Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloudbase Mayhem. My guests today are the core group of what has just been formed. We're calling the U.S. women's team. If you haven't been noticing lately, our U.S. women are crushing, is the only way to put it. But Jenny O 'Neill, Galen Kirkpatrick, Violeta Jimenez, and Alexia Fisher are my guests. That's just the core group. There are others on the women's team, of course. But these four have been performing at a remarkable level as of late. Galen, as you heard on a recent show, and just had her independently on a recent show, but she's our current U.S.
national champion. She was just on the podium. And the overall at the Monarca, she won the Red Rocks wide open, and she was on the podium at Chelan again in the overall. Violeta is always just right in there. She's, I think, second or third right now in our NTSS, which is our U.S. ranking. Alexia Fisher just crushed down at the British and at the pre PWC, the Niviuk pre PWC down in Columbia. And she was, I think, fifth and then sixth. And those two. And she's now the highest ranked U.S. pilot in the WPRS, period. Not just women, but period. And Jenny O 'Neill just recently stepped up to an ENZO.
Did, I think, 10 comps, she said, in the interview here just last year alone. And is in the top 15 in the NTSS. And just remarkable how fast she's come up through kind of the system and up through comps. And as these all four ladies are, I just interviewed on the practice day down in Baishu, Guandu. So they're all preparing for the Superfinal, which is going to be going by the time this gets out. But should be early on there. So watch them and all the rest. I'm sure many of you are at the PWC.org or pwca.events. And you'll see the link to the Superfinal. And it's really fun to watch. You can watch it all on live tracking and in real time.
And see how these girls and the rest of them do. But we get into how this has happened. They've all had a pretty unique, their own kind of journey to get to this point. And now with the recent formation of the team and what they're doing at all these comps. And working together and strategizing together. And really working towards a common goal. And also independent goals. They're all working on independent performance. And incredibly inspiring to see. And to see how they've kind of unlocked the code so quickly. And how they're really raising the bar. Not only for women, but for all of us. And they are definitely, it's no longer just kind of the
women's side of things. And getting on the women's podium. But going for the overall. And gunning it really hard just across the board. They are definitely the ones to beat now. Certainly. In North America. And I think we're going to see great things from each of these women. We already have. But on the world scene. So we wanted to do this interview before the Superfinal goes. Because this is a big one coming up. And there's some really fun topics here. And I think you're going to enjoy it. I do want to say at the end we talked about we get into setbacks. Each of these ladies have had some pretty difficult things to go through. And when we go. We got to Alexia. She had an accident.
And coming up to this point. And had never really talked about it publicly. So this wasn't the right time. But she just wanted me to say that she has also. And she didn't want to just not answer the question. But she has also had a pretty serious setback getting to this point. But we talk about all that with the others. And get into how and why. And how they've managed to carry on. And the passion is high here with this group. The fun is high. They've brought a whole new dimension to the U.S. paragliding scene. And community. And many of you have heard about of course the amazing parties we have. And we'll get to show those of you who get to come over to the World Cup in Monroe this fall.
And we'll host you in style. Please enjoy this talk with a fantastic group of women. Cheers.
Good afternoon ladies. How are you?
I am talking
to Jenny and Galen and Violetta and Alexia. They're on their practice day. They're the day before the big one. The Superfinal starts tomorrow down in Baishu, Guandu. And we thought it would be really fun to sit down with these crushers. And find out how they got here. And what are some of the things that they've all been through. And the women's
team. And
strategies. And coping situations. And setbacks. And a bunch of fun stuff. So we're going to get into that. But I thought for the audience's sake. Let's do some introductions. Starting with Jenny. Where are you from? How long have you been at this game? Give us a quick rundown on your flying and comp flying resume. And then you can each just hand it off to the next person.
Hi, I'm Jenny. I sort of live in Colorado. But I've been basically traveling and paragliding for the past two and a half years. I started flying in 2020. I did my first comp. About a year later. The Applegate Sprint. And in the past two years. I've probably done. I think this will be like my 20th comp. And my second PWC.
This
is your second PWC. The Superfinal. Yes. That rings true to me. That's how mine was. I did a World Cup. And then a Superfinal back in 2012. That was pretty exciting. Yeah. And you've just recently stepped into the end zone, right?
Yeah. I just was in Columbia. And I did two comps. On the end zone. So, yeah.
How's it feeling?
It feels good. In Columbia, it was a lot more turbulent, I would say. And flying it here feels really nice.
Thanks. Galen. Yeah. I'm Galen. I'm from Washington State. I sort of live in California in a van or on a boat. And I've also been doing a ton of races the last couple years. I've done about 30. And about 10 or 12 of those. And those have been PWCs or other Cat 1 competitions.
Yeah. Your first was X-Ray,
correct? In Turkey? Yeah. My first was X-Ray. And then I did a bunch that season. And then the next season. And that leads us to here.
Violetta.
I'm Violetta. And I've been flying. It'll be 10 years in September.
I entered the World Cup scene around the same time as Galen. We both flew in AX-Ray in 2021. That started a lot of competition flying for me. So I didn't count before this interview. But it's been a number. And it's been a really fun ride.
Alexia.
Hi, I'm Alexia. I'm from Seattle, Washington. And I've been flying for five and a half years. And my first PWC was Costello a year ago.
And Costello just a year ago. Just last March. Yes. And you're all at the Superfinal. That is super duper awesome. Okay. We'll do the same. We'll start with Jenny again. But I'd love to hear from each of you. None of us are Chrigel. None of us started this when we were zero. We've all gotten to this when we were basically adults. But I'd love to hear something about your history just so the audience can learn a little bit more about where you came from before you got into flying. And specifically, What is one thing you did before you got into this sport that you think has really helped your success, or helped you get to a place where you can be with the best in the world at the Superfinal in Baishu?
Yeah. So before I started paragliding, I was doing a lot of climbing and slacklining. And before that, I was a competitive gymnast for pretty much my whole childhood. And I think there are a lot of aspects of that way of competing. That kind of parallels to paragliding in some way. So that kind of helped shape a competition mindset for me. One thing that I do think helps a lot is that I've also worked for like 10 years as a software engineer. And I've been able to give myself a lot of free time and the finances I need to do this sport because it's very expensive and it takes a lot of time. So I've been able to work remotely from anywhere in the world so I can be where the flying is good. And that's helped me progress as fast as I have, I think.
Excellent. So mindset and work-life balance. There's a lot of software engineers in this sport. It's interesting. Yeah, a lot of engineers. It gives you the time. Yeah. Jenny, talk about, you know, Will Gadd always talked about that when he saw climbers get into sport, it always made him way more nervous than flow sports. Someone coming from skateboarding or surfing or mountain biking. You know, when you're dealing a lot with gravity from a non-static kind of position, you know, obviously the climbing has the risk side and, you know, the just exposure side for sure. But do you think that climbing was more important or was gymnastics? Because gymnastics I see is fantastic,
you know, balance and flow and strength.
Yeah, I think gymnastics set me up for a lot of things in life, both like mentally and physically. Yeah, climbing is like, it's, I mean, when you paraglide, climbing seems really safe, I would say, in comparison. And yeah, so yeah, with gymnastics, yeah, you just learn from a young age a lot of, like you were saying, balance and motor skills, which isn't a huge part of paragliding, but it certainly, you know, helps make you safer at launching and landing. And then the mental side of gymnastics, I mean, it's a hugely mental sport. It's really, it's difficult. You have to. Make yourself do scary things a lot and remain calm in those situations, so. I
like hearing this because my daughter's in gymnastics, so.
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Gail? Well, y 'all already heard from me, so I'll try to keep this sort of short. But I think one thing I didn't mention, I have a history of doing improv comedy and, like, improvised theater. So I feel like a lot of good flying is improvisational, you know. You're kind of, like, drawing from this skill set or you have all these tools you can use, but when you're actually performing them, you can't, you have to get into the flow state. You can't get too up in your head about it. Knowing a lot, having this extensive toolkit, but then discarding it and just going to fly. In theater, you're not going to die, probably, but you do have this, like, social risk. You're, like, on stage in front of a lot of people.
And you're hoping to give them, like, a cohesive narrative or a funny, you know, experience. So paragliding feels in many ways, like, a lot simpler than that. You don't have to create a narrative. You just have to stay alive and stay in the air. And, yeah, so I see parallels in that. For sure. Me?
Yeah, so in thinking back on what I did before paragliding, I think it actually says more about who I am as a person. And then because I chose those things, I also chose paragliding. I've written a little bit in Cross Country about how my path through life hasn't really been predictable for a lot of people. And certainly paragliding took a lot of my friends and family by surprise as a thing I would want to do. So one of the big sports that I did before paragliding was ultra running, which is very different in certain ways. But perhaps the more transferable part of it is this idea. This idea of going through difficulty and coming out the other side, that work pays off in the end. That, you know, if you put in the effort, and it can't just be the day of, if you put in the effort beforehand, then, you know, you're going to be able to perform better when the time comes.
But actually one of the other things that I, Jenny grew up as a competitive gymnast and I grew up as a dancer, actually. And I think that's in some ways been a really critical part of my development. Again, as a human being, as somebody who literally moves through the world. Because in dance, specifically partner dance, you're constantly reacting to what your partner is doing, to, you know, how you move, how you land. And you're trying to make it look good. So you're thinking about how you move your body through space a lot. And that's been very helpful as I've, you know, moved through different parts of paragliding. But neither of those, I think, are directly transferable. They're just sort of my background.
I am a person who enjoys moving creatively and finding ways to solve a physical problem. And I'm also somebody who really thinks that there's nothing I can't do if I try hard enough, basically. So that's me. Hard
work. Yeah. Cool. Alexia?
For paragliding, I was really big into sailboat racing. And did basically every single kind of sailboat racing. From small single-person dinghies to large 60-foot ocean racing. I feel like it transferred quite a bit because you're working in the similar elements, especially with the wind and water. And with the racing, you have, it's very similar to paragliding competitions. You've got a start time and a start line. And then you've got marks, which are like turn points. And then you have to look at wind strength and wind direction, as well as speed. And that's current. And it's similar to thermal strength, lines to fly, clouds, that sort of thing. So I feel like the strategy transfers quite a bit.
And I did that for... Yeah.
Whenever I'm trying to describe to someone what we do, I often start off the sentence with, it's like sailboat racing in the sky. You know, you have waypoints and you're going upwind and downwind. And they're creating a task and they're creating a race course. It's super similar.
There's a lot of ties there that relate. So we've got a climber, a comedian, an ultra runner, and a sailboat racing.
You can come from a diverse history here. That's fantastic. You've all, we're going to get into the coaching and how you're attacking the team stuff here towards the end. But I'd love to hear from each of you. And we don't have to do it in that order, whatever order you want. But do you all have a mentor? I know you've been, you've been, you know, you've worked with Maxine Bellaman. Yeah. You've worked with coaches quite a bit recently. Do you have a mentor, either comp mentor or just flying mentor that has shaped how you fly, how you attack flying, how you think about flying?
I could start maybe, but the idea of mentorship, I recently, you know, said that kind of, Maxine Bellaman was sort of my flying guru or mentor. We've only worked together for, you know, three, three days, if that. So it's been like very little person on person time. But I love his philosophy and what he brings towards flying. So I guess that's one meaning of that word mentorship. But another, I think, is sort of just accountability, like someone that supports you, who you enjoy spending time around with and who you, like, exchange energy. I, for that one, I'm going to give the answer of Kansas or Michael Hamill. He's like an old, well, he's a young comp pilot.
But he's been doing comps, you know, much longer than I've been flying. And he's just always been incredibly supportive of me. And, you know, we we really enjoy to enjoy to fly together. So thanks, Kansas. He's a
special human. Who's next?
I can go. I mean, certainly all these ladies here have been that for me. And, like, I think, you know, there is really something behind representation matters. You see people doing it and you're like, oh, I can do that, too. I was also fortunate to learn. With a bunch of women and to have to have women who are all learning together and traveling together. And that's really helped me a lot. And then, you know, all of the U.S. Competition pilots just being able to ask anybody anything and flying all the U.S. Comps over the past couple of years about
me.
Sure. So this is this is such a great question, Gavin. And as Galen said, we've been thinking a lot about mentorship as part of this team that we'll talk more about later. I would be remiss if I didn't give some credit. I spent a couple of years spending a lot of time with Mitch Riley, who I dated for a while. He's great. Shout out to Mitch. But he was a very, very helpful mentor at that stage of my of my flying journey. I think the last few years I've really spent a lot more time. I've had I've worked with several sports psychologists, which has been really great. You know, kind of thinking, who am I in the sport? What do what do I want? What? What are my barriers? And that's been really important for my personal development. Like Galen, I also developed a relationship with Maxine Bellman last year, who's been just fantastic.
He's he's a great person who's continued to help give me strategic advice. And that's awesome. I would say there's there have been a number of other of other people in the U.S. community who've given me advice at times that I needed it. And. You know, sometimes they may not even have realized that they were doing it, but it's been really helpful. Bill Belcourt is somebody we all know, and I really treasured the times I've gotten to pick his brain. Josh Cohn is another person who who gave me some really great advice and recommendations in the last couple of years when I needed them. And really, this goes beyond the topic today. But I'd love to see us get to a place in the U.S. community where actually we can all develop that relationship.
That mentorship relationship with each other, where even if it's not, you know, where, Gavin, you and I are on the phone every month, like, you know, maybe there's a time you can give me mentorship or I could give you mentorship. And I would love to see that happen where we can all support each other and share some of our wealth of knowledge a little bit more.
Yeah, I mean, just listening to you say that, that's that could be a whole show itself. I mean, I think that one of the things that you ladies are doing is forcing all of us in a really good way. Forcing is a negative term, but it's forcing all of us in a really good way to be more like the French, which is they're constantly getting coaching. They've gotten coaching since they were juniors. And this is something that, you know, where it's hard to learn when you're in your own echo chamber and you're doing it totally on your own and you're trying to figure it out on your own. You're not hearing from I mean, I've been super fortunate to have mentors who live here in Sun Valley. But when it comes to comps, we're all just free wind from nowhere. It's a very cowboy environment. In the U.S. And yeah,
that's another topic that I said we can talk about for a long time. But I really appreciate that with all of you that you're, you know, hey, to get better, we got to work together.
Well, and just real quick before Alexa goes, Gavin, we appreciate you, you know, like what you've done with this show, especially, you know, worldwide, but also for the U.S. flying community. Yeah. You're we've got so much information. Are you? Yeah. And your book and your show. So you're a big part of that.
I'm glad this isn't a video podcast. We don't be looking at any blush. But Alexi, what about you?
So I started competition flying in twenty twenty one with the Applegate Open, and I feel like it's been a bunch of mentors throughout my career, mostly Washington freshers. But like that comp, Matt Senior actually pushed me out of the sprint into the open saying you should do this. You'll have more fun and, uh, Owen Shoemaker, Matt Henzie, and when I started competing, these lovely ladies, I was very drawn to them as well as Bianca learning just how to do certain things in the air and fit in and all that sort of stuff, yeah.
Great, Alexia, on fire down in Columbia. This, uh, it's gonna be a fun week for you all this week, okay? We're gonna talk about breakthroughs, and you all suggested this. I thought it was fantastic, but you've all each... what I love about it is, uh, you're kind of all coming together, but you've all had very different paths getting here and kind of your own individual journeys, obviously, to get to this point of working together and even creating a U.S. team. I don't even know how long that's been a thing for the... for the women's team, but talk about that journey a little bit, that independent journey, and then maybe along the way, I'd love to hear if there was kind of breakthrough moment, uh, whether that was just working and working and working and working and you get there through hard work, you know, like Violetta said, but was there a light bulb that went off in...
in the path? And let's go, just so the listeners can orient, let's just go in the order we've been doing it. Sorry, Jay.
Yeah, so I started
which I found really helpful. It can be really frustrating to be in a B-wing, and in a normal competition, you just, you can't keep up and you, you kind of miss out on some learning, I think so. If you're on one of the wings that can go the fastest with all these people, you can, you can learn quicker. So I kind of did those first and then started stepping up wings and I wasn't doing especially well. I just did a lot of competitions, like I probably did 10 last year, and I think like one of the moments I remember, I wasn't actually, I didn't do a lot of competitions, the PWC in Brazil last year, but I was there and on the last day I flew the task and I flew it like very well. I wasn't like the lead the whole time and I like couldn't believe it. I was like, well, I'm, I'm just doing it, I'm just following these people and keep doing the same stuff so over and over again. And, and kind of after that I was like, okay, I think I can do a PWC.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask for a wild card and see if they let me in. And, and they did. And then in Turkey, um, I kind of did the same thing and just stayed really consistent every day and did, and did well. So, so
The "aha" moment was kind of, "Uh, oh wait a minute, this isn't—this isn't out of reach. This was, yeah, this is something I can do, yeah."
I felt like I had, you know, worked on all the technical skills a lot, like flying a lot of cross country, doing a lot of competitions. And then, you know, it's like I was just like, I want to try to climb as well as everyone and glide as well as everyone and do that over and over again. And if you continually do that, you'll get to go with them. So yeah, just staying in the moment of that and not getting, you know, too ahead of yourself or, yeah.
Jenny, what was the catalyst to get into the sport? Because I think, I think of everybody here, you've been in the least amount of time, but what was that?
Yeah, so I started it, um, pretty much during the pandemic. So I had been climbing and I'd been living in my car and climbing for a couple years, and I had seen paragliding and I had seen how much money it cost, and I was like, I'll, I'll do that when I'm not living in my car and I, you know, have a, have a home, and I got a job. And so once I was in, I ended up in Colorado and I had a friend who was taking lessons in Boulder and I just was like, I'll just try it. And then, you know, like everybody else, you try it and then you just can't stop doing it and you're like, I'm climbing, whatever, I gotta go paragliding. So yeah, yeah.
My, my last day climbing was my first day kayaking, my first day paragliding. Last day kayaking was my first day paragliding. Oh, this is, yeah.
Well, I let's see, just really quickly, I think two years ago I sort of had a breakthrough when I started really believing in myself. That was in Brazil, here in Baisho for a PWC, and then the Pan-Americans, and I was just like, well, it's possible, let's try this out. I didn't have any expectation on myself, and it went really well, um, and then I think this year I had a breakthrough when I started just being really nice to myself again and kind of owning my skill set, or just believing in myself again. And then I'm just very excited for whatever the next breakthrough is. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I feel like it has to do with, uh, working together like with these women and with the greater community at large, and just like continuing to open myself up and and be comfortable and, you know, perform, believe
awesome so
I'm gonna give a little bit of a different story to start, and then the same story to finish. The different story for me, when I started competing, uh, which was I don't know, five years ago or something like that, I was on a small wing and people told me, "Oh, the smells don't go as well." But a real breakthrough was when I switched to a small medium, and this is something I want all small people to hear, not just small women, small men too, because I've seen people be incredibly frustrated, you know, on a small a PWC, and I've been there too. And I mean, I'm here to tell you like that, you know, if you can carry that extra five or ten kilos of ballast, it makes an enormous difference, an enormous difference. You won't believe how much, and where the sport was for, for me in the United States, despite having mentors, they were all bigger people than me.
Nobody could tell me, you know, what's the best sway to ballast and how much of a big difference it would make. And when I made that switch, which was at Monarca a couple of years ago, It, it enabled me finally to keep up, which was kind of amazing. And so that, that is a really critical thing for women and again, small men, to keep in mind is you are really, really handicapped if you're on the smallest size. It's needless, and in some ways, I had to relearn some things about flying once I got on a bigger size, because there are things you cannot do when you can't keep up that suddenly are possible, and you have to figure those out. So that's a really important thing to keep in mind. That was a big breakthrough, kind of following on what Galen and Jenny said.
Another thing is when you begin to trust yourself, and maybe that's a struggle that we all have for our entire flying careers, is how do you trust your instincts? When do you trust your instincts? When do you hold back? When do you push? I have felt those moments as as well, where I realize, ah, yes, I do trust my instincts here. It is time to go. These people are right. These people are wrong. Being able to trust yourself in those circumstances. is the basis of comp flying actually do
You think that comes from time in the saddle and just doing comps, or is that a switch in your emotions? Is that a switch in yourself? I
Think it depends on how you, as a person, interact with yourself and what makes you trust yourself. For me, it is a certain amount of time. I don't trust situations and people until I know them really well, until I have a certain amount of knowledge. That's just who I am. Other people, I think, are more intuitive and it might be more easy for them to make that kind of, that leap to trust, uh, but whoever. And that's, that's part of the work, too. You have to figure out who you are and what you need in order to trust yourself, uh, and you know, we don't have to get into accident and injury here, but those things can make it a lot harder. Getting scared by something can make it a lot harder, so you need to figure out what your barriers are as well. Great.
alexia so
I had a little different beginning to, um, doing sport class gliders, but I started doing them in the open class competitions and only a couple of sport class competitions. So my big thing was just trying to stick with the group as much as possible and not lose them, like, is it one thermal for the start, two thermals, three thermals, and realizing that the only way to do that on a C, A, B, and C wing was to climb as best as I could, climb better than them. So I really focused on climbing and then moved up gliders fairly slowly and listened to mentors when I did that, and also did a bunch of practice at the lake. SIVs, I just got on the Enzo in Turkey, and that again made quite a bit of a difference, especially since I could be confident on it and I was able to feel good under the wing.
And then, uh, in Utah, I actually struggled a bit and bombed out twice, and so twice in a row. So that took a lot of pressure off because it made me realize it's okay to fail. And so I had like all this internal pressure I put on myself, and and getting that release allowed me to trust myself more, like the others were saying, having that confidence and that, like, knowing that something was going to happen and I was able to do it, and I was able to—these ideas are good, or my intuition is right—and that helped a lot there and translated more into Columbia and also getting a submarine and not a really blown out GR4.
Excellent, I think it'd be great to hear from each of you. You've kind of run the gamut here, from you know, from learning to Superfinal and all the things in between. I want to talk about back center a bit, but let's talk about advice to the folks listening who are thinking about getting into comps, whether they maybe they're a newer pilot or new to comps. Those are, those can be two very, very different things, but you know, we've got wicked pilots who never going to fly comps, uh, but they might be thinking about it, especially after listening to this. And so let's start again with Jenny, because you're the newer newest one to comps, but looking back, uh, if you pull from that lexicon of knowledge, you know, and pull out one thing that would be, uh, something you'd like to impart, something you wish you would have known, I
Don't think you, I think if you want to do a competition, you should, you should do it. You don't need to feel like you're maybe like totally ready for it, to just try it. You can go and you can thermal in the start gaggle and you could bomb out on the first glide, but you're still gonna get a lot out of flying with 100 people for an hour and it's, yeah, so I just think it's a really good way to learn. I, I did my the sprint on an a-wing, which was like painful, an extra small a-wing, um, and a lot of people were like, "Why are you, why are you doing that?" and I was like, well, everyone says comps are the best way to learn, so I'm just gonna go and like see how it goes. And by the end of it, I was making goal. The last few days, I was just making goal after it closed, but I was still there, um, and yeah, like Alexia, you get really good, you get good at climbing because that's, that's the one thing you can, you can try to do.
So yeah, I would, I would recommend, yeah, if you're interested in competing, finding, finding a sport class competition and just trying it and not worrying about the results, just thinking of about it as a way to get to launch every day and a way to fly with a bunch of people who are better than you and see how it goes.
Caleb, yeah, I think that, you know, not trying to be competitive, it's not really, I mean, you don't get to where you ought not to be focusing on the competitive nature of it and just until you're, you know, ready to win it, which is, you know, just the top five or ten pilots maybe. But I, I guess the advice, which would be like, become, become your own teacher, which that feels like an idiotic thing for me to say because I'm a paradigm teacher and I would like you to hire me, please. But, you know, at a comp, you have all the, all the pieces to, to put together yourself, to imitate what these other pilots are doing and to see how they're doing it.
And so it's, it's a lot like a tour if you make it, so yeah.
So, um, two things. First of all, people, I think, put a little too much pressure on themselves to, to when they start competitions, you know? They think, "Oh, I have to be in it to win it." And like Galen and Jenny said, you actually don't. So, what I wanted to say about that, they've already said a lot of it, is think about it like paragliding summer camp. These comps can be so fun, and I mean, even if you're not in it to win it, you should be there to see your friends and get transport to launch and be on a task where, if you bomb out, somebody's going to show up in a nice van. If you go to the U.S. comps, it's going to be a nice van with a cold beer, you know, cold water, which is awesome. Somebody's going to get you, like, it's the easiest way to fly cross country, and then you're going to go and tell lies about it to your friends over burger that night.
It's going to be great, you know? So, think about it as, as a fun time to engage with your community first of all, and our communities, I think, are a really, really important part of our paragliding careers. Now, here's, here's the converse: there is a game within the game, right? There's a, if you like games, if you like sports, if you like to play chess, if you like challenges, There's some really cool stuff in there, so like Galen said, figure out a way to teach yourself. Figure out, what are you? You know, once you're at that stage where you're like, "Yeah, I want to go deeper." Like, what are you trying to learn? What is it to why you're getting dropped on glide? Is it how you can climb better? Is it how you can observe better? Is it how you can make decisions better? Figure that out. You know, maybe make a couple goals for yourself and then teach yourself.
You know, take notes after your flight. This sounds really nerdy, but I'm—again, I'm saying, if you're—if you're there and you're like, "I want this, I want to get better," do those things. You can hire a coach, like a Galen, for example, or Or a Maxime, you know, or whoever, or whoever you can even, you can ask your buddy, who's a good comp pilot. Hey, you know, can you give me some advice about what I can do better? So engage with it, you know, and how I'm giving examples of how I learn, you know, which I'm a nerd. I like taking notes. I'm very exhaustive with that sort of thing. Other people are different. Figure out how you learn and, and, you know, get back to it. You know, maybe, maybe it's just practice, but really engage, go deep. Great.
I love you. Yeah,
I think anyone who wants to do a comp should do it. They're a ton of fun and a really great way to learn. And why they're such a great way to learn is you get to see immediately whether or not your decision was the right one or how well you're climbing or how well you're gliding. So having that immediate feedback is such an enormous help in your progression, I think, as well as just hanging out with your friends, like everyone else said already. Right.
You know, I did a ton of work. Great advice. I did a ton of work before the last couple of X-Alps campaigns on, on the thing upstairs here on your head and tons of sports psychology. And I work with Thomas Theroux, who was Regal's supporter for years and wasn't until this last one. And is a sports psychology coach. One of the many things he does, but what he wouldn't mention and what none of you mentioned is focusing on results. And that's not what you want to do is focus on results. You want to focus on performance. You want to focus on your strengths. You want to focus on all the things, climbing, gliding, the little things that you can improve on and the results will, will come.
So that was cool to listen to you guys talk about just the things that matter and the things that don't. Okay, let's talk about the women's team. I'm going to tell you what I think it is. And then you all just correct me and you tell me what it, what it actually is this it's, It's been really remarkable, and it seems pretty recent to just see you all get together after the task comes out and each of these comps, and you kind of gather up and I don't know what you're talking about, but it seems like you're talking about what the, you know, the strategy for the task is and, and maybe good lines and maybe bad lines. And things you should be thinking about.
And that's about all I know. So tell me what the women's team is, what your goals are, what your, why you put it together, why it's necessary. And this one, I don't care about your, just take it, each of you take it, how you want to talk about what's going on. Cause it's, we're all fascinated. We're all, all the men are all talking about it. You know, I was just talking about the other day with Nate, what are they doing? I want some of that. I want to know what they're doing. I want to be part of this. I'm going to put a wig on. I'm going to show up and I love dressing up as a girl. So that'll be fun. So tell me, tell me, what is it? What's going on here?
Okay. So I'll, I'll start. I think one thing that you can, you're right. This is a recent, a recent effort on all of our parts. And it, we really, we saw that there's a lot of momentum around the fact that there are four of us performing at a very high level right now, which is an unprecedented situation in the U.S. Or frankly, anywhere. That's why everybody's talking about it. And I want to be clear that one of our main goals, although all of us have individual goals and we all, we all care about our own individual performance. One of our main goals is to ensure that this moment in time is not fleeting, that we capitalize on this and we make this the norm instead of the exception. And so that's, that's really, you know, I would say the thing that, that motivated us to start working together is like, how can we, how can we.
How can we really keep this going? You know, how can we bring more women in, not just us? And where can we take this group of women involved? We've all gotten ourselves here on our own merits by our own steam. And so that's, that's probably the most important thing to say, first of all, and as to why it's important, you know, I think our, our U.S. community and our, our flying community in general is making strides as far as inclusivity. But when I started. When I started, for example, you know, you, you could go through the lists at a PWC and you'd have to go through manually and look for women who are doing well. And it was really sad. I had nobody who really was an iPod to me who I, who I could say, oh,
this person showed me that I can do this because what, what motivated me wasn't to be the best of a small group, but to be the best overall. I think we're changing that. Jenny mentioned visibility. That's, that's a really critical thing. Had I had this been. In place when I started, I would have had, you know, people I could reach out to, to be like, how did you get there? I would have had just a path that was laid out that would be more clear for me. And that would have made it easier. I think I wouldn't have felt some of the struggles that I did feel. I wouldn't have experienced some of the doubt that I did feel. The last thing that I want to say, and I want to let my teammates answer this as well. I was reflecting at Menarche this year, which is when we launched our women's team and we did very well by.
Winning the top two teams, which is great with our, our combined women's teams. I was looking back to my first Menarche five years ago, and I was remembering, you know, being on a small glider. Seeing, you know, maybe five or six women in the comp that may not be entirely true. I don't remember how many there were, but there weren't a lot. And there was just this tacit acceptance that a woman would never be on the overall podium would never be in the top 10. And that was just the way it was. And I accepted that too, even though. I hated it. And now five years later, we have two teams of women on top of the podium. You know, we had, we had three women in the top 10. It was amazing. I mean, it was just everything that five years ago, me would have needed to know and would have wanted to know to give me like, to keep that fire burning, to keep going.
And so that's, that's to me why the women's team is important for, you know, my, my dreams of five and 10 years ago when I started flying, I wanted that inspiration. And now we can provide it. Isn't that amazing?
Yeah. Before the next person jumps in here. That was awesome. I want to give some perspective here. About five years ago, I think Violetta was when I met you with that pizza place. More or less five. You were a complete new, I mean, you were completely new and you were dating Mitch and, uh, you know, I, I mean, it's just awesome that now all of us, by all of us, I mean, the men in the sport are competing. It's not just. The women's category where you, like you said, you pretty much guaranteed a podium spot, uh, that now it's, you know, I think Alexia, you're our top ranked WPRS pilot in the country right now. Galen, you're our national champion. Violetta, you're second in NTSA. I mean, I just looked at the results and Jenny, you're brand new to the game.
You're 15th in NTSA. I mean, it's pretty awesome. Uh, and, uh, it's happened really quickly. That's interesting that I heard. So I wasn't too far off. So the, so this Monarca 24 was the first time you literally kind of put the team together and someone else can take that. I
mean, I guess I just have a few things to say. One is that, yeah, we all just really, uh, respect and love each other at the Monroe comp. There were three of us and, you know, Alexia had to go bomb out a couple of times so that she could completely crush Columbia. But there are very well, it could have been four of us in the top 10 and so, yeah, just kind of like working together and, and honoring each other and figuring out, yeah, well, what, what can we do if we, you know, help each other be more of who we are and encourage each other to encourage each other to be great. We're all different pilots with different styles, but I think all of us have probably been on a women's podium.
Yeah. And felt like that was an awesome thing to inspire other women, but the, it didn't really matter in terms of the overall ranking. And so I know, I think we're all, I hope it's okay. I can speak for everyone, but we're all like fighting for the overall podium, seeing Meryl on the overall podium two years ago in the Columbia, like by a point and a half was incredible. Yeah. It was incredibly inspiring. And seeing Violetta on the podium last year in Menerica, again, it's just, it's like, yeah, it's just, you, you see that you become inspired and then you want to make that a reality, both for yourself and for the people who you love and support.
And so just experimenting. I have to
share a funny moment internally when we were down in Columbia at the pre-BWC.
Alexia, the day before was, I think Alexia, one of you was up front every day for the women's win, but Alexia, I think you were fifth or sixth that, that task day. It was a pretty stiff competition at that, at the pre-BWC. The beat director made a comment, kind of, he was kind of, wow, you know, this is amazing. What did you do? And I went, uh-uh, uh-uh, not what we girls do. Uh-uh, uh-uh, you don't know these girls. They're going to be up there all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome. It was so funny. Yeah. Okay. So a little bit more about that. Jenny or Alexia, tell me more about what, how this has encouraged you, how this is open to, you know, new women in it.
Why is it necessary? What's, why is this, I mean, I didn't know that it just happened at Menarche. That's pretty recent, but is, what are the plans for the future? I've asked a whole bunch of questions. Take whatever you want.
Yeah, I think, like, speaking to what Violetta was saying, like, I came into this already seeing that it was possible, which is awesome. Like, you hear, like, oh, you're on a, you can only be on, ever be on a small, you're never going to be competitive, but at the same time, I'm hearing that I'm, I'm seeing the opposite almost. I'm seeing, you know, Violetta and, and smaller men and whatever competing at the highest level too. So, like, I'm sure that had some influence on me being able to come up as fast as I did and, like, what, what you're doing. You were saying about the glider size. Like, I didn't even consider what size, you know, to buy, because you just said, buy mine. And I said, okay, I'll take the oldest, you know, sure.
So, yeah, I, I think, yeah, for me, just being able to see that right away, it, it shows that, well, it obviously had a difference because it, you know, I was able to do this so much quicker because of the women that came before me. So, obviously, we need it and we need to keep it going. And one other thing to say is, like, I think that. We're very clearly inspiring other countries and making them realize that they need to do this too. Alexi and I were in Turkey and Violetta and Galen were not. And so many pilots were like, wait, there's, there's two more of you who are also doing lovely. What, what's going on over there? Like, I don't understand. I've never seen this before. And they want that too. They want to have more women flying with them. So, it's, it's really cool to, to inspire the other countries as well.
I had a really special moment standing next to Revis at the party at Menard. And I can't remember who, who it was, but one of the, one of the pilots from Mexico came up and, and, you know, brought me a shot of tequila, which I didn't need at the time. But, and he said, you know, hey, I, I think we were nine out of the top 10, right? We're U.S. pilots at the Menard. And Menard is pretty heavily U.S. pilots anyway. I mean, I'm not trying to shine too much of a light on that, but it was pretty remarkable. And then three of the top 10 were you ladies. And, and, and he just said, yeah. I've heard from a number of different people, both in Norwegian and Mexico and other countries that were represented there that, hey, something's going on here. And we need to, we need to start imparting this in our own pilots, in our own countries.
We bring this, you know, you guys are bringing it. And it's, it's, that's really cool. Galen, you and I talked about this a lot on our show, but it's the community aspect of it. It's not just the women's team. It's the community aspect of it is really neat to see. Alexia, do you have anything to say about the women's team and how that's affected your own success? I
think when I started, I had the support of Violeta, Galen, and Bianca, and that helped a lot, especially with the questions you don't want to ask the guy pilots, like how do you pee in the air and other things that are more women specific. And it also created this like safe space, I guess, where I could ask more personal questions and get this. And I think that's one of the things that's really cool about the women's team is that it's a very male dominated team. It's a very male dominated team. And I think that's a really cool thing that we're seeing in the women's team. And they're also trying to do women's teams and women only regattas and women only boats. And so it sort of transferred and it's clearly helps a lot.
So Gavin, we've talked a lot about, you know, how, how this has helped us and why it's important. I just want to add a little tactical stuff about, you know, how this is coming together. So as I said, this is very new. I want to give a shout out to Yushpa. First of all, which gave us some seed funding to get started. And we're, you know, we're, we're really considering hard how we can best use not just the money, but the momentum and all the energy around this team right now. Really, as I said, we're, we're trying to make sure this is the norm, not the exception. So that includes, you know, bringing a lot of other women along for the ride. And, you know, this is, this is our third month of existence, basically. So, so we're, we're just starting to try things. But one of, one of the things that we're trying to do is we're trying to, we're trying to we've been doing, you saw our briefings, basically, wherever we have a group of US women at a competition, we're, we're trying to do briefings.
We're trying to be on, on radio in the air, if, if that's allowed by the rules of the competition, most competitions do allow that. We're trying to get good at radio communication and get good at what it is we can, what information we can pass to each other in the air to help fly together. We've, we've got a lot of other plans that we're thinking of too, you know, like perhaps having an SIV for, for women who are interested. In flying competition wings and perhaps, you know, cross country flying together in pursuit, just giving you a preview of the world record. And so lots of really cool goals that, that are coming together. I think the thing that I, I want, that we want everybody to know here is you're talking to four of us, maybe the four who are hopefully on the crest of a wave.
And so we are really wanting to. Bring along the rest of the women in the U S and by extension, women globally as well. And so I think, you know, you're seeing four right now, but it would be good to think of the women's team more broadly. And we are too, we're asking those questions of how, how can we, you know, bring everybody else along with us and, and make sure that behind us four is another four.
Yeah. I hadn't planned on asking you this, but I feel like it's the timing is right. The, you know, just by nature of age, I've been at this quite a bit longer than you all have. And I, it's really inspiring to see what you've done. One of the things I'm a little worried about is you're doing, you're all doing it a lot. I mean, you're investing a massive amount of time into this, you know, Jenny, you did, you should say you did 10 counts or something last year. I was going to actually predict 15, but you're doing a lot of comps. You're dedicating a lot of time, a lot of travel. Uh, you know, I think those. You're a little more jaded and pessimistic. It had been in a long time. Worry that is it. This is a lot. Is it, you know, it's the comp scene is it's easy to burn out on or to lose the passion on or to lose the drive.
Is that, uh, something you're talking about considering worried about, are you feeling it at all? You know, you're, you're about to partake in the Superfinal, the Superfinal and the worlds, uh, and the Pan Ams, you know, the, the, the, these. Cat one events are, they're an endurance race. They're long, you know, especially if you have a couple of bad days, it's pretty hard to just kind of sometimes hard to climb out of that emotional hole. Uh, well, anybody take that if you want, you
know, Gavin, that's why we have each other. It's to, uh, keep us from booking a ticket home early and, you know, going and crying in the poor weather back home. There was a bunch of questions in there, but maybe what I wanted to just say is when I did the PWC, the first one, Oxari with Violetta, and we both qualified for the Superfinal, which at that time was 14 months away. Um, for me, I was just in kind of a special spot in life where I sort of had some time, free time and resources. And I was like, what if I, on my own, take this really seriously and train for the Superfinal? Like I just did my first PWC and I qualified, but I have 14 months.
Like, what would it look like if I took a quote unquote professional approach to this training? And it was just an exercise for myself. And it was, it was like fun. It's paragliding, you know, but I guess since it's really difficult to make a living in paragliding, I think you see, you know, there are far more incredible pilots or comp pilots than are represented on like the current score sheet. Um, because people ebb in and out of it. And I, I think that's really natural, but, um, there's certainly a fun or a really gratifying aspect to taking it seriously and, and, you know, treating it as if it were a real sport or as if being in the top 50 or top hundred actually quote unquote mattered, you know, it matters to us and, and, and that's, you know, about it.
But perhaps we can, we can change that or perhaps by like working together and, you know, I don't know, I'll stop dragging on, but.
That's a good answer. Anybody else want to comment on that? We don't have people.
Sure. Yeah. I do not plan on doing 10 comps this year. I will probably scale it back a little bit. I certainly do feel, yeah, especially after the two comps in Columbia, I was a little, a little tired. And so I'm just going to work on making sure it's still always fun. And when it doesn't, it
doesn't feel
fun focusing on something else, but, you know, I still plan on doing all of our, you know, U S comps because there's so much fun, like you said, not just the flying part, but just hanging out with everybody. I just want to be there. So that's, that's really motivating to just know that you get to hang out with your friends for a week in Chile and it's, it's the best. So.
I also really enjoy the traveling aspect of it, seeing new countries and cultures and new places to fly. Okay. So. That's one thing that motivates me a lot, even if people are like, oh, you shouldn't go to Switzerland. It's going to rain six out of the seven days, but if you look at the photos, it's stunning and I've never been there. So I don't care. Yeah.
No, it's, it's.
Yeah.
You can go to a place like that. You just, the flying is a bonus. That's the attitude you have to go in with. If you get to fly, great. If not, fine. You're in Switzerland. Life's okay.
It's a great point. And, and Gavin, I'm going to add a little bit of a philosophical spin to, to the question of, you know, how do you maintain. Interest and, you know, preface this with, I'm also an ultra runner, which means I'm probably insane. And a lot of people won't necessarily agree with me on this, but Galen said, sometimes there's something really exciting and taking something seriously and in seeing what can come out. On the other side, if, if you put in a lot and to me again, I've, I've written about this a little bit in cross country, but it's sort of like the question of how do you stay in love with one person? You've got a wife and a kid, you know, you're, I'm pretty sure you're going to be together for a long time. Gavin, how do you make that work? You know, are you doing the same thing every time, or are you trying to keep it fresh somehow?
And so really, I, I mean, this is a little bit philosophical and, and perhaps, perhaps too much. So, but I see my relationship with paragliding in a somewhat similar light. I may not do as many comps every year this year, I'm actually trying to focus a little bit more on cross country in between the comps. That's something I also love and I've neglected it, honestly, for the past couple of years in, in favor of comps. There are so many expressions of the sport, so many new places to see, like Alexia said, so many people I want to fly with. For everybody who kind of, for every person who goes in and out of the sport, we also have examples of people who've really stayed in some way or another, like Belcourt, you know, at Take Nick, who had a couple of kids, came back, smashed it at the Pan Ams.
Like there's all kinds of examples like that. Yeah. It's, it's beautiful to see.
It does seem like once you kind of crack the code, you know, thinking about people like Josh Cohn, you kind of crack the code, you know, you can, you can go do a lot of other stuff and come back and still, you know, you're always going to expect somebody like Josh to be on the podium, no matter what he's doing between comps and that kind of thing. That is pretty exciting. That's certainly motivating to me. Excellent. Okay. I would love to hear that, you know, none of us got here by this Rosie. The candle lit path of wonderfulness all the way through. There's some deviations, there's some roadblocks, there's some ditches, in some of your cases, there's been some pretty big ditches, setbacks, I'd love to just hear about a struggle or struggles or, you know, what would have been some of the things you've had to battle through
to be in Pichu?
Of course. Of course. This is the question. So none? Nobody has any setbacks. You're all good. I don't, I don't think any of us have struggled whatsoever, Gavin. It's been, it's rainbows and unicorns the whole way.
Super easy.
So I can, I can go first because, well, I let my teammates think about it. So I, again, I've, I've written about this and many people in the U.S. community in particular know, I've had a couple of bad accidents, one of which a few years ago was, was really terrible. I, I could have died. I could have lost the ability to run, to walk. And I didn't, which is great and go read Cross Country for the whole story and, you know, a lot more about
that. It's a
great story, by the way. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Literature. It's literature. Go read my literature in Cross Country. More to come. But anyway. So I think, you know, that's, that's been definitely a big challenge has been recovering from that. And the physical recovery is one thing, the mental recovery, which I alluded to earlier is another entirely. And the choice to fly again for me was, again, you know, this is maybe why I think of it so philosophically. It was like, are you going to do this thing that you love again? So are you, are you going to do it again? Are you going to stay the course? Are you going to break something else inside of yourself after so much has already been broken? And for me, being who I am, being the way I am, there was no answer I could give myself
that felt right. Besides, I will try again and I will see how I feel and I will see, you know, what I want to do. And I got in the air again and I realized that my goals were largely the same. How it made me feel was largely the same with a hefty dose of gratitude added in. And. What was different was how I wanted to approach it. You know, as, as people like Will Gadd say, you can never enter the air without risk. You're, you're always going to be at risk. You cannot promise yourself. You're not going to hurt yourself. But I did believe that I could be better, that I could make better decisions, that I could address some of the things that had led to, you know, me almost dying. And I've, and I could mitigate some of those risks and I have over the last few years and I hope I will continue to do so.
And in some ways, although, you know, there's plenty of things in our lives we wish we could do again, if I had it to do over again, I, I would have, you know, done, done, I would have made different choices so that I, I didn't have, you know, those accidents, but I can't. And so the best thing I can do is kind of take that, you know, Japanese kintsugi approach and, and paint gold over the broken places and say, maybe in some ways I'm better because I had those accidents because I had those terrible things happen to me. I can now look at flying in a way that's, you know, it's, it's harder because it's nobody likes being scared, but that fear is what can keep us safe sometimes.
I heard you say you wanted to come back to the sport to, you know, because you felt like you could mitigate the mistakes. You could, you could become a better pilot was how much of it was just the love of the game.
There was a lot of love in the, of the game, but there was also a lot of fear and the love outweighed the fear you can't. Now, now, you know, I'm talking about flying is falling in love and being in love. You can't go back to an abusive relationship, Gavin, you know, you have to, you have to find some way to say it's not going to happen again. You have to find some way to, to, to, you know, think it's healthy and feel that you're going to have a healthy relationship with it going forward. So that's what I had to do. And ultimately I did do it. All right, everybody else feels free.
I guess I feel pretty, pretty grateful and it's partially, I'm sure it's also due to me being so new in the sport that I haven't had any major setbacks or injuries to speak of. And I, I try to make, you know, safe decisions. Two years ago, years ago in Chelan, I did throw my reserve and it did make me realize, oh, I, I, I need to learn some stuff. Um, so I spent a bunch of time over the water learning to stall my glider. Cause I had, you know, I had not focused on that very much. And, and that definitely gave me confidence again and flying acro too. So.
Oh, well I'll go next. I guess it would be appropriate to mention that I'm a trans woman. And I started transitioning right after I started flying about seven years ago. Uh, which was about a year and a half before I started my, my first competitions and about two and a half years before I really started competing at the nationals or on the world level. And so when I, um, finally made the decision to come out. I. It was, it was really important to me that I didn't change anything or that I didn't let that change anything about what I was going to do in life.
I didn't want to shut myself up or live in fear. So I, I just sort of decided on this resolve that I was just going to do what I was going to do otherwise. And I faced a lot of unfortunate situations and interactions with people, you know, we've all faced sexism and misogyny. The, the very standard on launch sort of stuff. And then also like the effects or the deeper effects of how you're treated and taught differently. And I have experienced a special version of that and yeah, it just sucks. So it was a couple of years of, yeah, just like really unfortunate experiences, especially internationally.
Um, just like dealing with people saying awful things to you, like on launch or on landing or online or harassment, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so that all sucked and it really, um, you know, I mean, it really sucked, but it also helped me develop this level of focus, which feels, uh, very strong now. And I would be remiss not to mention that. Um, as much as difficult as it was and as much sort of pushback I received it also, I received so much love and support from people, especially in our national community from all of these folks, um, but also from around the world from cross country magazine.
So, you know, as difficult as it is, as it is being maybe the only trans person in the world, um, but also as a person that a lot of people know, it's also like, you know, been this amazing experience and, um, and so, and so sort of trying to, or getting to prove that. I don't know. She
deserves to be here.
Yeah. So winning the national championship last year was a big deal for me. It just felt like, especially to the people that harassed me, it was just like, well, that, that, this is not, this is not a good thing. This is your game. And like, I also love it and I belong here. So yeah. Anyway, that's all. Thanks. Okay.
Y 'all. So tomorrow's the big day. We start the, uh, the big one, the Superfinal one sentence goal for the next two weeks. Next 10 days of racing. Jane. Thank you. Go.
My goal is to learn as much as I can fly a little faster every day and have fun.
Um, I, I'm just super excited to get to race with the world's best pilots again. And, uh, I, yeah, I just would love to have a great result, but I'm just really most interested in having fun. So.
And not to be a broken record, but I am, I am looking forward to having an amazing time playing a game. I really like to play.
It's my first Superfinal. So I'm excited just to be here and also flying beautiful Brazil.
Beautiful. You're all beautiful. Love you. Thank you so much and good luck.
If
you find the cloud-based may have valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways. You can give us a rating on iTunes or stitcher or however you get your podcast that goes a long ways and help spread the word. You can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media. You can talk about it on the way up to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And of course you can support us financially. This show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing. A lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes cost. So if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. And you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal, or you can set up a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out. We put a new show out every two weeks. So for example, if you did a buck a show and every two weeks, it'd be about $25 a year.
So way cheaper than a magazine subscription. And it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but I, for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people. And these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So I hope you dig that. You can support us. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We've tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material, a little video cast that we do and extra little nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show.
But we feel like you should hear, we don't put any of that behind a paywall. If you can't afford to support us, then just let me know and I'll set you up with an account. Of course, that'll be lifetime. And hopefully. And you're being in a position someday to be able to support us. But you'll find all that on the website. All of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought Cloudbase Mayhem merchandise, t-shirts or hats or anything, you should be all set up. You should have an account and you should be able to access all that bonus material now. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next show. Thank you.