208. A Love Affair with Flying - Flying- Phil Hystek

Thanks for watching!

I'm a time instructor down in that part of the world. He's been teaching for more than 30 years. Started teaching hang gliding back in the late 80s, early 90s. Started teaching paragliding because he was forced to. Pretty funny story about that. He was teaching out in the Pacifica and the dumps and San Francisco and flew XC and the Owens and Lakeview and eventually all over the world. When I talked to him, he had just gotten back from a four-week full-biv trip out in Bir with a bunch of mates. He used to guide out there. He's taught a whole bunch of very big names over the years, including Nick Neynens and good mates with Johnny Duran and taught him how to paraglide.

He's his neighbor, but this is just a riot. We get into some fantastic terrain and talk about all kinds of crazy stories. A little bit of his history. I would have loved to talk a lot more. This one runs long. It's two hours, but it just gets better and better and better. Hang in there all the way through. We get into some fantastic stuff about the lessons he's learned and what he's trying to teach his students. Phil is 65 years old. He's got a fused ankle. So far this year, he's done 171,000 meters of vertical gain of hike and fly. He's super passionate about hike and fly. Which he does mostly out in his backyard there in Queensland.

But he's set all kinds of records in going up hills and flying. Just fantastic. This was a riot. I basically just laughed for two hours. You'll hear about stories in Bali and a crazy accident. Learning about how to recognize red flags and the devil and the angel sitting on our shoulder. Just some great stuff. You'll hear a lot of names and legends. He's won a legend, of course, in his own right. But John Heine and Mitch McAleer. This was just a ball. Please enjoy this fantastic talk. We'll call this the first one with Phil Heistick because we're going to have to follow this up with several more to catch up.

So enjoy. Cheers.

Phil, great to have you on the show. I'm super excited to talk to you about all kinds of things, including your four-week trip that you just had out to beer. Sounds like you had some fantastic flying. We were just chatting it up before we started recording here. But I don't know where to start with you. There's so many places we could start. You've been at this game an awfully long time. You were just saying you're the longest. You've been instructing in Australia longer than anybody if you just put it together. You started in 92. And this is a good place to start. You said you were forced to start Paraclimate. What does that mean?

Yeah. Well, good to talk to you, Gav. Yeah. I do think when you first suggested I talk to you, I thought you'd asked the wrong person or you're scraping the bottom of the barrel because I don't think I'm that special.

I think I've been hitting my head against a brick wall for just long enough. That's why I'm still here. But anyway, I started thinking about hang gliding back in the late 70s when I first left school. I left school in – I'm 65 at the moment. I left school in 76 and I started working as an aircraft engineer fixing airplanes up.

And because my father was a commercial pilot and instructor and everything else, normal airplanes, I sort of did a lot of flying with him. But I never had a license, right? Anyway, I must have said a few things about learning about hang gliding. I remember my father tried to teach me how to fly airplanes. I didn't like this. It was like drilling holes in the sky with a big propeller, just roaring around, just throwing the air all to pieces. And I really didn't like it. But we lived on this big property. My father owned this 5,000-year-old. It was an acre cattle property up in the mountains above town. Actually, right near Manila, halfway between Manila and Bendamere. So you know where Manila is. So I used to watch eagles, big whistled eagles fumbling up. And I thought it was the most beautiful thing watching them rather than airplanes flying around making a lot of noise. And I heard – I'd sort of read stories back in old Popular Mechanics magazine, that sort of stuff about people making hang gliders and flying hang gliders.

And really, like I thought, now that's got to be it, you know.

So I'd sort of seen some pictures. I'd seen some pictures of people doing these hang gliders. And I must have said – I was sharing a house with these two crazy dudes. And one day I come home from work and one of them goes, we're going to land a hang glide. And I said, yeah, really? Great. Who's going to teach us that you are? And I said, what? Yeah, you know how to fly. You know how to fly. So anyway, so these guys, they're just crazy. You know? Like, you just imagine in the 70s. Long hair. Like, just – Just like really just – they were just wild, you know. I was on this big G Caddy. I was this crazy motorbike rider. Anyway, so we got the hang glider. They bought this hang glider. This was in 1976 – no, 77.

They bought this hang glider from the bottom of someone's house. It had been hanging there for about 10 years. So this was like a 1960s hang glider. And we had no – It didn't even exist then. It's like a handkerchief with a ride. It was like the – It was like such an early day. So anyway, so they – so we get the hang – they bought the hang glider. They put it right on the roof of the car, and we went to find a hill to use. And the only place that they could find that was sort of – that we thought was suitable was very fortuitous. It was a place called like the Town Common. It was up behind the hospital. So it was behind the main hospital, right? Just some little rolling hills. Perfect. If you crash, you're in the sweet

spot. You just go to the hospital. Exactly.

Very fortuitous. It's so nice and close. You can actually see the hospital from where we were going to go. So we got the hang glider, and we carried it across the paddock. Because what I knew, like they had no idea what they were going to do. I just sort of must have fired up their imagination. So I knew you needed a hill, and you needed wind, right? And I knew you needed the wind up the face, and I knew you needed some hill. What I didn't know is you needed a place to land. I didn't know. I didn't realize that you needed –

You got two

things, right? You just need a place to – That's great. That's right. That's right. Wind and a hill. So we go up the top of the hill, and we're setting the glider up, and there's these bolts and nuts and everything, and I'm just looking at it, trying to work out how to put this thing together and put the pole in here and the pole there and on the top. And anyway, so the wind was pretty strong from my memory. It was quite strong. And so obviously I was going to teach him how to fly, and for me to teach him how to fly, I had to fly myself. So I've gotten – it wasn't a – so this wasn't a harness. It was one of those little swing sets. Yeah. It's a little – like a little wooden seat on two – Jeans. Like two ropes that went up to the – yeah, it went up to the – You're flying a swing set. So I get the hang glider. Exactly. It does a swing set. And so I get the hang glider, and I'm in the seat, and I've got this, and I push the nose.

And one of those old ones, they have the really long, like a really short nose angle, like really – you know, so – and I stand on top of this hill, and I push, and I'm standing there, looking down the front. And I just push. I push the control frame out a little bit, if you know anything about hang gliding. You've just got A-frame. I push the A-frame out, and the thing – the wind got under the nose, went straight over back and just flipped me straight upside down, and I'm hanging upside down in the hang glider on the top of this grassy hill, right? Okay, guys. Did you see that? That's how we do it. That's right. Don't do it like that. So – excuse me. So I ended up bending the king post, which is the post that pokes you up top of the hang glider. It keeps the wings up. I'm falling on the ground. And obviously, we couldn't fly it then because the king post was bent.

So, you know, very dejectedly, we packed the glider up, and we carried it down the hill. And suddenly, I've got a few little alarm bells going on in my head, and I'm thinking, you know, if I'd taken off, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no idea how to fly a hang glider. I had no idea what we – I just thought we were just going to take off, and you'd just fly around the sky like a leaf in the breeze, and something would happen. You'd end up on the ground, like, magically. Just a light on the ground, and off you go, you know, like, so happy as Larry. And I thought, that's not going to happen because I had no idea what I was going to do. So we're walking down the hill, and I'm thinking, not a good idea. Not a good idea. So because it was a Saturday afternoon, and they couldn't buy a new bit of aluminium, they were going to go to the aluminium place and just buy a little bit of aluminium and put it on the top.

And they couldn't do that because it was Saturday. So they went the next week and got some aluminium, and they said, we're going to go back up again on Saturday. And I go. I've got to see a man about a dog. Sorry, I can't go with you.

So anyway, I just remember the one guy, he was just this crazy, long, blonde-haired dude, like, really just, like, you know, full-on, really energetic sort of guy. And he's going up the hill. I was, like, I was off doing something. I wasn't going to see the carnage, you know. I didn't want to watch the carnage. So he's going up, taking off and flying straight into the side of the hill. Boom. Both his arms. And so I go and see him in hospital. He's lying in hospital like one of those classic. Like in a movie, you know, with his arms, both his arms in plaster. His arms are hanging there. He can't do shit. Darwin Awards. And I went, now, that was a good decision on my behalf. So anyway. That was in 70s. We have a saying, better lucky

than stupid, right? Sorry, sorry. Better lucky than good is what I meant. Better lucky than good. Yeah, exactly.

So I ended up. So I just ended up. I ended up giving that hang gliding thing away for a while because I thought that was pretty dangerous. And I was, you know, I was traveling around a lot on the motorbike. So I ended up going right around Australia on a motorbike. And then I ended up living in San Francisco in 1988.

I'd moved. I just, I went over. I actually went over to Canada, to Vancouver. I bought a motorbike. I rode up to top Alaska and all the way back down to Denver. Down to Central America, down to Guatemala. And I met this girl in Belize, like you do from San Francisco. And I ended up like you do back in San Francisco, you know, for some reason. She was, she was, she was very cute. I can tell you. So I ended up in San Francisco. And so I was working. So I shouldn't say this, but I was working there. Don't worry. Nobody listens. It's just you and I. I didn't. Yeah, that's right. Just you and I. So no. So this is, this is the, this is back in, this is in the late 80s. So. No green card. No, like just work. Just doing my own job. Because by that stage, I was a sign writer. So I was painting signs, right?

On boats and buildings and cars and everything else. And, and so I, I was actually making pretty good money just working for myself around San Francisco. And one weekend I was just sitting there in the little, in the little flat I had in San Francisco downtown. And my girlfriend was there and she said, and I was just talking about it. The fact that I didn't have much to do and what I was going, what I was going to do. And that's what I said. She said, you always talk about hang gliding. Why don't you learn how to hang glide? And I went, that's a good idea. So I looked in the, in the yellow pages and I see two hang gliding shops in San Francisco. One's called Shandell Hang Gliding and one was called Airtime, Airtime Hang Gliding. And, and, and so anyway, I remember I went down to, to Airtime and I had one, this free info night.

And I shouldn't, I'm not bagging these guys because this is 30 years ago. They're not more than 30 years ago. So, but I went to this free info night and I listened because I'm like, I was an aircraft engineer before and I knew what flying was about. And, and these guys are trying to tell me how they fly a hang glider and how aerodynamics work in a hang glider. And I went, that does not compute to me. That is not right. So I knew, I just, I walked out of the door, I walked out of the door and went home and I went, and, and of course I, I thought, you know, I thought this, you know, maybe I'm, I'm just have these dreams, you know, and I thought that hang glider pilots would be, you know, like, like sky gods, you know, all fit and healthy and just run off the hills in hang gliding and that sort of stuff. And I got this info night and there was a guy there and he was this, I shouldn't, I shouldn't be judgmental, but he didn't look like a sky god and he was the owner of the business.

And I just went, I went, no, my dreams are just completely obliterated. So I walked out of there and I went, no, it doesn't work. So anyway, I, the next weekend I thought I've got to learn a hang glider. I really got it. So I just went down to Shandell hang gliding down at Pacifica and the bottom of San Francisco, actually the bottom of Wetzlake there. And, and I walked in the door and I'm trying to remember his name. There's a guy that used to work there, redheaded. Like he was, this guy was, he was, he was addicted to Mountain Dew. He was young Mountain Dew, the strength. It was like the early, it was like the early, early version of Red Bull, right? This guy, he's, and it was Saturday afternoon and this guy was sitting, he was wired. This guy, he was, I'm trying to remember his name, but anyway, he was wired and he was so, so intense.

But I walked in there and I said, teach me how to fly. I put the money on the table and said, I don't care how good you are. You can't be any worse than the other guys. You just teach me how to fly. So, so anyway, so I ended up, so, so the young fellow taught me. So this guy that was, he was working out, I wish I could remember his name because he was a nice, he was a really nice guy. But the guy who taught me his name was Andrew. Andy Whitehill. Now Andy may be listening, but I don't think he flies hand gliders anymore, but he wasn't like he, this Andy was just as intense as this other guy, but he was younger, long hair, like a hippie sort of dude, you know, like full on, full on. And, um, addicted to everything, including sushi. He was, Andy was addicted to sushi. You know?

So he was, he was about, I don't know, it must've been, it must've been the wasabi up his nose that he really liked. So it's something to do with his nose.

Anyway, so, so Andy, Andy and I stuck up a really good rapport. We were really, and I remember, so I was, we went out for the first day to learn how to hang glide. And I walked up, we walked up the hill and we set the hang glider up like this, just, and put all the, you know, all the batons and everything in it and got it all going. And I remember I ran down the hill. I started running down the hill and the guy lifted me off the, off the ground. And it was like a game changer. It was completely like, I'd never felt anything is free. And like all the time I'd spent in airplanes, everything else, this was suddenly like the door opened and I went, this is the most amazing thing in the world. It was, it almost, it almost still makes it, it, it's so emotional that this is like 33 years ago.

And it's still, I can still exactly remember what it felt like when my feet left the ground and I floated down the hill. And this hang glide. And landed okay. I just pulled the, pushed the bar and I was on the ground. And, um, it was quite amazing that, um, so when I, um, I remember turning up on the first, when I've turned up on the first day of the training hill, I looked up and there was this guy flying a toss. He must've looked up the top of the training. He was fine. Do, do, do. He's coming down. He landed. Turned out that within a year and a half, I ended up teaching. Him how to fly because I, it's one that, you know, when you get into a, are you, when you get into a sport or in something and you go, this is where I went to be, I just, I was, I was meant to be here.

And it was like, I, everything I did seem to work everything, even though, but, and, you know, and, and Andy taught me a lot, like, he was incredibly good as, as, uh, he was very safety conscious, even though he's crazy, he was absolute crazy guy. He was incredibly safety conscious, really, really. a really nice, you know, you have to take it in the right way, but if you look at what he was trying to teach you and why he was trying to teach you certain things, it works so, so well, you know. So anyway, within a year and a half of learning to fly hang gliders, I was already a basic instructor for Yuska, right? So I was a basic hang glider instructor. I took up my hang glider instructor's rating, and I was teaching people what they used to call basic, which is just launch and landing.

I wasn't allowed to teach them high glides, just launch and landing for Yuska. And

are you, at this time, are you going to the Owens? Are you flying XC, or are you just a Pacific guy?

Okay, yeah, so interestingly,

Andy loved flying XC. Like, he was an XC junkie. And so my first bit of flying, my first XC was from a place, what am I? Sorry. I don't know how much time we've got here. Yeah, forever. But anyway, so Andy decides we're going to go to Elk, a place called Elk Mountain, which is just out the back of, sort of northwest of San Francisco, from memory, sort of on the way to west, on the way to Lakeview. Now, northeast. It's like on the border between. Yeah, okay. Yeah, northeast. Elk Mountain. There's also a mountain called Hull Mountain, so Hull and Elk were there.

Anyway, we go to Elk Mountain, right? It was the end of winter, just end of winter. So the snow's all melting. But so Andy didn't have a four-wheel drive. He had this Kombi. It was a VW Kombi, right? Yeah. And so we drove up the tarred road up from the bomb out, which is a riverbed, and we're driving up, and we get to the dirt, we turn off the dirt road, and of course now it's covered in snow. This is just in the winter. So Andy goes, well, we can't get the Kombi up here, so we're going to have to carry the hang gliders up. And the hang glider I'd end up buying from Andy was the exact hang glider, not a signed copy, but it was the exact hang glider that Mark Newman had won the US Nationals on the year before, right?

Or the two years, so maybe two years before. So it was a Moyes GTO. A GTR World Beater, right? Yeah. And it was the heaviest, biggest monster of a glider, but it looked so good. And when Andy had given me the option, he said, you can buy this training glider or you can buy this glider. Of course, what am I going to say? I'm going to go, that training guy, like single surface shit, I'm going for this one here. It's got like 36 battens in it. It's got everything. It's like, mate, it was so. It was so wild. I want the fly. I thought, no, that's my glider. That's my glider. I don't care how hard it is to fly. I'm going to learn how to fly this thing. So anyway, we're going to carry these gliders about, well, maybe about a mile up this dirt track in the snow.

And so myself and the mate who, the one that flew it, had flown over the top of my head on the very first day, he was still not a, he was, he was, he was at that stage about the same equivalent level as me because this was, this was only probably a year after, or yeah, maybe, no, it might not have been a year, but three months after I started, I already had this, like the world, the glider that won the US Nationals. It was just, I was just, I was jumping way too far ahead for myself. Like I, if I knew, like there's no way now I'd let any of my students do anything like that at all. But, but I was like, I knew where I was going. I wanted to be there. Like. Like straight away. So, so we got these hang gliders. We carry them up through the snow.

We get onto this launch and the launch is, is sort of like, because it was faced, it's faced southwest. It was, it didn't have any snow, but all the track up, it was all full of snow, you know? So we carry these gliders up and these guys are so heavy. We get the launch and we're setting it up, but the wind was still over the back and it's over the back, over the back, lightly cross, over the back, lightly cross. Now this is my first, my first ever high glide on a hang glider. All another glides have been off the training hill. So Andy decided to take me to Elk Mountain, which is probably from memory about, it's probably about 2000 feet top to bottom and into this, into this riverbed, you know? And so, so I'm standing on the launch. Now, I don't know, have you ever done any hang gliding? No, no, no.

So with, okay. So, so with hang gliders, what happens is that the glide, the, when the, they have a thing called a VG, which is a thing. Or in Australia variable billow. So it's a, it's a, when they say pulling rope on, you pull this rope on the base bar and what it does, it tightens the wing really, really tight. It makes the, the side wires that go from the bottom of the base bar up to the wings really tight. So the whole wing is very, very rigid. And you do that when you're, when you want to do a really long fast glide and it makes the glide much more efficient. But basically, yes, but what it does. Yeah. So, with a speed bar, speed bars on paragliders make guys more, you know, certainly make them more,

make them go faster. They don't necessarily make them go more efficiently, but they certainly make them go faster and more prone to getting collapsed. What happens with a hang glider, it doesn't make them more liable to get a tuck or anything, but it makes them really, really hard to control, to maneuver. Right. So it tightens them up really tight. So anyway, if you don't have the VG pulled on the side wires are loose. So what happens is the, the wings will flop. One wing will flop down to the, so the right wing will flop down to the left wing, the side wire goes tight and then the left wing will flop down to the right one. And just this flopping business side to side, which is really disconcerting, but as soon as you take off and the wings get lifted by the airflow, by your weight, then the thing doesn't have that flopping business. Right?

So, but if you pull this VG on, on launch, it would tighten it right up. You wouldn't have the flopping stuff, but what it does, it makes the glider incredibly hard to take. Like it, it increases the stall speed. It increases the, like the, the launch speed, everything gets really, really tight. And you say, you don't want to launch. So you've got to put up with this flopping business of the glider when you're standing on launch. So anyway, I've got this really heavy glider. I've tucked it up on my shoulders and I'm standing there waiting for the wind to come right. You know? And Andy's saying, oh, it's going to come. It's going to come. It's going to come. So I'm standing there because I didn't want to have to pick it up and then run off the hill. So I wanted to get let stable, you know, with his wings going flop. And so when they, when the wings flop, they would move. If you held the base bar, totally still each wing, if the wind dropped, if the right wing dropped and left wing went up or left wing went down, the right wing went up, the tips would probably move at least a foot.

That's how far, that's how much, that's how much on the wing tips are moving up and down. Like, so there's this hard rigid base bar you're holding, but these wings are flopping from side to side. And it's really, it's really unnerving for, for new pilots carrying a big, heavy glider to have this flopping business. And then when you run off, you've got to make sure it all goes right as you run on. So anyway, I'm standing on launch and I'm looking down and it's nice open run down the front of the hill, but on the right hand side, on the right hand side is a big tall pine tree, big tall pine tree with the tip of the top of the pine tree. It's about, it's about level with my, with my eyesight, a little bit, maybe a little bit lower, a little bit lower down there. Yeah, I know. Maybe it's probably if I took a line out, it's probably the, so the pine tree is probably about, I know maybe,

maybe 30, maybe, maybe a hundred yards down the hill and fairly tall. So it's a run, big, tall pine tree.

And I ended up, so I'm standing there and I'm looking straight ahead, but looking at the pine tree, looking ahead, looking at the pine tree like this, you know, like you do when you, and I'm looking at the pine tree. And then it's amazing. It's amazing. When I, when Andy finally said, Joe, I wasn't, you know, like I was, he just said, it's on, go. So I started running, you know, that pine tree moves straight across in front of me. I don't know how it did it. The pine tree, it just, the pine tree got legs and went straight in front of me. But this, and I'm just going straight for this, because, you know, one of the things with the hang glider, the one thing you don't want to do in a hang glider is run off and push the bar out, because that doesn't store, it will store, store the wing, right? So you got to pull speed on. So you pull the base bar in as you run down the hill, right? So I'm running down the hill, pulling the base bar in, and this bloody tree has come straight across in front of me, straight, and I'm going straight for the tree,

straight for the tree. And I go, holy shit. I just, I went, I just let go of the control. I let go of the base bar, everything. I just let everything go. I went, holy shit, I'm in the tree. And with a hang glider, if you pull, it's really easy to pull the bar in and go really fast. As soon as you let it out, it goes to trim, it'll go, go straight out. And the glider went, we just missed top of the tree, like this over the top. And then it just, this big dive over the top of the tree and just coming up. Now, so I disappear from view from where Andy, so he's looking across, he's been going sort of towards the tree. And he just goes, I close his eyes. And then suddenly I'm just disappeared because he can't see me behind the tree, but I'm just going. And I, and I'm flying down towards the landing field going, oh, oh, oh, I was so, I was so scared. I just pulled the bar in. I saw flames coming out of the back of the hang glider and flying down towards the valley.

And he just screamed. Oh, no, I don't do this shit anymore. This is crazy. So anyway, I got to the bottom. I got to the bottom. I ended up doing it. I did a landing where I dropped my nose as I come in. Cause I skidded along the ground. I was just so, so wide and nervous from what had happened with the tree. Then it turns out that, that, that Ofer is my name. Ofer Brewers. He was a, he ended up being a really good mate of mine. The guy that would, that I'd seen fly off top of my head, went on the first day of the training. And he was, he, and I'd carried the hang gliders up. He took off and went straight back and land and crashed into the side of the hill in some trees. So I spent all the afternoon. So all the afternoon trying to get him out of the trees, way down the front of elk mountain. Right. So anyway,

your first trip to go

XC was super successful.

It was just, that was the first hug. So anyway, so then, so then we go, we go to, to Lakeview. So most people know about Lakeview. Yeah. It's pretty, pretty amazing place. It's amazing. It's very famous for the, for the glass off they have there. And we, so we went,

there's some hill, some hill was about 20 miles to the south of Lakeview. And I'm trying to remember the name. I don't think that, I don't think they fly there anymore. They don't fly

Lakeview at all anymore. But anyway, we went up there on that. Don't they? Yeah. I mean, I haven't heard of anybody flying there in ages. They used to have comps out there all the time. And stuff. And we've been trying to get a comp organized there forever, but you know, that's where we ended that Sierra trip I did back in 2012 with Antoine Lauren's and Nick. And so we ended in Lake or Lakeview and it just looks amazing. I don't know why nothing's happening. It's amazing.

The glass off, the glass off there is like mind blowing. I can tell you a bit more about the glass off there. A few things that happened in that glass up. It is just because you've got Mount Chester at the back there and you've got like, it's, it's, Chester up the back of the Valley there from Lakeview, I think. Anyway, it's, it's a big, it's a big, wide, big, wide Valley that produces amazing glass off. So anyway, we went up to this Hill. We were going to, and this is going to be my first XC flight, right? First time I was going to try and thermal and fly somewhere. So I was going to fly from that Hill to Lakeview. Anyway, I took off. I'm on, I'm on this glider. I can tell you that when you pull the VG on it, it's so hard to control. But, but if you're trying to get the max glide out of the thing, you pull the VG.

And so anyway, I'm coming down towards Lakeview, the township. And, and I'm getting really, really low to solo. And I was so focused, like, you know, you get so focused on just like what you're trying to achieve, which is, you know, get to your goal. But, but you don't have any idea how you're ready to lose sight of how high you are, where you are, where your landing fields are. So anyway, I almost landed on the roof. I was so low. Like I just, just, just missed the roof of the supermarket over the car park. And there was this, this like some sort of farm field on the other side of the supermarket car park. And as I came in, as I came into the landing, I realized that VG was still on the glider.

It was full on. And this glider was, was notorious for being almost uncontrollable when you had the VG on. And I came in for the landing and it was, and because I then realized that the VG was still on, because the big long rope tag behind me, but I was too low to even let it off. And as I come in and I got this, it must've been a dusty coming through the paddock and I got picked up, wham, and just slammed like wingtips straight into the, into the ground. On the side? On the side. On the side. So that just went, side slipped. So I must've gone, I must've gone up maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 meters up in this dusty and they're just slammed into the ground on the wind. And the glider was, I broke the wing straight off the glider, just tore the tip of the sail right off the wing.

Like the wing broke about maybe two, maybe two meters in from the wing tip, just tore the wing right off. Just took the, took the whole wing right

off. Oh,

you're a baby. So anyway, so my beautiful glider was trashed. And so anyway, I ended up buying a new, a new hang glider, which was a really, really difficult hang glider to fly. But I, you know, buying this new glider, I left this glider sitting in Andy's shop, just as a pile of mess in the corner with the intention that one day I might try and fix it up. Get it, get it, get it. Meaning that I have to actually sew the sail back together. I have to put all new, new tubes and everything else, but it just lay there for ages. So anyway, I had this, I have this passion for teaching people how to do things. Right. I've done, I've taught my, both my parents, my parents are teachers, my big, my elder brother's a teacher.

Like we have this teaching, you know, DNA thing, you know? So anyway, I was playing around, sort of mucking around with hang gliders. And I think Andy saw that I was relatively skilled. So he says, why don't you become a basic instructor? Hang gliding instructor. I went, yeah, okay. Okay. So I, I thought that was a pretty cool thing to be offered. You know, and he said, you can work for me and you can do that all the weekend, launching landing stuff down the beach, down at Big Sur. Because we, there's a, we had a, had a, a beach down, you have to go down past, past San Jose and you go sort of down, down the coast there. And there was some beach down there that we used to, we used to teach on. So I'd drive down there in the, in the, on, you know, on the weekends in the morning. And I'd,

I'd teach hang gliding and come back. Anyway,

Andy had, this is back, this is in about 90, 1990, I suppose. I know, I lose track of years and dates and this sort of stuff, but not long after I'd started teaching hang gliding. I was like, I was a hang glider pilot and I was obsessed with hang glider. It was the most beautiful thing to do in the world. Like it was, it, hang gliding is actually an amazing thing. You never get a chance to fly one. I know. They're beautiful things to fly. The whole curling

thing is very compelling,

you know? Oh, they're beautiful. And, and also, so, in this time, I'd also flown the, I, I, I'd gone and flown the Owens. I'd flown the Telluride. I'd flown it.

I'd flown it. Point of the mountain. I'd flown a lot of, a lot of places. All West, all West coast. Were you, were you getting

into comps at this point and that kind of thing? Like the. Yeah,

yeah. I was flying in comps. Yeah. I was flying in comps. I was, I was, I flew, I flew in the, they had a big comp in the Owens. They had a big comp in the manufacturers league meet at, at, at, at Telluride. Also, they had one at, a place called Dinosaur. I flew there at Dinosaur, which is right on, I think Dinosaur's on the border of Utah. Yeah, Dinosaur. And, yeah. So they, there's a big, big comp they had there.

And there was, was it not a, not a place? Oh, so many different places there, but we did a bit of flying, a fair bit of flying around, around Salt Lake City as well. Anyway,

so Andy came to me one day and he, he, so Andy went over to, he went on a holiday with his girlfriend in Europe, right? And, and he came back and he said, you know, he said, there's no hang gliders there anymore. They're all paragliders. And what had happened, I'd seen like people had been playing around paragliding in San Francisco. They weren't allowed to fly at Fort Funston. So Funston is a hang glider site. That's you do not fly paraglider. Funston is like, it's so, it's so, it's so rigid there. So, and I used to fly, I was flying the hang glider to Funston all the time. And people used to be launching from West Lake down from the, what they call the dumps, which is just down. If you go south from, from Funston, you, you go down there and you got these little dunes, that sort of stuff.

Anyway,

the paragliders would fly there and people, they were always getting taken away in ambulances. And they were going like, people were crashing all over the place. And they take off from the, they take off from the top of, you know, like hang glider would take off from Funston and cruise around. You get in what they call the sheer convergence and you'd be doing, you're way out there cruising around and paragliders would take them and go boom, straight to the, straight to the beach, straight to the beach. You know, they just, and if, and if they made the beach without crashing and hurting themselves, that's amazing. But they were just so like big, massive, like six cell gliders, you know, they're just so old, just shit box things, you know? So anyway, they were, they were just a joke. They were just, they were, they were a joke. So anyway, but Andy goes to Europe and he come back and he says, he says,

there's no, no hang gliders in there. There's just paragliders everywhere. He said, we've got to teach paragliding. And I said, find someone else. He said, no, no. He's like, I want you to learn the paragliding so you can teach paragliding. I said, no buddy, I'm a hang gliding pilot and I'm a hang gliding instructor. And that's me. I'm not teaching those things. I said, they're dangerous. They're stupid. They're just performance. And they all look, and they're all flurro.

I'm not flying one of those. No. And so anyway, he goes, so he says, okay. So about a week later, he comes back and he says, he says, he says, I want you to learn to play paragliding so you can teach, because we need it. We need to, we need to broaden the scope of the shop. We need to teach paragliding because it was, it was a Shandell hang glider. And, and, um, the, the, the two guys, uh, was actually, I think Jeff might even be still be in the business of paragliding. Um, but I remember that airtime hang gliding, which was the opposition to Shandell, which is where I first went to try and learn to hang glide was owned by two guys, Jeff and Kelly.

Kelly actually killed himself on the cliffs in front of Sam, trying to function on the, on a paraglider. Interestingly, interestingly, he didn't die crashing his cash in the paragraph. What he did is he landed slope landed because he was thinking out in one guy in the ocean slope landed. He was walking along the edge of the cliffs, flipped and hit his head on a rock and killed him. How was that? How unlucky was that anyway? But they were getting it. That shop was getting into teaching paragliding and Andy goes, we got to teach paragliding. I want you to turn land a paragraph. I said, no, I said, no, you can find someone else to teach paragliding. No, I'm not going to do it. So eventually, eventually he came back to me like about three weeks later. He says, he said, okay, if you don't learn a paragraph, I don't want you working for me anymore because I need someone to compare it right as well as hang on.

And I go, I, because I was so, I was so obsessed with hang gliding and it was such a beautiful thing. And I was meeting some really cool people teaching, teaching people how to fly. And it was just, you know, I was flying, you know, I like, I really, really wanted to stay in the business of hang gliding. And if that meant I had to learn to paraglide, then okay, I'll do it. So anyway, are you still at this point, are you

still doing signs and all that? Are you just making your living from instructing? I

am still doing science. I'm still doing science yet. I'm still, so what I'd be doing, I'd be doing is I'd be down mostly. I started, started the, the most things I was painting were, were chancellors of boats, right? And so down on the, in, in the San Francisco bay. And I'd be, I'd be sitting there on the, on the boat, you know, painting away. I look up and I'd see the sky. So I was looking good and I'm going, see, I've got, I've just washed me brushes out and off I'd go, you know, so working for yourself, I could do that stuff. So I spent a lot of time. I was, I was so teaching on the weekends. I was flying anytime it was flyable. And I would, I was making some, the making money painting signs. If I wasn't flying. Would you say that was, you know, would

you say your jam back then? So this is, I'm guessing it was like 92, 92, 93. Is that right? Yeah.

Yeah. No. Yeah. 91, 90. It would have been that early 90s. Yeah. 90, 91.

Would you say your jam back then was, was teaching? Was it XC? Was it acro? Was it what, what was your.

No, I, um, it was because I was still so new to the sport. It was, it was like a whole learning invention. Like it was, I was still learning so much. Like I was,

I didn't consider much much much much

much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much

much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much

much much much much much

much much who were just the legends of hang gliding back in those days. And I was just trying to – I was, you know, like there was so many people and so many things to do that I just wanted to get into everything, right? So anyway, I was – so Andy goes – so I finally capitulated. And I go, okay, I'll learn how to power glide if that's going to keep me in the job, right? So because I probably wasn't getting paid a lot of money by Andy. I was just – but I was in it for the love, which is what most people were doing back in those days, more the love thing.

So anyway, so Andy goes, okay. So this was sort of like a funny thing. So Andy goes, okay, I'll teach you how to power glide. I said, good. Okay, so we said – because the shop at Pacifica there was about probably a mile and a half from the –

From Westlake, from the dumps, well, Westlake. He says, what we'll do is we'll take the car down to the dumps. I'll show you a few things and then I'll have to come home because I've got to come back to the shop to do some more work. And I'll leave you there, right, with the power glider. So I take – we take the two cars. He jumps in his car. I jump in my car. Now, normally when we go – when I go hand gliding teaching, I spend like a half an hour loading. I'm loading hang gliders on the roof of the car, loading hearts on the back of the car, tying everything on, putting all the radios, harnesses, the wheels, everything, like this. So we're going to go down to Westlake and have a go at this power glider thing. So Andy gets his little bag, like a little backpack,

throws it on his back, puts a helmet on the top, and we just walk to the car, hop in the car, and then we go and we park. And we just – he's a little bag out of the car and we walk down the beach. Like, that's it. It's a tiny little bag. And I went, well, this is – that just – that confirms me it's a joke. You know, like – because an airplane is going to be big. Like, an airplane is going to be big. You don't just, like, have a little bag. You can't fly a bag. So anyway, so we go – we get to the top of the sort of sandy, grassy slope. And normally when I get to teach in the power glider – in the hang gliders, you spend another, like, at least an hour setting all the hang gliders up, pulling them out, opening up, batons in here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He gets his bag out of the car. He puts it on the ground. Opens up, like, a minute and a half.

He's got the thing open. He's in the harness. He runs down the hill. And he says, there you go. And he shows me – so this is the old inflation technique. It's a bit of breeze. This is, like, an afternoon. He grabs the two front – so he's got the, you know, doing reverse inflation. He's got the right hand, right hand to the brake that goes to the right side, which is when you're flying the left side. He left hand. So not cross brakes. So brakes that are – you know, right, right, left, left. So he inflated the glider, bring it up over his head, let go of the brakes, turn around, grab the brakes again, and run down the hill. He said, that's how you do it. And so he does it twice for me. And he walked – he comes up. He says, take it out of the – he gets out of the harness. He goes, have a go. I said, that looks pretty easy.

So I have a little go, get the canopy up, turn around, run down the hill. And I just – I mean, left the ground. By this stage, I was a pretty experienced hang glider pilot. You know, by that stage, I'd flown the hour. I'd flown all through, you know, telluride, that sort of stuff. So I was sort of – I was pretty comfortable flying.

But this thing was just a joke. It was like I hardly even left the grass. I was just running down the side of the hill. But I did one run. He said, that looks good. I'll see you later. So he turns around and walks off to his car and just leaves me with a glider, with a power glider. He's given me like five minutes of instruction. And he says, see you back at the shop when you've finished. So –

What, you mean that's not how you do it now?

No, no. There you go. Here's your P2. Nice job. That's right, yeah. Just give me – just load my wallet up and I'll just give you the license. Up you go. Just do it. Just do it. So anyway, within – I reckon within half an hour, I've got the glider in a complete mess. I've walked through the lines. I've got the thing over my head. I've just got – it's complete shambles, right? I've got – it looks like one of those abstract sculptures, you know, like just like all this shit. It lies everywhere. I have no idea, no idea what to do. So – and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm just trying to think why I did this. I think it was one of those early – like I think ITV used to make them where the glider and the harness were one unit.

So they weren't – you couldn't disconnect the glider from the harness. The risers were part of the harness because what they used to have back in the old days, they had the thing called a speed seat. Have you ever seen a speed seat? No. So a speed seat was where you had on the harness – so nowadays, you have three risers come to a carabiner, like, you know, here. But these three risers came to the – straight down to the bottom of the seat. So the front riser went to the front of the seat. Mitch Mackler showed me that. The back riser – and exactly. So when you want to go fast, you'd lean forward. And when you want to go slower, you just lean back. That's the trim of the glider, right? And I think – and I think this was one because I remember that it was such a mess and I couldn't figure out how to take the harness off the glider and I couldn't figure out how to get it off the glider. And I couldn't figure out how to get the harness through the lines. Obviously, now it would be much easier if I knew now what I know – I knew then what I know now.

But so I started undoing the quick links between the risers and the lines. I started undoing all the quick links like this. And then I got into this mess where I had those lines everywhere and I went, oh, this is not – this is not working. So I just – I stuffed the glider in the little bag, like this, and I put the harness on top of it and I put it on my back and I went – and I went – and I went – and I went – and I went – and I'm walking back like the – probably 100 metres back to the car. And I got to thinking. I thought, you know, one thing this isn't, which I thought it was going to be, is easy. I thought it was going to be really easy. And so I went – and like, you know, in my life, I'm sort of attracted to difficult things. And I tend to like having challenges that aren't just easy.

So I thought, this is pretty interesting. It's not as easy as I thought. And because I was a – I'd end up in San Francisco as a – having ridden all around North America on a motorbike, I only had a – like, I was more a motorbike rider than a car driver. And I thought, hey, I could put this on the back of a motorbike. So I thought, there may be something in this. And Andy really wants to learn how to fly. So, yeah, okay. I might have a go. So I went and bought myself – my first paraglider was a Wills Wing AT125. Okay. If you want to do a search on that one. It was actually – it was Wills – so Wills Wing were a hang glider – they still are a hang glider manufacturer in California. And they licensed – they built ProDesign under license.

So there was – the AT was like a – it was the equivalent of a ProDesign something or other. And they were an absolute shitbox, but they were still – you know, and so I bought this thing. And what I would do is when I went to teach hang gliding in the – down the coast, I would throw the paraglider in the back. And on the way back home, when I sent all the students off and they all went home, I would just – there was a couple of beaches down there and I would just play around the beaches with the paraglider. And so my official learning experience in a paraglider was five minutes of instruction from Andy Whitehill at the dumps in 1991. That was it. And the rest of it was – we call it suck it and see.

So it's just like I would just end up like I would go, no, that didn't work. I'd get dragged over hills. I'd get blown over some hills. I was just like thrown over the back of a mountain. Like lucky I didn't hurt myself. But I got caught out because I was so used to the hang glider. The hang glider is a whole different kettle of fish. Like you're not inflating the canopy. So you've got this wing that does produce no drag. When you walk to launch, you're not going to get dragged backwards by the inflation of the wing. You can keep it in really good control and just take off. And so I kept thinking that paragliding was sort of like that. And I would try and take off in really strong winds and almost get – I'd get dragged over hills and through bushes and everything like that. But I kept – so what happened is I kept – there were people that were developing really good techniques because paragliders were developing pretty fast.

Right? Right. Right. People were – there were some really amazingly good European pilots who were developing skills based on the new style of gliders. And I would just watch these people and see, you know, that's a really good-looking technique. That technique doesn't look very good. That one's sort of okay. We could probably get that one to modify a bit. So I ended up just getting – just adopting heaps of different techniques from different people, and that's the way I learned. It wasn't – I didn't – and so probably to my – you know, I see it now as to my benefit was that I wasn't taught how to fly, and so I wasn't indoctrinated in saying this is the way you do it. Because if you go to school – You were open. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of schools – yeah, it's like open source learning the paraglide.

But, you know, you go to school – even like now when people come to me, I go, this is the way you do it because I've been doing it long enough and I sort of know what works and what doesn't work. So we do it like this. But when I – And so if anyone learns with me, they tend to have my style. Yeah. And people – when people learn with me, they sort of – I've got some very characteristic sort of very identifiable ways that people do things that they've learned with me. And so people can actually see that someone's learned with me anywhere around Australia. They'll go, oh, you learned with Phil Hostick because you just got that way of doing something. But I didn't have that. I didn't have the benefit of that because no one really knew what they were doing. Back in the early 90s, I was – I was a student. Back in the early 90s, no one really knew what they were doing in paragliding anyway.

So I was just – it was really – it was a suck it and see and try and work out whether this worked and that didn't work. And you just got to be lucky that the ones that didn't work didn't kill you. And the ones that did work, you gave you a really good time. So – When did you go back to – So that was the long – that's the long story about the fact that I was actually forced to learn to fly paragliders and I've been running my only form of – of income for the last 25 years has been teaching paragliding. Really? I've only taught – that's – yeah, that's my only form of income is teaching paragliding. Wow. So I've gone from not wanting to fly paragliders at all to being absolutely obsessed with paragliding and, you know, like – and nowadays I do a lot of – a lot of different stuff in paragliding.

You know, like I'm – you know, I don't think – the one thing I don't do a lot of in paragliding is acro. I'm not a – I'm not a real high G person. I don't – I do – you know, I like to do pretty big wing abs and that sort of stuff. But – and like my little mini wing and that sort of stuff. But I don't – I don't – I'm not into doing helicos or, you know, or misty flips or, you know, infinities and that sort of stuff. I just – I'm just not that kind of person. I like to keep the wing above my head rather than underneath it. What do

you think –

But the interesting thing, when you talked about – yeah, when you talked about when I was in hang gliding, whether I was – whether I went trying to – whether I – what sort of discipline I was sort of heading towards, it was mostly –

Mostly XC and comp flying. But I did – I actually became very good friends with John Heine. Yeah. Very, very good friends with John Heine. Yeah.

And, yeah, there's a few stories. I won't talk on this podcast about that because John's probably dissonant. But have you ever – you would have interviewed John Heine at some stage with you? No, I haven't yet. I

will, of course. But, yeah. John Heine was – I was so much fun. He

was by far the – him and Mitch – him and Mitch were the two top acro pilots in hang gliding. Yeah. They were the top aerobatic hang glider pilots. John and Mitch were like vine all the time for the number one slot. And so I became – I wasn't – I never really met Mitch McAleer, although it's interesting one time when we did – we had the Manufacturers League meet, right? I don't know if I should keep talking because I guess you're going to waste all your time. No, no. No, no. So we went – so we had the – this is back in the hang gliding days. We had the Manufacturers League meet in Telluride, right? Or just – it was a fly-in, I think. I don't – it might not have been the Manufacturers League meet. There's a big something fly-in there, right?

And you've flown Telluride? No, I've

been there a bunch. I've never flown it

incredibly. Okay. So there's – so in Telluride, there's the main launch, which is over 12,000 feet. I think the town – I don't know. It's at 10,000 feet. So it's pretty – you're high up, you're thin air, that sort of stuff. And most people who fly there will end up hypoxic to some degree because, you know, most people just rock up to Telluride and just don't acclimatize. They're straight up to 18,000 feet and whatever. And so in Telluride, they've got two landing fields, right? Two main landing fields. They've got the Leisure LZ, which is a big cow field on the outside of town, and they've got the Seizure LZ, which is a baseball diamond in the middle of town, right?

Leisure and Seizure. Right in the middle of – there's Leisure and Seizure LZ. So anyway, I went to this thing. This must have been when I was – I think I've been flying for nine months, not even a year, and I'd gone to this thing with my GTR World Beater hang glider thing. I thought I was a legend. But I was still only a – I was only an intermediate hang glider pilot, right? And I rock up there, and they give us the – they read the riot act, right? So you're saying you can't do this, you can't do that because, you know, it's a pretty big place, you know? Like you're in the middle of the Rockies. It's really – it's big, strong thermals, that sort of stuff. They say, so for you, dude, because you're a new pilot, you can't fly – you've got to launch before 10 o 'clock, right?

And you can't land in the Seizure LZ. And I went, so you – that's what you think. That's what you – that's what you think. Says you.

So the first thing I decided to do is I was going to fly in the middle of the day. No drama about that. I was going to go up there, and I was going to take off right before the cutoff time, and I was going to stay up as long as I could, right? So anyway, I've taken off, and I just remember this actually classic thing. I've gone up there, and I was actually on top of the hill, and a few other people said no, and Mitch McAlee was up there, right? And we sort of took off together. We're flying around and just cruising around, and this is the time where you wish you had back in the – like they've had GoPro. They didn't have anything back in those days. But the time you wish you had a GoPro – because I'm – so I'm family up above – I'll tell you why. Above the top of the mountain, and I'm probably at about 16 grand or something like that, and I'm looking around trying to think.

Now, Mitch was in the same gaga with me, in the same thermal. Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? I looked to the side. You can just imagine in your hang glider looking over to the east, and you've got the Rocky Mountains and everything, and here comes Mitch. He's done this loop, and he's right beside me upside down. Like, right? He's in the top part of a loop. He's straight up. Like, I'm hanging on trying to thermal up this, and Mitch has done this big dive, and he's come out of the top, and he's straight upside down right beside me, and if only he'd had a camera as the most amazing shot of the Rocky Mountains and Mitch McAlee upside down in the hang glider. Like, right there. And I went, what an amazing. Amazing place to be. So, anyway. What a legend, too. I mean, the stories about what he would do in those kind of situations are epic. It's just unbelievable.

It's actually crazy.

So, anyway, towards the end of the day, we're getting towards the end of the stay there at Telluride, and I'd been, like, I kept saying to myself, I'm going to land in the seizure. I'm going to land in the seizure. I'm going to land. Before this finished, I'm landing in the seizure. I was like, what? So, anyway. So, anyway. So, anyway. Afternoon, I'd go up there, and I'd be watching people land, watching people land, and now the seizure of LZ is right up against the side of the mountain, right? So, you've got the mountain coming straight down,

and I think that side of the mountain faces north. So, it gets like it's quite cold there in the afternoons, and so when people come in the land, they would come in, because the wind by that stage would be katabatic, and so you'd come in over a little creek. There's a little creek bed, and into the seizure LZ, into the baseball diamond, and because you're coming into a katabatic wind that's coming down the hill, you've got a headwind, and you just come in and land, right? So, you can come over the town, because the town's a bit lower than the baseball diamond, over the town, and just, like, almost laying on a shelf, like a little aircraft carrier. Doop, and land. So, I'd been watching people all day, all week, watching them land, watching them land, watching them land, picking up skills, tips, where they were setting up, that sort of stuff.

Had it all nailed. Anyway, so, the last day, I'm thinking, I'm going to land in the seizure, I'm going to land in the seizure. So, we drive up the hill, and we get to the launch there, and, of course, what happens is a big thunderstorm setting up out to the east, right? So, I'm standing there, and I was watching this storm come and sort of heading in towards us, and I really wanted to fly. I really, really, really, like, I was obsessed that I was going to land in the baseball diamond, right? So, I'm standing there on launch, and the storm's getting closer and closer, and, you know, like, the calm before the storm, there's no wind at all, and I didn't even, like, you know, there's a storm out, and there's a storm, like, probably, I don't know, maybe 10 miles away, just over top of the mountain, right?

But I'm focused, I'm going to land, I'm going to take off here, and, of course, I'm...

I'll tell you right there, you've got this ridge, you launch from this ridge that go down towards the town, right? And if you go to the east, when you take off and go to the east, you're going out over town, you go to the west, you go out towards the leisure LZ, right? And you have to make a choice. Well, you can launch from the east and still get around the leisure, but it's a little bit more of a squeaky glide, right?

So, I'm standing there on the launch, and there's no wind at all, but I knew if I wanted to land in the seaside, I've got to go off the east. So, I'm standing there, and the storm is getting closer and closer, and this guy, the launch marshal, goes, he says, I'm going to close the launch in five minutes. And there was no wind. I'm at 12,000 feet, right? 12,000 feet in the hang glider. And you really need a bit of wind to take off in the hang glider at that altitude. So, I'm standing there. And I'm a bit scared. Can you hear that bird squeaking? Yeah, well, I was going to say, what

is that?

That bird is an annoying... It's a very beautiful... It's called a butcher bird. And it sits... And when it rains... It's raining here right now. When it rains, it sits out... I've got a harness hanger outside my shop here, and it sits on top of the harness hanger and sings the most amazingly beautiful call, but very loud. Very loud. And it's very annoying. I'm on the phone. I have to run outside and just shoo it away because it's just beautiful. It sits there. Sometimes it actually comes inside my shop. It's a little black and white bird. It looks like a magpie. They're beautiful. It's quite a nice sound. They're quite aggressive. All of a sudden, what? Oh, it's a beautiful... They have the most melodic sound. Them and the magpies have the most melodic sounds of any birds in the world, I think. It's like really... They have the most beautiful vocal notes. Anyway, that's something else.

So here we go. We're back on... We're at 12,000 feet on the top of the mountain, on the top of the mountain, about to take off, right? And the guy goes, I'm shutting the launch in five minutes. I'm waiting. I want wind. I want wind. And finally... And he's... He's down and down. He says, three minutes, two minutes, one minute. And he says, launch close. And I just took the... I picked the glide and ran like stink. I just ran as hard as I could down the hill. Down the hill. And there's a road... The access roads are probably about maybe 30, 40 yards down the hill. And I ran down and dove over the road and almost hit the ground again, running down the hill. By this stage, I was still... I was pretty good at launching hang gliders, but I had to run so fast.

So anyway, I've got up the hill and I'm flying out and I'm flying out towards the town and I'm going, leisure, seizure, leisure, seizure. Like, you know, you have the idea you're going to land in the hard landing field, but they said you're not allowed to do it. You're not allowed to do it. And I'm going to do it. But there's a storm. And am I good enough? And am I going to kill myself? And I'm going to look really bad with all the people there and I'm going to... I'm disobeying their rules. Well, anyway, I'm flying out towards the landing field. I'm flying out towards the landing field.

And then I finally... I go...

I'll do the seizure. So at this point here, there was no going back. I had to... Do you get the point? I have to land in the middle of the town. It's

seizure or you're

landing in a building. I'm landing in the middle of town. I'm going to be landing on the top of the supermarket. I'm going to be landing somewhere. So anyway, I'm flying out towards the landing field and then actually... So on this flight, I was using this new hang glider I bought after I was flying the... After I destroyed my other hang glider at Lakeview, I'd bought this new hang glider. It was called a Seedwing Sensor. And it had this... It had the leading edge material was this very special material that was super, super smooth. It was like glass. And what would happen is... When you flew in the rain, the raindrops would beat up on the leading edge and make the thing stall at a much higher speed, a much higher airspeed.

What you're better off to have on the leading edge is like ripple stuff, a little bit like vortex generators on an airplane. They have like... It's like golf balls have little ripples on them to keep the airflow connected to the... It makes the... It breaks up the lamina flow a little bit and makes a little bit of turbulence on the top. So this glider was very renowned for hating being flown in the rain, right? So... And it would just... Even at trim speed, like you're flying at trim, it's just on a stall all the time. So you keep flying really, really fast. So I'm flying out around the town thinking now, okay, I've got the landing field all sorted. I'm just going to go in and I'm going to land, right? So I'm flying around and suddenly I guess it starts raining on me. And I'm flying over Telluride at 11,000 feet

in a glider that wants to stall at about 45,000 feet. That's five mile an hour, right?

And so I'm thinking, okay, I've got to suss, I've got to suss. Then I realize that this storm is pushing a gust front up the valley towards the town rather than the catabatic coming down the hill. So now rather than having... So the landing that I'd worked out for the last week is pretty blown out of the water. Now I've got to approach from the side of the hill and the landing field is... The landing field, the baseball dome is really small and right against the side of a tree covered, it's a pine tree covered mountain, right? And I'm going around and thinking, you know, like at that point there, you have to take control of the situation because no one's going to help you. Like no one, you're just there, you've made the decision and you can't do anything about it.

You just, you're like, you're in the middle of the ocean by yourself in a canoe and that's it. And you just got to go, what am I going to do? I've got to paddle and stay alive. But I, so, and there's this other guy. So, and I just end up in the landing place with some other dude as well. And I'm thinking that's all I need is someone else. And we're both in the same altitude and we've got this tiny little field and we can't extend our lines at all. And so anyway, this, and it's getting quite heavy rain. And so I can't, so I've like, I was smart enough to go like right in deep against the side of the hill, a big cranking turn against the side of the hill with wind tip, like right, almost on the, on the base. With a diving turn back into the, into what wind there was now, because the wind had backed off a little bit.

And I was coming across the baseball diamond. This other guy comes screaming from my left, plowed into the ground in the baseball diamond and just wiped his gliders, skipping across on this wet grass, right across in front of me as I'm coming in, I'm coming in, setting up, trying to be all like really, really, really calm. And this guy comes, just waves out across me. Oh, God. He's like, oh, my God. He's like, oh, my God. And so then, and so, but I, I do this at most amazing. So like, I've just, I, I just land and I flared the glider and I just dropped the wind tip a little bit. And I was so happy that I, I got to land the seizure. Now I'm carrying my glider back over and who should be standing at the, the grandstand right next to the grandstand of, because the, you know, baseball dimes got the grandstand there.

You have to walk the glider out. John Heine's standing there and he goes, not bad. Not bad. He just says, he just says to me, not bad. And like, I, I wasn't, I wasn't, that's why I wasn't really good friend of John's. I just, but I just, John was like an idol to me, you know, and he was like the most amazing acro pilot. And he goes, not bad. And I went, wow. Like not only have I landed the seizure, I've, and I've flown this bloody sensor through all the rain, but John Heine's told me that I'm not bad. I think, wow. Like I, I have, I have made it. Now I really am a legend.

And then, and then, and then just the last, the last icing on the cake is where we had this, like a, it was a prize giving thing, you know, like for the, after this competition sort of thing, you Bob, you know? And, and so they gave me the rookie of the year award, right? Because they, yeah. So, and so I walked out, I had this, I was feeling chuffed, you know, and I walked out and I was standing next to the front door of the little, of the room where we're having the prize giving and Mitch Mackley walks out and he goes, he goes, nine months. I said, yeah. And I'm like, she says, wow. And just turns around and walks off. He just goes, he goes, wow. And then walks off. And I went, well, I get, I don't know how to take that, but I know Mitch, I know John Heine said pretty good.

And, and Mitch Mackley goes, well, he goes, wow. And I thought, well, yeah, I, maybe I'm pretty good. I don't know. But then,

but then I proceeded to get myself in a lot of shitty places after that, because probably because I thought I was pretty damn good and end up like getting, yeah, getting, getting myself. I was very lucky that I was after that. I was pretty lucky to survive what I was doing because I was, I wasn't being really stupid, but I was flying in places that were, that were really radical for my skills. I was flying at a hill level. I still didn't know enough about the atmosphere, you know, which is what's really important when you're flying a paraglider or a hang glider is to know more about the air than it is about how to fly the glider. You know, that's, that's the most important thing is understanding the atmosphere. And so I said to all my students is that the number one skill you need to develop in paragliding is to understand where you want to be and where you don't want to be.

And that's how to understand what the air's doing and what the air's going to do. Question

for you, you're totally left field here, but before we started talking, you talked, you said that you actually instructed. And I remember Nick telling me about this, but you instructed Nick Nenans and you went to, you went to beer together back when he was a total newbie flying the Bolero. Yes. What makes, I would imagine Nick was a terrific student. You know, we went on to see all his incredible accolades and flying all over the world and all of his bivy expeditions and incredible exploits. And, you know, what makes, let me try to rephrase this. You know, you have taught a lot of people for 30 something years. You've taught everybody.

I've taught actually a lot of, a lot of people have become really good at flying. I know if you've ever, I don't know if you have interviewed Wally. Yeah, Wally was on the show about a year ago. He's an

amazing pilot.

He was my, he was one, he was my student as well. He was one of my students. Um, so, well, you know, Wally is a little different than Nick. Nick just a bit, you know, Wally's very organized, very, you know, Wally's an amazing pilot. Like he's, he's so, so, and he, he, you know, I, I admire him so much for how his ability to organize things and to, to be so, you know, so good at flying, but so good at teaching and so good, everything. He's a really, he's amazing. He's a really good mate of mine too. But with Nick, with Nick, Nick, um, he, the thing that I really, I really learned from him, because I did, I've done quite a few Volvos with him. We did, we did quite an amazing, um, few days down in Tasmania, uh, probably three years ago.

Uh, just him and Nick and myself, we went down there and did some Volvos through the, through the ranges down there in Southwest Tasmania in absolute tiger country, like crazy stuff. But that's, that's for another time. But, um, and then I did, I did a Volvos with him in, um, uh, in Pakistan. Um, just a really nice one up towards, um, Hispanic. Um, and so the thing that, that really, um, uh, the, that I learned from Nick was Nick's amazing ability to not get stressed in stressful situations, right? That's what made him, that's what made Nick the pilot he, he is. Um, because what he would do, you know, so what most people do is they have a plan A and they have a sort of plan B in the back of their mind.

They go, well, that doesn't work. So Nick would always have a plan B that was just as, just as, just, just as organized as the plan A. But the thing, what's happened, what happens too is that sometimes when it goes from plan A, plan B, if A is not going to work, plan B is going to, it has to work. If that goes pear shaped, because the conditions change completely, most people lose their shit. Most people just, they go, oh, like suddenly the stress comes up and you don't think straight and you start making really, really bad mistakes. Right. The one thing Nick, Nick always did is he was able to just think completely clearly about the, how, about the next step to not get himself into trouble.

Yeah. And, and because, you know, with, with flying, with flying, it's, it's so, it's so much a mental game, right? It's, it's an amazing mental game. And if you don't, and, and most people can fly in, in most, in, in a lot of conditions. If they, if they, if they keep their mind on, on the, on the job, right? And the thing with Nick is that even if things were going wrong, he's, he was able to keep himself completely focused and work out a plan, like work out a plan. And so there would be times when I was flying with him and I go, what are you doing that for dude? Like, what are you, why are you going over there? But he'd go over there and it'd work out because I wouldn't get in really stressed. I remember we were in, um,

uh, we're in Pakistan doing a, doing a vol biv and we were flying back towards, um, towards, um, uh, Karanabad, which is where we were staying. And, um, after we'd done the vol biv that night, the night before, and we miss, I sort of misread the valley. There was a, there was a big, big gorge. We had to fly down to get out of this valley. And, um, and Nick was, Nick ended up like really low in this valley getting trash. I was, I happened to get a good climb and I was way up on top of the mountains. I was looking down. I'm thinking, what's he going to do? What's he going to do? So I, I didn't want to let him, you know, I didn't want to leave, get him. I didn't want him to leave me behind. So I just, you know, even though he's down low, I pushed ahead, I pushed out and sort of got down to where he was, but we both got stuck in this quite strong valley wind.

And I was looking, I thought there's just a, just rocky, raw, rocky gorge down below, you know, this glaciated river, just massive big bowls and sort of stuff. There was a landing field that we could take and go further back down the valley and land. There was still big boulders. And I, I had this idea. I said, I'm going to push down the valley and try and get out through the end of this gorge to a big open river flat. And Nick goes, that's not going to work. That's not going to work. He said, the wind's too strong. He said, we're just going to land here on the side of this, like this scree slope was so steep that, that when you stood on it, you just couldn't even stand it. You slide down the steep, down the scree slope, but it to him as a landing field. And I didn't even look at it as a landing field. I was, I was getting stressed because I, because I was, you know, it wasn't what I thought was going to happen because I, you know, like the, you know, missions weren't as I thought they were going to be.

But Nick goes, Nick calmly goes, no, we're just going to land over here. And we just went, landed on the side of this scree slope, sort of slid down to the little road at the bottom and packed up and walked out. And that's the sort of thing when, when you fly with Nick, he, he would just, he would always have another plan. Yeah. Always. And, and he would never get stressed and very, um, totally independent, totally self-sufficient. He would, he would never, uh, need anyone to do anything for him. Yeah. Like as far as, as far as, you know, uh, like he would be happy to go. Like when I first taught him, the first thing he did is went back to New Zealand with his little Bolero and started flying in, in, up, you know, doing the hike and fly and trying to evolve up in the mountains.

And he'd only been flying for like a month and two months. He'd come back to me. He says, how come I go backwards in valleys? And I go, maybe you guys, maybe the wind's a bit too strong for your Bolero. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Amazing style. I think he, I think he, he was the first one that, that I had, I heard say, I mean, we all think this, you know, when you're talking about plan B, plan C, that kind of thing, but his, his whole thing for, you know, when it gets rowdy or stressed, he's got kind of a series of things. One is just turn your variable off, you know, that, that reduces a lot of stress because it's making all these crazy noises, you know, screaming thermals and massive sink. And well, just turn that off. And then the second thing was, you know, if it's too, if it's gnarly where you are, go, go fly somebody else somewhere else. You know, which in other, in other words, it may not be really great to land because the Valley winds are cranking or you're like, you're saying you're in a storm and that kind of thing. Well, just go to another Valley, you know, fly somewhere else.

It's going to be better somewhere else.

Yeah. No, he is, he is, he is amazingly centered when it comes to stressful situations. Yeah. And, and, um, you know, I, I remember like, uh, we were in, in, in Tassie and, uh, I won't tell you all this whole story, but I ended up having to get helicoptered out off the, off the mountain. I got stuck in, in impenetrable, in inescapable scrub. I was walking. I, but I, like we were flying together. We were heading towards over these mountains of towards another range. And I ended up just making a wrong decision. I thought I'd just land and relaunch when they got better. Cause it was, the thermals weren't as good as we thought they were going to be. And, and I, I ended up just landing in the totally wrong place because I thought that's what Nick would do.

And he goes, no, he just kept flying. He went over the bound over down this valley, got a climb and went over to another side, to another, another mountain about five miles away and just ended up over there and, and, and ended up landing there, walking up the hill and taking off. And cause he went to a hill that was, that he could see it was a better proposition for a thermal, even if he got over there low. But I just thought, well, I'll just land here. Cause I'll just wait. I'll wait it out here. But he just, he doesn't think that it doesn't get in that stressful situation. He would just go, well, I can see a hill over there. It's going to work. Like it's not, it's not that I don't, it's not that I don't know that that was going to work. It's that when it gets stressful, I, I don't think of all the options. I don't, I don't allow my head to think all those, all the options.

But Nick had that ability to do that. And

I don't know. I mean, I mean, in your experience, teaching, all these people, all these years, I mean, that doesn't seem necessarily like something someone could learn. You know, that's just who Nick is, you know what I mean? That's, that, that's not

by, by a long shot. It's, it's like, you can, you can have all the skill in the world. You know, the interesting thing is that, you know, I don't think Nick wouldn't mind me saying this, but you know, there, Nick isn't the best, the best part in the world, but what makes him vastly better than the majority, the party parts in the world is his ability. I had to fly the glider. He flies them pretty damn well, but his ability to think clearly in stressful situations that, that, that is, you know, and you've just, you know, you watch what he's done since he, since he has accident and broke his back. He does. He does. He's just completely calm and accepting of where he is, what he's doing and moves on and just does something where he doesn't, he doesn't, doesn't dwell on, on things that are, that are possibly going to hold him back.

He just goes, well, there's an option. There's another, there's an opportunity there. I'm just going to take that, you know, and that's, that's incredibly inspirational when you see people like that, like that does, you know, he inspires me and he inspires a lot of people in the world. Yeah. Nick, he's, he's an amazing man. Yeah. Truly.

Phil, another thing I, I know you're, I know you're super into hike and fly. Craig was telling me you're, you're breaking all these records. You're 65 and you're just chasing it super hard. I can tell the way you talk. You've got an insane amount of energy. But at the same time, you know, all these years of teaching, and you came up through the sport when the carnage was massive. And then, I don't know, is it backed off? Is it worse? But, but you know, you're, you've seen a lot, a lot of good, a lot of bad. How have you maintained the level that you've got for it? I mean, you know, the, the, the passion, the energy, the, the stoke.

Well, yeah. Well, I suppose the good thing nowadays is that there are a lot of, there are a lot of facets to flying, a lot of offshoots to paragliding you can do. Like back in the old days, you just, you know, lobbing off top of the helm, just glide to the bottom and got pretty boring after a while. But, you know, now you can do, you know, you can do hiking, five-ball bid, acro, speed wing, mini wing, XC. You can do so many different things. And, you know, I, I do have a bit of a, I, I, some people say I've got ADHD. I don't, I don't, I don't know. I don't think I do, but I do have, I do tend to, to go from one, one thing to another thing pretty quickly. But, you know, like, so what I do now, like I've, I was a comp pilot for quite a while. I flew a lot of comps.

Never, never won. I was never Australian champion. Cause I'm just not, I don't have the mindset to be, to be a champion XC competition pilot. Cause I'm just not, anyone who knows me, I'm not organized at all with instrumentation. Like instruments and me just don't mix at all. It's like, I have no idea. Like I'll get on, I'll get on launch in a comp, and I'll go, how do I even turn the barrier on? You know, and I have no, I'd back in the old days when you have to enter your task, you route manually on the, on the fly master. I have no idea what to do nowadays. It's great. Just go to QR code, scan the gap, bingo off you go off your flight. So I sort of lost a loss. I was a comp, I lost a bit of touch with comp time, but I've got myself back into comp flying.

Now I've got myself a boom 12 and I've been flying that. I did pretty well last year in the Australian nationals and that flew it over New Zealand, come third, New Zealand last year in the, in the nationals on the boom 12. So I'm really, I, I, I love, I love pushing myself to extremes, um, to doing things like, you know, like flying the boom 12. It's, it's a pretty high end glider. So I'm sort of, you know, I'm using that as a bit of a challenge, but when it like, I love, one of my passions is hike and fly. Um, so this, this year I've done 171,000 meters vertical this year in, in since the beginning of the year, 171,000.

Holy shit, dude.

Are you kidding? You got 171,000 meters. You're doing a thousand meters almost every day.

Yeah. Well, well, I, some days I'll do 2000. Okay. I'll do 2000 some days. Okay. Um, but that's a pretty good, pretty good. Um, yeah. Yeah. So I know. I, I, I, and so the thing is, interestingly, you're going to sign up for the X-Alps

next year.

No. So interestingly, so I wish, I wish, I wish there's a couple of things I wouldn't do the reason I couldn't do the stuff. I can't run because I actually have a fused ankle. Right. So, so one of my ankles is fused for a motorbike. I had a motorbike. I got hit by a car when I was, when I was 15 on the motorbike and it smashed my leg up really bad. So my, my ankle has actually been fused, but I've got fused. My ankle was fused between the tip and fib and the talisman. So it's the main, the main ankle. So I can't bend my foot up and down. Right. So I can roll it side to side with the, with the lower joint, but I can't put up. So until about four years ago, my ankle was getting progressively more and more arthritic because I, you know, it had been, I broke my ankle in 1975.

And by 2017, 2000 and 2019, 18, my ankle was really arthritic, like so bad. And I couldn't walk more than, I couldn't walk more than 50 meters without being in severe pain. I was, I was taking painkillers every day, three or four times a day. Right. Just continue feeding myself with, with Panadol and whatever. And, um, the reason I, I, I didn't, I'd been told by a doctor years ago, I'd have my ankle fused, but I didn't want to have a fuse because I thought it would stop me from walking. And I just, I could still walk even though I've had painkillers, I could still walk, but only 50 meters or so. So, um, anyway, and, and because I had thought I had an internal, I thought I had an allergy to, to titanium, internal titanium, because when I first broke my leg, when I got hit by the car, they put plates and screws in my leg, which all got rejected.

My body rejected all the plates and screws that all ended up coming out infected and everything else. So I thought I had this real fear that if they put anything in my body, plates or whatever, defuse my ankle, I might, you know, say, no, I have cut my leg off. So I ended up getting an internal, I, I, I got, I found there was only, there was only like four places in the world. You can get an internal allergy test for titanium. And one of those was in Geneva. So I was over there for a, I used to go visit a good mate of mine lives in Geneva. Um, um, Patrick Rosa. And, um, he, he lives just down the road. You know, Patrick, he's a really good mate. Yeah, he is. He's a, he's a new big mate. Patrick and I are really long time good mates.

Um, so anyway, I was saying to his house and I found that the place was just down the road from his house. So I went down there, I was staying there one year, went down there and got the test. And they said, you can be free. You can be okay for titanium, pure titanium put in your body. You don't have a problem at all. Since I, since I found that out, I went straight to the surgeon in Australia and said, here's my ankle. And even though, um, even though I felt that, that it would rob me of my, my ability to walk up hills, I knew that I would be pain free. So I did it. And then I found out that I could walk up hills without any pain, no pain. So suddenly I went from not being able 50 meters to walking up hills without any pain at all. And cause I use poles to help me a lot. And so the reason I walk up hills now, reason I did Bob is because I can not because I, it's not, it's not, it's because I want to,

but, but it's, it's, if you, if, if you're denied the ability to do something and suddenly you, and they'll say, well, you can do that now. If you, if this happens, you just do it. You take it, you take the ball and run with it. And so I've just, I've gone from not being on a walk at all to, to walking up mountains and like I'll walk a thousand meters up the side of the mountain without even thinking about it. Um, the good thing about doing high and fly here is because the mountains are all small, you do get that five, three or five minute break between your hikes to fly down and then walk up and fly down, walk up, fly down. So like I'll do my normal hikes will be, so I've got a, I've got a flying site in my property here. So I, I live in town, town called Conungra and, um, I live on 60 acres.

My 60 acres goes straight beside the hill. So it's a long thin block goes top of the mountain. So I go, I walk out my door, my house, walk straight up to my launch site and fly down to my front house. I'm in the front yard and the hike up is 270 meters high. So I do turn a 70 meters. So I just did this morning. I walk up, fly down, walk up there. Just I'd bundle my glide into a little, into a, into a like 80 liter bag. I just apply a little gin Griffin 14 and I just got woke up pretty fast. I'm not, I, I, I can't run. I just like I can run to launch so I can, I can launch a, I'd fly an 11 meter. I weigh 90 kilos. I fly 11 meter gin, gin, gin fluid when I'm flying, when I can, when I have the sites to fly it. But normally I just fly 14 Griffin here because it gives me a good glide.

And so I woke up, set up, fly down, walk up, set up. So I did some morning. I did three of them in a lot of cloud around just as rain is coming in. So I got three before I started raining. Yes, I did. I did six off another hill. That's about 350 meters high. So I did six in the morning or that one. I

just, you've taken that ball and run really fast. I'm not going to go far with it.

That's amazing. Well, again, if you can like, you know, honestly, like there, I remember this, this, this ex girlfriend I had had this son who was really nice kid. He was autistic. And so, and so he had, yeah, he's same height as me. Everything. He had the, like he was only 17, 18 had the, you know, like perfectly physical, able body. And he wouldn't want to do anything with his body. He just sit in front of the TV and he's like, I'm going to go and play games. And I'm thinking, dude, give me your ankle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just think if he was, if he was robbed of the ability to walk, I'm sure he, and they'd said, you can walk now. Then you would just start walking, you know, because you just go, well, I've been given that opportunity to start doing it.

And so that's why, like, you know, even though I've been told by a surgeon, she had me knee replaced because my knees pretty stuff from using it from, you know, when my, my ankle was pretty bad, the other needs your stuff. But I don't want to stop because if you stop, you can start again. And because you've got given this gift of being able to do things, then why not do it? Why not do it? But I, I am lucky. I'm lucky. I live, I live like, so I can do hiking. I can do like two, 1500 meters hiking and flying. It might probably be without even starting the car. I just walked right up and fly down. I can, all the sites around here are within five miles. I can do like maybe 10 minutes drive or motorcycle ride from my house. So I can, I can just go to an, you know, if it's east, I go over the back of it to another hill behind my property.

And that's only a 10 minute ride on the motorbike. So I'll go over there and I can do, you know, so I don't have to worry about driving from Brisbane down to here, which is like an hour's drive. So I'm sure if I lived in Brisbane or if I lived an hour away from here, I probably wouldn't do as many hikes, but you know, I'm in a place, I'm in a place where I can do it. I have a body that can do it. And I think, well, why not do it? I

mean, they, they, my, my wife's a personal trainer and she has this saying, you know, if you want to be going upstairs when you're 80, you go upstairs when you're 50, you know, you gotta be doing it now. If you're doing it, if to do it then, you know, you want to dance, got to dance.

I do enjoy, I do enjoy the, the challenge of keeping up with people or, or beating people who are half my age. It's like, I like up the, up the hills. I do, I do tend to push it a bit. Everyone knows me as a bit of a mountain goat. I, so I did push it a little bit. It's not, it's not because I want to beat them. It's just maybe because I just don't want to come second. I know. Okay.

So, hey, there's a, I want to ask you a few questions that are, that are shorter just because my editor at some point, he's going to say, dude, we can't just do a three hour show. Yeah, exactly. But you've, no, no, no, this is awesome, man. But I want to know, I want to know a few things. Best place in the world to fly. Best place. When you, when you're, when you're sitting there in Conungra, you know, tomorrow you want to take off and go somewhere. Where would you go?

Well, if, if it was closer, if it was closer and it wasn't such a drag to get there, I love Iceland. Oh. Iceland is amazing. Okay. Amazing. It's not such a, it's a, if you can do XC there, it's amazing for XC, but it's not, it's not, it's definitely not a good, it's not a good XC place, but if you can get XC there, it's great. It just, it's, it's a wild windswept adventure paradise for, for coastal soaring, for strong wind stuff with small wings. It's just, no, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a speed wing place, more of a mini wing place. It's just because it's, the whole place is on the trees, you know, you just, you just look up a hill, you walk up a hill and take off and fly. It just, it's quite stunning. So I love Iceland. I really, really love it.

I certainly, I certainly love beer, but if you get the beer and you get the, you know, the back over to Wismarli, it's, it's the most amazing parrot playground for doing ball beer. It's, it's a beautiful, beautiful place. I do, I do like, I've just, I spend a little bit of time in South America last year or this year, early this year in Bolivia. And I'm going to go back to Bolivia there. I found that like, I really, really enjoyed that place. Because it's, you know, I love, big mountains, you know, the Andes, amazing. I just, you know, I like, I like places that people don't go to. That's, I sort of prefer those places. That's why, you know, not like a lot of people go to Iceland, but they don't go there for flying. They go there just to look around.

So you, when you fly there, there's half of them there. Beer, the same thing when you go to the back, there's not that many people flying at the back of the air. In Bolivia, there's only like, I think there are 20 piles in the whole country. Like it's, it's, it's an amazing place to, to fly them in the volcanoes and get, you know, like launch heights at four and four and 5,000 meter altitude, that sort of stuff. It's, it's, it's quite a stunning place.

I certainly, you know, I like flying around Conongra. It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful area. Flying in my local area has real challenges. You go from small hills to flatlands, to back the hills, to flatlands again. That's, it's great for, for triangles. It does, it, Conongra is a little bit of a problem with sea breeze comes into the summertime, pretty sort of early two o 'clock in the afternoon. That, and that stops you from getting back. Yeah. Back to Conongra, because you mostly go west and you have to come back towards the coast to do it at return. But it's got some amazing challenges. It's, it's like a, you know, everyone goes to Manila for, when they come to Australia, they tend to go to Manila, but, you know, Conongra, it's just, the launches aren't very high.

They're not very big launches because it, you know, we just try and keep the, try and keep ourselves sort of low key as much as we can. But it's a, it's an amazing place for flying, for challenging yourself to fly cross country here. It's, it's really nice. And I do, I do like, I do like Corion as well. Corion is a really nice place down just above Bright in Victoria. And they have good comps there. That's a nice place. Both those places. Okay,

how about this one? When you look back at your long career of flight and passion and just being in the air all these, all these hours, if you could rewind the clock, go back to that, you know, either late seventies when you first got into hang gliding or, you know, early nineties, you were forced into paragliding. What do you, what, what do you know now that you wish you could have known then? What could, what could yourself go back to, you know, your 30 year old self and go, dude, this is what you need to know. Would you change anything?

Probably not because I guess, well, you know, I suppose because I didn't, I didn't really, I didn't really hurt myself that bad. I did hurt. I did have a, I did have a major, a major accident in Bali. That's another, that's another epic that I could tell you about that. That was, have you ever been to Bali? I have. Yeah. Many times. Yeah. So I, I, I crashed on Timbers beach really badly, really badly. And, um, ended up, ended up six weeks in hospital on the front of my back. Um, breaking the, breaking the pelvis. That was, and spoke this, broke the back of the pelvis on, um, on Timbers. Oh God. And, and he's dead. So I, you want to do the quick little quick story about that? Yeah. That was a bit of an epic. I, um,

um, I just been over to Indo and, and we'd done the Indonesian nationals in, on Java. And we're on our way back to, um, back to Australia. And I thought I'd just drop in and see a few people. I'd taught them how to fly. They were living, they lived in Bali in, in Kuta. But they were, um, but they, they, but I taught them in Australia how to fly. And so we come back, this is, this is in 95. So there's hardly anyone flying paragliding in Bali at all. Timbers Beach, you get to Timbers and there'll be no one flying. So I, um, I was, I was spending about three days in Tim, in, in, in Kuta. And I didn't find a Timbers a little bit, just cruising around. I had a, I had an Adele Energy.

I don't know if you've ever heard of an Adele Energy. But they were one of Mr. Jim's last designs for Adele. Yeah. Anyway. So, um, and so I, I'd heard about this site called Chandi Dasa. Yeah. Uh, which is up the, up the, up the coast. So I went up there, got there, no one flying there. Found where the, found where on the, this side of a hill, there was some old rice, old terraces. Took off, had a beautiful flight there. The last day of my train, the last day of my stay in, in India, right? And so I was flying there the day before, and I had to get back to Kuta to get my flight at 11 o 'clock that night to back to Australia. Right? And I'd rented a little motorbike and I, I was, I was at Chandi Dasa on the motorbike.

So that morning I got on the little motorbike and I was chuffing back down to, to Kuta. And I get, I come into Kuta about two o 'clock in the afternoon. All right. And I was coming in there. This is the, this is a good story about, about,

about listening to yourself and what you should do and what you shouldn't do. So I'm going on the motorbike and I'm coming towards, and so I, like I'd come second in the Indonesian nationals, second to, I'd gone, I know Charlie Follet had been made of mine at that time. And I had this past paper bag full of rupees. Like the, the amount of money they gave you for winning this, for becoming a second accomplice. I had this massive bag of money. And so I'm coming in and, and, and so I was, that bag had been left at my friend's place in Kuta where I guess I was staying there for a couple of days. And I'm riding back into, into, into Kuta on the motorbike. And I'm thinking, I've got my glider in back. I might go and have a quick flight to Timbers before I go back to, to Kuta.

And I'm thinking I should go and buy my girlfriend some presents with the money I made. I think I should go forward. I think I should go and back and, back and buy some presents. Maybe I should go flying. I'm going towards the point where I've got to do a right hand turn to Kuta or go straight to Timbers. I'm going along, going along, going along. And I'm, and it's getting, it's getting more and more intense. Do I go buy presents? Like the airplanes leaving at 11 o 'clock. Like, and so, so I, so, and so I made the choice, I'm going to go fly. So I ride up to Kuta, I mean up to Timbers. And I ride the little motorbike across the dirt there to Timbers. No one there of course. This is 95. No one flying. Perfect. On like a train, right? So I get in the, and, and by the, so I, you know, I've been teaching for five, for four years, three years.

I was, I was, you know, I was reasonably skilled at flying a paraglider. So I take off from, from Timbers there and I'm going left along the ridge there. The wind was a little bit cross from the left, right? So I'm pushing along the left. And you know when you go to the left, you go along and the ridge cuts around a little bit and there's a bit more wind. There's more of a bowl that faces more into that, into that left wind, right? Yeah. So I'm going along there and I'm, and there's a little, some little temple up there. And I'm, I'm cruising around by myself having a fat old time, right? Really cruising around enjoying it. And I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking, yeah, I really should need, I need to go back. I really do need to go and land and go back to, to, to Kudo. So this is the last day of my, Last second of flying, yeah. of my, last flight of the last day of my, of the, the comp where, It always is.

I have all these really good flights, It always is. And I'm flying, and I'm flying, and so I'm flying back towards the, the, the launch and I'm going to top land. And I've got this glider's got, it's an old, the old Adele Energy's, an old company used to have trimmers and a speed bar. So trimmers and a speed bar. So, and I'm an old hang glider pilot. I like, I like the speed rush you get about doing a fast run along a ridge, you know? So I've got a slight tailwind, a little bit of wind, because the wind's coming up my ass a little bit. And I'm flying down the ridge and I've got the bar full on. I'm flying really close to the ridge, reaming along on this energy, getting a good ground rush because I'm a little bit tailwind. And then I decide,

I have no idea why I decided to do it. I let the trimmers full up, full open. So I've got the speed bar full on and the trimmers full open, which doesn't do anything in coastal air until I go just past launch when they've now got that big, big hotel complex down the bottom below the right hand side of the launch. But back in those days, it was just, it was seaweed farms and some little paddocks down there. And this, you got this to kick off, kick off thermals there. And it was still a bit thermic. And I went, and I went past launch and Charlie was on launch. Charlie Flay, who's, it was, he'd been traveling with me. We'd had, we'd had a little bit of argument and that's why we didn't turn up on the hill together. We, I didn't want to know about him anymore, but I went past launch and he's standing on launch.

And I just waved at him, went past launch. All I was going to do was go down the ridge. I was going to do a left hand 180, come back and land. And I went down and I went about probably 300 meters past launch. And he got this massive asymmetric on the right hand side and went straight into the hill. Yeah. Straight in, into the side. Like it was some more, actually sort of a bit of a glancing blow as I went into the hill. I sort of hit sort of on my left side in a glancing blow. Into the side, into the rocky, shitty, cactus covered side of a cliff.

And Charlie saw me. He saw the big collapse and just saw me go, pshh, disappear. So luckily, and I'm lying on, I'm just lying there and I'm trying to feel my feet and I could feel my toes, which I thought, well, that's good. And I moved my, moved my right leg. Well, that's good. I couldn't move my left leg at all. Like my left leg just wouldn't, I could move my foot, my left foot, I couldn't move my left leg. So I ended up, I was lying there thinking, that was really stupid. That was really, I mean, a lot of pain. And then, so Charlie takes off because he couldn't get to where I was by walk. And so he took off and flies across and lands right where I was. And, you know, Katoot, who runs the Paragon, he runs a tandem business there on, on Timbers.

Anyway, he's been, he's been there. He started his business that year that I crashed. He was actually there as well. So Katoot and Charlie turn up with me. I'm lining my harness on the side of the hill. So they pick me up in the, in the harness and throw me in the back of a little Suzuki Jeep. And I'm just like, just throw me in the back of the thing and then dancing down the road. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,

bam,

bam,

bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,

bam, Doctor goes, I think you should go to the hospital. And I went, I'm going home. And now one thing you've got to learn about when you go overseas, it's a good thing to have travel insurance, which I didn't. I'd admitted to take travel insurance, so I had no way. I had no way. I wasn't about to ring up travel insurance companies and say, get me home. So the guys got me in the back of the little Suzuki, and they said, what, do you want to go to the hospital? I said, no, no, I'll go to my mate's place. So they drive me to an offense place in Kuta, and I'm lying there on the bed. I still haven't had any painkillers.

And the girls, there was a guy and his girlfriend who I taught how to fly, and his girlfriend had some period pain tablets, and she gave me a period pain tablet and said, that's all I've got. I don't have anything else to give you. So she gave me this one tablet, and I'm lying there on the bed. I'm lying on this bed, and the pain's getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And the time's getting closer and closer to the time I need to get out of bed. I need to go to the airport to get in the airplane. I'm going to get home.

And I'm thinking, hospital, airport, hospital, airport, hospital, airport. And then finally I go, finally I go, take me to the airport. So I get up, and I hobble out to the car, hobble out to the car, and they turn me back in the car, and they take me to the airport, and they said, I can't walk. So they get a wheelchair, and they take me to the check-in desk. Oh, God, no. And the lady goes, what's wrong with you? And I said, I've just hurt my ankle. She said, oh, it's okay. You can get on the airplane, get on the airplane, but you can't take the wheelchair on the airplane. So it was a 747. It was a red-eye flight back from Bali. It was leaving at 11. I was going to get back in Brisbane at like 8 o 'clock in the morning or something like that.

Oh, my God, no way.

There's no way you did this.

So they push me to the front door of the airplane, and now I've got to get out of the wheelchair. I still have no idea what's wrong with me. Right? I've just got – I can't move my

left leg. You don't know

you've got a broken pelvis or broken back. No, I have no idea. So I'm using the seats like crutches. They get down the – and luckily they gave me an emergency exit route, which I don't know why they do that, but they gave me – so I lay back, put the seat back, and I actually went to sleep, and I actually slept almost the whole way. I don't know why. It must have still been a lot of adrenaline going on. And so I get home, and I ring my – and so the people would come and pick me up. They'd pick me up with my girlfriend's parents. Now, my girlfriend at that time, she was paragliding in Europe. She was doing a trip in Europe, and she was in Spain somewhere paragliding. So she wasn't there to meet me, but her parents were, and they're very, very hospitable Germans, right? And so I said, don't be surprised if I come out in a wheelchair because I've hurt my ankle, but I should be okay.

So I didn't want to worry, you know? So they turn up. I come out to the car park in a wheelchair. I jump in the back of the car. And then we go back, and they said, oh, you just come on the airplane. You want some breakfast? You want to come home and have some breakfast? And I'm going, oh, you know, like because they're really hospitable. They really want to look after me. And I go, okay, okay. So we go back to their place, and I'm sitting there. So I'm sitting. They've given me a little bit of help to get into the house. I'm sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast, and the pain is just getting so bad in my groin. And I'm thinking – and I say to them, I need to go. I need to go to the hospital. And they said, we'll drive you. I said, I'll drive myself. It'll be fine. I'll drive myself. So I crawl out to the car.

I get in the car, and I drive to the hospital, and I get to the car park, right? And I'm in the car park. And then I think, I can't get into the hospital because I can't walk. So I find an umbrella in the back of the car, and I use it like a crutch, and I walk across the car park into the emergency with this umbrella. And I get into the emergency. And the lady goes, so what's happened with you? I said, I had a bit of a crash. She said, well, fill this paperwork and don't sit over there in the waiting room. And I said, I'm sorry, I can't sit anymore. I said, I've got to lie down. I've got to lie down because I'm in a lot of pain. She goes, oh, yeah, okay, okay. So they get a little trolley out. They put me in the trolley, and they push me into the hallway, and I'm lying in.

Then they take me into the X-ray and do all the X-ray stuff. And they come out. And I'm lying in the line. And I'm just lying there. I think they've given me a little bit of painkillers by now. And I'm lying on the bed. And then I remember the surgeon, the doctor comes out, and he says, I'd make myself very comfortable on that bed if I was you. I said, why? And he said, you're going to be there for six weeks. I said, six weeks? What's that? He said, well, you're breaking your pelvis in two places and breaking your back. And I said, what a cock of shit. I said, I walked in here. I'm going to get myself out. He said, no, you're not. You're going to be on that bed for six weeks. And it turned out that I was flat on my back for six weeks. I wasn't even able to sit up for six weeks.

And it was exactly six weeks from the time that I went in there, the time I was actually going to sit up. Six weeks. And if I – so like – You're freaking crazy. You're

crazy. I can't imagine the pain. You must not have the highest pain tolerance in the

world. So breaking pelvis is quite often severe femoral artery. You know, quite often, a lot of people bleed to death by having a femoral artery severed by a broken pelvis. I am so lucky I didn't do that. I have no idea how I did. But it broke through the hip joint, like right through the middle of the hip joint and through the bottom of the pelvis was broken. So I'm lucky it didn't displace. If it displaced, I would have been dead. But anyway, so that sort of – so since then, I haven't had an accident because I learned from that one that you don't use chemis and speed bar at the same time. That's the takeaway. But also, if your head's telling you don't go, don't go. Yeah. No, go buy presents.

If you're going to go buy presents for your girlfriend, do that. Exactly. You're a long time herder, Dad. That's amazing.

And an amazing place to stop. That's incredible. So you did like a tuk-tuk drive and you lay down in the thing and then back to the airport and then a red-eye flight. Oh. Breakfast. Go have some breakfast before you go to the hospital. Then the breakfast. And all with a

broken pelvis and a broken back. But, you know, interesting that a good mate of mine, a good mate of mine, Alex Yashenko, who still has the Australian distance record, he was one of my team pilots, my gym team pilots years ago. I was flying with him in Pakistan when he broke. Yeah, I was there. I was with him on that day. Oh, wow. Yeah. And that was another one of those things where all the Swiss cheese was coming together. It was like, of course, they'd had, you know, there was, I'm not going to say too much about this, but there was so many things that were. Little red flags. That were red flags. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. And then it happened.

And, you know, like, and a big part of it was just bad luck that hit the ground the way you hit the ground, which caused him to break his neck. But, you know, like when, when, when, when those it's, it's really, really hard. It's incredibly hard to see those red flags yourself. And it's even hard for people who are around you to see them until after the fact. And you go, yeah, that was so obvious, but at the time there, then they're not obvious to a lot of people. But if you, but certainly I've known a lot of people who've had accidents where all those, all the holes in the Swiss cheese all lined up and bang, they went. And, and it's, you know, and it's sad, you know, cause Alex is really good mate of mine and he's, you know,

obviously he's in a really bad way now. And you just think if, if only one of those things hadn't happened, one of them, he wouldn't, he would still be totally fine. You know? So it's, yeah, that's the one thing about flying that I, whenever I take off in a paraglider, I'm still always, always, um, uh, like I keep in mind that if I do it wrong, I kill myself. Like it's, it's, and I just feel, I feel that a lot of people that fly don't fully appreciate how much they're putting yourselves at risk in when they're flying paragliders. Cause paragliding is the most amazing thing. I like, you know, as I said, I've been flying for over 30 years and, and, and love, love the sport. I like the challenge. I like the rewards, but I'm also really, really mindful of how fast things can go wrong and how little control you have over the environment.

You're in, you have no control of the environment. You haven't got where you want to go in the environment. But a lot of people, I know they just fly around with the, you know, the head in the clouds almost, you know, basically they just, they just cruise around and, you know, and that's why a lot of people have accidents in paragliders. It's because paragliding is so easy to do. It's like, you know, if you can't fly a paraglider, you won't fly anything else in the world. Cause they, they are to, to actually take off and fly in a straight line takes no skill at all. Pretty much. Well, take no skill to fly straight. It takes a bit of skill to take off. Yeah. But when things go wrong, they go wrong really fast in paragliders. And luckily that, you know, you know, I've known, I've known Jim for, for many, many years, you know, almost 30 years is he, and, and I take my hat off to guys like Jim who, who were able to design.

They've, they've, they've, um, they perfected the design of paragliders. So they are so forgiving. Like the new paragliders are just, so amazingly forgiving. Um, and you know, it's, it's to, to the full credit of people like Jim and, and, and, and, you know, and, and like the other guys, those, all the designers, Hannes and those guys that you just did design the most amazing gliders that are so forgiving now that weren't that way back in the old days. But what it's done is, is let people who have no, no skill and almost, you know, I shouldn't be like this, but have no right to be in a paraglider. That's the, that's the one thing I, I, I, it's almost, it's almost, I, if I don't, if I don't like paragliding, it's because, because paragliding makes it too easy for people who shouldn't be in the air to be in the air.

Yeah. I mean, Russ Ogden has a saying about that. It's not

a sport. Yeah.

Russ Ogden has to say about that, that it's, it's incredibly easy to fly a paraglider. It's incredibly difficult to fly it well. You know,

well, it's, it's, it's incredibly easy. Most people are being carried by, just carried as a passenger in the glider. They're not, they're not, they're not integral to the glider. Because the thing with a glider, this I try and make my students understand is that the glider is, you are part of the glider. Like the glider is the only aircraft in the world that will not fly without the pilot. Yeah. Every other airplane in the world, you can jump out and it'll fly by itself. But a paraglider is completely not an aircraft if you're not in the, in the seat. So you are not just the pilot, you are integral to the glider's ability to fly. Yeah. And so you need to think, you need to think of yourself as being part of a machine, in the air, part of the device in the air, rather than I'm just flying this glider. Right. It's, it's like, and you watch people who are really good. It's an extension of their body. You know, it's, and it just, it's the way they move with a glider.

It's like watching someone who knows how to ride a horse really, really, really well. They don't look like they even ride in the horse. They don't, they're part of this big animal that's riding around. And the thing is paraglider, paraglider is so big and so light and so powerful. But so, but, but you have to, but you're, a big part of it. You know, you're 90, you're 90 % of the aircraft. You know, the human is 90, 90 % of the aircraft. Yeah. The,

the, the thing that has, I've never been able to totally wrap my head around. And something we talk about on the show all the time is what you talked about with red flags, right? That your ignorance in the beginning, you don't know what you don't know, but it happens to every level expert intermediate syndrome, expert halo syndrome, the beginner, cause you don't know what you're doing. But it's the, when you, when you dissect it, when you look back at the accident report, it's just the same as, is skiing back country. There's always, there's always, if you could just take one thing out of the equation, the accident probably wouldn't have happened. Right. So there's always these things, but like with you, if that hadn't happened, you know, we all need cheap mistakes. Hopefully we don't have the big asymmetric collapse and smack into the side of the cliff and break our pelvis and, and, and break our back.

But if that hadn't happened to you, it'd be hard for you to recognize the next time. You know what I mean?

It's totally, how

the fuck do we teach people? You know,

that's the problem is that red flags, well, is this

a red flag or is it not? Or is it, you know, I mean, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta listen to that little devil and the little angel on your shoulder. But I can tell you in the X-Alps, you know, there's all these times where it's really intense and, and, but you just got it. You're, you're, you know, you can't listen to the devil. You gotta, you gotta fly. You're going to deal with this. And you do, but you know, but, but when you're, when anytime outside of the race, that would be a massive red flag. Like, dude, this is not a day to go tempt fate, you know, and I don't know how to teach people that. It's impossible. I don't know. Is it? I don't know. What do you teach your students?

Well, certainly with, with my students, I tend to say to them that everyone, everyone, most people will have an accident. Yeah. The accident, that is the thing you learn. That's, that's, that's what it takes to learn because, you know, certainly some people, some people, uh, uh, a bit more risk averse and less inclined to push themselves to that point where they will have an accident. Um, some people will have an accident because there's just, they're like total bozos. And they just, they, if an accident is going to happen, they're going to have an accident, but they may be lucky enough to just not have an accident. But some people will put themselves, will put themselves in a situation. They just don't see the flags and they don't see the flags because they've got the blink. They've got the flag blinkers on, or they've got the, they've got the little devil and angel earplugs in.

So they can't hear the devil and angel. And it takes the accident to pull the earplugs out and be able to hear. And it takes the accident to take the blinkers off, to be able to see, Oh, I should have seen those things happening, you know? And so like, you know, I've got a, I've got a very, very good friend. Uh, this lady pilot, I taught, um, a while ago, a couple of years ago. And, and she'll know, you listen to this podcast and she'll know who I'm talking about, but I've told her numerous times that if she survives, she'll be a very good pilot. She'll be one of Australia's best female pilots if she survives. And I'm really concerned. I've always said that I can see, you know, I watch, you know, I've seen, I've taught so many people. I've watched people move through the sport and you can see he's going to have, you're going to have an accident.

And if they don't have an accident, it's probably because they were lucky. They didn't have an accident. Uh, but a lot of them will have one and you can tell them to your blue in the face and they, some will listen like this girl's listening. She listens to me now, which is really, really good. And I, and I think she appreciates that I'm saying the things because I'm looking after her. I don't want to see her hurt herself, but you're going to sort of sense that other people that I talk to that just, they just, it just goes in one ear and out the other. And it will take them to have an accident. All I hope is it's not going to be a bad accident. It's just going to be, uh, a small, a small incident. Yeah. A small incident, you know, I like, it's really hard.

I like what you said. You know, Jeff Shapiro was one of the first people I interviewed on the show. I've had him on a couple of times and, you know, he, he comes from a, well, a hang gliding background as well, but, but a big time base background and wingsuit background. And, you know, wingsuit pilots have it, have a saying that this flight, this one flight is the most important flight of your life because it is so radically dangerous. You know, they're, there is no margin in wingsuit, you know, in, in, in proximity flying. And so I like what you said about, you know, that you just have to be constantly in the frame of mind that this is, this could kill me. This, this could hurt me real bad. And that's, this very basic flight off my home Hill and benign conditions. It's 8am. It could kill me. And I, and if I, if you have that in mind, then you're going to respect it.

Yeah. Right.

And that's what I say. Like, you know, when I get on the launch and like the, our launches around here are quite, quite touristy. There are a lot of tourists there. And some of my students are on, how do you take off with all these tourists around? I said, I don't even know they're there because I get so focused when I'm doing tandems there. I get so focused on the job at hand that, and Tommy bomb can go up as I mean, I wouldn't even know because I'm so, so focused on what I'm thinking about all the things I've got to do. And, and so I, and I try and, I try and impart that to my students too, that, that you just get focused on the job at hand. And you're focused on the situation you're in and what you're going to do. And that's why, you know, I, I spend a lot of time with my students getting them as good as I can on the launching. So that there's one thing that I have to think about when they've been the flies, what they're going to do to take off, right.

Their takeoff should be, should be totally like, it should be just an instinctive thing to do. You don't even have to think about what you're doing with the takeoff. Cause if you're not thinking about the takeoff, you still think, you know, obviously it's, it's, you, you still think about what you're going to do with the takeoff, but that's not taking up a huge part of your focusing. And I've got to try and get off this hill safety because that becomes just a natural thing to do. And then you can think about the stuff you got to think about in the air. And you got to think about as far into the future as you can in the air for the time you're going to be in there.

You're open to noticing.

Exactly. Watching, looking all these other, and you're open to seeing the signs that you might not see. You're seeing the warning signs. You might not see if you were so focused on one other thing. So that's one way to do it is to get people, really good at some of the base things, not, not so good that they're, that they, they become too soft, too, too cocky, but it's more than it takes that, that it allows them to free up their focus to look for other signs that will be, that, that could be warning signs. Yeah. If that makes sense. Totally.

Phil, you're a treasure, man. I appreciate what you're doing for the community and, and the Stoke and the Bivy's and the 171,

there's so much, there's so

much more. I know. I know. It's more. I could have told, but anyway, we'll do it. We'll come

back to, we'll do a part, part do. And for sure. Otherwise my editor will kill me if we keep going, but don't get me talking. Don't get me talking. I don't stop. Sorry. We got to let you talk. You're, you're, you're good at it. My, my, my dad would love you, man. He was Irish. He loved a good story.

I appreciate you, buddy. Thank you very much. And thanks for sharing all this knowledge and, and some great stories. And we'll come back and get some more at some point. Thanks, bud.

It's been a pleasure talking to you, man. Pleasure.

Pleasure.

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