, um, those opportunities, you know, now that the pandemic has wound down, people are getting back to their normal occupations, and, um, so I've been losing instructors to better, you know, their normal careers and stuff, yeah.
This is interesting, you know? Sun Valley's having one of the worst summers in terms of tourism in a long time, and this is on the back of the best summer ever last year. All my buddies that are guides, I just talked to Chuck the other day; he's having the worst tandem season in history. Uh, all my buddies that are guides, are you know, they're painting and doing other stuff with their lives this summer, because I think people shot their wads, you know? They, they bought their campers and they're all their tickets, and it's interesting because apparently Europe's having this, the busiest summer ever, you know? So, I think a lot of the folks that were planning Europe trips and 20 and 21 and 22, they didn't get to go, you know? So, they're all over there, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
I wonder if that kind of growth will subsist and will keep, keep happening. We're
Not really seeing the dern, the downturn over here in, uh, Vermont in the Northeast USA. Um, but I've long been wondering if all those, you know, mountain bikes that you couldn't get and all the stuff that was campers and outdoor equipment that was you know, really in demand. The pandemic, and there was way more demand. There was supply, you know? It's like rock, uh, bouldering crash mats. Like bouldering went through a big peak back in the day, and then there were a bunch of used crash mats cheap when people got bored of bouldering or whatever, and I'm wondering if, all right, we're going to start to see some pretty good deals on our, you know, RVs and mountain bikes and skis and all that stuff, because when people like it You never know if it's like that parcel there that's separated and it just keeps going up to cloud base, or if it's like a high pressure day and it's going to come right back down.
There's like a stickiness that it overcame briefly, but in the end, you know, we're a pretty weird group of people that actually want to do this more than, you know, just to have that, you know, bucket list experience, you know? And I think it's, you know, that's actually one thing I, I'm sort of going through right now with my business is I'm, you know, winding down the tandem operation. Of course, you know, Bella and Jamie, and they've moved back to Europe since, um, the pandemic, and they were happy to run a tandem business, but to me, tandems don't really contribute to the mission. The mission is to build a piloting community, and if they're just a tourist, like, even if there's decent money in it, it's just not worth the effort for scheduling and communicating and getting folks
to do the
mountains and all that, because it doesn't contribute to more paragliding. It's just like, we gave them a great experience, which I did my first commercial tandem in a year. Um, now that I, you know, have less tandem pilots working for me, uh, and I actually really enjoyed it. It was fun, it was cool, it was great giving that experience, and I had—we had like a lovely 40-minute flight, and we, you know, gained, you know, a thousand feet or whatever, and surfed the ridge back and forth, and then went and landed when he started getting a little woozy. But, um, you know, it was cool to revisit that part of paragliding that I hadn't done in a while. Um, yeah, so anyway, I've
Never, I've never done it. It's always been... it's another thing that I've always kind of avoided because I thought, you know, if I love this so much, I was always a little wary of the tandem thing because I would talk to tandem, especially the ones in interlocking, you know, the ones that are banging 8, 10 a day, and you know, hey, the the worst thing you can do for your own personal flying is tandem fly because you just, you don't, you get the hours. But it's interesting, you know, a lot of the tandem pilots I've spoken to lately almost refute that. It's almost the other way around, you know, they love giving the experience, they're making good money, they're still flying, and you know, Sabba Spina is a classic example of this, you know, one of the best World Cup pilots in the world, uh, you know, just competed in the Eiger again, and you know, he's having a really good time, and he's one of the interlocking guys.
He, you know, he's he's a seasonal tandem pilot, so I mean, I think you can manage it, but I've just, I've always been afraid my own personal passion of of flying, especially XC, well
Um, you had him on the show earlier, Andre the Cosmonaut. He does an excellent job of banging a tandem out in the morning and then send it cross country as soon as the conditions turn on, so you can do both. Uh, it's definitely a balancing act, for sure. Um, yeah, the the work side of it does does take away in some regards, you know, like a lot of people launch the, you know, the fledglings, the the novices that are just learning to soar in the morning, and then and then I'll start having a bit more experienced pilots soaring with me in the afternoon, and maybe I'll do a triangle or an out and back rather than just trying to punt it down wind as far as I can, and ideally get back in time for like a 3 34 o'clock again with the with the same novices, so you can have a lot of fun around it, but it's it's certainly not just all fun if you're if you're teaching and helping folks
um are
You are, you still teaching SIV I
Am, if my my beach ever comes back, uh, we've had some record flooding and um, the weekend after the state capitol flooded, we were okay, uh, but there was not much beach left and it has kept raining and we've had just repeated flooding events and now there is no beach left and so I've canceled all sivs for the next two, three weeks. We'll see what happens, so
Let's talk about SIV for a little bit. Is it the—I don't know, your system out there? You talked about it in one of your emails that you, you like to keep it to the basics, but this was several years ago, so maybe you've changed things. But what does SIV look like to you? How important is it? How do you—when do you recommend people do it? You know, all the, all the kind of classic things we hear about SIV, but what's your perspective?
Yeah, I never intended to be an SIV coach. Uh, when I founded the business, there were three partners.
And, uh, maybe one year into it, the acro guy, um, you know, decided that he didn't have time and want to take that risk anymore. Um, he, he, uh, left, and and we, we had been having a little bit of disagreements about techniques because he just wanted to teach folks how to be great, and I was like, "Yeah, that's awesome, but like, if you tell them to exit the spiral by switching direction, like 75 percent of them are going to really screw it up, and they're going to go into the glider. So, like, let's talk about how to get out slowly, and when they mess that up, how to get back in, and like, keep it straight and not let it roll the opposite direction, so that we don't have the lines go slack." And and he was very quickly like, "You know what? I can tell you that you're gonna be better at this and want to do it, so why don't you coach the SIVs?
I'm out." Um, so, so, uh, I sort of got like thrust into it mid-season with a, with a booked SIV calendar. And I called Rob Sporup and he was like, I don't know, bro. Like, I don't think, well, I guess you could probably do it. You keep it pretty mellow, so I was like forced to come up with my own curriculum because, you know, I was an advanced instructor at the time. I had all the qualifications; I should have been able to do it. I'd done a half dozen SIV clinics. I was pretty comfortable—full stalling and wing-overs and all the basics. Um, but the reason was that none of my students had local training. Nobody had local training. It's like Florida, or Utah, Colorado, maybe. There's just this entire part of the country, you know, that two thousand miles, there's no SIV in sight.
And it's a pretty big ass to tell one of your students, "Okay, go for a, you know, a week-long trip out to California to do this scary training that you know." And our number one canceled, you know, between like trips and soaring instruction and tandems, and everything, SIV gets bailed on the most because as it comes up, people always have life events or stuff. Can you think? Everything, everybody's nervous, and it's just a weird different thing. And, and so, um, you know, it, it's hard to convince people to travel for that. Um, so it was like, well, I can't be putting out generations of pilots that are wanting to fly cross-country but have never done any SIV. We gotta do it ourselves. And fortunately, our original business partner came in with all the knowledge of the boat and the towing and all of that, so we were all set up.
And then we found a beach in New York, and I went to the—the town owned the beach—and I went to the select board meeting and pitched them on the idea of leasing us the beach, and they were all about it. They're like, "It's gonna put us on the map. We're gonna have something cool that's our own." You know, because it's this sleepy part of New York on Lake Champlain. Um, and yeah, it's been—it's been a big process. I actually hire, uh, three U.S. uh, Coast Guard commercial captains because we're on international waterway; we have to have proper commercial captains running our boats because Lake Champlain goes up into Canada, of course. Um, yeah, totex and all that, so it's a big production to put it on. Um, but it's totally worth it in terms of, of building the community and piloting success. And so my friends know how to get out of the sky in a hurry and can deal with collapses.
Um, and yeah, I keep it fairly basic. We really focus on, you know, instant recovery, energy management, and, and smoothness, and getting out of the sky in a hurry, and basic drills on that stuff. Uh, it looks a little bit like the SIV I originally got back in, um, 2005, 2006, but I've also been hanging out with this, uh, Canadian kid who's been teaching me tons, who will, like, show up and start doing infinite tumbles and twister, you know, helicopters and twisters and all this stuff. So we get this real acro pro that comes out just recreationally and hangs out with us once in a while. And so we've been learning some, some of the new techniques because he's all the way from Canada to Canada, and he's all the way from Canada, dialed in with the acro scene in, in Europe and in Turkey and all that.
Uh, so it's been fun. Um, but yeah, it's not about, uh, so like when I keep saying basic, for me, you know, I don't teach people a full stall on their first SIV, you know, unless they're exceptional, and I don't have them spinning, and I don't make them throw the reserve. I want them to leave, ideally, dry and with a smile, and that way they're excited to do more of it, you know? And, and for me, a really big win is if they've blown up a couple really big collapses and dealt with, dealt with the different varieties and, and done, you know, um, several different forms of, of collapses on one side, and, you know, are you holding it in, making it fly straight? Are you leaning in and going with it, perhaps towards auto rotation if you're feeling, you know, bold and all that?
Um, and then, you know, we're starting to get them doing spirals and, ideally, asymmetrical spirals. I think that's just a fantastic way to demonstrate energy control and dissipating energy. And, um, and, and I don't, I intentionally don't teach stalls until their second or third SIV because I think it's pretty easy for people to do a stall with a coach on the radio. following the voice in your head, but to have the presence of mind to really learn anything, so it's not just something you've done once, I think is beyond most people. They just remember, "Oh my gosh, that was crazy," and it was just this really overwhelming event. Um, we can talk more about it later, but the first time I tried to full stall in the wild, it did not go well.
Let's talk about it right now, okay?
So, uh, this was the second time I threw my reserve. Uh, like I said, 2006 to 2008 were fairly exciting. Um, I was invited to Bravo. Uh, I saw a guy over the back. We were fairly low. It was one of those days where you couldn't get out and it was getting fairly mean. And in retrospect, maybe it was rotor, but I see a guy just pop up in some really strong lift. then like half his wing gets wiped out and he just runs, and I literally said out loud, "Pussy," and I flew over to it. That's
where I'm going and
Uh, it wiped out the inside of my glider, which I haven't had happened too many times, if ever. So I was already dropped in a fairly robust turn because I lost like 60 percent of the side I was turning in, and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do into uh..." and I'm thinking to myself, "Don't spin it, don't spin it." And at the time, the SIV clinics I had taken hadn't really focused on looking at your wing when things get exciting, and so I was trying to feel when not to spin it. If I'd looked at it, I would have known when not to spin it, but I was focused on going straight, you know? And and all the curriculum is "lean away, break away," and now I talk about, you know, a decision point, like like I tell Palace, they need to have like a flashing light proximity alarm in in the in the um instrument panel of their mind that you always know when you're when the proximity alarm is going off and you must fly straight.
But if you don't need to fly straight, don't create an incident by making it fly straight when you got enough room to let it turn 90 degrees or 180 degrees while the collapse works itself out. Well, I was insisting on making it go straight, and then before you knew it, I spun it. Of course, big spin with a with a collapse, and I'm like, "Oh, I've done this." you
spun the flying side I
spun the flying side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I at the time, I probably had 200 and flights, 250 flights and 100 hours. You know, yeah, yeah, which you and I say, yeah, super new. But these days, like, you're when you're working with beginners and they're like, "Oh, well, I've got 150," or intermediates, like, "I've got 150 flights." And it's, I remember being there, it's this point of pride. You've worked really hard to get those 150 flights. You feel like you've learned a lot, but you're like
Oh my gosh, I'm so
lucky to have all the people that I've
worked with to be able to you
know, just keep pushing the great. But like, if you've done three or five over the water with a coach following the coach's directions, and it's just all like adrenaline and crazy like pulling it off in battle when you've got a spun go
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so lucky to have that. I'm so lucky to have that. I'm so lucky to have"
glider, like I'm stalling the glider, and next thing you know, I got three riser twists in a stalled glider, and I'm looking at like six, eight hundred feet of altitude, and I was like, well, this seems like an optimal time to deploy my parachute, and I fell down through the trees and walked away, and flew the next day, and it was fine. It's benign, yeah, led to some lasting fear for a while. I was like, looking around at my carabiners, like, this is all that's holding me out of this thing, you know? It's not rational. Fear is not rational, but you know, it manifests like, oh god, tiny little piece of aluminum is dropping me this thing, like that slowed me down a little bit in the grand scheme of things, uh, you know? But, but yeah, uh, so I don't think that full stalls, you know, until you have the other skills really dialed and then have done a bunch of them, are going to be a particularly meaningful reset for most people.
Um, and I didn't, you know, except for having spun accidentally, I didn't really need to full stall. I just, I just thought that was the go-to after you spin, um...
I'm curious, you know, when you're instructing and doing all the SIV training, and is is the ultimate best thing that people get? Well, I should just ask you like that: what is the ultimate best thing that people get out of SIV? And then I'm going to come back to what I think. Wow,
Um, so for me, it comes down to those three things: disaster recovery without overreacting and handling it well, energy management, getting out of the sky in the hurry, you know, if something happens and your wing ends up sort of below you and off to the side, is this an opportunity for a sweet asymmetrical spiral turn or a wing over, or are you going to overreact and handle it badly? Um, and and getting out of the sky in a hurry, I think is a is a big one. Uh, it's not uncommon that I'm on launch with new pilots and and we're talking about the conditions and I'm pointing out some over development in the distance and talking about how, you know, recommendations from the USHPA are not flying if there's any over development in the sky, you know, at that rating, and you're like, well, I can always get down with big ears and speed, and it's like, well, maybe seven, eight hundred feet per minute if you're really pulling on it, you know.
but like, when you get caught because there's rising air, it's going
up at 10 meters. Yeah, yeah, I
think freedom units, Gavin. Okay, feet per minute. So, uh, yeah. So, you know, if you can't get out of the sky in a hurry, how are you going to beat it down? You know, your best chance is to run away. And, and, and so I really like to have people. I think it's a total win if I can take somebody who's a novice pilot and they leave really comfortable, uh, with collapses not being much of a concern as long as they have altitude, not overreacting. And, and then, really, I like to see spiral control. Can they enter and exit spirally? And it's the capstone is if you can do like a nice asymmetrical spiral, just the repeated entry and exit of a spiral, maybe getting a little bit, um, ovalized and coming over the top of the glider, um, and even better if you can demonstrate wing overs, which as you know is a
significantly more challenging maneuver that I think very few people actually do. Well, um, you know, if they can show that energy control, I think that's a huge win. Uh, and then down the road, of course, we're happy to teach, um, stalls, and I do some spin appreciation, like, you know, just the start of a spin with folks, so they can see what it looks like when it breaks, and and get them thinking about watching their glider and what it looks like as the glider's starts to peel away and stall on one side and all that. so
I would totally agree with everything you just said, and it—this was just something that popped in my mind as I was just about to ask this that question. I, I wonder, where just you know, the SIV training has implanted awareness of the ground and when to throw? Because they, when I have the accidents I've seen, most of them are launching, landing, proximity stuff, right? That's what we all see. And very few happen up high in the air, but the ones that are fatal, they threw too late or didn't throw at all, right? I mean, especially at the World Cup level, the accidents that I've seen in World Cups and in comps are people trying to solve it too long and they lose their awareness of the ground.
And to me, that's the thing that's the most valuable, maybe thing in SIV is not recovery, which is very valuable, like you said. Those three things: energy management, getting to the ground, recovering, you know, doing the right thing at the right time. Of course, that's why we go to SIV training. But you know, I've heard Theo talk about this to Blick, who's the master of acro, is just that: "How long do I have? How long do I have?" You know, the my wing is in this configuration... Seen this before, SIV. I know that that triple twist you're talking about with a deflated glider is... I don't have this move in 800 feet, so I'm throwing right now.
I don't have the time to fix this, you know? My most recent throw was down in Nair Eat after via. They took us all over there, uh, to kind of explore this new site that's just inland from, from Puerto Vearda, and it was the first flight there. I was crushed, tired. I just done the Superfinal and we drove all night and the flights got all messed up, so I got almost no sleep, and that should have been a red flag, you know? But we're all there to kind of promote this site, and I'm not trying to break any records. I'm just trying to fly around in the sky for a little while and land, and wing blows up super low, and it was just one of those. I have no time to deal with this whatsoever.
Huck it right now. I just was, you know, my SIV training took over, and it was the... the takeover was, fuck, don't have that move, boom, throw it. And those of you who can't see what Caleb and I are doing right now, I just looked up, I looked at the wing and went, "Don't have that move, I gotta throw right now." I mean, I was 80 feet over the deck, you know? So, uh, it was, yeah. Anyway, you're nodding your head a lot. I, I, I find that, I mean, the accidents I've seen in the air from up high, that's the only accident I've seen, and I've seen it a lot. It's just people trying too long. We
Spend, uh, the first evening of the clinic, you know, doing classroom and in the simulator, and spend a lot of time talking about it. Um, I've had two close friends pass away paragliding, and they were both found with their parachute out but not open. My first deployment was really, really dirty low, maybe 100 feet to spare. Um, and I can talk more about that later. Uh, but um, the decision to throw for me, you know, there's a lot of almost platitudes or, or easy sayings, you know, but "when in doubt, there is no doubt, get it out." You know, if you're below 500 feet, really, you know, we talk about 300 or whatever. There's also some conversation around how low is too low, and you know, if it helps slow you down going through the trees, that's great.
I think paragliding Vermont's inherently safe because trees are really inconvenient to get gliders out of, but they're a great crash pad. I think I read from Ari that it's like the, the foam pit of paragliding, uh, which I thought was a pretty clever quote. Um, and around here there's like paraglider pilots that are also arborists that are on like speed dial with like a rate to get your glider out of the tree, and they're really good, which is hilarious. I remember
In the, in the 2014 film that we did, or was it 2013? We did my first really big bivy—was the first one was in Beer with Don Sylvester, but the second one was Antoine Laurens and Brad Sander and Nick and those guys across the, across the Sierras. And there's a line in there where I say, "You know, there, when it comes to trees, you know, there are those that have and those that will." And on that trip, everybody but me had landed in a tree. And so, and I, I kept that going for quite a while. Yeah, I haven't made it in a tree. I forgot. I don't know how many trees I've landed in now. I've been in a lot of freaking trees, some under reserve and some just, I just did it in the Ex-Alps. Nobody knows this story, but I blew my wing out on a cliff launch and blew out my stabilo and then forgot about it. When I went and went to land and tried to do a big wingover and had no juice in my wing and just went straight into a huge tree, did a bunch of damage.
This just happened three weeks ago, whatever, a month ago, you know? So yeah, trees work pretty good. I've never been hurt going in a tree, yeah.
Well, in Vermont, we have seas of trees and our XC routes are fairly limited, and so a lot of people look at our pictures and they're like, "Feeling exposed, you know?" Because there are a whole lot of options down there.
Wait, wait, what? I see lakes, I see trees. How do you make this work, man? Yeah.
It's funny because the hang gliders have been watching the lines. The paraglider has been flying, you know, especially like Eduardo set a state record a half dozen years ago where he flew right down the spine of the greens, and the hang gliders were like, "We've always looked at that, and it is nuts that you actually did that." And Eduardo was like, "Well, the clouds were working, and there were some landing zones, you know, like there was a beaver pond I could have landed next to and had a two-day, you know, a long hike out, uh, but yeah, not a whole lot of stuff."
He could, he could get out of him like that, no problem. He's a tough one, yeah.
absolutely wow
So, has the the the flying you guys have been doing out there is is it has it inspired some cool lines in the hang crew? Yeah, are they uh, are they are they pushing it again?
Unfortunately, like, we've got some great friends in the hang glider community, uh, but there aren't big numbers like there used to be, and they're not so interested in cross country. So it's really cool when they come out and soar with us, and they're zipping between us and, you know, flying around us. Um, but I think the, the big XC days are done, and it's really cool to look back at the things they had accomplished. There's no GPS tracks, of course, because it was before GPS, but they were flying from Muscatney, Vermont, to the coast. Not infrequently, they were calling them the Sandmen, you know, and I came really close one flight, but got shut down by the coastal breeze. We actually flew from West Rutland, which was like 30 miles further.
Pretty cool. The only time I've come close to doing, I did like 99.8 miles point-to-point that day, my best flight in New England. But, um, yeah, the, the, the big lines they were doing in the past, year-long, aren't getting repeated, unfortunately, not.
Too bad, yeah. I got, well, you made a suggestion for me to get one of them on the show, the John, so I'll get him on here. He's a
paraglider, uh, but yeah, okay, yeah, he's been pushing it. It's really cool at the distance here. Back in the day, like, there was like a 2010 distance record of like 40 miles in Vermont, or 45 miles, that stuck forever. And then, like, 2016, the record chase heated up. It was like falling like twice a year, just incrementally ticking off, and I was always just, you know, five miles behind it, uh, and then 2020
It, it fell like two or three more times that year, and I got it right in September and held it until the next April, um, when we flew that long flight across all of Vermont and New Hampshire and landed in Maine, um, but that was just like one of those things. Was the day, right? We were going to 13,000 feet that day, and that just doesn't happen around here very often, yeah.
So a lot of people listening are wondering what the hell you're even talking about. Let's just define New England flying. I mean, even for those of us out west, we don't really know what you're talking about too much, you know? It's—is it what makes it so hard? Obviously the trees, but I mean, are your—are your average speeds just way less because you're having to climb all the time? Is it just way more technical? Are you not getting the long days what you describe? The differences—what's the difference between flying in the Rockies, where we're, you know, 10-meter climbs, and you know, going on 30-meter, 30k glides is pretty common? What's the—what's the difference?
Yeah, so I think there's a couple factors. One is that it was a pretty young community figuring it out, and so we've definitely gotten better, and the gliders have gotten better, and we've gotten better, and we've gotten better as well. Um, but part of it, I think the big challenge is that the thermals are pretty anemic and rare around here. The trees do not—they don't pump, you know? Like when you had Andre on the the show, and he was talking about how he tops every climb out, you know? Speed to fly is pretty irrelevant if your next thermal is not guaranteed, you know? Like three-hour flights are fairly long around here. Uh, six-hour flights are extremely long. I don't know, anybody's had a seven-hour flight in New England, you know? It's, wow. Yeah, it's just we're just
Getting going at seven hours out here, that's amazing. Yeah, okay, you know...
My best flights are, you know, launching at 1:12:30 and landing at 6:30, or, or sorry, um, you know, not full-day events, um, so you're not
Getting off the hill in mid-July at 8:30, you know, in the southeast, slow brit never okay.
There was like, the earliest I've ever had a successful XC start is like 11:30, so we're not getting the long days. The really, if you find five meters per second, that is an extremely strong climb around here. So, um, you know, the other thing is the routes are very limited. You know, we have a couple corridors that you can put together 100 miles, and it's going to be following one of the highways or major valleys, and those usually don't line up with the wind direction. So our cross countries are always in the middle of the highway, and it's going to be following one of the highways, battling back across the wind. Um, and you know, there's a lot of times you can follow a route for a ways, and then you just run into a mountain that, you know, I'm using air quotes here, because the mountain could be 4,000 feet tall, but it's fairly flat and surrounded by a huge apron of trees, so you can't really get towards it.
And if you were to get high enough to glide in, you've got like one shot to find a thermal, and then as soon as you're not finding lift, you're retreating back into the valley, because you've got miles of gliding to get to acceptable landing zones, and so a lot of tree
landings, I mean we
do pretty well at staying out of them, but there's a lot of, uh, sort of almost flat land flying in these valleys where you're finding, like, you know, thermals off two or three or 500-foot little hills, rather than being stepped back up into the 4,000-foot mountains, because you, you just can't work back in there before you need to retreat right away. Um, and there's some exceptions to that, but I think it's a great way to get to, and we've had some days we've actually crossed the greens, but it's at like Sugar Bush or like a couple places we know where the apron of trees is two miles instead of an apron of tree that's five miles, you know, but pretty exciting. You feel pretty exposed when you're going over the green mountains and there's nothing but trees around. I've
Seen the pictures, it's pretty, it's fascinating, it's really... it doesn't look very straightforward by any means. Um, okay, dirty low, you come back to this. I always forget to bring people back to the... what happened? So it was my
First international trip, I was in Nepal. I was with an instructor who's a great friend and now a great friend, and um, he was one of my first instructors and he was like, "You want to do some SIV?" and I was like, "Yeah, great. Like, I've done a clinic before, let's do another, you know, some SIV." And he has me glide out over the lake and he says, "Okay, now we can try that asymmetrical spire." We talked about it, and I think to myself, "Am I really over the lake?" I think I'm over the lake, but he was closer towards launch and from his perspective, he thought I was over the lake. And this is one of those things where you, you want to listen to the coach, but it's always you that's in the chair. You need to be responsible for your own decisions, and I should have just said, "Hey, sorry, I'm not feeling ready yet." So that all becomes relevant because after all the mistakes, I was like, 100 feet over dirt and almost over the water doesn't count.
Um, so I was trying to do an asymmetrical spiral. And I combined his timing with the other guy's amount of brake pull, and it didn't work out. I spun the glider, which is, you know, I had 110 flights in 25 hours, I was still a P2 and very rookie, and then of course did a bad job of the spin recovery, tie itself in a knot, and I'm like sort of making it fly straight, not doing that great job making it fly when I reach for the reserve. Well, so I was trying to make it fly straight, and I was thinking to myself, "He'll tell me if I need to throw the reserve," and that's something I teach you all the time, like, don't wait for somebody to tell you. Like, if you think you're even thinking about it, now is the time. And by time he said, "Hey, maybe you should throw the reserve," and I reached for it and got it out.
I maybe had 250, 300 feet as it was dropping into like a nose down, about to auto rotate, curvaded spiral, and I just remember somebody somewhere telling me, "Hey, if you ever want to come out faster, yank on that bridle." And somehow, after I threw, the next thing I immediately did was scoop my hand down under, grabbed the bridle, and just gave it a good yank, and it popped open immediately, and I had maybe 7500 feet. I don't know, like, it was very, very low, yeah. And it was low enough that the instructor thought the reserve didn't come out because I had gone behind like a little tiny 300 foot tall hill that had obstructed his vision, and he thought I just went in But again, I totally walked away. I got really lucky on that one, uh, and it was crazy because as it was going down, I was thinking to myself, "You know, it's still very new in my career." I was like thinking to myself, "What a disappointment I am to my family that I've just either killed myself or put myself in a chair," and and the pain that was going to cause my family, you know, and and in that moment, it's really wild how you can think a lot of things in a heated moment.
But I was thinking about how bad the the health care system was, and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die where where I was." And you know, if I did survive, you know, if I didn't fix it, and I knew I needed to get my reserve out and fix it, but like what it could look like getting really broken in Nepal.
But fortunately, I got the reserve out. You know, having, you know, six months earlier, my buddy Max having him not got his reserve out, maybe primed me to get it out quicker. Um, yeah, PLF and and flew the next day.
I, I'm always hit by these stories in a way that it spooks me, because we've all relied on a shit ton of luck, and you know, that was one of those where, man, that could have very easily gone the other way. And for a lot of people, it does. Santa talked about this, you know, that, um, what if you're the guy who's just ridge soaring at the point and you have to blow out on the on the ridge side? You know, that's kind of a 50/50, right? I mean, we learn how to get better at handling those things, but in the beginning, you're not very aware of your glider and pressure and, you know, airspeed and all these things that are, you know, important, uh, to keeping your glider open.
And what if you, what if you're that dude? And that dude, that happens a lot to a lot of dudes. And yeah, it's, I don't know, there's no question here, it's just just, I guess, I guess what I am is curious about, you know, as an instructor, you've been at this a long time now, you do these trips, you know, if there was something you could just take out of your brain and plan it in these new pilots, what would that be? Because the, I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to learn without making the cheap mistakes. You know, Jeff Shapiro talks about that. We got to make a lot of cheap mistakes in this sport to learn. And, and you, you hope they're cheap. You hope they're not expensive.
Yeah. It's really challenging because we're all the hero of our own story, right? We all think that it won't happen to us. I'm exceptional. You know, nobody really can truly get their head around their own mortality or how an accident could change their life. Um, and so, you know, it's tricky to try to get folks to remember. If they are in a situation where others are advising caution or not doing it, they need to use their imagination as to why and understand just how big the gap in experience and understanding can actually be. Um, you know, I've been on launch several times and had new novice pilots like poking me like, why aren't we going yet?
Like, this is good. I'm ready to go. You know, the limits for my rating and they start quoting me limits. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, if he wants right now, you're going to go straight up and backwards.
You know, like it's maybe 14 miles an hour here, but we're two thirds of the way up this mountain. And I can promise you, like, look at how that wind turbine is spinning and look at what's going on right now. And look at the cloud building above us. And like, you're looking at some of the best pilots in the region, all sitting here waiting for it to back off. And here you are ready to send, you know? So, um, you know, I, I think the tricky part I think is mostly communication. I think the tricky part is convincing yourself that you're having fun and you're okay with where you're at and, and not having that creep and ambition because the first time you get in the air, it's amazing and that's enough. And then you keep doing it and now it's not enough to have a good high flight. You got to go distance. And if you only go 10 miles, you're bummed or whatever, but just always being okay with wherever you're at.
And even if it's driving down, cause it's not your day, just remembering that all that matters. Is you keep smiling and coming back for more and stay in the game and not take those, you know, 99 % chance, you know, risks because, um, I, I had, there was a really, um, informative article I read early in my paragliding career, um, by Mark Forger Stuckey, I believe that he was talking about how, you know, 99 % isn't nearly good enough if you want to do this thousands of times. And I would have never thought like that, you know, that was not something that came natural, that sort of thinking.
Um, but yeah, I mean, if you want to fly thousands of times, you can't be taking, you know, risks if you think it's probably good.
It is an interesting thing, humans, isn't it? That we, you know, I always think of the wingsuit community when I think about that, you know, and their whole thing, you know, this one flight right now is the most important flight of your life, obviously, especially with wingsuiting, but it is interesting because we can jump out of planes. And the first time we do it. And it's just a plane drop. It's so thrilling. And then you get into base and then you get into wingsuit and then, you know, it's not that thrilling unless you're kicking the treetops. And so it's just this, man, the equation there is gnarly because you're just to get the same rush that you used to just hucking out of a plane, totally safe. You got to back up, you know, there's, there's all kinds of systems in place there in a sense to.
You've got no backup, you're, you're going, you know, a hundred K an hour plus, uh, your, your, your splat is, is the difference in a little tiny air current and game over, you know, uh, that's what's so gnarly about
speed, right? I mean, equipment wise, speed wings are just little paragliders, right? But from a goals perspective, hang gliding goals and paragliding goals, they're the same, right? You get off. Launch safely, maximize altitude, make a bunch of decisions that minimize your risk. And you're trying to go, you know, stay high and go far where speed flying might as well be wingsuit base jumping in terms of goals. It's like, how fast can you go? How low can you go? So I have taught a couple of folks how to fly speed, but I'm really, um, reluctant just because I think it's a huge responsibility. And I think that community is grappling with the, the, the very real dangers in that sport. I think they're,
I think their numbers are worse right now than, than wingsuit last I heard. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Because again, it's proximity, you know, and the, the, the ground, the ground hurts. Yeah. We, we need to do more interviews with, with speed pilots for sure. I, I've been watching this car. There's some, the, the roles they're doing are just why you got your Rumba, man. I'm not ashamed to admit
it. I fly my speed wing right side up.
Yeah, no doubt. It's about skiing, right?
A lot of time on snow, making nice turns, flying over the cliffs, getting back into the powder. Nobody else gets to going fast proximity, but you know, close, but not, not rolling and going upside down near the terrain. Yeah,
it is. It is really very impressive what they're, what they're doing to that community, but holy smokes. Yeah. It's pretty intense. It's awesome. But well, uh, let's end on an uplifting note. You've got some funny stories. Funniest thing. I'm going to put you on the spot here. Funniest thing you've ever seen in air sports.
Funniest thing I've ever seen. Yeah. Are you looking for the story about me, about me taking a leak while I was flying?
No, not necessarily. Just, you know, it could be something you've seen. I'll tell
that one because, because we're both chuckling about it now. Uh, we talked about it in our email, uh, gliding into the lake in Mexico in like, Oh nine or whatever. I decided for efficiency sake, I was going to continue. Standing on my speed bar while I was urinating and had a massive blowout just as I had finished. You know, and it's like, we had this moment of, well, what am I going to do? You know, do I like close my fly so they don't find me exposed or do I deal with a collapse? So I reach up and I find the red line. I start pumping it once, twice. Nothing's happened by the way.
Four times. Fourth one, I realized I've got this to be low in my hand and I'm still spiraling at the ground, turning into the, you know, and the funny part was that later my buddy was saying, was saying he was, I was hanging out on the roof and I saw this guy just lose control of his glider and he must've gone down for like four rotations. Did you see that? Yeah, I saw that. I was long for that one. Oh man. Uh, good, good, good times. Um, yeah. So
how'd you, what? What happened? Well, as soon as I figured out I
had this to be on my hand and I got the brake in my hand and like leaned away, like gave one actual pump of the side that was cool, you know, with the brake, cause I hadn't grabbed the brake handle. I was just grabbing colored lines. Um, yeah, it all ended fine. I just, just, you know, lesson learned. Don't stand your speed bar while you're taking a whiz these days. I've tried to sell you on a couple of times, but these days we're making urinals, which I really appreciate. It really simplifies the job and it's always there. You don't have. You don't have to have any planning ahead of time. I like to launch with my fly open. You're talking about the cup
thing that Marcus makes. Yeah, we had, he stopped
making those a couple of years ago. We sort of improved upon the design and we're doing something similar. Um, but my buddy 3d prints them and then he uses like a vapor smoothing process where you use acetone vapors to like melt the thing. So it's not porous, it doesn't absorb urine. And then, yeah, it goes through, so it doesn't like, you know, with the condom catheters, they don't have like a very good exit route. It seems to go up. And so some fluid stuck and all that, and this, we burn a hole between your legs in the pod. And so gravity takes it right out and down the bottom and out you go. So it's pretty easy. You should do a
whole show on, you know, P bloopers there. I mean, then we could fill hours.
I'm not, I'm not too proud to say I definitely wiped urine off my goggles before. Oh,
for sure. I had a, I had a, I had a, I was training for one of the races one year and just had to go so bad. Flew from fish and I'm heading down towards core and I'm tall and I gotta go, gotta go. And I was one of those, I could tell it had blown off and I said, okay, I downwind, I thought I did everything right. And I started going and it was just this perfect arc right into my face, just, just full flow right into the goggles down into my mouth. You know, it's just, oh God
wasn't that bad. But what I was doing was I was trying to use like an early funnel prototype with a garden hose. And this was before we realized that putting the hose through the pod was the way. And I lost control of the, the end of the hose, you know, and that was
I'm just flying
around, sapping you. Awesome.
Awesome. Yeah.
Well, a good one to end on, Caleb, thanks for sharing all these great stories and knowledge and good to finally get you on the show, man. It's good to spend some time with you. I hope we spend some more time with each other in the air one day. I can't believe we haven't done that before, but I'd love to do some flying with you, but
I'm not going to invite you to Vermont because everybody's all come visit you. It's like, no, no, I'll visit you. You don't want to come here. You'd be hanging out in the rain for two weeks.
It does sound like a wet summer. It's crazy weather. It's been brutal. Yeah. I'll invite taken. Sounds good. Wherever we go. Let's do it. Great. If
you find the Cloudbase Mayhem valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways. You can give us a rating on iTunes or Stitcher. However you get your podcast that goes a long ways and help spread the word. You can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media. You can talk about it on the way up to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And of course you can support us financially. This show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing, a lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes costs. So if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. And you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal. Or you can set up a subscription. We have a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out. We put a new show out every two weeks. So for example, if you did a buck a show and every two weeks, it'd be about $25 a year.
So way cheaper than a magazine subscription. And it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but I, for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations. With real people. And these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So I hope you dig that. You can support us. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash Cloudbase Mayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We've tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material, a little video cast that we do.
And extra little nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show. But we feel like you should hear, we don't put any of that behind a paywall. If you can't afford to support us, then just let me know and I'll set you up with an account. Of course, that'll be lifetime and hopefully you're being in a position someday to be able to support us. But you'll find all that on the website. All of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought Cloudbase Mayhem merchandise. T-shirts or hats or anything. You should be all set up. You should have an account and you should be able to access all that bonus material now. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next show. Thank you.