209. Thad Spencer- the Comeback - Thad Spencer

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloudbase Mayhem. Just got off a podcast recording with my friend, Thad Spencer. You all heard him possibly earlier. We had this show with him pre-accident. This is post-accident. For those who didn't hear, Thad went in real hard in a weird towing accident out in Minnesota, western Minnesota. He and Alex Peterson were going for a big day, and I actually got the call on this heading to U.S. Nationals in Chelan in 22. So it's been about 18 months, and this is kind of the comeback story. It's all positive. It's not doom and gloom. It's all cool.

Just the takeaways. The ways, funny stuff that happens in the ER, funny things that happen when you're on fentanyl, and just the comeback. The fear, anxiety, the anxiety, the fear, injury, and the anxiety, and just all the things that go into should I fly again, should I not, family, dealing with having somebody pretty broken. But it was 100 % recovery. In a lot of ways, he got very lucky. And yeah. We need these mistakes. We talk a lot about just how valuable they are in creating who we are and who we become and who we will become. So it's a great story, and we had a lot of fun with this.

And as always, when we go in, there's a lot of learning. So enjoy this second edition of Thad Spencer. Just before we get to the show, just wanted to... I'm going to say happy holidays. Enjoy this holiday season. I know many of you have travel plans down to Colombia and Valle, South Africa, Brazil, wherever this crazy sport takes you. Enjoy. Be safe. And if you can, this show will always be free, and we'll always be ad-free. But the way we make it possible is through your support. If you can support the show, all we've asked for is a buck a show. If you can do that... Awesome. If you can do more, even more awesome.

Various ways to support the show through the website. Go to cloudbasemayhem.com and find them all. You can also do it through Patreon and other ways. You can do crypto. So thank you for making this possible. I appreciate it. Your support covers all the behind-the-scenes costs. Travel to go interview people and editing and storage and all the things that go into making it come to life. Without you, it's... It's not possible. So thank you very much. If you've been listening for a long time and haven't been able to support us, but you're in a position now, it's the holidays. Great time to do it. We've also got lots of merch on the website. You can get Cloudbase Mayhem trucker hats that are really cool. Each one's totally unique. More Patagonia t-shirts with the logos.

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Miles talking to Thad Spencer. This is kind of our take two after the hit. We call it a hit. Big hit. I

like that. It's a big... It's been a big hit. It's been a really big hit.

All right. So here we go. Thad. Good to have you on the show. Good to be back on the show. This is take two. And as I just said, this is after the hit. You made a lot of hits in your life with music. And now you hit the freaking ground pretty hard. So we're going to talk about all that. I was just actually this morning thinking, this is going to be fun. I'm going to talk to Thad again. And I remember the call from Alex Peterson, who was incredibly... I don't know if you know this, but he was... He was kind of the first air Jedi that I knew when I got into paragliding. I remember flying out at Bingen on the other side of Hood River for one of my very, very first times.

I was a super... I don't even know if I had my P2. Brand new. Cracking the egg. And Alex was, you know, taken off. I don't think he had a helmet. His shirt was wide open. Just, you know, this hair flowing. You know, and I'm like, oh my God, that's Alex. Peterson. You know, I think he had just flown or maybe was about to fly, circumnavigate around Mount Hood. And which I don't think had been done. And, you know, just this, the coolest kid on the block, you know. And he, and I was driving up to, you know, so now this is years, years, years later. That was back, I think that was 2004 or something. And I was driving to Chelan for the nationals and he called me up and, you know, kind of frantic.

And it, you know, calm, but frantic and just, hey man, you know, Thad went in hard. I need your help. And I need, you know, we need to call some people. And I was just, whoa, dude,

what? Was he looking for money? Was he trying to drop it off my injury? Do you think, do you think that that's what that was?

Well, you know, it was funny because it was just another, you know, it always, when the shit hits the fan, you're always going, God, I wish I had this. And I wish I had this. But basically he was looking for family contacts. You know, he, he didn't have your wife's number.

That was a really, that was a really interesting lesson about communication and sort of when we're flying with each other, we should have each other's contact information. We should just have a spreadsheet. I know it sounds morbid. We

need a spreadsheet. We need a, you know, we need, we've started these telegram groups or WhatsApp or whatever. Those are really helpful. But yeah, man, it's just always, holy cow. I don't even have this dude. It's wife's family. I don't have a way to contact anybody.

No. And it wasn't lovely how my wife found out. So, you know, this as a, as a man that's maybe, maybe, you know, been injured. I don't, I actually, I want to ask you about that, but. Oh,

dude, I've been injured so many times, but not from paragliding, knock on wood. But yeah, I've been, oh my God, nine knee surgeries, both shoulders and yeah, I've been hurt plenty.

And you want to kind of control the communication of how you've been injured to your loved ones. You know, you want to, you want to kind of, you want to spin that to be the best possible. I'm in the hospital. I'm on my back with a lot of broken bones, but hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, everything's fine, honey. How you doing? You know, hey, I'm good. You know, I wanted to be able to make that call. And, you know, it takes a while. I was, I was flown by a helicopter into the hospital. Then you're in the ER and then you get CT scanned and then you get told what to do. And then you go to the ICU and all that time, I didn't have a phone. And Alex was frantically just trying to, you know, play catch up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He did get my son's phone number, called my son and my son gave him, I think somehow all they got was the address of our place in Wisconsin.

So we have a place in Minneapolis. We have a place in Wisconsin. I had been in Wisconsin, left to come fly. So I drove back to Minneapolis about two hours away, went flying that day, then got injured. And so she's at the other house. And the way that she found out I was in the hospital was the sheriff pulled down the driveway. Yeah. Yeah. Been flying right. The sheriff car comes down, two, two really, yeah, two really nice sheriffs. They've got those hats on, you know, those sort of like Canadian Mountie hats, and and that stiff polyester uniform and the freaking gun belts and such, and and they come and and they they said, "Um, um, Miss Spencer, are you the wife of Thad Spencer?" And you know, her knees went under her. You know, she just assumed I was dead, and then, yeah, so so Alex and I and anybody else I'm

Flying with, I think we've learned that, you know, maybe we should just share contact information before we take a flight, if we don't, if we, you know, if you're in a little group or whatever. You know, when I go to Columbia and places like that, we definitely have that information for each other. Yeah, but it's one of these 2020 things.

Isn't it? I mean, it's—you just, you don't think about it until it's a little bit too late. We, we did a show with this guy, Richard Barber, uh, and a couple of his buddies that had a—had an adventure go pear-shaped in, in Pakistan a while back, and the way their loved ones found out was through Garmin, when they hit their SOS. You know, Garmin has their, their emergency contact, and that was terrible because the information was, I mean, you just, you, you, "sterile, sterile, and something really bad has happened." I think you very much, good night, and

You have no way to find out how it's bad. What? No, you can't call Garmin, and you know...

So, I, I've thought a lot about this. You know, I think our emergency contacts, a, should not necessarily be our loved ones; it should be who's the best person on earth that can handle an SOS situation, you know, an emergency situation. You know, if, for example, for me, it's, it's my neighbors, it's Nate Scales or Matt Beechinor, guys that are really good pilots that know the game, that know who to call, that know how. I know those dudes are going to come get me. I don't have to rely on search and rescue, who are, you know, inevitably going to be slower than, than us, our community, you know, and, uh, and they, and then they will craft the message once they find out really what's going on to my wife. I think, I, I don't know, I've thought about this a bit.

I think that's the best way for us as a community to handle these kind of things.

Well, yeah, I was sitting in the the ER, um, pining to get my phone. I knew that there'd be an opportunity at some point after all the hubbub was over that I could call Sheila and just say, "Hey, this is, this is what happened, and hey, I'm fine, but I'm going to be in the hospital for a bit." But I never, I didn't get that opportunity. At this, they take everything from you. They cut all your clothes off, they take all your stuff, and you just sort of, you just sort of left. Um, but anyway, I mean, yes, that wasn't great. It was the worst possible, um, situation, uh, for her to find out. But she, she was nonetheless incredibly supportive through the whole thing. I remember saying in the hospital, I remember saying, "You know, that might be it for me and the paraglider," because you have that feeling, you have that, that sense of, you know, this was, this was really more than until.

And she said, yeah, she said, "Oh, don't even, don't even talk about that. Of course you will. And that's, that's just, that's just the accident talking. You're fine, you know." And she was just really behind me getting back under the glass, and she was like, "Oh my god, I'm..." which I don't, I don't know if a lot of people have somebody in their lives like that, you know? Yeah.

Good question, uh, that's that's an interesting one. I mean, I think a lot of people typically, man, is just so that's a sport that's there's more men doing it, uh, you know, you hear a lot of stories about, you know, once they get a girlfriend or or get married, they stop flying and, uh, you know, for all kinds of different reasons, you know, kids, safety risk, yeah, just also as a being a partner, this sport takes you out of being a partner a lot, so I think that that's well

And it's an incredibly selfish, let's be honest, it's—it's probably worse than golf. You know those guys that golf that disappear for the day? We disappear for days, you know, at a—at a whim.

And you know, when you first said that, "Oh yeah, but golf's so expensive."

Yeah, this sport's cheap. Well, golf's stupid, we can say that. But, but yeah, price-wise, I bet they're comparable. I always

Think of George Carlin when I think of golf, and you're gonna do it 18 bloody times.

Um, hey, so rewind. What happened? What, how'd you hit the ground? What was... tell us, tell us what happened that day. Well,

Okay, so it starts with the Xeno 2 coming out, so that came out, you know? So my accident happened June of last year, so

is that

2022, are we in 2022 now? 23

So this was 20

Yeah, yeah, so June, yeah, June 22, and the Xeno 2 had just come out. Bill and I both got ours, and I had the first opportunity to fly it, um, you know, weather-wise, and I had a lovely, you know, like seven, seven-hour flight, 150, 160 miles, really, really, really liked the glider. Felt how different it was from the Zeno 1. I know you're not a Zeno guy, but I flew that glider into the ground just like five years, I think, I was on. Xeno, and it has very, very, um, predictable and and, um, obvious characteristics, um, and you get the two and you sort of assume many of those characteristics are going to come, come right along with some improvements, right?

That's what you, but it really is kind of a different glider, and particularly in just the way that it communicates.

with the glider, and the glider lift a little bit more of a handful in the stronger list. That's all I the

Xeno one, I always heard, yeah, it's not so tuned out, really hard to search and light stuff and that kind of thing, yeah.

Yep, it was just a little less talky, um, and so again, I had one flight on it, just this one day, and I remember debriefing, telling Bill about it afterwards, like, "Dude, so great," because, you know, the improvements were the kind of improvements you wanted, you know, at the end of the day when it's light, you can really find everything, you can find everything, you can find with much more precision than than the the first, you know, which maybe would have flown through some of that and not giving you hints about it. So this is my second flight on it; it had been a week or so, and it was a kind of a mixed media day, I would call it. It was kind of a high pressure, um, but maybe still had really good top of lift, and maybe there was a chance there could be cloud. It was one of those kind of mixed in the middle days, but it was, it was showing in in XCSkies to be a really good

Kind of gusty, you know, wind as often those days are, and in that time of year when you want to get a get a long flight, you're probably launching with a little more wind than is fun, you know? Down ground handling, it was a little cross, so it was gusting maybe up to 15, 18, and steady at around 10. You're talking

miles now. It was a

handful. Yeah, yeah, sorry, I always do. I'm an American, Gavin. Did you see the SNL?

skit about the metric system and all that? Yes, man.

It was so good. Nobody knows. Good, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yes, I will speak miles per hour. Uh, so anyway, you know, it was one of those days where when you pull your glider up, you'd sort of, you know, you, you slide underneath it, and it was a full-on kind of, um, and it was just Alex and I and, um, Steve, um, Serene showed up to to tow us and, um, he had a friend. What's this terrain?

Like, for those listening, where are you? Just dead flat, I'm

on a dirt road, dead flat dirt road in western Minnesota. Um, it's an area, uh, we've we've found that has several roads facing north, south, east, or west. Two, two to three mile long roads, so like nice long toes, and this day was crossed. So we were on the east-west road facing west, and it was a bit north, so it was kind of a—it wasn't a handful, but it was a handful, you know, that you—you're when you pulled your glider up, you were kind of at a 45 to the road, and so

Not, not ideal towing conditions, not. But that's what

It is, that's what those days are, yes. And that's what those, if you want to fly far, you're going to have to be in some wind. And and Alex is so much faster at putting, uh, his kit together, so he launched first. He has like one of those, I don't know, the thing just comes out of the bag and it's on his back and he's gone, kind of guy. And I'm picking and sort of going through checklists and, you know, checking all the straps and just, you know, I'm pokey and I've got that big quartel harness, which is, you know, just a lot of stuff. And he's already in the air and it looks like it's good. And of course, it always looks like it's good when you're on the ground itching to get into the air, you know? And he just seems to be a speck and and maybe even going to the moon and, uh, and any minute will be gone and I'll just have to chase

time to go

Yeah, time to go. And you got that kind of angsty sort of, and so there was a—there was a guy that came

Um, named Jedediah, um, Schermer—I hope I'm spelling saying that right, Charmer—um, really nice guy, and he's a hang glider pilot, and he wanted to just observe paragliding launching, uh, toes, so because he's thinking about ebbing towards that direction. And so, yeah, yeah, exactly. This is what he sees, so a really nice guy, and we're, you know, talking to him, and and and he sat in the back of the truck with the tow winch and just watched. And so when they got back, I'm ready to go, and um, I'm I'm flying one of these. This is, um, Revis found me this interesting tow bridle that's very different than a normal tow bridle. No normal tow bridle is, you know, it connects to the carabiners and it's two, you know, two webbing pieces of webbing with some sort of a class that comes undone, and it's and so it comes to a triangle in front of you.

Well, this, this tow bridle is interesting. It was just a piece of, is it dihema? Dihema, is that what it's called? Yeah. Dyneema. It was a piece of Dyneema that attaches kind of like a chicken switch on a um, on a, on a snow kite or a water kite. You know how you pull the little red thing and then it undoes? So it had two chicken switches on either carabiner, and then just a piece of that cord that goes from one to the other, making just an arc in front of you. You run the weak link through that, and now whatever direction you're skewed to the, to the tow line, it adjusts, so you're always balanced. And, and I don't know if I'm explaining this correctly, but I'm explaining it right, but it was pretty cool and I was really excited about this tow bridle, and then used it a couple of times.

The downfall of this tow bridle is that both of the little, little release things are right there at your carabiners, right up against so

You got to go to those, you got to take your hands, you got to hold one, no.

No, they're really easy to get at. They're easy to get up, but they're too easy to bump. And my first launch that day, I, I launched quickly and, you know, slid under the glider. You, you know, you wrestle it, get it straight, turn real quick, and go. And I was about 50 feet up, and as I was adjusting, I don't know if you have this problem with your cartel, but every time I launched in my cartel, I have to kind of push my flight deck down into position and, and kind of, kind of wrangle it a little bit. And as I was doing that, I popped the chicken switch and I was released, lovely. So now I'm, you know, so, which is no big deal. It's, it's lots of wind, I just went straight down landing, so there was no big surge or

Anything, it was fine. Okay, no.

And if there was a surge, you're just pretty good at containing that anyway, just naturally, as I've been towing for 18 years, and all of that just seemed natural, and it was just another—it was another. I'm telling you this because it's another kind of loading the gun to what, what ended up perhaps having something to do with, with what happened in that. I was anxious to get into the air, and that's never a good thing, right? Then you have this, now you're

Even more delayed, and now you're more anxious, and yeah, yeah, it's stacking up here a little bit.

stack stacking up, so I reset, um, and back in the air now on this, um, launch, um, everything looks great as I make my turn, um, do my—you know, you only run a couple of steps when it's windy like that and you're in the air, and as soon as I'm in the air and sort of getting into the seat, I check the glider and I've got a little stick on the left side, and it's little. It's the kind of little stick that in the Xeno one, you almost always got on launch, you were always popping out those little tips coming in often while you're running off a mountain, you know, as you're—as you're doing your run, you're like, ping, ping, ping. Yeah, okay, that's clear. Or even if it's not clear when you're—when you've left the mountain, you can still just waggle that out really quick with a little pump. Okay, so

Now we'll get into my, you know, arrogance, um, in that I saw that and right away like, pop this out, but it doesn't come out a few pumps and I'm low. I'm probably, let's say, 25 feet, you know, I'm just in the seat. I haven't even done anything, I haven't even pushed the flight deck and done anything, and um, I'm, I'm gonna get that cravat out and that becomes kind of my focus. It's not a big cravat, we're talking about probably a foot of material. It's not wound in, it's just tucked so

leave it alone and

I should leave it alone. Thank you, Gavin. And and had you been along on the flight, perhaps you could have given me that information from the truck and um because that's really, it's really what probably put me where I was. It didn't cause the accident, as you'll hear, but it certainly wasn't a good thing that I was putting a fair bit of focus on this. Okay, so a couple things are going on. I'm weight shifting to the right. The wind is from the right, right? It's a little bit north, and so I'm weight shifting over that direction and I'm futzing and I started by doing the brakes, nothing, and I then I grabbed the stabilo and um hold on that, and all that did was bring in a big ears over the cravat um, which was quite counterproductive to what I was trying to do.

I had hoped that when the big ears popped open, some of that momentum would take the cravat with it. Didn't um. And so instead of being I I'm still in line with the the tow vehicle. I know where I am in proximity to this tow. I'm letting myself drift a little bit to the south because that's keeping me on the wind line. This whole thing is is is causing that a little bit So I've moved a little bit to the south. I'm looking up and I've decided, you know what? I think I'm going to grab the stabilo and give it a pop and see what that does. I'm just, I'm winging it at this point and um, still have my right hand on on the brake and I've probably got both, I think at this point, I've got both brakes in the in the right hand and I'm just starting to reach and the whole glider goes away.

So I wasn't touching the stabilo, I wasn't doing anything to the glider other than weight shifting and I'm just starting to reach and the whole glider goes away. So I wasn't shifting a little bit to the right and everything just went away and it felt to me like a like a pretty large asymmetric um, but the glider's gone. I can't see it really and, you know, that's

on tow, so what

on tow, on tow, when is this ever?

So you, so you took a big frontal I

Took a huge frontal, and I have confirmation of that. Um, I thought I took a big asymmetric, and I thought the asim basically just kind of spiraled me down to the ground because from the point of of it going away and me being ass over tea kettle on the ground, it seemed like a couple of seconds because I was probably 75 to 100 feet up. Um, so the best part—well, it's not really the best part, but it's funny. Um, you know, people talk about your life flashing before you, and I didn't have that. I didn't have this sort of, "Oh, wasn't that a lovely moment when I was in that play in seventh grade?" and I remember when I got the training wheels off my bike, like, and it wasn't one of those, it wasn't like a Pixar movie, but I was coming to the ground at a speed unrecognizable by any standard I can understand.

It was like, "It's over, I'm gonna die in this sad little road in western Minnesota." And and then done punched, I'm then I didn't feel a thing. I was completely blacked out. I and I mean it, I didn't feel a thing. The impact is on, it's like somebody went in and edited that out. I don't have the impact and I but just before the impact, I remember sort of maybe balling up a little bit, you know, just sort of maybe kind of looking away and pulling my, trying to pull my legs up. It's gonna hurt, probably. It's gonna hurt bad. It's so fast. It was so, so fast. Um, the the rate at which I was coming in and so I woke up, sort of woke up

Jedediah is over me. He's, um, holding my neck, and it's hot too, by the way. It's a hot day, and I remember there's like sweat rolling off his nose, and you can see the fear in his eyes, and I don't really know what's going on. I'm just on the ground, and there's this guy above me backwards to me, you know, because he's behind me, and, uh, then slowly realize, oh yeah, I was just flying. Oh, no, I was just crashing, you know, it all just kind of slowly comes back into your head. And he's still holding my head in that kind of way that somebody does when they're assuming. You've broken your neck, and he's asking me questions, and I guess I answered some of them. Um, he said it took me a while to become lucid; I was pretty knocked out of it for maybe three to five minutes.

Um, and and of course, I I don't know if it's shock or what it is, but I sort of wiggled my toes and wiggled my fingers, and everything felt pretty good, and so I said Yeah, I think I, I think I'm good, dude. Um, we should, yeah, let me up. And I, and, and he sort of got a little tighter on his grip and he said, "No, I, you know, I, I just saw you hit the ground. I think, I think it's, we've got an ambulance coming." I'm like, and he said, "I think there's a helicopter." I said, "Oh, no, no, no, no, we don't need a helicopter, just take me into because the closest town is Wilmer." I go, "Well, we could just get an x-ray of Wilmer." And, um, and, uh, but I still argued with him about getting up. And thank God, so it ends up this gentleman that showed up that day was a fireman, man.

He actually, that was lucky, so lucky, because Alex was in the air. Steve is a really nice guy and I've known him forever. He'd have probably let me get up. He'd have probably been like, "All right, well, that knows what he's doing," and I would have probably let him get up. You know what I mean? We're not trained.

Pumping, you're totally in shock. You're, you're a moron, yeah.

Yeah, I'm a complete moron, and so yeah, the ambulance, I guess it took a half an hour of him sort of holding my head, uh, and it's just hot, and you know, um, so they got me out of—I think they got me out of my harness without—I know they did, they didn't have to cut it. And then, um, the ambulance took me in their little cab, and then after that, you hear the helicopter arrive. They've sort of cut off my clothing, and um, I've got some fentanyl or something delicious going through my system, because I mean, like, you just woke around a little bit. It's starting to hurt a little bit more because I think some of the adrenaline's gone, and the back pain is maybe coming in, but they've got me on a backboard with the neck thing, and I get in the helicopter, which is pretty fun before

This so the we, I had an incident with, you know, Ben Abruzzo, who my supporter and all the X-Alps, when he broke his back in Nevada. When the, when the ambulance showed up, they had no drugs on board. They had no narcotics; that wasn't allowed. Why? Why? Because, yeah.

because of the opioid crisis

Exactly, and it was—it was unbelievable because I was, you know, it was clearly, he had no injury, there was no reason not to give him drugs, you know? I mean, that's just step one: is you got to control the victim's pain, you know, right? And he had been lying there because our first aid, it was, you know, one of these things, first day, kid wasn't with us and it was in the other car and, you know, and but it taught me a lot about, man, we have got, all each of us have to have at least some kind of control over our own pain, and we have to have at least some kind of control over our own pain, and we have to have at least some kind of, uh, to give our buddies if they go in hard and so, so they, so the ambulance showed up and you're—you're, they get, they get you something right away, or was it your—or was it your guys that gave you something right away? No.

They did the ambulance, and the ambulance is kind of funny because as they were putting me on the backboard, they have to roll you and get it underneath you, and then they kind of roll you back down, and so they're, you know. And what's funny is, I don't know, it's probably part of that job, but I think you're just a—you're just a slab of meat. You're not really a sentient being that's being put on a board; you're kind of just. And they start talking amongst themselves as they're carrying me to the ambulance about the bulge they have noticed in my back. One of them says to the other, "Yeah, did you see that bulge in his back? That doesn't look good." And I'm like, "Hey guys, you know I can hear you. I'm the guy that's got this bulge now." And so your mind is just like, "Oh no." You know, I—you feel like I—I in my mind, I think I could think of like a bulge in my back, and I'm like, "Oh my god." I'm like, "Oh my god," I'm like, "Alien, that's sort of alien popping out of the body." And just like, "Oh no." And I—I love it.

That

Doesn't look good, but

That, that makes you. That doesn't look good. And she and the other one goes, "Oh yeah, yeah, I did see that." And she's like, "Oh my gosh, I go, guys, and I didn't, I think I did say something like, how bad? What? What does that mean?" And they're then they sort of started to placate me a little bit and, um, and then they get the drugs in and you're doing a lot better. Time goes by really fast because, according to the to the guys on the ground, uh, Jed and Steve, you know, it was like 45 minutes until the helicopter showed up. To me, it was two minutes, two minutes, and I was in a helicopter and I was chit-chatting with those guys. I tried to get them to take me to a different hospital than the one they were going to take me to. Uh, they were taking me to the level one trauma center in in Minneapolis, which is HCMC, which is downtown, and it's a great hospital, but it's very busy, you know, it's gunshot wounds and car accidents and and and so I was like, "Well, why don't we go to the Fairview Riverside Hospital?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, it's like a little bit more of a suburban hospital, maybe a little quieter, maybe a little bougier rooms." And the guy's like, "Dude, you're not going there, you have to go, you just fall in a great distance." Yeah, you're gonna go to here.

And so, uh, they were great. Helicopter ride is really fun. I was, I was, I was wondering because it was bumpy because it was a, it was a thermic day and it's high noon probably at this point and they fly low, they're only like, I don't know, five, six hundred feet up and so it's kind of bumpy and I'm thinking, what's this landing going to be like? And I'm like, "Oh my god, it's going to be like a helicopter ride." And I'm like, "Oh my god, like in these conditions, downtown, you know, on the roof?" And my back starting to get a little more sore, maybe you know I can feel that giant bump that the paramedics are talking about and I'm just assuming it's just, you know, wheelchair time for daddy and, um, and they just put it down, they just greased it. I mean, just it was, you couldn't even feel the thing touch, it was just soft as. And then you're out and you get in this elevator and the elevator goes to the ER and the ER is like this beautiful, shiny and again, this is probably the fentanyl talking, but everything kind of, everything kind of glowed in there and everybody had these cool uniforms on and there's about 50 of them.

It seemed like, "Oh yeah, just wasted." And I'm, and I'm buck-ass naked on a gurney and I'm absolutely covered in feathers because they've cut my down puffy off and it's sweaty and so I'm like, tarred and feathered. I've tarred and feathered myself in my own like greasy sweat and so I'm naked, sweaty and and have all these feathers on me and they think they've never, they've the the head guy said, "You know, we've never had a paragliding accident here before." I'm like, "Yeah, I suppose you haven't. This is a first for both of us." And, uh, they, um, you know, they were really expecting me to be basically a broken pile of, you know, broken

bones bones

Yeah, and then it really wasn't that bad. They, there was no blood. I didn't have a scratch on me. I'm not a scratch. Do you, uh, did

Did Jeb Adia is it? Is that a Jed?

Jed, jed, jed, yeah, uh

You must have hit perfectly. I mean, you, you... well, I came in

I came in, I did he, and so maybe we should the rest of the story. There's a little bit, one funny bit in the er that I'll tell, but um, let's talk about it because what Jed did, that was amazing. Is he, as soon as the helicopter left and he was in his truck driving home, he got out his iPhone and he made me a voice message of exactly what he was saying, and I'm like, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I'm what he saw as he saw it." Okay, so he gave me as best because I didn't have a video, I couldn't review the video of this because there's no video, I didn't have a camera, of course, and no one was video, but he was watching Alex in the air, um, and so he gave me a blow by blow, and I didn't listen to that for about a month because you kind of don't want to, you don't really want to look at your equipment, um, you don't want to do much, um, you're just sort of coming to terms with having all of this confidence stripped away from you, right?

Um, and all that omnipotence has been now. Now I'm no longer, I'm mortal again. You know, I can be hurt, and I, I think that many of us have a feeling in paragliding that accidents happen to others. Good lord, it's not happening to me, I'm really good at this. How could it possibly happen to me? And, uh, I'm careful and yada yada. So he gave me this blow, blow by blow, uh, of, of exactly what happened, and he, he knew enough about paragliding to be able to describe things like a frontal, and he said that described the the cravat, small little cravat, and then he then he saw me, you know, pulled the big ear over the cravat when I was working with the stabil, and then he um, he said shortly thereafter, the whole front of your glider disappeared, you know, and he said, then he called it taco, he said the tips taco, you know, horseshoed, um, and nothing really recovered after that.

And then you hit, and he said, you, it looked like you hit feet first, you know, so pointed, and which is is true, I kind of made a a half turn as I was, and then came in on the the. So if you think of a dirt road, and then you have a little embankment, like a grassy sort of um, slope, and then it goes down to farm fields, I hit on that, that glancing part, just that little angle of the grass, and then slid. So that tiny bit of angle, the um, uh, the I think I sent you those spars, I back in the day when I found, when I finally did get to my equipment, and I pulled those straightening spars out of the cartel harness. They were absolutely twisted and broken, so those things probably saved, probably is why I'm not paralyzed.

Those two spars that come in the back of that harness, right behind my spine, they're absolute. I still have pictures. They're twisted and torn. They're actually torn. Jesus. And they're really strong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, they're really, really strong, that kind of corrugated. plastic. So the combination of, yes, it's honeycomb plastic. I, I told him, I said I would maybe even think about making it out of honeycomb carbon fiber, make it even stiffer, because that was a—that took a lot of the impact that I think my spine would have had to have taken, um, at that impact. And then my tailbone is still to this day pretty sore, I think that I—and I didn't break it. They, they x-rayed it. I had them x-rayed it three times because it hurts. Yeah, um, so, uh, that was really helpful that he gave me this, this, this picture, because I had this picture in my brain of what happened.

And in, in my mind, I thought it was a pretty massive asymmetric that just arced me down towards the ground and couldn't recover in time, but instead it was, it was a big funnel, which is a pretty amazing event.

through the throughout

Yeah, but not when I was on the ground, and we haven't figured that one out either, Gavin. I

Can't understand why wasn't I still, I, I just don't get it. I mean, when you're, when you're towing your wings back, you're pulled back, you're... yeah, God, that's bizarre. I, I mean, I'm trying to think about, you know, you've got, you've got kind of an unstable aircraft because you've got the, the tuck on the left side, so that didn't help, uh, but you're, you're, you're, you're leaning the other way and you're, you're toying with that side. Could that have been, man, I

Don't, but at the time of the frontal, I'm not toying with anything. I was just reaching, reaching for the stabilo, so but but what I, what I'm left with as I think about the outcome of this and is that dude, that that cravat should have just been left alone. Get five, six, seven, absolutely. Then same as

flying off the mountain, right? We don't mess with that stuff until we've got margin, so yeah, okay, for sure. Mistake A or B or whatever you... that, that was, that was, that was a miss, but god, the frontal, but

Let me ask, and let me add one more miss to it, so check it out. Now, what if I was both hands on the brakes, centered position in the, in the, in the harness, not you know, and this frontal started to happen? Yeah, maybe it would have come now. Maybe, maybe I would have caught it. Maybe I could have yarded on the brakes and, and, and I would have been cognizant of it as opposed to ignorant of it because my attentions were spent, am I on line with the toe? Am I weight shifting to the right? And how do I? Get this, and it was just such arrogance, Gavin, that I should be mucking about because I have told so many times. My arrogance allowed me to believe that it was okay to muck around that low and not be just flying that glider into into a more positive definitely

Definitely, definitely not a lockout.

Oh no, no, no, no, not even close.

That's, that's what, that's what always worries me when I see people towing and they start messing with something, you know, you just, you just start, you slide a little bit, a little bit, especially when you're low and there's not a lot of line out yet, you're just, you're getting to that, you know, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine because I won't, I've seen it once and I was towing and we were luckily in the ocean, over water, and it was totally benign and the pilot was—wasn't a pilot, he had just seen us towing and he just desperately wanted to go and I thought, okay, I mean, he had done something somewhere and, and you know, of course, as soon as he leaves the ground, he's trying to get in his harness or something yanks on a break and just immediately lock out and boom, in the water and, you know, he hit, but even over the water and even we were just starting, it was almost, I mean, I would have said he had a mild concussion, uh, you know, so you can imagine it on a dirt road or something.

So that, that was the first time I'd seen one, I haven't seen one since, but it made, it gave me a lot of respect for it because it was crazy how fast it was, it was just towing whack, just bam, you know, it's just holy shit, it was so fast and I'd only heard about lockout and I don't have the towing experience you guys do, you know, but it was, it was, uh, it was really frightening. Well,

And if I was even remotely close to any angle like that, which I wasn't, but if I were, Steve would dump the pressure because he deals with it. Oh my god, he deals with it all the time. He gets these, these students up there mucking about with their GoPros and trying to get into their harnesses and their

harnesses, and they're like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna get in my harness and"

They're wanging way to one side or the other, and they just dump pressure, slow the vehicle down, and if necessary, they'll, they'll bring them all the way to the ground offline, you know, and and then restart the whole I

mean it doesn't doesn't fit no that story at all. I just just, you know, it's just weird. It's just weird, you lost your wing like

Well, it was a thumping day, and and I've d, I've, you know, deconstructed this with the number of pilots, and and what we all just keep coming back to is that, you know, sometimes you get hit, sometimes there's just a big piece of nasty air that, even though your glider is under pressure, you know, and one thing that that maybe pops into my brain as a possible is that could could me weight shifting to the right have re somehow pushed the harness in a way that hit that chicken switch again, and I was released. Now, I didn't feel that; I mean, that would be a pretty profound feeling. There would be, there would be a surge first off, there'd be that immediate kind of pop where you, you're up, you're, you're released from the toe, because like if you break, if you ever broken a weak link, or you, if you had a line break in towing, it's a very profound I

have had that times, and it's a... it's... it's hands up, it's... I mean, it's hands on, it's like, "Whoa, I gotta catch"

Exactly, yeah, yeah, you get the pop and you get time, you know that it's coming, and so you have plenty of time to get on the surge. I didn't have that; I was fully pressurized, and then the glider disappeared in a finger snap, and it was just like, I guess you

just hit a really gnarly bit of air

It's all we can think, and that's what Bill seems to think, and some others that I've talked it through with. And based on what Jetta dia related, he didn't see the glider surging forward and then a cravat. It was the the the angle of attack was the same and the whole front end just disappeared and and I know you've we've all had frontals and and when you have them at altitude, it's it's it's almost a non-event and you wait for that pressure to come back. And I remember, I remember waiting to see if I could get back and a little bit. I didn't have a lot of time to wait, but I waited a little bit and then I got on, then I gave the brakes just a little pressure like, "Oh, it'll be there now," and it was just a sack of nothing. The champagne

Was going down... what's the, what's the funny story in the ER?

Oh, well, the ER is great because they're all expecting probably the biggest drama, you know, in world history in terms of what they—they just know that somebody's fallen from an incredible height. And and then I show up and I'm, you know, fully naked, tarred and feathered, and making jokes, all jacked up on fentanyl. And um, so they're asking about paragliding and maybe I'm answering some of the questions again. You're, you're pretty messed up and um, it's very cacophonous and there's a lot of movement all around you and you're just kind of on the gurney and you're watching, uh, the ceiling. And and then this, I hear this voice come from behind me and she said, um, "Sir, is there anything you need to tell us about your incontinence?" And uh, I said, "Wait, I go—I, I didn't know I, my, what?

My, what? You're, you're incontinence?" And I said, um, "I don't know what you're talking about. Incontinence, that's like peeing on yourself or you can't pee." Or she goes, "Well, sir, you're wearing a condom catheter." Oh my god, that's crazy right now. And I'm like, "I am? I, oh, I am. I am, I am." And then, yeah, I'm good. So the whole ER has been pretty noisy until I say, "Oh," and everybody goes quiet and you can kind of feel the heads turn like, "Okay, how is this going to go?" And I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to answer this. What, what is going on with why this is on this guy's dick?" And I explained, "Okay, you know, when we're in the air for a certain amount of time, you need to, you need to urinate, and this is the method that we've come up with in the paragliding community of how we connect this little hose.

It runs out the harness." And everybody starts laughing, you know, because they're just like, "You know, it's just not a thing you run into. That's a pretty strange thing." Um, so, so, uh, that's really good and Here's the best part: I somehow figure out maybe it would be a good thing to not, because you know what they're going to do to you? They're going to fully catheter you in a hospital. You know what that is? That's not, yeah, that's not good. I remember

My dad always told me, you know, he was in the military, and I went in for one of my surgeries, and one of the knee ones early on, and you know, I grew up ski racing. I think it was maybe the first one, my first big, uh, ACL repair, and he said, "Make sure they don't give you a catheter. It, it, it ruins the flap." I remember saying that, "It ruins the flap. You'll, you'll, you'll have to pee the rest of your life." All night, you know, he was so mad about his, he, he'd had a surgery at some point and had to get a catheter and it ruined his flap and, well,

Damn, well, um, so I got to keep mine on. They let me keep it on, Gavin. I was able to, I was able to pee out that for the first few days I was in the hospital because you're, you're pretty immobilized. Great. So then they, they give you a CT scan, which is a two, you know, we all know what that is. And, and, um, once I was had the CT, then I just waited. And, and then the doctor came in and read the butcher's bill and, you know, I think you sort of start thinking, you know, what, I'm gonna be fine. There's, I bet there probably isn't even anything broken. I bet this is, you know, because I was whisked in and out of that big room pretty fast because they just, they're checking you for, they'd already checked me for internal injuries in the helicopter. They have this mobile ultrasound thing and they were doing that on me, so they didn't see, but they said I had a one, one lung was slightly collapsed, but they said it would reinflate and it did later that day.

Other than that, um, so the guy comes in, I think I actually think it was a woman, I apologize. Yeah, I was pretty messed up at this point because the drugs weren't quite working as much and it had been a while and, yeah. And then they just tell you all the things that are broken and it was nine vertebrae and eight ribs and my sternum. You broke nine vertebrae, nine vertebrae and, and she kept and then, you know, they call them C1s and Rs or whatever they know, they have these little codes and you're listening and, and she just keeps saying them and keeps saying them and then gets to the ribs and then it's like, wait, how many are we talking about? And, and I think there's a small tear coming down one, one eye here, you know, just like, what? And, uh, and no, she, she said, "Oh, oh, that's, I'm sorry, that's the bad news.

The good news, these are all stable fractures." And I said, "What is, what does that mean? How is that good?" And she said, "They don't have to have surgery, like, oh..." No surgery, so I... I, she said, "You'll be in a brace for a while, and and these will heal, and you will... you will be back to normal. You're just"

going, yeah, yeah, party

Yeah, you're—yeah, I mean, you're worried about what, what's all that? You know, what's, what's being in a brace? And because you think those halos and, you know, that kind of stuff. And one of my vertebrae was kind of high, but it didn't require neck immobilization, so I, I wore basically this plastic—excuse me, this plastic brace. It comes in two parts and it velcros together on you, and it completely immobilizes your body from basically your, your, you know, pelvis up to your top of your sternum. And, uh, Alex's brother had worn one of these; he had broken his back paragliding years ago, so Alex was kind of a, an expert. And he's in the hospital with me now. He was with me when they told me the news, and so we're both just sort of in a little shock.

And he goes, "Yeah, I know about these body braces, dude. Oh, that's not a good thing." "What's not fun?" I go, "What's not fun?" And he goes, "Well, they, they heat mold these things to your body." You know, because they got to get it molded, your body goes, it's—it's really hot when they're pressing it on your body, so kind of get ready for that. I'm just like, "What?" And that's not the case at all anymore. When his brother had one, now they—they take measurements, so they use like a laser, and I don't know, but they brought it and it fit me. Um, so you just wear that for some months, and you know, you're in the hospital for a bit, then you're out, uh, into a what they call the acute rehab, where they just make sure you can walk upstairs and what

Was your headspace at this point? Was it, "Holy shit, I'm so lucky," "Holy shit, I'm so unlucky," "What, what are you, what are you thinking?" Oh my god, I hate this sport. I mean, I

Never, I never hated the sport, but it was, um, you know what you go through, Gavin, that's maybe even more destructive. Is I'm a horrible pilot, I suck, you, you, you suck, and I've made, I've made terrible, terrible misjudgments that have almost cost me my life and, um, cost everyone around me a great deal because, you know, you require a lot of help. My wife, just, we had two new puppies in the house and, uh, just, just the mayhem of all of a sudden, she had to do everything and I could do nothing. I couldn't lift, they wouldn't allow me to lift anything more than five pounds, um, and you're in a lot of pain. I was in a lot of pain for quite a while just as I healed, um, and and and I, I just felt really incompetent.

I guess that would be the best word, like, really incompetent. All of the confidence I built up over the 18, 20 years I have been paragliding were completely and utterly removed through this incident. And then you've got all this time to ponder it, you've got months to just dwell and and ruminate about it, and that's pretty unhealthy too. But, but also, I think like grieving, it's part of the process of, like, you know, like, you know, like part of the process, you have to ruminate about, you have to see it from all the angles and you have to figure out, because there isn't just like... your reaction is classic. Oh my god, you're on toe! How could that happen? There's no... I don't, I don't, I don't get a really neat, buttoned-up little package of an answer as to why this happened. I have to live in this more, you

know, misunderstanding because of the podcast, and just because we're in this sport, we've all talked to a lot of people who've had accidents, and it seems like the easier recovery is when it's really clear, you know? When you really understand what went wrong, you can identify it, and you know, when it's when it's mushy and gray, and that—that seems then—then there's a lot more we like knowns. When there's a lot of unknowns, it's just your brain seems to frazzle a little bit, well.

And and you know, like, I think when you get away with stuff, when you get away with little incidents throughout your life, you're not going to be able to—it's easier to sort of rationalize that as, "Yeah, because I'm really good. Hey buddy, you can't take—you can't keep this one down. I'm good, you know?" And and it's not luck, I got skills, and I—they're natural. I got natural skills, you know what I mean? You can—you can come to so many different, um, understandings of why you've stayed safe all these years. And then when you haven't—when, when you know your—when your luck runs out, you got a lot of processing to do about, um, a—how you've been looking at the sport for all these years, um, how skilled are you, and all of that was undermined for me. Just, I—I really did feel like I had lost, um, all of my confidence.

And I did—I think for a while, I certainly wasn't feeling great about jumping in, in underneath a paraglider. Um, Chris Santacroce, I saw this thing he did, he talks about preserving the good feelings you have about paragliding and how important that is. It's like something you have to hold close to your heart and and preserve, and don't let it get eroded, because it's easy for that to get eroded. And then you don't want to, you don't want to go back and do it. You see your paragliding equipment and feel bad about it, as opposed to feel excited about it. He actually uses that analogy. He says, "You know, you'll see your gear and you want to go do that." And if you're on the other side of that curve, you see your gear and you want to go do something else, because it just makes you, maybe gives you a little queasy feeling. And I definitely suffered from that.

And then I had all this time, you know, um, I couldn't do a thing. Walking for the first month was a pretty big deal. And then pretty soon I could. I was, all that was my main activity for the three months that I was immobilized, was, you know, taking walks in in the hot of summer in a plastic shell. and just sweating and

Knowing you, uh, you know, I don't know you really well, but you have a lot of energy. This must have just been burning you up. I mean, this to just to be in care of you and I'm incapacitated is my worst nightmare. You know, I have to do shit.

It's everybody's worst, yeah. And I guess what made it feel okay, though, is that I knew that I was getting better. I knew that I was healing. I had great doctors, and they talked about how I would heal and what the prognosis was, and everybody said, "You will be a hundred percent. You will, you will be back to doing everything. You know, it's just going to take time." And, um, as we're older, you know, it takes more time. Um, so that was, you know,

patience of it all, on top of it, psychologically, I had just retired after 35 years of running a business, sold it, and then was also battling the kind of, I don't know, ineptitude and, you know, insecurity of all of a sudden having your identity, if, if we look at our identity as being work, being removed and now what? And who am I? Um, so I was just coming on the heels of that into this accident, and now I'm sitting, I'm sitting in a chair looking out of at a window for three hours, you know, with nothing, you know, that's the plan that I have for the afternoon is I've gotten myself, you know, into the chair, and then you just got a lot of time to think, a lot of time

Yeah, and I, I'm curious about that because it's, you know, I, I've been injured a lot. I've had a lot of these, you know, okay, incapacitated for a while, and I have both fond and not so great memories of some of them. The ones that are fond, I was, I kind of took it on as a challenge, and I, and I, you know, read books or, you know, I do, I did things that I don't normally find easy to do because I'm busy, and, and I, and I came out of it, I think, a better person. And I've had other ones where I've just wasted away in my own misery, and I don't do enough, and I, you know, these days you're on your phone farting around and blowing time, and, and I don't know if that's

the right word for it, but I've had a lot of times where I've just

remembered, you know that I've learned anything coming out of them, so I've done—I've done it both ways. There's, there's clearly a good way to do it where you can look back and go, "You know that injury? I needed that time. I needed it mentally, I needed it physically." I, I need it. You know, we get sick for a reason, right? We get a flu, and I always think, "Yeah, it's because I was burning the candle at both ends. I'm tired." You know, this was my body going, "Okay, dude, you, you're not gonna relax." So I'm

Yeah, yeah, I was... it was like forced double retirement. I got, I got retired, and then I got double retired. I got retired from everything that I do, and yeah, I think it was, uh, it felt very negative maybe at the time, and then that, that negative feeling started to kind of, um, erode away, and and a feeling of like, "Wow, I'm... this is so great to be alive, and so great that out of all of that could have happened, only this happened." You know, yeah, I broke a bunch of vertebrae, but they're all healing, and I'm wheelchair. Maybe my back will be a little, yeah, maybe I'll be a little more fragile for the rest of my life, but man, that's the small price to pay. And, um, I, I think I, I definitely, definitely... it was an immensely positive thing, probably for the, for the accelerated, um, version of who I am now compared to who I was.

I look at life as kind of a three-phase thing. We have the first phase where we're learning and we're young and we're ambitious, and then the second phase, we take that ambition and we create something of ourselves. And we're young and we're ambitious and we're ambitious and we're ambitious, and you know, we have a career and a life and maybe grow a family and grow a relationship. And then I'm in phase three now, where it's the back half where we take all that wisdom and perhaps some of the money that we've made, and we, we put it towards this last phase of our life. And I, I just, I want to be the smartest version of myself and the kindest version and the most thoughtful and decent version of myself in this last phase. I've messed it up, I've messed it up all up, and these other two, but I feel like this is the last one that I can maybe repair

some of the dim-witted, ambitious, driven, egocentric bullshit that I've twisted and turned through in the first two phases of my life and really kind of try to get it right. That's kind of a

nice takeaway. I mean, I'm hearing that all says humility to me. It sounds like the accident maybe expedited, who are we to say, you may have come to this conclusion anyway, just out of retirement. Maybe you didn't need the accident for this enlightenment, but maybe it kind of expedited the humility side of things, which is something we all need a little heavier dose of.

I need piles more of it. I mean, and what we put our ambitions to, you know, a lot of times we're putting our ambitions out in the world so that then glowing adoration comes back at us, right? Look at how successful you are. Look what you've done, right? Those ambitions are often driven to sort of put a spotlight back on ourselves. And one thing about being in this phase of my life is, I think I'm thinking a lot less about putting a light on myself and more just enjoying myself and making sure the people around me are enjoying themselves and thinking more about that than, "Look what I did." And I think that really phase two of your life is spent.

Look what I did, you know, whether you're trying to post up a really big flight and make sure everybody sees it or fly the furthest from the launch that day, whatever it is, I've been that guy forever. I having all of that ambition and, and it is a lot of energy that maybe can be spent more positively. And sitting around in a plastic shell on a 95 and 95 degree humid day, you know, you know, kind of biding my time healing gave me a lot of, a lot of perspective on that. And then also how one approaches the, the sport of paragliding and why, you know, I guarantee you that you had very many, you've had several reasons for why you love and do paragliding through your, your time doing it from the beginning to the end and how you're doing it.

Yeah. And how that changes. And I think that Alex put it really well when I was coming back, trying to come back into the sport, he said, dude, just do some country club flying for a while. And I love that phrase, country club flying, just have fun. I don't like country clubs. I think they're racist piles of shit, but I don't, I don't I don't agree with, yeah, what a country club is, but I love that idea that let's just have fun and let's just find days that are enjoyable and that manifest nothing more than that. And I think that's a really good idea. And that can start to build a foundation that gets me back to, you know, perhaps having a few more goals and pursuing those goals. And what's,

how's that right now? Are you flying again?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been, yeah. And it wasn't easy. The very first flight I took, the very first flight was, was really fun, funny in that. So it took a long time. I was, we were in California last year from December to, April and in about a month in, I had brought a kit with me. I hadn't flown. It took me a while to even look at my kit, Gavin. It took me probably two months before I got my kit back out of the bag since the accident. Alex brought it to me because all my stuff was, he, he wrapped it all up. So it still had the dried grass and gravel in the bag from the event. Of course there was no blood, which is great. It was nice to not have like a bloody harness. I had to clean up, but I hung it all up and inspected the glide, line by line and, you know, all the cells and everything.

And then I did the same thing, hung up the harness and inspected it. And that's when I found those, you know, those, pulled out those spars that come down the back and they're twisted. But I didn't think much about flying more than just, I know that I'll give that thought, but I need to get some distance from it. And by this, by this winter, so this was last winter, I was starting to feel that way. And, um, I'd been speaking with my flying instructor, who's a flight instructor, and he said, I'm going to fly with you. And I said, and, you know, telling them some of the, some of the things that were going on in my head and, um, working through that. And finally it felt okay to go fly. And so I chose, and this is a funny place for me to fly. Cause I am not a ridge soaring person. I just don't, I'm not good at it at all. I don't know if you're any good at ridge soaring.

I'm horrible at it. And just, it's a, it requires a specific kind of, you know, like a little quiver of gliders. They have a 22 meter for this and, you know, like they're into that. And they're really good. And I showed up at Torrey with my giant quartel harness and my Xeno tube and all of my anxiety. And my friend, my friend, Phil Russman said, he joined me. I said, yeah, I just want somebody to be there for this first launch. Right. And, uh, it was a little light and we had a cup of coffee and waited and then the wind started to come on. And as it came on, it was obvious. It was kind of like a light switch. It was on, it was blowing like nine, 10. And, and I started just unzipping. The bag was like, how do I do that again?

Like unzipping the bag was this foreign thing. And all the anxiety was just sort of kind of coming on. And at one point, I think I was just standing over my bag, kind of looking at it. And I'd maybe got the zippers off and I'd maybe like pulled half the glider out. And I was just kind of, kind of standing, looking at it. And Phil, Phil comes over. He goes, "How you doing?" I said, "Oh, I'm fine." He's like, "Are you getting that out of the bag?" And I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Tell you what," and he saw it right away. He goes, "Why don't you stand over here and let me get this out for you? Let me," let me get this set up. And he unzipped the, got the glider out, opened it up and sort of walked me over. He said, what, come on, come on over here. I'll get you in the harness. And I stood there like a sixth grader getting his snowsuit on to go to school.

And he kind of, yeah, kind of put it on me and sort of did the buckles. Okay. You have a good day, you know, and bye honey. See you this afternoon. It was so awesome. It was so great. Cause I was, I was kind of frozen. Um, and then the, then, then the muscle memory comes back. The wind came up, I just built a wall. And then that the simple act of just building the wall, it's like, Oh yeah, I know how to do this. And she shook, glider came up, did my turn launched and it didn't feel horribly scary. It just felt a little different. And it felt there was more consequence. I guess there's this feeling of consequence that I didn't use to have. Um, and then I just built it back flight by flight.

I did a few flights there. There are a lot

of, um, Oh shit and weird stuff in your head and, you know, seeing yourself splatter into the rocks kind of stuff, or was it just.

No, no, no, no. And, and I, and, and that's, that's a really good question. No, but it's front loaded when, when you're in the act of it, it felt more natural when I wasn't in the act of it, when I was preparing to that. That's where a lot of the anxiety was. It was that first, um, getting the glider out and thinking of, I think I'm going to go fly today. That was the hurdle that took more, um, time for me to get over. Once I got over that hurdle and the act of flying felt fun again, then, then it was really, it was, it wasn't simple, but it was simple. It was easier to get back.

That was last winter. So we're about a year later. Are you, are we still country club flying? Are we now kind of, where, where are you at? We're, you know, compared to where you were when you had the accident?

Well, I think that the person that, that had the accident, definitely always trying to fly something big and long. And I don't know that that's in me so much. I feel like I've, I've done a lot of that flying and I've got some flights that probably will stand for a while. Um, at least one will probably stand for a fair bit of time. Anytime you get over 200 miles, it's going to hold for a while. You know, that's that kind of rarefied air that I'm very, very happy and proud to have, have figured out how to get past. Um, so I don't feel like I'm chasing those ambitions as much, but what I did this summer was I would get up on a cross country day and I would just say, why don't we fly for four hours? Let's, let's go for four hours. And then how you feel at four hours, you can land or you keep going.

And I remember the first one I got to the four hour mark and I don't remember what the distance was, but I, um, the day wasn't great. It was kind of a handful of a, day staying, staying up. And I remember thinking four is enough landed and got picked up right away. And then the next time that all of a sudden I felt like flying a little bit more. And then Andy came into town, Andy doll came into town and we had this lovely day where we just flew this big triangle. And by the way, I should note, uh, note, I also stepped back to a photon. That's how I kind of got, uh, my first lights were in the Xena, but it was at a Ridge. Um, but Bill had a good, a good concept. He said, Hey dad, why don't we get rid of that Xeno? You crashed and buy you a new Xeno. And I said, why? And he said, cause that one tried to kill you.

Let's just get rid of that one and get one that doesn't have any bad juju. It doesn't have any bad feelings. And he said, he said, you know what too? I think that that first batch had issues with cravats that I've talked to. He said, maybe I've heard, or I can't remember exactly, but he, he said that I think they've kind of got that dialed out. It might've been a trim thing. I don't know. So we just ordered another one. And, and you know what? I flew the photon on small cross countries throughout the summer triangles and, and, and smaller, like no more than like five hour flights. Um, and until, until one day, uh, I knew the day was going to be a little tricky for the photon because the photon is not exactly the best light lift sniffing glider. And this was going to be one of those days where it starts light gets better and then ends light.

And I just knew that and the Xeno was still sitting in my, on my rack unopened. It was just the box was still sitting there. It had been there for a couple of months and I knew, Oh, I want to fly that today. And I wanted to fly it. It wasn't something that I was trying to get myself, you know, like I wasn't trying to muscle through it. Yeah, no, I wanted it. And then I flew it and it was fantastic. And then I think from that day forward, I felt like I was back.

So it doesn't really sound like you had to battle through a fear injury here. It was more just.

I did. I felt that way. I felt like I battled back. Yeah. Because I, you have to remember when you get on launch, you're not really, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm supposing here, but you're not really going through a checklist of the dangers of paragliding. You're just stoked to go fly. And I'm still, I'm still checking some of those boxes. I'm still feeling the ramifications of this act. My first paragliding instructor, Alan Chukalot used to have this great phrase. He would say, are you ready to commit aviation? And the first time he said that to me, yeah, it's a really good one. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you're deciding whether you're going to get into the air or not. I'm not deciding that for you. Are you ready? Do you feel confident? And do you feel like you're in a good place to commit aviation?

And I think that, that, that phrase has never had more meaning than perhaps now, because there have been physical consequences. I had to go through a long physical recovery. I had to put my wife through my, you know, incredibly selfish, long physical recovery. And so, yeah, I'm taking all that into consideration when I'm, when I'm launching now. And so I think there are, there is more of a feeling of, and it was a battle. I was completely, absolutely dead set against probably flying again. Um, in the early days. I remember

Bill saying that, you know, I've checked in with him many times over the months since the accident. How's dad doing? And, you know, there was definitely, yeah, not, not too sure he'll do this again. And then, yeah, but.

Yeah, he was really, he said some great things though. As you know, he's such a poet, you know, he can say a lot in a few words. And one of the things he told me was, you know, we're, we're, we're doing an extreme sport in nature and there are going to be events that could happen in, in a paraglider. Yeah. Yeah. Any times they don't. And sometimes we skirt around it and sometimes we get hit hard by an event and it has consequences. And that's just this, we can try to mitigate risk as much as we can, but we can't eliminate risk. Yeah. And that was really good for me to hear because it helped me feel like, okay, this wasn't so much my fault as it was my turn.

It was my turn to have an event low in the worst possible. You know, worst possible time. Now, could I have helped I could I've helped the odds of my event? Yes. Now that I've really, you know, circumnavigated and thought about this whole thing, I should have been two hands on the brakes, focusing on my glider, focusing on gaining safe altitude where an event couldn't, you know, bother me. And, and I didn't do that.

So I, you know, I paid a very heavy price and I might've been able to obfuscate this entire issue that I had both hands and maybe check that, check that frontal. So, um, I wonder though, I don't know, Bill,

if, you know, we, we always talk about that. We need cheap mistakes and this was not a cheap mistake. This was, you paid, you paid a pretty heavy price, but at the same time,

I don't know. Do you, do you feel, would you look back at it now and go, yeah, but it was a necessary price. I mean, do you, again, do you think you would have gotten the takeaways that you have? On life without it? Yeah, no,

I, I, I, that's why I say, you know, we're, we're all on, I'm not some mystic and I'm certainly not religious. Um, but I definitely feel like, you know, things kind of happen for reasons. And, and those reasons are of course, self-motivated. We're, we're putting ourselves in places that cause things to happen, right? It's not like the world is, is got this master plan and setting us on it. We do things that cause other things to happen. We all know that we're, we're trying not to get injured, but we know that we're in a sport where it could happen just as when I get on my bike and go on a 40 mile road bike ride, I could totally get injured. It's not lost on me. Is it going to happen? Probably not. And it's probably not going to happen when we're in our paragliders and we're, we're flying in weather that's, that's within our abilities and we're flying equipment that's within our abilities and we're flying distances that are within our abilities.

You know, we, we, we have this checklist of all these things that make us feel comfortable when we're flying. And when we're in situations like that, we're not going to get injured. We're not going to be in situations where we're not feeling comfortable. Sometimes we muscle through that discomfort to get to a goal. And sometimes while we're muscling through that, we might get hit. We might not. And then we grow from that. And in this case, I'm kind of growing from the opposite. You know, it's, um, you know, pile driving in the ground. I learned a couple of things, by the way, if you're ever in an airplane and it crashes, you're not going to feel it. That's kind of a little blessing if I'm in a, you know, air bus and it goes down, you don't feel it when it hits. You're just your your your light gets punched, you know, you're you're out. Um, I, I don't have, I wouldn't say that I have less fear, but I guess I have a more,

I don't know, realized look at the consequences of this because I lived them and you've lived them. You, you know, the consequences of blowing your knee out, right? You know what that, is that one of the injuries you had multiple

times? Yeah.

Yeah. And so you're probably pretty careful with that knee on certain things you do.

Yeah. I, I, it's interesting how more, how I'm more careful just in general with age, you know, this week I'm getting a colonoscopy and hernia surgery, you know, welcome to your fifties, dude. And, uh, you know, and it's just, it's amazing how I, how much I operate now. I mean, I just did the X-offs for the last time in 21. It hasn't been that long, but I'm way more aware of just because the getting hurt sucks. It's the, there's always the recovery. It's, you know, I don't want to get hurt. Uh, you know, I've been hurt a lot. And so you're, you're just more careful, which I think, which is interesting too, because in this sport, that's maybe not the best approach. I think a lot of times we need to be just absurdly confident and, and you don't, you don't want to be, you don't want to be sitting in the back seat in this sport ever.

Uh, you know, timidity, timidity, exactly. And so it's, you know, it's one of these things where you have to start, you know, you want to be Belcourt, you want to be, you know, approaching your sixties and going, I'm going to fucking crush all these kids that are, you know, trying to chase me. I want to be, you know, I want to go big. I think

even though he is, he has come to a place of, of, um, softness in his hard-lined approach at, you know, I think that he's realizing, um, yeah, I'm six. Coming up on 60 and, and, and I'm not always going to be able to keep banging on it as hard as somebody that's in their twenties, you know, and it's not going to, and, and moreover, I think that he's, he can sit back and look at the achievements of his career with great pride and, and, and an understanding that that's a body of work that will last a long time, you know? Um, I'm not speaking for him. I've just had some conversations with him and, and I know that, I know that he's in a, in a, a more retrospective perspective about, you know, as, as you are in when you're, when you're getting to be this age.

Um, and, and to your point about confidence, I think that that was one of the things I really had to come to terms with is that I knew I did not want to fly fearful. And in fact, um, my wife asked me, how are you doing when I was packing up to leave for that first flight. How are you feeling? I said, the biggest fear I have is being afraid when I'm flying. That was my, that was my biggest fear. And that was the best part about that first flight. I wasn't afraid when I was in the air. I was a little bit afraid beforehand because I was afraid that I would be afraid. And, and it's a real kind of Escher painting feedback loop of, of trouble that you don't want to have. And I was really, really excited that that, that wasn't what I had. I didn't, once I was in the air, everything felt normal again.

And your muscle memory and the feeling of, of your skills, and your awareness of what you were doing came back.

Dad, I want to, I want to end here on something. I think a lot of listeners can really relate to, or certainly I am at the point in my life where I can, and I'm just fascinated and curious by this subject. We talked about this a little bit before we, we started recording. You had this kind of double whammy, but one of them was retirement. You know, you had this, you know, very successful business that was your life and kind of the, you

know, the,

find your life. And maybe there was the paragliding and this, and you, you, you sold it. And suddenly you've got all this time, you know, at one point you came back into your, your studio, which I can still see behind you. You still got it. Obviously you came to the studio and you thought, yeah, I'm going to do, I'm going to do, I'm going to do something. And you explained that, but uh, we, we all get to, hopefully we get to this phase where we, we suddenly have more time and you know, we can participate in more pleasure because we're not working all the time, but that's, that can be a pretty hard transition. And a lot of people don't do it very well. A lot of people retire and within six months they're dead, you know, because they suddenly don't, they don't have something to strive for, to achieve for it.

That's kind of what we're built as humans. We do, we're not very good at, uh, sitting around.

No. Well, I think, for men, I can't speak for women, but I know for men that, cause I have a lot of people ask me this, Hey, you've retired, haven't you? Yeah, I'm retired. Hey, how's that going? I'm really, I'm really nervous about that. I'm like, what are you nervous about? Well, I mean, what will I do? And, and I always answer that with whatever you want right now, you do what your job tells you to do or what your career path has in store for you. And when you're retired, you get to decide. And I think a lot of people have fear about that though, that they'll have no ideas about what to do with their time. And that might be part of what's spinning in your brain a little bit. It's like, well, what am I going to do? And I think that what you end up doing,

first off, you talk about that six month paradigm. First off, I think it's a one year process. I think that from retiring to where you feel comfortable as a retired person, it's probably a year because you have to get past all that ego. And past all that self-worth stuff. You're also, by the way, while you're retiring, you're also becoming an invisible man in our society anyway, because we're aging, right? You're not attractive to women anymore. You're, you're a transparency, you know? And coming to terms with that and being comfortable with being transparent in our society is kind of step one, like, nah, it's all right. I'm old. And most of the people below 40 think I'm worthless, okay? You know, I don't think I'm worthless, and and and uh, I'm I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with their feelings. you know, and I'm not going to let those feelings sort of make me feel negative about myself. So I think you have to come to terms with that too. We're, we're aging, we're disappearing, you know, as, as from being vital, important parts of our society in a way. Um, but the career thing is tough because, um, We put so much of our self-worth into that, into those accolades, into those achievements. And for me, that was—that was a big thing. I ran this thing, I started something from nothing, created something that employed a fair number of people and did a fair amount of business per year and, and grew that. And then at its height sold it. And the, the engine that inside you that did all of that is still purring away and there's nothing to point it at.

It's like this engine that's revving and it's not in gear. You don't have anywhere to put it. And, and so I think what happens is you have to get that engine to a slower idle. First off, you have to just get that to stop being sort of adrenalized by all of those, um, things that all those attributes about you that helps you build that business and strive and succeed are not necessary to strive and succeed in retirement. And, and being in a body brace and sitting about, um, was a really great sort of, um, uh, pressure cooker of, of getting that motor to that engine, just to start revving at a lower pace. And then, then you've got time to, to figure out, well, what is it that I want to do?

And I like to, I like to make things and by things, I just mean anything, whether it's a piece of music or, um, uh, a shed or a greenhouse for my wife or, um, um, paint, I started to paint, uh, and, and like, I, I just want to make something from nothing. That's a really interesting and important thing. Otherwise I feel like I haven't, I don't need to, I don't need to come up with a lot of, I don't have to have this big checklist that I've completed by the end of the day for me to feel worth. I can do very little, um, uh, in terms of accomplishments and still feel like I've had a good day. If I've, if I've had a good day and I've been around some people and, um, I've had some social interaction and I don't know, I don't know, just lived a, a simpler, more quiet life.

That's really good. You know, and if there can be some flying in that, you know, all the better, all the better. And, and, and the risk of that being gone, that's, I think what was really painful was that maybe I've lost my identity as a, as a, you know, uh, a functioning working person in our society. And I've lost paragliding, you know, losing both of those two things was, um, that was, I was myself worth my, yeah. I can, you imagine what that would feel like? Like if you, if flying wasn't on the table, anymore, who are you, Gavin? You know what I mean? Like, what is it that you really excel at? And that's what I was faced with it. Yeah. Then who am I? And would I be okay? And the funny thing is, is I got to this place where to get back into flying, I got to a place where I was completely comfortable not getting back into flying.

I felt confident and, and, and quiet in my heart without that in my life, I could see myself without it. And, um, then I started to crave it and then I found a path back to it, but I had to be, it had to be almost off the table. Yeah, you almost had

to kind of throw it away, give it away, hand it off.

But that's, but that's what retirement is too. So to answer your question, I think that answers it more than anything. You can't see it until you don't have it. Until you

release it.

You have to, you have to release it and it has to be gone from you. And then you realize, oh, well, I'm actually this guy now. I actually, I care about these things and. Hey,

that's. That's okay.

That's, it's

all right. Yeah. Okay. When, when you realize, okay, but doesn't have to define me. Fine. Adios. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, and then you are who you are in that phase and you get to be that guy for the rest of, you know, till you want to be another guy. And I think that we get to invent ourselves. And when we, when we lose sight of that, when we think the world is inventing us or our, our work has invented us, that's when we're misguided. It's like, no, you invent yourself. You decide who you're going to be. You decide who you're going to be, how you're going to be, what you're going to be every day. And if that happens to be someone that wants to fly really long distance in a paraglider. Awesome. But if you're okay, just flying a pretty good distance in a paraglider, you know, um, then that's really awesome too. And I think that's, I w I want to make big flights, but it's not going to be the end. It's not going to be the sole reason I get under a paraglider. Right.

Um, and maybe that's the perfect thing for a guy that just turned 61. You know, and still feels a little stiff in the morning from that injury. That injury keeps me. And I took my back brace and I, I packed it up and I put it in with like some of my other paragliding equipment. I just kind of keep it in there. It's like a nice little, like, yeah, just that, that was there, you know, don't, don't put that on again. Don't ever be in a place to put that on. Yeah. I like it. That thanks,

man. I

got one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I have one, one really great story that Bill told me when I was, um, uh, in the throes of like trying to figure out what to do. I was like, I don't know what to do. And he's like, well, cause he broke his neck and he wore a halo full on halo, you know, bolted to his skull. You know how those work. Right. Nasty. And he said, all I could do was walk. Cause he said that you just, you want to get out and walk. I'm like, all right. Um, he goes, that's all I could do. And it really gave me peace. He said, I got to the point where I was walking like 10 miles a day. And I said, really? Cause I was walking maybe two, and I'd be all kind of clammy and sweaty. And, and so he said, yeah, when I first started walking though, he goes, I go out, it's summer.

I got the halo on and it's kind of gray colored. It's kind of like a gray titanium. And he said, all of a sudden in my head, I can start to feel a burning ache, you know, where the bolts connect in because it was taking the heat. The metal was heating up and then going into his brain. And so he started to walk, he'd just take a t-shirt and lay it on top of the halo. Now, I mean, you know what he looks like. I wish

we had a picture of that.

And he said that, um, um, late, late in the season, he said, wasps would get under the thing. And he said, you couldn't swat. You can't move quickly and swat the wasp away because you're wearing this thing that's bolted your head. You got to be really careful. Oh my God. So he sent me a photo. I will send you this photo. He sent me a photo of him in the, in the, in the halo. And, uh, and he was in that for the same amount of time that I was in my brace and he couldn't, he, he could never take it off. You can take a body brace off when you're laying down, you can take it off and, and, um, sleep without it. And then you put it on when you get up. So at least you got a respite from him. He, he did not. Yeah. Really brutal. Anyway, I'm sorry. I wanted to jam that one in because that was a great story. I'm

picturing my mind walking around Dana Point in Salt Lake city with a wasp filled heat.

Heat tent. Uh, dad, thanks man. Appreciate it. And, uh, I'm, I'm glad. Thank you. It's really fun. Interesting 18 months for you. And, uh, uh, last time we flew together was out of Blackhawk. So I'm looking forward to wherever we fly together next.

Yeah. Let's do that again. Cheers bud. All right. Cheers.

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