234. A lifetime in the clouds - Chuck Smith

Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of Cloudbase Mayhem. I've been meaning to do this one for a long time, this would definitely fall into our legend series, but Chuck Smith, who has been running our tandem operation here since the beginning of time here in Sun Valley, has cut his teeth back in the late 80s, and I gotta go through this sheet of names here in a second, but Chuck has just been incredibly instrumental in the flying industry. Chuck Smith, who I've only seen here for the last 40 years, has taught pretty much everybody who's come through, who was anybody at some time, and as we talk about a little bit in the show, there's something pretty special about Sun Valley. I believe somewhere around 50%, maybe even a little bit more, of all the U.S.

athletes who have competed over the decades in the Red Bull X-Alps have cut their teeth here in Sun Valley, including Will Gadd. Nate Scales, Mitch Riley, of course, Hans Urmanek, myself, Willie Connell, goes on and on. Pretty special place for a lot of reasons, but Chuck picked this spot to lay down in his tandem business, and he's been going hard, he's been super passionate about it forever, all these years, and this was his last year. He's gonna close up shop. Close up shop. After this summer, he's still probably going out and doing his Ghana thing, which you'll hear about in the show, but that's it for Sun Valley Paralighting, who's been a staple here for a very long time, and he has had the great fortune of flying with tons and tons of very recognizable names over the last 30-plus years, and let me just get into some of these.

I mean, he got started back east. East in the late 80s, under the tutelage of John Bouchard, and flew with his brother out there back east, Dixon White, the Yates brothers, Michael Gaudu, Philip Renudua, sorry, I had the name wrong, Granger Banks, a bunch of skydivers, Peter Zimarelli, the Domenico brothers, and then Bob Schick, Bob England, Ken Baer, Todd Bibler. You might need to get on the show desperately. A lot of these people I do. Amy Brothers, Lee Kieser, Chris Santacroce, Jimmy Grossman, who died in a kayaking accident here a couple years ago, I miss him, Joe Gudzinski, Scott Gresset, Chris Blachley, Greg Kelly, the Ferguson brothers, Josh Cohn, of course, Zach Housington, Mark Shipman, Jan Stenstervold, Pierre Boulot with Subair, Xavier Raymond, Uli Weissmeyer, Bruce Goldsmith, Richard Gallone, Robbie Whittall, John Pendry, John Heine, I left that on the show, and Robbie, always meant to get Richard Gallone on, and unfortunately, I don't have that opportunity anymore, but he taught a lot of the climbing guides, because, of course, as we've all known, this was originally seen as a descent tool, and now using it, of course, as an ascent tool in the mountains, but he taught a bunch of climbers, Dave Carl, the Grant brothers, Jeff Swayze, of course, Bill Bell, and a bunch of other climbers.

and worked for a number of different manufacturers, it just took him by the reins. He moved to Europe, chasing it. He summited Alca Congua in 89 to attempt to fly off, which turned into a total disaster. You'll hear some about that. He did some stuff down at Kitty Hawk, and a crash out there in the trees. I'm not sure we talked about that in this show, but maybe. He competed in the 89 World Championships. He was our Dialone winner. first U.S. national champion, which you'll hear about what that was all about down at the point back in the day. He worked with the Smith brothers and worked down at Mount Holm. He did tandems out with Dick Jackson out in Aspen, was a co-owner there for quite a while before he made his way to Sun Valley and set up shop here.

He talks about Hobbs and going down there and chasing records with Larry Tudor back in the day and did a bunch of stuff in Europe and back and forth. And, you know, at this point had completely given up what he was planning on doing with his life and just stuck with flying and then had a crazy accident that he thinks might have been triggered by an earthquake out near Reno. He talks about life in a pre-accident days and post-accident days. Chuck talks about the World Cup in Japan and landing in the city at goal and watching Mitch McAleer go in and out of the clouds and some of his insane loops. Yeah, we had a lot of fun with this.

It was nice to have him at the house and do it in person. We don't get to do that very often. It was nice to just finally do this show with someone who's been so instrumental in free flight and so instrumental to all of us here in Sun Valley. Of course, many of those pilots I mentioned are scattered all around the world these days, but had a lot of fun. Some great stories. I think you'll enjoy it. Cheers.

Chuck, I don't get to do too many of these in person. Welcome to my house. We've been meaning to do this for 10 years, but that just gives us more time for more stories. How are you, buddy?

Doing all right. Hey, thanks for the invitation. It's really great to be here. Well,

you know, this is a crazy time. You've been the king of our mountain for, forever, uh, way, way before.

That

title's yours, man. You got a distance record up there. Well,

we've got to, uh, we got to spend some time. I'm so glad you made this list of all the legends and all the people you've flown with and been around over the decades, but let's rewind the clock to the beginning. And you got into this with your brother. I understand. How did you, how did this all begin? What year? How old? All that, all that funny data stuff.

So, you know, I, I got into paragliding, I think like a lot of the other early pilots, we came in through the climbing community. And, um, for me, I just kind of fell into it. I, you know, I grew up on Cape Cod and, um, actually there's a rich history on Cape Cod of gliding, um, back to the man, late 1800s, early 1900s, you know, actually in the 20s, the Germans, um, had a glider school out there in my hometown of Wellfleet, which is out towards the end of Cape Cod, you know, on the far end of the arm out there. And we have these really high sand dune bluffs. And, uh, but, um, and I think there were some records set there.

I forgot who said it. It was on the Bay side and that was, um, second only, I think to the Wright brothers. I think their record at the time was about eight minutes. And this was the first time somebody exceeded 15 minutes in the air off some sand dunes. Actually a sand dune called the corn hill. And it's where a lot of people don't know. I'm going to stay on paragliding, but we're going to, we're going to deviate. So people know that the general story about the pilgrims coming over on the Mayflower and going to Plymouth and, you know, landing on Plymouth rock and all that. Well, you know, that's all pretty contrived, but before they actually went to Plymouth, they were hanging out in my hometown for about a month and the outer Cape looking for water and this and that.

And they, they came across this stash of corn that belonged to the law, uh, the local Wampanoag Indians and they stole it. And, uh, so anyway, that's why it's called corn hill. And, uh, they came across that. So besides that history, that goes way back, but, um, but there's a, a lot of gliding history out there. And, um, so just a mile or two from my house where I grew up is, uh, you know, the launch site and also where they had the Germans had that glider school and so on. And, uh, so the main flying site, a lot of people in the, in the U S flying community will know Whitecrest beach. You know, that's where people, if they fly on Cape Cod, that's where you launch from.

And, um, I'd been watching the hang gliders fly out there for years. And I was like, I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to get one. I got to figure out how to do that. And, uh, so essentially saving up some money to buy a hang glider. And then I think it was late 1986, early 1987. I'd been climbing for, I don't know, five or six years. And I read in by climbing

and mountaineering. Yeah.

I started rock climbing. They got into ice climbing and then mountaineering, you know, it's tough being a mountaineer living on Cape Cod. Yeah. We made it work. And, uh, and, uh, so I came, I came across this, uh, this article in climbing magazine written by John Bouchard and, uh, John, of course, uh, is a legend in the climbing community, certainly in the new England climbing community. And it was an article about how he came across paragliders in France. And it was even before I think that the word paragliding existed. We, we, most of the time we use the word parapont. You know, the French term. Sure. And, uh, as soon as I saw the image, oh, those guys flying in France, I said, that's it.

I got to do that because the main thing about it was, and what we believed in the early days that every mountain climber would have one of these as part of this normal equipment as a descent tool. Yeah. So I said, that's it. I got to get one of those. So I actually drove up to New Hampshire one time because with my buddy, Mike Nagel, my climbing buddy. At the time. And, uh, just stopped by John Bouchard's house unannounced one Saturday morning. I'm like, Hey, I want to buy a paraglider. Really? He was making them. Yeah. It was Feral Corporation is, uh, was the company. He already had his, I knew his company, Wild Things. And, uh, he was making, you know, climbing gear, you know, harnesses and, you know, so runners and so on.

In fact, Bill Belcourt was working for him. Right. And that's when I first met Bill. Um, it was, it was about a year later after I purchased my glider. You're kidding me.

So this is kind of late, 87, 80. Yeah. So I'm

not sure when Bill was there. I met Bill probably certainly in 88. Okay. So in 87, I got the glider and it was, uh, you know, you acquired your paraglider a little bit differently back in those days. I mean, there were really not much for instructors. Um, you know, I went there, woke up Mark Twight, who's a famous climber. Working for John at the time, he was living out in his cabin, told him I want to buy a paraglider. And in those days you just told them what glider, what colors you wanted on your cells and, uh, Nine or 11. Yeah. Nine or 11, I think seven and eight, the small ones. And, uh, so they sent it to you, UPS.

You got it in the box. There was, um, understanding, no, not understand. Um, oh, I forgot what it was. It was a book on the web. I'm not

sure if it was written

by Dennis Pagan, but it was an understanding. This guy was a different book that preceded that. I can't recall. I still have it somewhere. And a video, it wasn't really an instructional video. It just showed people flying and launching. Yeah. So I'm in his VHS and I'm looking at it. I'm like, okay, you pull on that thing, you pull this up, you hold there and, you know, went out to the sand dunes with mine. Yeah. Oh, and we flew in our climbing harnesses back then. There was nothing else to fly. Of course. And, uh. Just some webbing. So it took me about half an hour to figure out how to get myself in the air. But when I did, and I know a lot of people will appreciate this when they had their very first taste of flight, it's, I still, I still think of it today.

It's always the best one. I was only like three feet in the air for like three seconds, four seconds at the most. We chased that feeling forever. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That sensation. I don't know. Everybody will understand that. Totally. And you never forget it. Yeah. It was amazing. Wow. And I just like, wow, I just fulfilled the dream just now. It was amazing. And your

brother was with you?

So my brother, so I'm out there. He's still in school. And, you know, my brother Rob and I, we're kind of like the Wright brothers out on the sand dunes, but not nearly as smart. We nearly killed each other. I don't know how many times. The performance of those gliders were so bad. You're always on the edge of either soaring or getting blown back. I mean, it was that window was so narrow. And then I just can't believe that we didn't really get hurt with the stupid stuff that we did. But, you know, we'd flying in just tremendously strong winds, him holding on to me and holding on to my ankles and getting airborne and letting go.

And he couldn't hold on any longer. Or, you know, we'd go to the beaches where there weren't sand dunes, but the wind was onward. It was wind, you know, and or windward. And so we do a lot of, you know, you know, just tying a rope onto somebody, you know, just up you go. Yeah. Flying you like a kite. Right. And I'd use my climbing harness and like a figure eight belay device to basically, you know, anchor whoever's in the air, you know, and make hand loops in the ropes. And, uh, yeah, we didn't blow up any gliders. I was surprised that we didn't, but we, you know, but yeah, we learned about lockout. That's for sure.

Just towing by pulling. Yeah. Just

by flying them like a kite. Yeah. Just anchoring with a rope, you know, and the pilot just getting too far off to the side. And I remember my brother almost hit a pier or a breakwater, actually giant boulders. I was like, how am I going to explain to mom that I just killed her second son? But we survived and, uh, yeah, here we are. When

I watch those, the, those videos of the early days, the, the stoke combined with the absurdity is really compelling. I mean, you just watch you guys going, that was epic. And you're talking a four second sledder, you know, just, just everybody's in the dismantling it all. I mean, I'm talking about the hang gliders, but dismantling and put it all back together. And just the. You know, how fortunate we are now, our first fight can be off Baldy for 20 minutes. It

was really fun to be part of, and it was all, you know, it was really John Bouchard that really in that, that climbing community in new England, at least that I was in that click. And, um, yeah, it was exactly what you just said. It was that stoke and we're so excited. And it was a lot of the climbing community in North Conway where, uh, John Bouchard lived and where he had his company, you know, and it was like Joe Lentini and, um, you know, the grant brothers, Jeff Swayze, and, uh, another person that still, still around Dave Carl. Um, they were all climbing guides up there and we were all just like, you know, we, we did a climb like white horse cliff and it was this big slab at the top that we'd launched from.

I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't. We were all just like, you know, we did a climb like white horse cliff and it was this big slab at the top that we'd launched from. Well, there's no way you're going to stop. And we'd land down at echo echo lake down there. And I remember we timing ourselves. I'm like, wow, I got, I got one minute and 57 seconds in the air. Like, well, I got, I got two minutes and 10 seconds. I got lift.

But it was, none of us really knew much in those days. Nothing about meteorology aerodynamics or anything, but it was. It was,

it was, it was.

was that level of excitement and stoke yeah

nate's got this great story from here that i think his first flight off greenhorn but you know is that he walked into the ski shop and the guy said hey you want to go paragliding and whoever he was asking said no and nate said i'll go and he goes and takes him off greenhorn and he lands and the guy goes okay well now you know as much as i know i do i

just love it you know that's exactly it well just figuring it out you know what parallels that a bit too is it so you know when i got into flying and then you know i was going to go back to school that that fall back

east yep

and finished my degree i'd been out of college for a couple years i'd done a couple years of college was about to go back and what are you studying television production photojournalism oh

that kind of makes sense yeah and

uh so i was about to go back and then that's about the time when i discovered the you know paragliding and then my buddy mike said hey listen i'm going to switzerland to go climb in this fall and i'm like screw school i'm going back to europe

and much to the delight of your parents i'm sure yeah

they were like okay but um so i said that to lead to you that parallel and i mentioned before is that after a year in europe flying because you know i um i'd been an exchange student in germany in my uh for a month or two during my senior year in high school and we're still best friends to this day wow you know 40 odd years later but um so i had a base camp in europe to stay there work and then you know work for a month or two and then take off a few weeks to switzerland to go flying and climbing and etc. so after that year i came back to the states would

you say back then were you was your jam more climbing or was it more flying

flying took over from the climbing okay yeah um not right away yeah you know because it was i wanted it as a descent tool yeah but um over the years it was less climbing and more flying that's why i tell climbers they're like yeah i want to get i'm like don't do it don't do it you won't climb anymore you just want to fly and uh so true so i had come back from europe pretty much dead dead broke you know and i but i was so excited about flying you know because that i called up john bouchard and just say hey john i i've been flying for a year i want to be involved in paragliding somehow i'll cut the material i'll stitch the material help build these i'll do anything he says well why don't you start teaching i'm like what but i don't know anything man yeah yeah and he's like yeah i don't know anything he's like well you've been flying for a year you know more than anyone else around here i'm like okay he said come on up spend the weekend with me so i'm like my god yeah i mean it's like john bouchard oh i mean i'm not worthy

and uh you know spent some time with him that weekend and we climbed together and he sent me home with a bunch of gliders and i instantly had a flight school wow and sort of started teaching teaching out there on the dudes is this 90 that's 1988 1988

you had your first school yep that's awesome yeah it's like when they hand you a baby i learned this when they hand you a baby at the hospital and you go wait wait where's the manual what you're just sending me home with this thing i don't know what i'm doing where's the instruction

where's the instruction manual yeah but uh yeah and then you know we spent some time with some california pilots and started just i mean we're just like sponges and you know yeah just learning everything you could from everybody you flew with i'm looking at

i'm looking at your list here bob schick bob england ken bear john bouchard i see todd bibbler on the show

yeah amy

brothers who are the circus performers yeah so that's what

was interesting you know there was definitely i at least my perception from that time was that you know the vast majority of the of the people that are involved in paragliding in those very early days it was the climbing community and then there was this other kind of subset of where they were circus performers you know people like cirque topol that's why his name was cirque after circus you know and um dixon white was involved in dixon god bless him yeah i wish he was still around yeah and michael mike godot he he and i used to juggle together on launch all the time but he was um he performed a lot with lance burton who was kind of like a i think he's a retired magician now but he had a big act in vegas for many many years he's kind of like a david copperfield and um i'm trying to think who else well yeah well uh granger banks i think he was a big actor in vegas for many many years i think was doing that stuff circus stuff and uh philippe renaudon he was a french guy out on long island one of the early guys he came here as a circus performer amusement park stuff and he was involved in the f1 you know um you know car racing and stuff like that but so you had this weird combination of climbers and like and circus circus and then there was the skydiving element too like peter zimily and the dominico brothers they had excalibur and uh you had the yates brothers you know jim and john they had their uh climbing company making gear and so you had all these different factions and there was a whole faction of like of pilots up in the northwest

you know shipmen and so on that i didn't know them that as well but uh it was just interesting to see how these things different locations

it's kind of interesting that that's still totally exists you know i mean the frenchies uh the that's what they call themselves the frenchies you know they're they they do all the high lining and the playing the instruments and basing and winds wingsuit and flying and you know they're it's always the french isn't it they're pushing this stuff but they

are yeah i mean well of course and that gets back to like the stuff i do in ghana until he passed away just a few years ago you know you know girode basson used to live in togo and he joined us in ghana and he was one of the three original frenchmen that were out there running down slopes with their skydiving rigs that really i think turned paragliding into a sport right you know depends on what how you you know how you perceive the different area i mean the british were parasending you know and dave bearish was running down slopes with his single you know those multi-lobed kind of single surface things that he had you know but i think it was really the french that yeah they really got it going they like to have fun don't they they

do yeah they like to push it uh gosh look at all these names buddy it's incredible they're just uh it's so what a what a journey that you've gotten to cross paths with so you know wonderful

characters i've been i've been so fortunate to fly with so many legendary pilots that are just just giants you know and

how did it go from instructing back east how'd you end up out here and if we're jumping too far ahead to just slow me down this is all i want to yeah take take your time no

um yeah the i was teaching a lot of it was you know kind of clandestine because it's national seashore out there and you know what we needed out there was easter winds and the east winds for most of it and that's pretty rare but um then um i started traveling out west we were flying in the owens like you know it gets a little blurry i remember john telling me hey you need to come out here with me because we were meeting in the owens i think for like a friendly competition but it was also kind of a meeting when we started putting together the apa the american paragliding association which preceded USHPA okay and uh so it's myself and a lot of those early pilots and we were just you know and fred stockwell um was really spearheading i think a lot of it and um and

we're we're guys like not larry didn't cross over to paragliding until much more recently but uh larry tudor but uh we're we're the we're the hangies already coming over at this point or is that still they were still pretty in their group and you're yeah i think

not too many crossed over it yet okay okay um i think when when the performance started getting better knowledge started getting a little bit better then more of them started crossing over but it didn't take you know it was a couple years okay years later yeah but um but yeah we all just got together and started coming up with a pilot proficiency program and things like that just kind of you know the just the seminal start of of uh the apa and that was exciting you know but once again i was like i don't know what we're doing right to make this stuff up as we go along you know and uh and then um 88 i guess yeah we had the first u.s nationals i drove cross country with my brother

my dad would let us borrow the car and drove all the way to utah and uh and

the first nationals got to talk about this what was it how did you win because you were you won you were our first national champion

yeah yeah you know i didn't screw up um yeah it wasn't much for cross country in those days you know it was out there at the point i mean we're flying it was basically speed over a course and uh some duration extra bonus points for you know if you were spot landing after you finished your your flight things like that and uh so

is it the point yep north side north

side yeah

and it's kind of an endurance thing right i mean you just stayed in the air longer yeah some

endurance a lot of it's just speed over course okay you know get to this point at that point and there's

a lot of people who

get who did it the fastest and stuff and uh yeah yeah lucky and you know but the cool thing that did was kind of open up some windows for me or some doors rather and uh and i think sometime it was either it wasn't there but it was at one of those sessions when we were getting together kind of coming up with the apa stuff that i met greg smith and uh so he was importing comet gliders at the time and then

He was one of the primary designers of the original katana made by UP. And he and I had done some work together. We had taught a course down in, I think it was 1990. We went down to Kitty Hawk and taught a course down there. And so we worked together really well. We flew together. And he said, hey, you want a job with UP? Come on out here. So that's when I moved out west.

So at this stage, you never did go back to school. At this stage, your survival is flying. Yeah. Okay.

Life happens when we're making other plans. Yeah, right. So yeah, paragliding just took over. And I was really a bit unfortunate for a long time that way. But yeah, I'm trying to remember. Is your

brother at this point still into it?

He's still flying. Not much. He was out here. This summer, I would have liked to put him. He flew tandem with my buddy, Eduardo.

Oh, cool.

But yeah, I wouldn't feel comfortable sending him off the mountain. But off the sand dunes on a calm day, he'd still be fine. But he's a Secret Service agent. He's got his hands full. Yeah, he's busy. He's busy. Used to be a respected position.

But yeah, he's getting ready to retire from there. But

back then, was he still flying with you much? Or was he already off on his career?

Yeah, off and on. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. So for whatever reason,

they grabbed you more. No, yeah. This was your thing. Yeah,

I was a little older. And he was still involved in school, high school, then into college. But he got there. We had some good, fun flights together.

But I'm just trying to think else. Yeah, so before, I actually moved out west. And Greg and I had done that.

We had a clinic down at Kitty Hawk. It was funny, because John Harris, he's still around. I don't know if he still owns Kitty Hawk Kites or not. But we went down there. We're all ready to, you know, it's like, I know the dunes. I know them well. I'll be able to teach out here, no problem. We got out there, and they wouldn't let us fly. We're like, what's going on? It was a surprise to John, to me, to Greg. And we're like, what's wrong? And where they fly out there. You know, where the Wright brothers flew. And like I said, Kitty Hawk Kites, they still have their hang gliding school there. I'm assuming now they teach paragliding as well. But it's State Park. And the North Carolina State Park said, nope, there's no parachuting permitted in the state parks here.

And we're like, it's not a parachute. It's a paraglider. Right. And they're like, nope, that's a parachute. And we're like, the federal government considers us an ultralight type of hang glider. And they would not budge. So we had to do towing instead. Really? It worked out okay, but it wasn't the curriculum that we were certainly hoping for out there. But I was just like, man. And that's kind of like the first time I kind of butt-headed, butt-heads with the state government somewhere. I was like, man, just let us be.

One

of my funniest experiences with that kind of a thing was with Santa Croce. At the event center in Hood River. He came through on his way. Remember when you used to do all the towing up in Seattle on Lake Sammamish? And he was coming through Hood River on his way up to Seattle. And he called me up. And I had just done my instruction. He said, hey, you want to do a couple of bro-toes? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we went down to the event center. And it was just him and the boat. And he was literally hooking me up. And I had just watched the videos. But I'd never towed. And I was like, wait, wait. Don't you need to give me more? Don't you need more instruction than this? And he's on his way running back to the boat. And a cop comes up. It wasn't a real cop. It was kind of a security guy. And he goes, hey, hey, you can't do that here. And Santa Croce goes, you can't do what?

Exactly. And the guy goes, well, I don't know. Whatever you're doing. And he goes, you don't actually know what we're doing, do you? And he goes, no, but I know you can't do it. And he goes, I'm going to run the risk that we can.

That's exactly the same thing happened to me on that trip. Really? Down to Nags Head. So we finished up, and I was flying out of Norfolk. And I'm not sure why Greg wasn't with me. I think maybe his flight was earlier, and I had a long delay prior to my flight. So I went down to Virginia Beach, and I was just on the beach ground handling. And some people are like, wow, what is that thing? And I'm like, hey, is there like a hill or anything around here? They fly off, and they're like, yeah, Trash Mountain. So it's an old dump that they've covered in grass. And everything turned it into a park. And they have the state emblem on it. So I'm like, cool. So I went back there. I flew off the top, come down and landed in the parking lot. And they come out of the building.

They're like, you can't do that here. I'm like, do what? That. Whatever that is. It's precisely the same thing. Yeah, they didn't know what the term was. And I'm like, all right.

Show me the rules where you can't, because it's not in there. That's right. I guarantee it. That's awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then when you came out here, so you're at nationals. You win nationals at the point. Was Utah home? Did you have a home? Or are you just floating?

So, well, I was living still back in the Cape. Moved out west. Okay. Took the job with UP. And so Greg and I were running the - And is that Elsinore? No, we, so Dick Cheney, I'm saying who else? So at the time, UP was primarily Japanese owned. Yeah. Mr. Isomura. And so we had our hang gliding production facility up in Mountain Green. Okay. Which is at the Morgan County Airport. So you go up Weber Canyon from Ogden. Okay. Beautiful area. Yeah. And so we had our facility there. Greg and I were running the paragliding aspect of things.

But we produced the hang gliders on the spot there. That's when we were making the detours. TRX and so on. The first, you know, kind of production, you know, carbon fiber hang gliders. And of course, Mitch McAleer was around. Spent a lot of time with Mitch, which was awesome. And so our paragliders, though, at the time were being manufactured in Korea at the Airman Factory. And people know the owner of that as Jinsong. Yeah. You know, as Jinsong, of course, now. But that was before he had his own company there. At least his own line of gliders. So he would manufacture the gliders, ship them over. I'd test fly each glider before I went out the door.

And either by towing or foot launching one or the other. And so, yeah. So we had UP Europe. We had UP in the U.S. up there at Mountain Green. And then UP University over in Japan. And

was that... Was this a time that would mirror the early 70s with hang gliders? Were there just a ton of companies, tons of stoke, sales were great, the future looked incredible? Or was it different than... Because hang gliding, was there like 60 companies or something early on? It was crazy.

There was...

Well, in the States, by this time, I think Farrell had stopped. And Bouchard had combined. He had combined with ITV for a while. I think he was still producing at the time. The Yates brothers had Summit Magic. I don't know if they were still producing domestically. But it was definitely European-based, most of the companies that were still around. But the stoke was high. And Greg and I worked hard to build the dealer network and get the best pilots in the country. On our equipment. And, well, we had Camelot for a while. It was really good. And I'm trying to think.

And then they started making some changes at the upper management. And that's when we decided it's time to leave. And Greg went to... He started importing Adel, which I think most new pilots now know nothing about Adel. Yeah. But Adel was... It's as big as ozone is now. I mean, that was the equipment. That was the one. And, you know, they have a lot of sponsorship for pilots all over the world. You know. And that's one thing I have to say. You know, working with Greg was awesome at UP. You know, Greg was really probably the first person to really seriously start sponsoring pilots in the U.S. You know, it changed the whole atmosphere.

You know, it changed the whole atmosphere here. Right. Yeah. So... But, yeah. UP days were some good days. I did a lot of test flying and a lot of travel, a lot of competitions. I was really fired up in those days.

And so that was... So now things are really shifting towards XC and race to goal or not yet?

Yep. Okay. Yep. Race to goal. And the... We didn't have flight computers or anything. Yeah. Sure. You're taking pictures. You're taking pictures in those days. Yeah. You know, you get your finger over the lens. Oh, no points for you, man.

You know, and of course, you know, you had to be in the quadrant, the correct quadrant to photograph your turn point. You know, and, you know, sometimes you're just getting your butt kicked in thermal turbulence as you're trying to take the picture. Yeah. You know, and you get this camera hanging around your neck and, you know, it's just, yeah, it was different.

Yeah. Slightly. Yeah, definitely.

But there were some good days. And, you know, the projects I got to work on were really fun, really interesting. You know, big trip to Europe to get our new gliders, our new prototypes through the DHV testing. That was a fun job. I don't know. Load testing and flight testing, of course.

And did they have a whole kind of a, I think of it as kind of an air turquoise system, but they had a whole, you know, you'd force deflations and asymmetrics. And was it that kind of testing? Yep.

Okay. You know, in the load testing we were doing, I forget what the facility was, somewhere in Bavaria. And so they had a vehicle pulling like a small trailer and the test pilot, you know, my job was the, for the load testing. They'd hook up the wing to. You know, some quick, some weak links and go streaming down this tarmac and generate X amount of G's on this thing. And, you know, the test pilot would then, you know, fly the glider from a seated position in this trailer and to keep it up overhead correctly. And I think, I think we're going to about eight G's. Whoa. Maybe it was a little bit less.

I can't quite remember exactly. Gee. Basically you had to, the weak links had to fail before any line failed or any line attachment on the glider failed or any stitching, anything. You had to have a hundred percent. You had zero fails. Right. To pass the load testing. And then, and then of course, you know, we were doing a lot of the flight testing, getting ready to go to the DHV. The weather was bad in Italy at the time. They guard us. We ended up doing it, a lot of it in Monaco.

And I

look back, I'm like, man, had I ended up in the water, I mean, we didn't have a boat.

But a lot of my flight testing was over the ground. So it was, you know, same thing. Better than that. Full stalls, spins, everything, asymmetrics, everything we do today. Wow. So, yeah, I didn't get paid enough for that job. But

back then, I imagine you didn't care. I didn't care. You're young and dumb. You're having a blast. Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, there's all kinds of stories. I guess from that trip, I don't know which ones you want to hear. Oh, yeah, the best ones. There was a good one. Well, the cool thing on that trip, I got to work with Ernst Strobel. And so he had come on to UP. And we were working on kind of the second generation of the Katana. In Europe, it was known as the Flash. And so one of the things we had to do, we were in Germany with Ernst Schneider. He was the head of UP Europe at the time. So it was me and him, Monty Bell. I can't remember if Ernst Strobel was in the car with us or not. So we're going to the Betzau, Austria for this weekend trade

show slash symposium for manufacturers. So basically, all the different glider companies were going there for the weekend and just kind of showcasing our new gliders. So everything we had. Yeah. The car with us was a prototype. We had maybe, I don't know, 12 or 15 pair of gliders and a couple hand gliders. And everything was a prototype. It was unsellable in Europe.

And so it's Friday night. We have to be in Betzau at like 6 or 7 in the morning because that's when they have this little glider ratio contest. You know, everyone's flying off to the same point, seeing which glider goes the furthest. You know, just a simple thing. And then we set up a stand. The people could come in and show us their flights. Line, you know, credentials. And they could take our glider out for a test flight or whatever. You know, it's like test driving a car, that type of thing. So we're at the border going into Austria. And we show up. It's like 11 o 'clock at night. We got to get to this place. And they stop us. And they're like, okay, where are you going? What are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. And they look at all the gliders and like, you can't come in. And I was like, what?

I've never been denied entrance into a European. Country, at least in Western European country. And they're like, yeah, you have all those gliders. We need a bond. Because yeah. I'm like, why? He goes, well, you could sell them here. And I'm like, they're unsellable. Yeah. They're prototypes. We're the company. We need to be this location in the morning. First thing we're going to totally screw up what we're doing. And they're like, nope. And of course it's like 10, 11 o 'clock at night on a Friday. There's no banks open. Right. So we can't get a bond.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause you're, you're, this is way before the Eurozone. You had to deal with this shit back then. Yeah, of course. This is

nine 91 or 92. I can't remember that, but we're like, well, we're screwed. What are we going to do? So we all decided in our infinite wisdom, well, let's just go down the border, another 20 kilometers and try another border crossing and sure. It was a much smaller road, much smaller border. It was a much smaller border crossing and the guy just waved us on through. Nice. Okay. Perfect. No problem. So we get them, get their hotel, get up the morning. I come down, it's the early morning glide ratio thing going on. And I land in one of the, the, uh, coordinators of the event comes over. He said, Mr. J Mr. Smith. I'm like, yeah, he goes, where, where is her Schneider? And I'm like, he's sleeping at the hotel. He's like, oh, we must go down right away.

Like what? And I look over and there's these three guys with side. Arms on their hips and they're from Austrian, they tracked

you guys down. So

what they saw, I guess they had a camera at that and they saw this, uh, our license plate and they're like, yep. And so they tracked us down and I was like, oh man, Ernst is in a load of shite now. And I told, I got there and I earned something. I was like, listen, tell them, tell them it was my fault. What are they going to do? Deport me and kick me and kick the American out. You're the one that needs to live here. So I think they might've give them a fine, but, uh, it ended up being, okay, no time for Ernst or anything, but man, it's just like, I've never, like I said before, I've never been denied entrance into a country before because I had too many paragliders.

That's amazing. That's amazing. The, uh, we're already ahead. I'm going to bring you back a little bit. So 89, you go to Aconcagua and I, I didn't know about all these mountaineering feats until I got here. Until I talked to Dick Jackson, I didn't know that part of your background, but what we, before we started recording, you were telling me a bit about, about that. So you get hired to go, to take somebody to fly off the top.

Yeah, it was a guy I was teaching to fly. He was from Boston and, uh, his name was John Nordlinger. Great guy passed away from ALS a few years ago, absolute bear of a man, but he, um, he hired me to teach him how to fly and also guide him on to fly off. And, um, and then we also had Brian Becker with us. He was a guy, a mountaineering guide from Colorado. So the three of us went down there, but, uh, you know, we kept, we needed a visa to get into Argentina and, uh, Brian had been down there a couple of times prior. He's already climbed Aconcagua before, and, but we kept it. He didn't have a visa yet.

And we're like, dude, you got to get your visa. He's like, oh no, you can get it at the airport. And we're like, eh, I don't think so. I mean, it says right here, black and white, you got to do it prior. So sure enough, we were all supposed to rendezvous in Miami and then go from Miami to Buenos Aires. And so John and I are Miami and there's no Brian. And yeah, they wouldn't let him on the plane is we're out of Denver because he didn't have his visa for Argentina. I'm like, ah,

better to find out there than I've done it the other way. Get down to Brazil. Oh, you need that. Oh. Oh, shit. Back to Copenhagen.

Yeah. So we just continued on. We're like, well, we have to continue. So we're in Buenos Aires for a while. And then Mendoza and just basically waiting for Brian to get his paperwork sorted out. And so it was taken about a week. So we're hanging out at the hotel and we ended up meeting this reporter and he introduced us to this guy that he knew who was involved with this hotel. Yeah. And he said, I'm going to be your host for the night. And we told him what we're going to do because we're going to climb Aconcagua and fly off of it. And I don't think it had been done at the time yet. Maybe. And they're like, and they didn't know anything about paragliding, really. You know, this is eight. Yeah. Eighty nine, I think. And so they wanted to be involved.

So they sponsored the entire expedition for us. Really? Yeah. Just. Yeah. I was like, great.

Wow. What a nice delay.

Yeah. Yeah. So it actually was serendipitous that Brian didn't make it because otherwise we wouldn't have made those connections. Wow. So we just, you know. Meant to be. Lemonade out of lemons. Yeah. It worked out great. And, you know, we had free lodging at this hotel and, you know, we climbed Aconcagua and that's, it turned into an epic. We don't need to go into it. Oh, yes, we do. No, it was just, John wasn't feeling well. And I just, one thing led to another, I ended up losing the tips of my toes to frostbite, went down a shoe size. Really? Yeah. You lost parts of your feet? Yeah, just two big toes.

Wow. And so, yeah. I thought I knew you, Chuck. Yes.

And, but we survived, put it that way. Did you

get to fly off it? No. Aconcagua was windy.

Got a pair

of windy. Yeah.

You know, like a lot of things. So, yeah. And that's kind of what led. I think, you know, they cascade and one little thing leads to another. And before you know it, you're in a life-threatening situation. So, it was, yeah, it was.

Anybody else in

those parts?

Coldest night of my

life coming down off that mountain, I'll tell you that. Oh, God. 23,000 feet. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I don't want to be that

cold again. Anybody with any kind of edema stuff? Any kind of? Yeah.

John was, he was suffering a bit from pulmonary edema. Pretty acute. Yeah. Okay. We got him down. Yeah. And luckily for me, the muleteers that we had, the arrieros, they were training a new horse to learn the route because it's about a two-day, you know. Just getting in there. You know, getting into base camp. Yeah. And exiting base camp. And so, I got to ride a horse out and that's what saved my toes. Otherwise, I think I would have lost a lot more. Really? So, I got to ride a horse out because there was river cross, multiple river cross. And just, yeah, two days of trekking, it would have beat the crap out of my toes. So, that's what saved my, oh my, my toes to a horse. I wish I remembered that horse's name.

Yeah. Because I feel guilty for not remembering. But that turned into then, we ended up staying down there. You know, working, doing promotion for that hotel company and promoting this Umbre Acero, this big like Ironman type of competition they were having. So, we're traveling around the country. Flying and just promoting that. What a cool

time of life where you can just. Yeah. There's no. You can stay away. There's no agenda. Yeah. Just, okay, we'll stay here. Yeah. Beautiful. That's amazing. Did you ever get to fly off it? Did you go back?

Nope. Never got to

fly it. Yeah. I don't think it's been done much. Yeah. Dick got off it, I think. I remember him. Yeah. But it wasn't the first time. I think he had to go back or I can't remember. Yeah. Oh,

yeah. Yeah. It's always, it's the Andes. It's always windy. Yeah. Always windy. But. Yeah. You know, that's what I, one thing I was bummed I never got to do while I was, you know, in New England, never got to fly Mount Washington. Really? Yeah. Because it's a third of the year there. It's, you know, it's hurricane force winds are higher. Yeah. I mean, the sailplane pilots fly and

wave there.

Yeah. Yeah. But I know John Bouchard flew it. Okay. You know, for sure. Yeah. I don't know anyone else. Maybe Dave Karl did. I'm not sure of any of the other local guides up there in the colony ever got to fly. But yeah, you had to choose, of course, the, you know, the right day and get lucky. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, we all know it's all about the wind. It's all about the wind. It's all about the weather. Yes. Why

do we do these sports that are so dependent on the weather? I don't know.

So. Yeah. What else is out there? Yeah.

What about this, the world championships and coasts? I've heard a couple of stories about that already, but the coast has got a special place in my heart because we go through there, of course, on the X-Alps every year. I'm going to have another little nip of this gorgeous bottle. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think Austria is so gorgeous. It's so incredibly green. The mountains are so beautiful. But yeah. Yeah. On the U.S. team, it was, let's see, Mark Shipman was kind of like our team doctor. It was John Bouchard, me, Mark Axon. Yeah. Greg Smith, Ed Pittman.

Who else was on the team? I know. I'm forgetting somebody. But yeah. But we, it was Mark Axon and John and I were flying on ITV. That's when we kind of, ITV came out with the Saphir. I don't know if anybody knows that. I think we'll wrestle you to the ground if it can. But it was. No, I will not fly. I will not fly. yeah god i still have it it's in the bag i'm holding on to it i mean it hasn't been unfurled since 1991 but i want to take it out because it was such a cool glider it had that checkerboard color pattern on it and it was kind of delta shaped yeah had that swept back leading edge and it was screened with valves in it and you know and it had that little tail section and and it had of course this this um you know the steer seat yeah and at that time we thought that was the way to go right you know i was like well that makes sense yeah it's like a hang glider you're changing your cg a bit you're leaning and you're in your you can steer your wing that way but then yeah when you think about it it doesn't make any sense because to go fast you had to lean forward so you're making your body totally perpendicular to the airflow yes you which is completely opposite of what you want right you're trying to go fast right and then of course in turbulence and the thing's just tossing you around yeah so that was the uh times of the steer seat but yeah so we went uh the three of us end up in uh on sea at the factory picking up the glider and then flying over on sea and you know i would it was um their test pilots it's the ali gali and uh what's his name terry babu he's still around they were the chief test pilots for itv and they were kind of walk us through the you know the maneuvers and so on with it i was just scared but this

and uh but yeah we went to the coast and we didn't do that well what

did the what was the comp what'd you have to do it

was all xc of course just like today okay and um but taking pictures and all that but yeah okay and uh yeah but the weather wasn't that good in the finals i don't think i forgot what the hell if they actually named the champion or not andre bucher was around back in those days he was like the favorite and uh that's another story i don't know if you know about him getting arrested eventually no

tell it

so but book i remember in the early morning boogers he was flying this huge glider big and slow it but he gets an incredible glide ratio out of it but um i think they know named carlo de la rosa or de la rosa the actual champion but um but i don't think they got enough uh enough tasks in to make it official okay but yeah andre bucher though he was one of the biggest names in paragliding in europe sure and it was years later i forgot i don't know how many years later he and his girlfriend robbed a bank i think he got into yeah he got into some financial issues i decided to rob a bank i think in germany austria and they had one of those exploding die pouches in there so he had it in the car and it went off and that's how they caught him and he ended up serving some time in jail i'm not sure how long and then but he just he just passed away from i think um cancer not too long oh really yeah was

this uh when did you have your pound you didn't was that am i getting way ahead that

was in uh um april 25th 1992 oh okay yeah that's when i had my i started my second life yeah really oh yeah so we just finished yeah i we just come back from europe come back from flying the um the world cup in japan that was me and greg and mitch mcalear that wasn't really a cool um experience at that uh competition so

mitch is flying paragliders are you

sure yeah i'm not sure

and he

was there doing um some hang gliding demonstrations oh

that's when he had his the whole thing folded around him right that was a different trip okay okay this one's really cool i tell you

man when i was that competition japan that was i was looking at it fondly i was like a rock star you know yeah i mean i was coming off of 91 i was the number one rated pilot that year and so i'm in japan and they just love that stuff i was getting autographs i'm like i like japan you know but um you don't get that talk about high industrial flying now man we they had us land in the city of kiddie kyushu one time all right i mean you're flying through these huge buildings into right downtown city wow it's really cool and then uh but man power lines everywhere and when you're out on flying you're jesus on your task man if you get you know pushed up or you know stuck on some ridge or some slope somewhere trying to work your way back up and you're just worrying about these giant power lines all the time and wow but one of the coolest things i'll tell you mitch mccleary in my opinion is the best hang glider pilot that's ever existed yeah you know you know what his loops are ballet oh my god they're crazy yeah when he does them he just he knows right where he can take it yeah before he finishes the loop

most people they do the snap loops you know heine's really good john honey but you know mitch is mitch is uh so the cool thing we were at launch one day in cloud base that morning was really low and mitch is on his hang glider and he thermals up into the cloud and he lose sight of him and everybody's there at launch there's hundreds of people spectators all kinds of and uh all of a sudden he comes out of the bottom of the cloud in the full dive just straight at the people straight now he only did that too he did buzz to people at the launch he had people jumping out of the way but he comes straight out of the bottom of the cloud and then he commences his loop and the apex of his loop goes back into the cloud again so you can't see it so you're watching him come in and out of the base of this cloud i was just beautiful i wish i had video of it because somebody does because there's all kinds of tv crews there but it was just beautiful to witness awesome awesome legend

he is a legend still is still you

go out to california you're like there he is above my ass how the hell is he doing it

wow cool so so at this point is it more are you more in up design admin that world or is it more competitions and more going around being a rock star i

don't know you know i had such multiple roles at up i mean i originally wanted to be a rock star but i didn't know i was going to be a rock star i was going to be a rock star but i didn't know i was going to be a rock star but i didn't know out there because they wanted to get a up school going out at the point yeah and then all of a sudden it was just more of admin stuff traveling around with greg you know building our dealer network competition flying and um so it was just were you really

jazzing on that i mean it was competition that was your thing yeah

yeah i was fired up yeah fired up about competition at the time i mean like i think a lot of pilots are yeah you know i've been really lost that that fire you know and that's one i kind of found that tandem flying kind of fulfilled that that void in a way and

we skipped it so we were going down this road because your accident so with your oh yeah

so yeah um so yeah we had just done the um the tory pine speed races what's that and so yeah so those were i'm not sure how many years that went on it was a couple two two three years at least so basically um we'd come off tory at the main launch you flew down coast and you had two pilots launching simultaneously one would turn right one would go to the north one go to the south you had a turn point hit that turn point they had judges there make sure that you hit that that that turn point then you race back the other race back the other way go to the other turn point and come back to the finish line cool and so it was gliders racing together but then of course it was you know whoever

had the fastest time as well yeah and i think they'd go head to head in the in the end i'm not sure exactly how that was structured but it was a fun event so at that time it was i think spring of 92 greg had already left up i was still there and um so i had my team bob sheck and uh some other really hot pilots and that's when we nearly here's this here's another story yes so keep coming so bob sheck and i decided it would be a great idea because we want to mess with greg we're best friends but he was he was edel yeah at the time and i hadn't you know i hadn't left up yet and uh and um so it was a friendly little competition we had going on so it was one night

bob sheck and i decided let's take one of these little smoke bombs right those are the ones with little canisters little chain you pull yeah and uh we'll mount it under greg's car

and we'll tie a string to it so when he's driving on his way to tory that morning so but then you know hopefully then the the smoke bomb would be initiated and he had all the smoke come out of the bottom of his car and he wouldn't know what it was all right great good plan okay so it's in the middle of the night we can't really see that well i'm under one side of the car i think tying the string to somewhere on the axle i think on rear axle and bob was putting the smoke bomb up in the bumper of uh greg's vehicle and he it was a mitsubishi montero so what we couldn't see in the darkness was that there was a wiring harness right next to where he put the smoke bomb

yeah so we waited we parked down the street from greg's hotel room and he was with his girlfriend excited little kids going oh yeah it's gonna be so much fun and he was with um his girlfriend lisa halls and christoph kirsch who was the european paragliding champion at the time okay and uh so they're in their vehicle riding and we're riding behind them and nothing happens i'm like ah we're like all right so we break off to go get some breakfast a little later we go to we go to tori and then greg pulls in he's like okay who's the smart ass you know and we're like well what happened which we didn't witness is the bench i think the string was slipping on the on the axle and that's why it finally engaged after we had left and so the smoke bomb the heat from it ignited the smoke bomb and it was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna the wiring harness the plastic on it so it's on fire flames are shooting up and

so greg explained the story to us it was like yeah we're riding down the road smoke comes out you didn't really see it but then the flames start shooting up from the rear bumper and they're right next to the gas the gas tank and christoph kirsch is crying foil foil

but you know luckily and you know it was cool thing greg he was prepared he had a fire extinguisher vehicle and he put it out and uh but man i was in tears because i was like we nearly killed greg and the european champion and lisa all in one fell swoop i mean how did we ignited the gasoline tank or something but that car never rode again correctly they replaced the wiring harness and stuff but greg said uh yeah the electronics on were always screwed up

i'm sorry sorry man yeah so

i think maybe that was really funny yes it was literally a week after that when i was passing through reno um unveiling kind of our new stuff and uh you know it was still a prototype i was on the new the new flash because we hadn't quite finished um the final testing with the dhv and i just was out there at p-line you know it was mid-morning and just coming in the land and wrong place at the wrong time man it

was a dust devil right devil

yep and uh there's a there's a theory um who was it there uh anyway people said well there was an there was an earthquake at the time i said well that was that earthquake was me hitting the ground yeah right but uh they said no there was actually a tremor that went through which

you have a lot in reno i mean that and i think that

might have triggered the dust devil because there were some other people up higher and they all reported like a couple minutes after i impacted and they were up a thousand feet or more that they all hit all this turbulence at the same time so it might have been all these multiple really you know warm air dust devils triggering off it's a theory yeah

i mean i grew up in in that part of the world and i mean my my parents used to you know you're a kid you sleep through all that stuff but they you know there was there's a lot of tremors in that that i mean you're right on the fault line yep it's not that out there to think that that could have done that that's wild yeah so you were how far off the ground when you uh

60 70 feet and you let that glider as you can imagine it was you know it was on it's on video and i can see yeah i might over control a bit it stalled i couldn't control the surge because it was upside down i was i was just getting thrashed so i the glider and i hit the ground at the same time wow so i basically just just as it was surging it was hitting the ground and yeah i was out so

there's no canopy over your head

you were okay accelerated into the ground and i was out and um i

got what are you in are you i mean what what was the harness what was it was there any protection nah yeah you're back in that okay but

i rearranged my insides pretty good you know and collapsed a lung and i gotta say i probably gotta credit like bill anderson with help and this other guy i was his name last name was fraser but real bill thank you bill for uh saving my life really yeah because they got to me and i was turning blue and i couldn't breathe yeah and so i think what and one lung was already collapsed and uh of course i didn't know that at the time but i think my airway was a bit obstructed with my insides that were all kind of moved up and they put a board under my back and sat me up a little bit and that i think released a little bit of that uh pressure off my airway and i could at least you know breathe on one lung what was broken well i

herniated my stomach colon and bowel up through my diaphragm jesus i take your things from kind of your lower area and shove it up into your chest so yeah really to break anything really move the insides around

good god you're a wombat man

yeah and the the doc i gotta say myron gomez i will never forget his name he was the emergency doctor that sliced me down the middle and put everything back to where it needed to be and i wrote him oh you were

really disorganized in there yeah

oh they had to open you up yeah they sliced me down the middle and uh put things back to where they needed to be good god but uh yeah so yeah so how old were you

29 okay okay yeah yeah and uh so but i um icu for a few days hospital for a week recovered um in the reno for a bit and then uh i made myself fly at five weeks it hurt but i made myself fly just to get back on the horse i was like i gotta get back in the air yeah you know and i knew it wasn't like oh gee i'll never fly again or something it's like i knew i analyzed it and i knew what happened you know it's just one of those things move on but yeah get yourself in the air and make yourself fly again which i did was that scary it was uncomfortable physically but not mentally okay felt good yeah you know and then um then

that's when some more things were changing at up when i got when i started getting back into was that your first crash

yeah i had some minor little ones before but that was the normal stuff yeah that was the first time i'd really messed myself up okay it's just minor little things i've never yeah okay anything real bad but yeah then i decided uh i don't you know i think i'm gonna move on from up i've you know it was a tough decision to make but um so i ended up going to aspen and helping them develop their tandem program there with yon stintz of old and dick jackson yeah that

was that was right after the accident yep

did that summer and then that autumn greg and i got together because we're like we because he was full on with adel and we know we worked great together i mean greg was just awesome and uh so he and i started kind of reconnoitering all around the west to find a location where we could have a flight school and like a demo center and i was like yeah i'm gonna go to aspen and i'm gonna go to aspen and and i was like yeah i'm gonna go to aspen and i'm gonna go to aspen and i'm gonna go to aspen and and a place where he could also base the uh the import business adel and uh we landed in sun valley you know so we started sun valley paragliding together he had adel and uh what

year is this

93 ish oh wow yeah so then but so flying had gone on here at sun valley for quite a while you know ed simon you know he was the president of the club and they started what

so and uh so they had recreational flying going on here for you know several years but nothing commercial so when we came in we had to negotiate and we'll start the process of getting a permit from the forest service to operate up on the on the uh on the you know ski resort here and that was taking a long time because it just hadn't existed yet right so months and months i think it was what eight ten months had gone by and it was just like i you know like financially it wasn't working for me you know so i ended up going back to aspen and working with them again and greg kept the business here the adel and you know and he had it took him by the time he got the permit i was already in partnership and with dick and aspen and

was a big part of your business back then is it is it instruction is it selling stuff or is it just me both i mean okay before

i left sun valley it was instruction okay basically just but kind of clandestine teaching here and there because we still didn't have a permit you know to operate yeah but need to do something just and then uh but then back in aspen yeah it was probably 60 70 percent tandems and the rest of the instruction okay you know yeah and then like i said

greg got you know we got the permit here i just said greg you just keep sun valley paragliding i'm i'll stay in aspen okay and then that goes on to the next chapter so ed

simon's flying here i mean ed

simon was here there's a lot of names in this place hans hub he was teaching up here okay he's still around i think he doesn't fly yeah he's ancient but he was the pride of aspen the first person to fly off of baldy really paraglider was hans hub yeah and then he taught ed simon how to fly and some other folks but he never really had a school a formal school or anything like that so that's why we were worried before we came up here initially with sun valley paragliding with greg and i you know we didn't want to step in on any toes yeah but it seemed like the place to be you know we'd already been here for a competition the year earlier you know that uh paul potter and garth callahan and ed they were i think part of the organization that it was a pretty good comp but that's how we first got introduced to sun valley that we were looking at this place we were looking at steamboat springs and a few other locations and what we landed in sun valley and that's why we started calling and saying hey we don't want to step on toes if we come up here and start a business or like in a school or anything and they're like no no come on up you know what hans is doing isn't uh anything formal so yeah and

you know before my time here there's there's just a string of names from this place you know dave bridges and Will Gadd and Chris Santacroce i mean yep santa croce back when he was in his teens right i mean yeah yeah

i think i took chris on his first tandem really

i think

holy that's incredible i remember it was when i was working for up and we're at the point and chris had his mobile home out there i'm like who is this kid you know it was cool back in the freaky days yeah man but he yeah he just he just took off man he just had the skills and boom Robbie Whittall

right

yeah Robbie Whittall was here yeah there was a window of time there after i left and greg still had the business here yep it's exactly what he had dave bridges up here Robbie Whittall mitch mcalear mitch

was here

mitch was here for a short time too yeah wow and uh yeah i mean like you know that roster of pilots man yeah and santa croce was here with him i mean it's like he was you know it's like the dream team yeah yeah but i unfortunately i think you know greg got into substance abuse and never really put that much energy into the school in the tandem aspect of things he was still you know doing stuff with adle important and making a bundle of money you know because adle it was the biggest market share at the time well

and substance abuse back then was kind of the go here anyway because it wasn't ski areas yeah nope it

tends to happen in a ski town yeah yeah so how

long were you in aspen about

eight nine years almost 10 years and

it was you and dick yeah

i worked for dick and yawn yeah and then when they split i became partners with dick right and those were some good years that's when i was doing quite a bit of cross country flying which i enjoyed and um and

they were having a lot of comps and stuff out there in aspen of the day

yeah in the latter part there in the latter 90s you know we had the red bull over you know wings over aspen really good comps we had all the euros coming over and i was still competing i was then competing tandem against solo pilots which was fun wow really um yeah i just yeah i try something new yeah of course we had a huge disadvantage but it was still fun right and uh i did this tv show with espn one time with bart connor he's the gold gymnast gold medal gymnast yeah and he flew a day in the comp with me as uh you know as my navigator and we did that part of that show but the cool thing with that little segment that we did it was called action zone this tv show but i got to fly with nadia kobanich his wife right who's you know best gymnast yes you know and they were so

good and i was like oh my god i'm gonna fly with nadia kobanich

such nice people incredible i mean the both of them are at the apex of their their sport and they are the most humble nicest people you ever meet yeah yeah that was really an honor and really eye-opening too talking to her about because you know she's romanian eastern european under you know that yeah behind the great before before the berlin wall yeah of course and um that was how one of the ways you would um you know become successful in the eastern block or in those communist countries at the time either you become a party member or you became like a phenomenal athlete

yeah i'm like and there was money for the athlete yep

yeah and i was talking to her about it it's like wow you it had to be pretty amazing or just interesting or it was like how did it all work you know and um because you were the perfect 10 you were the first gymnast to get a perfect 10 you were the most famous gymnast in the world and she says it was horrible yeah because yeah ceausescu he was the leader of romania he despised her because she was more popular than him whoa typical tyrant dictator you know and um so he made her live in a home he lived in a palace right there in budapest and uh and so or bucharest sorry and um

he uh yeah he made her live in a house just outside his palace and had his secret police watch her all the time jesus and then she told me how she explained egos oh yeah but it was interesting how she escaped you know they got into hungary and she told me how they had to go over this these mountains in the middle of the night like waist deep snow just trudging through there to get out of there and uh yeah pretty amazing crazy yeah but yeah the aspen days were some good days and uh and

the characters you must have met i mean that was you know oh yeah and

yeah and i think i know dick told you the story when uh he took um maurice herzog yeah flying yeah and uh yeah and dave bridges and i ran him down the sled because of course he couldn't run because he's got stumps now but but yeah that was a special special day being part of that yeah yeah i was like wow you know first guy i've

ever met in my life

had to climb an 8 000 meter peak and yeah yeah and then just awesome days working with dave bridges yeah i can't remember when dave left sun valley and came down to aspen exactly when but man talk about i mean he was two-time national champion yeah phenomenal pilot and just incredible athlete yeah unbelievable i mean before yeah when he was going on that on that expedition to chisholm pangma when he got killed he was a great athlete yeah he was a great athlete yeah he was a great athlete when he got killed with alex lowe i was strength training with him really and uh i could keep up with him in that at the time but when he would go up the mountain i'm like see ya he was just a lung beast yeah lungs with two legs yeah unbelievable earlier

killing jornay kind of yeah i just did yeah yeah

phenomenal heart of the man you come home you make sure you come home he didn't but yeah that was a huge loss you know to the flying community in the united states yeah you know there's been a few of those people like bob england if he was still around i don't know if he was phenomenal pilot yeah you know and of course greg and dave and uh yeah some of these people that were just phenomenal in our community and they're i don't know what it'd be like if they were still around

yeah kimi was like that i mean you wouldn't put him up there with the phenomenal you know level pilot but what a phenomenal mind and person and just yeah just character you know we've got a lot of those in this there's characters there's characters yeah a lot of alpha chuck tell me about hobbs so you know i've got a real affinity for larry tudor uh his yeah hearing about him you know when he was back in his record chasing days you know the dark prince and oh yeah and uh larry larry what the fuck are you doing what do you mean there's a tornado man and and uh you know some of that kind of stuff but uh you know hobbs is i've only flown there once coming back from texas a couple years ago we were chasing it down there we just had to stop because of the larry stories and i flew hobbs and you know it was a good day uh it wasn't it wasn't a great day but it was that's a neat place but what was that all what was that scene yeah

that was all with up when i was working there so they sent us down there for two weeks and we were like oh my god we're gonna have to wait a couple weeks to go do record you know attempts mark axon was with us as a official observer and it was me and greg and matsuo from japan he was a character man uh he ended up dying in a car wreck in thailand but uh and then i think there was another german pilot there but it was all with up it was cool getting paid to go fly distance yeah try to bring in and uh

then um so greg ended up i ended up putting in a lot of miles those two weeks but i never got the record if you added up all my miles i had huge but yeah and the one day when greg got the record i think was 63 miles at the time uh that's the day i sunk out of course damn it anyway of course yeah yeah but um but it was really cool we were towing up at that airstrip down there and uh we never got the optimum conditions we needed the way that the skyline's set up but uh we still had some it's a pretty good flying but i remember one day so i i don't know if i had met larry before that or not but we were at the hotel one afternoon and the car car pulls in and larry gets out and he's just covered in cow shit

it's like he i think he was on a paraglider yeah had to be yeah and um he wasn't part of our our team there he was just there for his own personal fun or whatever i'm not sure but he had landed in the stockyard and got drug in the high winds just right pulled him right through all the cow dung and he just discovered i'm like dude sorry yeah yeah but yeah it was it was windy i remember constantly landing backwards yeah you know so i just spent around and you know just

staying in the car you know trying to get out and and

steering the glider in looking over my shoulder and uh staring at with the rear eyes or some stuff like that so you

said earlier there was the first life second life you know the post accident how did your own flying style approach what changed

you know i probably subconsciously i'm probably just not as fired up as i used to be you know it's hard to say you know i still flew come some competitions after that but not nearly as much okay but um you know i stopped flying comps i guess in what late 90s you know 96 97 somewhere in there you know maybe 98 was the last time yeah just lost that that fire you know but uh but like i said before it's you know that the tandem flying kind of became a new project after that yeah

and see this so this is something i've never done i i've taken people tandem i have tandem kit but i've never been a commercial tandem pilot i'm not rated uh but you know when we all got together this summer for evan's wedding and we had a lot of good pilots out here yeah you know you're still you're so fired up i mean it's just you're if you loved it like that the whole time i

loved it i loved it you know the camaraderie yeah it was such and then still it was well back then it was a really small community yeah and it's still pretty small these days yeah so i like that camaraderie and that friendly kind of competition you know but uh yeah and just getting that feeling getting fired up for you know getting out there and after it but uh yeah when

did you transition here to in start of the tan business you so i

came here in 2000 okay spring of 2000 yep from

aspen yeah

it was um not directly wasn't the plan okay you know i sold my shares of the business in aspen and uh i got engaged and at the time and i was becoming an innkeeper yeah and uh you know my my significant other at the time she came in from restaurant management and stuff like that and she really wanted to become an innkeeper so we bought a this victorian mansion sea captain's mansion up in maine yeah and i went back home so yeah almost and uh i was gonna open a sea kayak business with it i wanted to run tours between inns i thought it'd be a really cool you know thing to offer but that just uh blew up i chose the wrong woman i didn't we never got married but you know i'm not going to get married but um yeah she had a plan i didn't know about okay but i'll tell you i will tell you 100 that ghosts exist really

yeah okay

yeah it was a 22 room mansion i'm by there but i'm there in the winter on an island in maine are

we going to some shining shit here i'm already gonna say it was

like the shining it was just me and the ghosts and that thing and uh yeah yeah you

don't strike me as someone that believes in this kind of

thing i'm not gonna lie to you i'm not gonna

stop you no man without

a doubt ghosts exist whoa spooky man yeah yeah so then um but they had that old thing blew up and so then i just found myself like well what do i do now and that's when the forest service up here were accepting uh applicants for the for the concession on the mountain by that time greg had lost the business here he was long gone yeah so i said well i got nothing else to do so i put in for it here we are wow 20 years later years yeah it was just didn't expect it but uh you know i love it up here

the and you you enjoy the tandems i mean the to me it's uh it's a big powerful place i it's

a lot of responsibility yeah i would you know and it's a whole new shit doing what

you're doing yeah

i mean you never know what you're gonna get there's percent of the time it's freaking awesome i love it but um there's at times i'm like oh my god what am i doing you know but there's no times too that um it's pretty magical and i got to be part of at least three or four times now of end of life flights where i've taken people where their last you know their last uh dream or their what they want to do before they die is go fly really

this is kind of a bucket list thing there that's it wow

so i've take i took a guy oh years ago he had als once again i think it's the most evil disease you could ever get because you just you and your brain is perfect yeah your thoughts are perfect you know you have you're totally cognitive you just can't your brain just can't communicate with the rest of your body oh god it's like being an anakin in body or something but so i had that guy took him he checked out a month after i took him flying well that was his dream he was one of his last things he wanted to do um i took a woman here a few years ago she had parkinson's similar thing she couldn't speak because they're not especially the als's latter parts they can't he couldn't speak he couldn't move his arms he couldn't move his legs basically quadriplegic but the eyes will tell you everything wow yeah i have a hard time talking about it man yeah because i get uh yeah i get emotional thinking about it because it's

all in those people's eyes and they can't talk but they can still smile and their eyes are just lit up they're still getting it yep and being part of that yeah that's what makes it really special yeah yep so i had a few of those and then you know there was one time is it

that is it that stuff that just keeps you fired up about it yeah it's just because you kind of seem fired up about it anyway yeah but it's

those those extra special ones where it really gives it meaning yeah and always remember too there's one time there was this little 10 year old girl i took flying and um the dad said hey you know she's really introverted and you know she's not gonna say much and um we took her flying and she was very demure and so on but he called me up i think the next day or two days later it's just like chuck thank you really it's changed my little girl she's come out of her shell it's amazing the transformation i'm like what like a paragliding flight i guess it just totally changed her wow i was like wow this is really cool to be part of that just yeah that's

neat yeah

that's really precious oh yeah there's the other ones when you get puked on yeah

well and you got you got to take the playboy girls up one time you know

that was pretty fun that was a fun gig i gotta say that was a good day at the office i'll never forget that one i was flying back east and i'm in boston airport and checking uh my voicemails on my phone and waiting for my luggage to come out you know and i get there's there's this message hey this is so and so from so and so production company and we really like to talk to you okay so i called him right away and i'm like what's going on he goes yeah well we're going to talk to you and i'm like okay we do this show and he goes would you guys object to flying with women that were you know topless and most likely naked i'm like yeah twist my arm a little bit more that'd be okay yeah so that was a fun gig it was for uh yeah uh the clayboy channel called badass they have a show called badass on there so yep we took him flying how

many of them was there

it was three uh they look like they had a blast

yeah i've watched those a couple times yeah yeah and

then when they left us we flew that morning i kept it under wraps i hardly told anybody right because i'm like you know i got so many calls from 10 to pilots all over the place you yes ob why did you tell me like yeah exactly because every swing in right you know what's gonna be showing up but i'm like i gotta go keep this under because i didn't talk to anybody about it right and we we had a we parked our suburbans kind of three of them in the crescent shape so that we could kind of you know people could see something was going on in the landing zone because we landed and go right behind the suburbans right and people could tell something was going on but they couldn't quite tell what unless they got a little closer yeah okay

i'm gonna put you on the spot here uh where we've just covered you decades of amazingness but craziest thing you've ever seen in sport oh

man the craziest thing i don't know man oh man and you can think about it remember i'll get thinking about it here but one of the coolest things even better when uh which i think is kind of unique it's not crazy um like the world cup in japan which i still still the organization i've been to the world cup and that thing was awesome but at the end uli wiesmeyer won the uh the comp and we had this this ceremony the award ceremony and they they brought him out this green blazer like they do during the masters in golf yeah and he had 10 grand in cash in this pocket i'm like that's the most i've ever known of anybody getting paid in a just in this sport for sure yeah yeah that was pretty cool that is cool

yeah wow and uh yeah we see what if i can think of something really crazy

yeah i

love i love all the names here on your list it's just it's just incredible i mean then i can tell you know at one point i figured chuck i was i was doing the math that that this is no longer the case but i think in my first or second X-Alps it was it was something like 70 of the u.s athletes who had competed since the very beginning you know the u.s athletes and had either cut their teeth here or spent time here you know hansa nate me i mean there was there and i'm missing several uh well Will Gadd of course you know he was in the first that's it's kind of a no i think that's

i mean i noticed that year that i was like yeah look at that yeah look at the willy sun valley yeah there's willy sun valley connection to the X-Alps for the u.s is pretty wild yeah yeah anyway

i i cut you off what you were thinking about

there but no it's

a special place yeah

it is now this is i don't know any other flying location in north america where more records yeah they just keep set and reset and they're still here a couple yeah and just got the FAI last summer yep yeah nice going galen yeah awesome flight that was awesome i know farmers all fired up yeah we're all fired up yeah we gotta get back get back to the locals yeah but you know the the amount of talent it's of pilots that have gone through here it's yeah pretty remarkable it is remarkable yeah it's really neat

tell me about ghana this has been your gig for how long yeah

gone has been an awesome awesome experience i fell into it you know i started doing it in 2006 and really um yeah so i got an email from mike from matt gertis he said it was like a email he sent out to all the ozone dealers saying hey there's this this festival in ghana and they're looking for tandem pilots and uh you know it's a free trip to to africa you know you just go there and fly and i'm like ah that sounds cool so it's only like 10 days before the festival i think by the time i reached out and um i sent an email and it was walter messer who's now one of my best buddies yeah walter's phenomenal phenomenal pilot climb flew for you

for a while here yeah

yeah he spent some summers here flying and uh i spent

some time at his house on our way to malawi to uh yeah to do that whole gig yeah yeah yeah so

he's um i

mean his whole thing with raptors is awesome yeah yeah

his knowledge of birds and so oh my god so yeah and um but he's in israel these days really he's met yeah he's spent something here he's not in

south africa anymore

nope oh wow no he left south africa not that long ago but he's been in israel for that for a while i was actually gonna go work with him a couple few years ago um right there during covid and work with him at apco oh wow but um yeah it was just gonna be a two or three month gig but i couldn't get into the country yeah israel kept shutting their borders down right but um yeah he sent me some a whatsapp message a couple weeks ago with the uh missiles flying overhead the intercept the patriot missile interceptors i'm like get inside it's gonna fall down on your head but um but yeah so i i reached i reached out i didn't know walter at the time it was six so i reached out to him i'm like hey listen you know it's probably too late for me to come to this ghana thing but you know please keep me in mind for next year he's like oh no we got time good we'll get you here so

we met had a great time and uh been friends ever since and then he got so busy i think it was about five years later he was getting so busy with the raptors in his facility in south africa yeah um they just couldn't do the ghana organization anymore and um so sabrina kirwin took over oh wow about a year and we had a lot of pilots that year becca and cade and oh man i'm just i forgot that it was a big year and then i don't know if it was a good fit for for sabrina so that's when ed stein my buddy from california and he's a long time pilot one of the old guard yeah he and i so he and i'd been doing the gig because when i first got in 06 when i first found out about it it was uh i told ed about it i'm like hey man let's go to once you come with me to ghana

i'm doing this gig and so he and i have taken over the organization of it for um at least for the pilots we don't we're not the hosts or anything the hosts are the ministry of tourism and the ghana tourism authority and so what they do is they tell us how many pilots they want what's going to happen then ed and i build the team and national team

and you're just taking locals for flights right so what

it is they it's a paying gig for them people pay to take the flight flights but that money goes back to or to the organization and the overhead of running the event okay so i got a hand i don't know how walter did it because he walt the whole started because walter was there working on telecom towers and he was up there on top of this because it's a escarpment that they have and uh in this area called qua and it's where everybody goes to celebrate easter so he somehow convinced the government and kind of like hey let's cut the swath in the forest here we'll make a launch site for paragliding and uh so now it's become the integral part of the of the country's easter celebration oh

wow go

figure i don't know anything else like it in the world where you have a government sponsoring a paragliding event like this and it's at easter so it's like the rising of christ the resurrection of christ at paragliding go figure but everybody goes to this region in ghana to celebrate easter it's like if you want to celebrate mardi gras you go to new orleans you want to celebrate carnival you go to to rio yeah so this is where people go to celebrate easter the rest of the year this area is quite it's quiet quite slow but in easter it's insane it just turns into street parties and dancing and music nothing happens without music there yeah and so and they love americans the ghanaian people are so hospitable and they're just ready to just party and have fun and enjoy themselves wow and uh so the festival yeah people pay the money goes back to the government to cover the overhead so for the pilots it's basically a free trip everything's paid for your airline you're lodging all your food everything's paid for it's a cool trip in a cool trip ed and i get paid a small amount because we actually run it run it yeah put together it's

a cool trip

it's a lot of you know a lot of international paperwork stuff like that but

and what how big is the team how many pilots do you need

it varies the most we've had i think is about 14 or 15 oh wow one year um and are

you flying

all day is it that kind of site wow all day doing interlocking it's just doing laps and like 85 of your flights they're assorable you know it's that equatorial air yeah big soft edges on the thermals and diameter nice and he's they'd they'd like us to work faster because it generates more yeah man you get in the air because i mean it's so hot and humid yeah yeah it takes you a while to get used to it i mean you just think about leaning over to tie your shoe and you break into a sweat so that's why when you're in the air it's it's just feels great you can get the cloud base how many

tandems are you doing a day well

it depends who you are yeah right if you're okada from japan you'll do probably 30 percent more than the rest of us he's just we call him okada kikai it means the machine yeah japanese right and uh but um i'll do you know seven or eight usually okada might do 10 11 12 you know most of us are all the you know blake pelton he's out there a lot oh cool he comes there a lot with us um we've got a core how long do you typically go out for just a few weeks oh the the festival's like three four days oh okay you know starts on the friday before easter so that's a half day friday because i have the opening ceremony and stuff then saturday's a full day sun easter sunday's a full day and then usually a half day on monday on easter monday but i'll stay there for a while yeah and ed and i've been working on

establishing some sort of instructional program there i was gonna say are there any

of their local pilots or local

people yep they're some locals now flying um and well we they need more we're going to get it it's typical government you know bureaucrats and red tape yeah we're really trying to get them to make a serious effort to get a more of a school established there and uh but their first pilot was jonathan jonathan quay and i took him tandem on the first time i was there in ghana in 2006 so i still have the picture from our flight and i always remembered it because i forgot how old he was he looked like he was 12 but i think he was like 20 something and we got up i don't know cloud bay a couple thousand over launch and he turned to me he goes it's cold you're the first person ever to say those words in ghana ever and uh so yeah so we started teaching him a bit ground handling and so on and then he but we could only do so much with him because our time there is finite and uh so then he finished his master's degree and he um so he's got some you know some income coming into him and he took it upon himself and he went to india and got his uh his his pilot rating there certification and so he was gone his first very first certified paraglider pilot and then

now he's their very first tandem pilot so he's doing tandems with us so it's so cool though that's really cool yeah and there's some other i think there's maybe four other pilots ghana solo pilots one lives in switzerland one lives here in uh in california so but yeah but there's a few that still live in ghana locally but they all show up usually for the festival so

that's just it's such a cool just the whole energy of the event i don't know any festival like it you know it sounds amazing yeah they've got live music and dancers and just and it's just the respect that they show for for paragliding there's really that's very really fun

yeah you don't feel like the dirt bag that we use yeah we're still dirt bags we're still dirt bags yeah i mean that's a good thing that's a yvonne schnard yeah being a dirt bag is a good thing but that's

a good thing that's a good thing that's a good thing that's a good thing that's a good thing

that's cool to have the respect for it that's pretty deep most people oh yeah i've done that down in cozumel no no it's not it's not parasailing that's not what i do exactly

yeah and it's amazing because they do they know exactly when you say paragliding they don't they understand people all over the country they know what it is yeah they don't mistake it with parasailing and that's not the case here yeah exactly case you know to this day people don't know what the hell you're talking about to this day it's still our parasailing no no right and the other thing i think it's kind of subtle that i think it's pretty cool in most places they say well a paraglider did this a paraglider did that and well no the paraglider is the right the object the inanimate object in that bag over there right like kangas says the cold air balloon yeah right but there they they call you pilots like oh yeah here are the pilots you know or the paraglider pilots oh cool it's yeah it's pretty cool that they recognize the difference right yeah there's some expertise here there's some you know some knowledge there's the correct lexicon right oh very

cool yeah chuck i haven't asked this in maybe a couple years i used to ask this question all the time with all my guests because i just liked it but anyway don't do it much anymore but with you it's totally appropriate uh because there's so much time i don't know the meaning of life ah exactly yeah will wills was the best his answer was i you get to do it all over again but you know what

i'm saying i'm not going to do it all over again i'm going to

here but if you could rewind the clock to your 50 hour self so somewhere in that 86 87 uh somewhere in there you know you're you're back in cape cod and you're you're launching off stuff for six minutes that kind of thing somewhere early on uh now you know today you could go back and talk to that chuck what would you tell him

that's a

hard one you know don't don't not recognize the important moments you know in your flying career i think you know there's times when i look back i'm like yeah i could have should have done something a little different there you know because i always wondered all right you know if i would have stayed with certain things would i been designing gliders you know working more manufacturing some things like that i don't know but um yeah i'd say just don't ignore the important moments that sometimes the important moments in your life you don't recognize them you know so yeah but uh

you know and similar to that sometimes i look back you know had i if i stayed in school had i taken a different path you know i don't know you know i mean it would have been aviation involved i think for sure right i look back you know and nothing to get i mean it's been an incredible ride in paragliding paragliding has been a uh it's been a vehicle to see the world i mean for you i don't need to tell you that you know it's been just a phenomenal ride an incredible journey and then i'm like what would i would i trade it in would i for something else you know what is the grass greener somewhere else i don't know but sometimes i look back i'm like well

naval academy maybe would have been cool and eventually become an astronaut i think about that would i do it and i i'd love to walk on the moon and i'd i don't know if i would seriously but if it involves trading my 30 almost 40 years of paragliding just to walk on the moon i think i'd do it i don't know it's it's hard to say because it's like i said it's been an incredible venture but i think Like, walking on the moon would just be life-altering. I think it would. Who knows? Yeah, yeah, anyway.

Well, we've got a group of people coming over here in a few minutes to celebrate what you've done here, and we're going to tap more into this beautiful bottle of Glenlivet. Yeah, 18-year-old. Oh, God. From the highlands. It's been gorgeous. I'm trying to stay away from it now. But, Chuck, you're a legend. We really appreciate you. What you've done here over the decades is amazing. You have led the way and held a lot of people's hands, and appreciate it, man. Appreciate your stories. I appreciate you, man. I

mean, what you're doing here, you know, you and Nate and Farmer and Hans and all those credible flights that have been done here, and even sleepers like Carell, you know, out there just busting it. Yeah. I mean, it's special. It's been really special. It'll be beautiful. It'll be part of everybody. It has been. It's a special place. Yeah.

It's a really unique place. You know, I get to see a little bit of it through the eyes of the World Cup pilots that came down. You know, my first big event here was the World Cup here in 2012, but, you know, running one this time down in Utah and seeing these Europeans who we just hold in such regard. Yeah. Them seeing this terrain. Utah is just like Idaho, and, you know, they're just going. I'm like, wait, what? Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's special. It's unique. It's special. Chuck, thank you, man. I appreciate you. Thank you for everything you've done. Thanks for having me here, man. What a great bunch of stories, and what a list of people. I mean, look at this. Look at all these people out here.

Well, I've been, like I said.

You're a lucky man. I've been so fortunate just to walk with giants, fly with giants. So, yeah.

Love you, dude. Awesome. Thank you, man. Thanks,

you. If

you find the CloudBase Mayhem valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways. You can give us a rating on iTunes or Stitcher or however you get your podcasts. That goes a long ways and helps 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 out to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And, of course, you can support us financially. This show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing, a lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind-the-scenes costs. So, if you can support us financially. All we've ever asked for is a buck a show. And you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal. Or you can set up a subscription 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 for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times. Sometimes on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people. And these are just our opinions. But our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So, I hope you dig that. You can support us. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash cloudbasemayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We can do that. We've tried to make it really easy. And that will give you access to all the bonus material.

Little video casts 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 will be lifetime. And hopefully, you'll be 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. 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.