Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud Based Mayhem. Happy holidays. Hope you're all having a wonderful December and enjoying the snow if you're in the Northern Hemisphere and getting lots of tasty flights if you're not. It seems like the season is well underway. Big season in Brazil and beer and everybody's now seems to be transitioning down to Mexico and Colombia. I'll be down there for the Menarca in January and then the Superfinal in February in Colombia. So looking forward to getting back in the air. The hike and fly has been pretty good here in Sun Valley. I guess we've had a very late start to the season, but starting to get some snow now. So transition. To skis, but happy holidays.
Just a reminder. We've got a lot of cool stuff. I guess it's a little too late to make it for Christmas now, but I've been importing a ton of XC Racer Barrios, Max and the Mini over the last couple of years now. Actually, I've been flying out the door. So if you need anything in that department, go to the website cloudbasedmayhem.com and check out the shop. I'm also now the importer for Netsu heated gloves. They've got a thin version and a thick version. And those have also been flying out the door. So much of that is back order, but I got another big shipment coming. Should arrive early January. So if you need anything and also tons of Patagonia stuff and cloud-based mayhem merch and all that kind of thing. If you need any presents, go over to the shop on the website and get whatever you need, including the book, Advanced Paragliding.
For this holiday special, we continue our legend series with Butch Peachy. He's been a San Diego pilot flying hang gliders out there for over 40 years. He believes he might be the first person ever to Vol Biv with his hang glider. And this is just a series of fantastic stories that kind of encompass most of his life. He's been really passionate about flying since the beginning in the seventies. And he talks about some of the crazy accidents he's had. And he's luckily been able to walk away from, and how to kind of deal with fear and flying. He's also on trucks now, so he's got a lot of valuable insights in that department.
Talks about how you have to change how you fly as you age and get less resilient. The importance of having a partner who supports what you do in the sky and just some fun adventures over the years. I've been really enjoying doing these. And I'm really thankful to Patagonia.com for that. I don't know if you all know this, but maybe 90 % of the podcasts we do here on The Mayhem or the guests on the podcast come from listeners, from you all, just suggesting people. I've got, I think, eight or nine in the can right now. I've been doing a lot of these lately. I've had plenty of time in the last couple of months. So I've got a whole bunch that will carry us through the winter. But keep feeding me your favorites.
If you want to hear somebody on the show, let me know, and I'll reach out and get them on. No guarantees, but I certainly try. So enjoy this chat with Butch. Fantastic character and pilot and a lot of history there. And again, happy holidays. Thanks for your support. I really appreciate it. We couldn't do it without you. And thanks for listening. Cheers.
Butch Peachy. You definitely got the best name. That I've had on the show so far. We'll have to talk about that. But welcome to the show. And thank you for your time. And tell me about how you got into all this craziness. We were just recording before we were recording. And we're doing the second time here. But 51 years ago, right? 1973.
Yeah, I had a roommate come home. And he says, hey, Peachy. That's what he called me. What'd you do this weekend? I said, oh, I worked. I bagged groceries with my first job out of the service. And. I said, well, I worked, Frank. What'd you do? He says, I went hang gliding. If you try hang gliding, you'll burn your skis. Because I like. I skied 30 days the first year I started. It's going all in for everything. And I said, what's this hang gliding? He says, well, there's this guy. They have this kite thing. And they hook it to the kite. You run down a hill. And you land at the bottom. I go, that sounds like fun. And so I went over. I met a guy at San Diego State. And he would take people up to about 50 miles north. And there was a school called Escape Country. And they held some of the first meets out there in the 70s.
And I ended up there. But I didn't connect up with the right school. It was kind of a fly-by-night school. And the guy kind of like set us all in a little circle. He had a chalkboard. Showed us a glider. This is angle of attack. This is angle of attack. And I said, any questions? And we're going like, I don't know. OK, everybody got to run with a glider on flat ground. Any questions? No. Let's go to the hill. And so they'd have a guy hold the back of the glider. And he'd run down. And they'd go, push out. Pull in. And everybody was like stalling immediately. And I was the third one up there. And I go like, OK. Because I had one aviation class. I knew I need airspeed. And so I started running down the hill. And I put the yell, push out. And I pushed out.
But then I pulled in. And I was clipping daisies as I'm going down the training hill. And they're yelling, push out, push out. And I climbed 40 feet into the air. And I almost overshot the whole train. And then I went down to another 200 feet. And anyway, I was the first one to fly in the class. And I looked back up after I landed. And everybody was just jumping up and down. We had a great day. Finally, the regular school came over. But the fly-by-night school, that's how I started. That was my only lesson I ever had in hang gliding. Really? And I knew everything about it. So we went and rented gliders and showed my friends how to fly. And of course, we crashed in ravines and broke gliders and hurt ourselves. Yes. And that's how the hang gliding started.
I love it that your instructors go, okay, well, now you know everything I know. And you've basically been taught nothing.
Oh, yeah. Well, it was easy. Lean right, lean left. And there was somebody at work that also hang glided. And that's all you thought about. It was like being in a – if you ever had a bad breakup with a relationship, every time you don't have any feedback, you think about that relationship. Except that was you thinking about flying the hang glider. That's what it is.
And so you're in your early 20s then? You're just out of the military? I was
73. I'm 25, 27 or something like that. Yeah. Okay. I was way older than everybody.
You wrote me in an email that you got into competitions. You wanted to be really good, but you didn't have the talent nor the intellect.
I laughed. I laughed about that a lot. But you just were saying you were maybe the first pilot ever to – what did you call it? It wasn't called Vol Biv, obviously, back then, but Camp
Fly. They called it Camp Flying. What happened was I was flying the second cross country meet ever. Well, I flew the first one in 78, and I flew 79. And we were flying flat surface – single surface gliders. The battens were flat. They would have deflexors. They would have deflexors or something like that. You can look that all up. But they were about a six-to-one glider back then.
Like a speed wing now. What's that?
Like a speed wing now. A paragliding speed wing. Yeah.
But what the hell? The big air at Owens, you can fly anything. Right. Even like a jacket with battens in it would fly. But anyway, they called the day because it was too windy. And this guy, George Worthington, I would look at him and he says, we've flown in stronger.
Air than this. He said, what will this fly off anyway? So we took off, and you couldn't make it to an LZ. You had to land back up in a ravine if you didn't get out. That's the way this place was then. We didn't have the glide to get out. But we took off, and then I ended up grabbing a thermo, climbing out, and then flying down the valley. I said, it's a windy day. I could really go far. And they called for 50 knots at 18,000 feet. And I go like, well, I'll just stay under 50. I do not. I'll just stay under 18,000 feet. And then I got to about 10 grand, about 20 miles, 30 miles away. And I said, I'm going to go deeper. I'm going to go deep into the mountains. And all of a sudden, I got blasted up. And then it was past a place called White Mountain, called Palisade Flats.
And I was being sucked up in this thermo. And I was at 13 grand to 14 grand, and I'm backing up. And the glider's backing up. And I got. I got the bar fully stuffed. I mean, I have pulled in all the way. And the glider's still backing up, and I'm trying to get off. And then I end up just getting blown over the back of the mountain into some rotor. And then came down in the shadow of the rotor, and the glider was going left, right, left, right. And somehow, I flared and got the thing on the ground, grabbed the nose of the glider, and held it down. Anyway, I found out when I'm holding my little hall wind indicator, it was pegged at 55 miles an hour on the ground.
So that 50 knots wasn't at 18,000. It was more like at 12,000.
Oh, my God. You're flying in waves.
So I was about a mile behind the edge of the mountain there. And so I walked around, and I had a cocoon harness. I'm freezing up there because it's like 40 degrees at that altitude, like just around 13 grand. Walking through the mountains. And I find some place. And my driver comes in. Butch, Butch, Butch, I saw you. You disappeared. Where'd you go? And I said, I'm okay. I said, what do I do? I said, well, go get George. And we're on CB radios. And it was a big box like this. He put nine batteries in. You know, I got an antenna. And I'll call him down in an hour. So I end up, it's all shale. Nothing up there except shale. So anyway, I tell him, I said, well, what are you going to do? I said, well, I'm going to fly off when the winds die down. He didn't fly. But I found some rocks piled up that basked.
It's sheep herders used. And I found some fence posts. And I used my landing form to get a fire going. And that's how I kept warm. Because I had a little thermometer. It would drop down. It dropped down to 32 degrees. And that's like, can you live inside your refrigerator for how long? You know? But I remember I just kept rotating, laying on my harness. I said, you know, freeze my butt off. And then kept rotating. Then the next morning, it dropped down. It dropped down to 15 miles an hour. I said, okay. I walked out. It was about a mile of glider. And I got it over to the edge and took off into this ravine. I said, if you ever did a good cliff launch, now's the time. And off I went. And I remember making one pass.
The vario went, nee, nee, nee, nee. And I go, thanks for letting me go. And I glided for maybe 20 minutes to a place called Benton Stations and landed. And I landed there. And it was just like. It was like 7.30 in the morning. And this is my girlfriend at the time. She goes, butch, butch, out there. And she drove all the way down from Mammoth where we were staying. And she showed up within five minutes. And I was able to fly the comp that next day. Though I smelled like smoke. That was the first. I was the first guy to ever camp glide. This guy George wrote about. Which I guess, you know, paragliders do this all the time now.
Yeah. I mean, it's. You know, we made a film about it back in 20. 12, I guess. And, you know, we were kind of guessing there was maybe 50 people in the world, you know, full bivvying. And now it's, now it's a regular thing. I mean, everybody's doing it. The advent of light gear and everything. It's just made it so much more possible and fun. You know, I
saw some of this guy was going through hitting all day. Him and his friend were hitting all these different mountains in, in through Nevada. And I got, wow, what a great adventure they were doing. I can't remember his name, but.
Hansa and Logan.
Yeah. Those guys are just, I mean, they're, they're doing stuff that like we never even dreamed of.
Yeah. That's, that's pretty exciting. Cause you just, you know, stuff it in anywhere, spend the night, keep going.
Yeah. And it got a little tent and all that. But you
were the first, you, you, you, you led the way, man. Not, not planned of course, but you were the first.
Yeah. I found a little stream, you know, the moon came out of the big Lynn Chikler set up in the middle of the night and the moon came up, you know. It was beautiful.
Do you have any food?
This, this guy's wife I stayed with, she says, you got to take food. And she gave me a granola bar and I had my granola bar in my harness.
Right. Cause he had something a little bit.
Yeah. So it was quite the adventure.
That was 79. So what. 79. We, we, we, we jumped a bunch there. What, what was the, what did flying look like for you between 73 and 79?
The guy I knew at work. Okay. We would go out with him to a little place where we walk up the hill and everybody just do a slope flying. I mean, this is like a hundred foot cliff and you run off and practice. He got, he got me, he knew more about hang gliding than I did. And then a friend of mine, I got him involved in it and we went and rented a, what do we do? Oh, we ended up buying a used glider and we shared it. One would drive, one fly, and you'd get two, three minutes of air time. Uh, like going Elsinore and landing and, uh, and then we, we bought a second glider had been crashed at Tori and he was a handy guy. He built a, built a frame for this, this sale. And so now we had two gliders and, uh, then we each got to fly and we, uh, he, he actually made his own harness.
I, I found one used and that, that's how we got started, but I didn't fly with the community cause I was a working guy. I wasn't one of these, you know, comp pilots or, or they worked for a factory. I was this guy that had a job. And, uh, so I would go to this place called Kyle's mountain. It was about 800 feet to walk up and I'd get out of, uh, out of school at San Diego state, go over to where I worked, walk my glider up the, up this mountain called Kyle's mountain, fly off, land behind work, pack the glider up and go to work by one o 'clock. And so I get flights and I'd fly two, three minutes. And then, uh, I remember one time if you could do a three 60, that was a big deal because they didn't teach. I never, we didn't learn how. You just, I remember the first time I did a three 60 off Palomar, they said, just fly it around a turn.
I'm like, what the hell does that mean? And the only thing I knew was just go over like, well, what we were doing was slip turns and it, I mean, I didn't even make it to the LZ. You lose a thousand feet per turn. Um, so I remember one time my mom came out to see me fly off Kyle's mountain and I did one three 60 at the hill and three, three sixties over, over her head. And my girlfriend says, that's the best I've ever seen you fly four, three sixties in a flight.
That is awesome. That's the early years before, you know, you weren't thermaling. You're still, everybody's taking sled rides at this point.
Yeah. I didn't, up until I went to Sylmar, we were flying Regalo standards and that's where I saw them thermaling Regalo standards. And I, I did thermal at calls on when it was blowing 20 miles an hour and I flew Torrey, which was scary. It was scary to me. Uh, but I wasn't with a, I was kind of like flying on my own. It was always flying. I did it for two years. Then I linked up with some people that every Thursday they went out. So I changed my days off and that's when I started accelerating my, my flying.
But what has, has this ever been a job for you or, uh, it was, it was flying ever full time or was flying all is flying always been a pastime.
No, I've always had a job. So I've been, you know, just kind of a privateer guy. It's like most people. You know, they, uh, they would make a vacation, so they'd go fly a comp and, uh, I w I was, then I was working through my way as I became a supermarket manager. And so I flew on Sunday. That was my day off. And, uh, and then go, Geithers got by better and better. And I, because of an influence kind of guy named George Worthington, he did all the first FAI records, uh, out return distance, uh, rigid wing. Uh, he was the guy I flew with, uh, but we'd go fly competitions where we were doing pile on racing and we'd get our ass beat, but we were, we were, we were decent at cross country flying.
Like, so we would go out every weekend and we would, we would have a task and it was a $5 bet. And we had all these different re different, um, different sets of tasks we have. And whoever flew the best would, uh, you know, got the five bucks and I constantly paid that guy five bucks all the time, but it'd be, it, it made me become a better soaring pilot because here I'm getting low and all down. I said, and I said, I'm not paying George another five bucks. I would work any little bit of lift, even a hundred down just to stay in the air longer. So that, uh, it was good to have a, a guy like that who would, uh, you know, he would challenge you. It wasn't just like, la, la, la fly around and, you know, and drill holes in here. We were
make every time you fly, uh, a challenge, make it a task.
Yeah. And for that's what it is for me today. If, if I get up, I'm going cross country driver or no driver.
What is this? Uh, I was told that you always, you always fly with a harmonica and you, you never have retrieve in mind. You, you, you worry about your retrieve wherever you land. Is that because you've, you've, you pull out your harmonica and people are interested in picking you up or
it's got, it's gotten me dinner lots of times. Um, I was flying a comp in Japan one time. And we were, they had us flying the 60 mile task over, no, over, uh, over tiger country, trees and everything. Japanese. I see why they came up with kamikaze, you know, they were just like doing crazy stuff. And so I was flying along and I, I got to one, I got over one mile on one overrun bridge and next bridge. And finally they, they, they said, bring two gliders because you're going to have land one in the trees and then you can fly the next day and they'll have a crew take a glider out of the trees. I'm like, wow. And so I came in and said, Oh, it looks like I'm going to go. On the trees. And I'm following down this road, which is about the width of my wingspan, like, okay, which tree am I going to land in?
And then finally I popped over and there was a village down, but I landed in this village. So I come in under a 20 foot power line and landed a dry light rice bed. And here it's a school anyway, I'm breaking down the glider and here comes the kids out and they're all in their little uniforms and everything like that. And they come over and they look, I don't speak any Japanese. And uh, so I break the glider down. And I hand him a piece of paper. I had two of them. One said it was in Japanese. If you find this person, you know, uh, call these, call this number and those before cell phone, and then they will come and get them. And so I'm sitting here and I pull out my harmonic and I started doing, Oh, Susanna. And I'm, I'm playing the song and they start singing in Japanese, except for the part where it goes, Oh, Susanna. That's how they sing it.
And then they go right back to Japanese and I'm cracking up. So that I show this one kid, his piece of paper. And he takes it. He runs away. And so, um, then all of a sudden, and then he comes back and it looks like his sister and his mom and the sister and sister had gone, you'll come, you'll come. And they take me over to the house and they sit me down. And here's the whole family, grandparents, parents, and kids having dinner. And they sent me out to tell the table, they feed me that I don't know what it was, but it was good. And so then the grandfather gets up and, and goes over to this cabinet and pulls out this little, uh, uh, little vessel, something. Yeah. And he pours me a little drink of it. And, and they're all going like what? And so I, uh, and so he, and he stems, stems up, goes, and I go up and I stand up.
Yeah. I drink it. It was like turpentine swelling, like, oh God, my eyes are watering. And of course the grandpa is going like, ha ha ha. Loving it. Loving this guy. Gene to drink my, you know, my, my, uh, homemade juice or whatever. And I knew what I was like. Oh, I got it. I got a safe face here. And I just go, can I have more? And he just roared. And then they were, of course, they're all going, yay.
That's awesome. The Japanese moonshine initially too, before dinner, but
the harmony is that, are you trained in that? Are you a trained musician or are you just something you picked up along the way?
Uh, this is something I carry with me. I, yeah, I, I, I used to be, uh, I used to work out in New York. I was a music major in college for a couple of years, but then I went to New York and started working. I went to Europe and United States. I, I'm a mallet percussionist. I know if it's timpani or marimba, it is, but that I'm a, uh, you play drums too. So, um, but that's picking up any instruments, you know, I carry one with me cause it's some people are on their phone. I'm on my harmonica.
That's awesome. Do you play
it in the air? No, but there's a guy who actually did, um, he used to carry his glider through the Alps and would do all this cross country. Like you guys do. X cross stuff. And he was, he was carried, he would carry his hang glider and he had his, this thing like a Sherpa, you know, the thing around your head when you're carrying a load, that's how I carry a glider. And I remember him taking photos of these with gold cameras and he would play his harmonica in the air. I
love it. That's awesome. But you, you, you traveled in New York and Europe for music and stuff, but you've stuck with California your whole life. You've been out there in Del Mar, San Diego area. Yeah. I got drafted
in 69 cause I was out there working and I was, I was doing tours in Europe and picking up contracts and stuff as a musician. And uh, then I got drafted and then they, they ended up putting me in the Marine Corps cause they were doing, they were putting 10 % into the, and, and the, and the Marine Corps cause they, they were eating them up in Vietnam. And uh, they gave, they ended up, uh, they gave me an audition and uh, I had good chops then. Um, but then they, they, they came down to, I can either shoot mortars in Vietnam or play in a band at Quantico, Virginia. What would you pick?
I'll take the band. Thank
you. Well, there's an advantage. If you went to Vietnam, you'd go in for, you'd teach at shoot mortars, which seemed kind of fun. But, um, then you'd come back and there'd be six months left of a two year draftee commitment and they just let you out early. So you're only in the service for 18 months. Ah, okay. But anybody I knew who went to Vietnam, it was in a, uh, enlisted, they all came back a little twice. Yeah. And I, I'm glad I missed it cause I was never a tough guy. Hard
on your mental health. Yeah. Right. We're not even talking about flying. No, we're not. But that's okay. That's good. So, uh, I, I love hearing stories about the early days. What's the craziest thing you saw in the seventies? That's a, and you feel free to think about that for a while. We can edit out
some sounds. Oh God, it goes on and on and on. It's just like anybody who flies or it's just, it's just when you're, when you're dealing with nature. It just, it does all kinds of things. You go to Owens and everything's magnified. So you
know, so, uh, you know, I, I just, uh, there's some of the carnage stories from back then. I just, it blows me away that you guys were all, you know, we really stand on the shoulders of giants. It was amazing when you guys were willing to huck yourself off. Yeah. I could talk about it with camping and 50 knots of wind and that's, that's sailplane wind or wind.
I ended up. Uh. One time I, I was, I was working and I thought, well, what the hell I I'm going to take some time off. And I, I bought a new hang glider, which was Wills Wing at the time. And I flew, I said, I'll go fly a cop. Well, I won the cop and it was the Southern Cal regionals, which was that this is the hotbed of all good pilots. The world champion was there. The national champion was there and I beat them all. But, and I, I had to kind of back down flying. I was only flying just like, wait, he can thread. So my ego is huge then. And uh, but, and then I said, well, I'm going to, I'm going to fly internationally. I'm just going to see if I can eat along. And, uh, and some of my friends go like, what are you doing for work now?
Butch? I said, well, I'm just a hang gliding bum with a mortgage and, uh, lots of roommates,
but I, uh, went and flew the, the, the pre worlds in, in Australia. Yeah. And then I found out, nah, you're not very good. You're good in your own backyard. That's that's where I found, like, I thought it was better than most. I was barely mediocre compared to the international crowd though. I mean, you want to learn to fly, you want to learn to fly and be competitive. Go to Europe. Those guys are hot. And so the Brazilians and a few other people like that.
Yeah, indeed. And that's what I saw with that
because you, I remember, uh, read something when you're there, the guys there, uh, yeah, I flew competition to learn more because you're, you're, you learn more in one competition than a whole year of a flying, you know, we say that a lot. And of course you see all kinds of crazy things happen.
Yeah. Well, any, any of those crazy things come to mind?
Well, there was one time I was flying cross, I, I was flying, I was giving cross country clinics. I took off on a horse. And I'm climbing into a cloud cover. But there was a thunderstorm behind us. I'm climbing up only a hundred feet a minute and I get to 10 grand and I'm, as I'm circling all of a sudden I hear, and as I'm completing my turn, I watch a US air go right by me and he missed me by a wingspan and it was, it was red, but you could see people looking out of the, out of the, out of the plane and, and that, and the people on the ground go, but did you see it? There's a plane. It just went right by. Yeah. Yeah.
And
I was
going to go land in Julian. It was like 15 miles away. I like landing at Julian because you can land it close to town and go get pie. And so I'm flying over there. I go over to Laguna and the air is glass smooth and I looked at the clouds, but there's these things called marmottas. Are you, you know what a marmotta is? Yeah. Well, that's a precursor to a tornado and I've never seen in California. I've seen it in comps. Comps I've flown in New Mexico or Colorado. We were used to flying in hail storms back there. Um, but anyway, and, but it was pretty soon said, okay, I was climbing over Laguna. It's like glass was, and all of a sudden the glider immediately dumps upside down. And I had just put my hands in these, these myths to keep me warm and I'm hanging by my fingertips upside down, trying to hold onto this glider, keep, keep the control bar.
And I fall into the frame and break the frame. Well, hang gliders like a lot of things will write themselves. No problem. Well, when it write themselves. And things broken, then it just was bam, bam, bam, and broke up. And I had a carb, all carbon glider then, and it's well, and it went into a, and went into a spin. And first it would do a high G spin and then sometimes a regular spin. And then, and I, of course I'm getting through, I threw my shoot, but the shoot, uh, it would, it didn't, it didn't be deployed. I looked down and I, okay, I got redeployed and then it comes up and wraps up in the wreckage. And so I'm going down in a high G being pulled by my arm, like a, just like, like a rag doll. And then sometimes it would, it would, it would settle to a, a normal spin. And I found out that if I held a piece of the parachute open, it would stay in a stable spin.
And, uh, then I remember going from blurry to blue, blurry, blue to blurry Brown. And then I, bam, I hit on a rock outcropping in a ravine. And I remember seeing pieces of the glider falling into the ravine. And I said, well, I'm probably done because usually hit on your chest like that. And I've, I've known guys. They hit on the chest and then also they pull the re or, um, you know, they, they pass out a little bit on their wife, their life for a little bit. And, but I, I was still okay. What hurt? Well, my arm was lacerated from the, from the, the parachute and, uh, and I got out of there, but, uh, then I, and it's like all kinds of brushes around me. And I, I, I finally get up and then all later on, here's a helicopter right here, shelter helicopter.
And I tell him I'm okay. Don't need anything. Goodbye. I'm thinking money, money, money, they're going to try to, you know, and then he said, and then he, he said, well, ask me to climb the ridge and, and he'll, uh, drop off his partner and give me a ride over. I said, okay. He said, yeah, I just told lifelike to head back. And there were like three agencies there that they, somebody saw this hang glider go down. And uh, that was the adventure, but there was a good thing out of it. I ended up getting a sponsorship for a new parachute. I got a sponsorship for a swivel and I got a sponsorship from an air deployment company. And I, I ended up, uh, when I, when I go out and do all these cross country clinics, I used to go around the country and that's, I ended up with eight sponsors and that helped pay for my gliding, flying gliding.
So
the takeaway is wreck more often.
Yeah. And, and that's without Facebook and internet,
that's amazing. Is that your only accident? If you had others, uh,
there's, there's been, I mean, I've been flipped upside down four times. And, um, when you lose control bar, it's, it's bad, but, um, I even got, oh, I got turned upside down a blossom and right in front of Susan was flying right next to me. And uh, I got turned upside down right above and, and I, and I was going parachute. And then I go like, oh, I still got the control bar. And so I, and the glider was like, almost like that, almost a good rate full and didn't fully tumble. But I remember stuff. Yeah. His, his hand is
basically straight down. Yeah. Well, there's more than vertical
fast. I remember it's a parachute, but oh, I still got the control bar. So I remember stuffing the bar and then flaring it, pushing out and then doing a hard turn. And she said, I missed the top of the hill by T by 10 feet. And uh, and then I'll, I was seeing this like stars cause I pulled so many Gs and uh, and then I ended up going, but I always, anytime I get in trouble, I get in trouble. Like that. I always fly back to where I just got in big trouble and go, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, like, you know, you didn't get me this guy you
deal with the fear injury.
Yeah. And then I went, I went and landed and they said they could hear me scream from the LZ down in the valley. And I, I did it. I don't remember screaming except, you know, that was about it, but that
I mean, screaming from kind of excitement, like, yeah, I got it. I did it. Or no. From the holy shit. Almost died. Uh,
when stuff like that goes by, you're just kind of like, huh? And anytime I've been tumbled four times and it messes up your, your turbulence tolerance, because every time that glider seems going to pick up or do something to you, you think, Oh, we're good. And it just kills it. And I've seen that happen for many pilots in competitions, they get, they get flipped upside down and they're, it takes them out off their edge where if they're doing aerobatics and they brush their glider. No problem. Right. Because it, it really messes their mind up. And I don't know how these paragliders, I mean, these are brave people, their, their wings collapsing all the time and they're going cross country and handling all that.
How do you handle it? Well, you know what I think wings have gotten better too. They don't, they don't, if you're flying them well, they don't collapse very much anymore. I mean, you're going to get little tip collapses, but, but, uh, you know, it just doesn't, it doesn't happen nearly as much as when I was learning. So either I've gotten better. Or the wings of the wings have changed, you know, when you're flying two liner, more high aspect wings, you really can't let them go. It's not good to let them go bite pretty hard. So it's, you know, you get better at keeping them open. Yeah. I've heard
that from lots of paragliding plans. Cause I tried it in, uh, 89, I was out fish flying the world meet. We had a blown out day and somebody had a paraglider and we, we, we played with it in the field. And I, then I flew it off the next morning off the top, you know, I think I did a reverse fly out. And then go out down the land and then, uh, then went up for the competition later on that. So you've
never, you've never transitioned over. You've stuck with HG though, all the way through,
I just, I was too busy having too much fun on my hang glider. And then I tried it again at Marshall guy, let me try his, his paraglider. I said, I tried this. I said, you know, you pull a ride to both left, you know, that's all there's nothing to it. It's easy. And there's a lot of early hang glider pods in the nineties. They got into it and they're like, and then, but they don't a lot of really good ones. They're smacked in because they're doing that downwind base leg thing. And all of a sudden the glider goes, and they're doing it close to the ground. So it just never got, and I thought, well, I'll just stick with the frame. That's why we call it a frame.
I like the frame you, you said in your email that you, you had a hiatus from, uh, I can't remember the years,
my, the, when I was, I was in the, on and off, I was on the world team about seven years. And, uh, uh, it was like late eighties at 86 through 94 is when I, uh, competed a lot. And that's when I did my best though. The people I flew against were 10, 15, sometimes 20 years younger than me. You know, I would, I would just like the old guy flying like I am today.
When you, when you, so you, so there wasn't really a hiatus that was, that was, that's what I did my best. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I got you. I fly
several needs. I'd win one or two a year, you know, something like that. Yeah. I always said, as I use phrase, like as being a musician, like when I went to New York, I thought it was going to be, I thought it was good. No, I was mediocre compared to people with talent. I learned that, you know, I'm better than most, but not good as some. Yeah. And, uh, that's that, that, that knows better than most were usually in Europe or Australia or Brazil, you know? And if you, you could, I mean like, why? Once I went to Australia, I, I, I won the day and, uh, and then, uh, then, then it went downhill for the rest of me.
Most people like crawling your way up. I was just sending down.
Butch, when you had that incident where you landed in the ravine, your gliders all broken up, you know, you threw your reserve, but it didn't sound like it really properly deployed. It sounded like you hit pretty hard. Uh, was it. Was it hard to come back from that? Were you pretty shaky after that? Or were you able to get right back on the horse?
You know, as I said, the, that when, for a while there, when you fly, every time the glider wants to like the backend wants to lift up, you think, Oh my God. And just, it just kills your flying. Um, one thing was it, it, I took one, one day to get the glider pieces up to a top of the ridge with some friends. Then the second day I went in and got the, we got, we got the glider out the next day. I thought I was breaking out in, um, poison Oak. So I went to the doctor with Susan and then they give me a blood test. And then, then he come back, says, Oh, you don't have poison Oak. You have shingles. And I said, shingles. How do you get shingles? They said, well, you know, a lot of stress or life-threatening situation. And Susan and I are just laughing. And it's funny how you internalize something like that, that, you know, you don't think it affects you, but it does.
Hmm. So. So you weren't even aware of it, but that's, yeah. It's funny how do we do this?
You internalized all that stress and fear and it came out and shingles, which is I've heard is no fun.
Yeah. So that's, that's the only stressful situation I can, I mean, there's been a lot of situations I've been in that, you know, you come out of and, you know, but it's, it's like cutting margins. How close, you know, if you keep cutting margin, cutting margin, cutting margin, you're going to get a new margin. The new margin becomes a new normal, but the new normal, I mean, that new, that margin is so thin. It doesn't, that's what happens to all these wingsuit people, you know, they, they, they do all these videos where they, they think takes to get that, they get that, that, uh, that, uh, uh, that one shot, but they're cutting the margin. Then all of a sudden one little hiccup. And so I backed a lot of that stuff down nowadays.
How old are you now? 77. 77. And you're, you fly most days. You were saying. I
fly whenever I can, um, uh, I mean, I'm retired. I, I, I got a 15 year younger wife and keep telling Susan, go to work. You gotta, you gotta pay for my toys. And that's basically what I, you know, and then Does
Susan fly? You've mentioned her a few times. She flew until she was about
57 and she quit when she says, you know, I can't fly enough to be safe. Yeah. Your best insurance is flying and we're not, and she'll, we got stuff to be done, but then all of a sudden I get lured away. Hey, it's time to go flying. You know, somebody said, Hey, we're going to go fly. I'm out of here. And she goes, well, how would you, what'd you get? How was your day? Which did you get any chores done? And, uh, that's it. No, but I went flying. She says, well, you do need to fly. I mean, so.
That's cool. Yeah. You got to have a supportive spouse. Do you mention instructing? Are you still instructing? No. I mean, God
stuff. I mean, I would, uh, have up to six. Then I used to have like six people and we'd have a class. We'll sit down and then we'd, I would take six people cross country and I, I would get them though from San Diego to Palm Springs. But even with any minute gliders, I mean, you can get them 25 miles. I mean, I had a guy had been flying like nine months and first day I worked on just teaching him how to thermal better. And the second day we got him 25 miles. So you know, that's, that's what I, I did. That's what I did well then. But I don't, I don't instruct now. I basically, you know, Oh, I drove for a while. I got a bunch of paraglider pilots a year ago, October. And I, I know I've been flying Owens. I knew all my owns, like the back of my hand, not as good as a local, but they were doing this naturally, you know, but those guys had a lot of stuff already figured out.
So I mean, I, I can't give much advice to the, to, uh, much pilots because they got it all figured out. They just, they just, they're all, I'm in a car with Butch rambling stories. Here that comes. It reminds me of different situations. Yeah. Well, back in the day, have
you, uh, did you have any mentors back then in your own flying that you've stayed in touch with over the years? Yeah.
Well, the guy, George Worthington, I mentioned who did who actually established the FAI records and stuff like that. Uh, he was a matter, but then he got taken out when he, he was trying to, uh, put together a meet where they did alter lights and he, his, his dream, cause he was a sailplane pilot and he wanted to have. An alter light that could take off from the ground, which there is now, it's called a Swift with electric motor and you can do yourself launching. That was his dream, but he was having running this contest and then, but, uh, the wing broke off his alter light and I lost him in 1983 and he was only 63. Uh, that was the main, but that's why I went to cops cause there were just so many good pilots and I, I, I couldn't believe it.
I mean, us pilots, they weren't that helpful. I go to Europe and then there was the world champion. I'm, I'm flying and it's meet. I said, I said, Hey, uh, what do you think about our task? I'd walk up to his, well, but I'm going to probably do this and this, and maybe we can do that. He'd tell me what they're going to do. They would, uh, and I, that's, that was good stuff. And then I don't know if comps do this anymore, but we, I used to impress anybody who wins the day has to debrief the whole crowd at the end. The next day and say, how'd you do it? What'd you do? Cause we all want to learn. And you know, I got lucky.
So
do you ever go through a real kind of distance chasing phase? You know, Larry Tudor and those guys, was that ever a thing? I
never got like, I want, I need to fly distance. I just want to do the best the day. I mean, in 87, we flew this meet off a place called Ord and they used to call competitions where you said, okay, it's an under, it's an unreachable goal. You fly along as far as long as lines you can go. And that's, that's how, cause they didn't have real normal scoring stuff. They didn't have, uh, uh, they did this, you just landed as far as you could go. That's what they were pushing on in 87 and, um, uh, it was 87, 86, 87 anyway. So they called independence. It's like, I don't know, 150, 160 miles away. And so we take off, we break airspace. We go over Georgia airfield base. We break that airspace. Then we go through, uh.
Edwards, uh, air force base. We break that space. We go through, uh, China lake. We break that airspace. And then we hit, we hit the, uh, uh, we get into Owens valley and we're flying up toward Lone Pine and, uh, Mo a lot of us landed at Opine, but this guy named Larry Tudor almost made independence, which is, you know, just crazy. And he wanted to meet, you know, he, he was doing like great stuff like that too, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I can easily be me most of the meets, but then I best, I best, I best at everybody at least once. Yeah. That's awesome. Awesome. You do enough mileage. You're going to get lucky.
Yeah. Yeah. That's true. You're gonna have your day. Isn't it? Yeah. Uh, what, this might be hard to articulate, but what has kept you so wrapped with flying all these years, 51 years of flying, what's, what's the thing that keeps you going out to the hill?
Well, I hear it from other people, but it, you, you're totally alive when you're, when you're flying. Um, when I used to have some higher stress jobs, the one day I went flying, I didn't think about anything else. And it was, it was, it was a respite. And uh, I mean, I mean, I asked, I, the most people I ever talked to was 60 people in one of these clinics and that was in golden Colorado. And I always start, start my talk out. Yeah. How many of you had flying dreams before you got into flying? Everybody raised their hand except maybe one person out of the 60. How about you? Did you ever, do you ever fly flying before you got into flying?
Oh yeah, definitely.
That's what we live for. And I can remember the flying dreams I had when I was seven years old. The day I tried a hang glider, I go, this is it. And I had tried a cell plane. I tried flying an airplane and I didn't try a helicopter until later in life. And I go. This is it. This is my flying dream. This is as close as I've got. And that was before we could go cross country. So you're, you're playing with the forces of nature that gets you into the air and then you can go over the horizon. And uh, I mean, that's wondrous. It's it, it's that we live this time of, of, of, of, of this, of this time, this presence that we can carry something with us on our.
Either on our back or our car and it transports us where we're sailing three, we're three-dimensional sailors. That's what we are. That's, that's, that's wonderful. Don't you think?
Yes, very much so. Yeah, man. I'm, I'm curious your, your partner, uh, is it Sandy, your, your, your wife, what was her name? Susan. Yeah. Susan. Um, when she, I'm sure she thought about it the same way when she stopped flying, what was that like for her? What was that like watching her go through that?
Well, you can, you can take the girl out of flying, but you can't take the flying out of the girl. Yeah. Since then she flown cell planes. She went float a motorized track and even thermal then she, and then, and she'll go out with me when I went. Oh, so she's still flying. She's just not flying. Yeah,
I did. But, but
she just says, she says, I, I don't fly enough to do to, uh, she's an excellent lander, but she's not, she, she's flying. Her glider was just way too big for it. She was always having problems that take off with it. And, uh, she's a, eh. Yeah. I, I, there's a lot of things I still want to do and I'm getting older and I don't, if I get hurt, I want, I can't do them. So right now, until I get time, you know, cause she, she re she retired from teaching last year, but now she's working for a private school. So, uh, you know, she just loves to fly. I mean, I, I, I met her on the, on the, on the training hill. I mean, uh, at, uh, horse Canyon. And I, I don't remember meeting her. She said she came and talked to me, but I remember running into her. We were in Mexico city.
I mean, not Mexico city, but in, in Mexico, they were flying or flying in and, uh, and then like the fourth time I met her, that's when we had a conversation and, uh, she was a person that's just a like mind, except she's way smarter than I am.
You do you, I have, I have people that reach out from time to time who've been in the sport as you have, you know, for a long time. And it's something I started thinking about as well. You know, I'm 52. You do start thinking about, uh, life. I mean, you have the longevity and the sport, but also durability, endurance, you know, the hard landings are easier to take when you're 20, you know, uh, we can walk away from stuff easier when we're more resilient, I guess. Uh, have you changed how you fly because of your age? Does that alter your approach? Yeah,
what what's happened is I still fly it. Topless. I can fly it. Well, I can take it off. but landings are really hard because it was topless you're screaming in and i had to go through this transition of trying to i'm still having problems landing it's like 50 of my landings are but uh but a lot of them are like you auger in and as you get older you can't handle the speed you don't react as fast and i mean you got some wind sure you'll get away with it but uh i've had to really kind of kind of back off i used to i had this range i could have had or 180 degrees of of skill task now i'm down to like a 30 degree range i i don't take 45 degree and more takeoffs cross winds i i always keep so i've i've i've reeled everything back so i can still keep doing it then i also bought a single service glider so i can fly more and it's something that's slow as a paraglider flies as slow as a paraglider so i'm on time well maybe i can get a glider i can fly with these guys but i still don't have the sync rate but i have i'm flying with the same glide ratio and it in a way it sucks because i'm used to flying it between 10 to 1 to 15 to 1 i mean my glider my top is glider at 48 miles an hour it'll get a 10 to 1
and and then i you did uh but when i'm flying this the single surface i'm flying at 30 miles an hour and it's saying four to one five to one three to one i talk this guy named rob he does all our weather i go god this this sucks flying at this speed he says well now you know what we deal with but he still goes far
except he's sitting on a couch you know going down with his feet out in front of it i'm i'm i'm proud out so yeah i've i've reeled everything
back so i'm flying with this single service glider
that's that's what i have to do but okay i have to fly because that that'll that'll keep me safer
yeah currency is is important isn't it yeah so and then when was the last time i still do
push-ups that's the only thing i i do and then you know just do some walks i had to quit running because i had a back i used to carry my glider up blossom and that's uh that's an 82 pound glider oh yeah then i end up buying yeah then i bought an then i bought an exterra which you can take it uh then it'll get it up uh uh blah just like i don't know how far that is but the paragliders were walking all the time but i was carrying the glider up yeah
what was the last comp you did
um kind of like some one-day comps uh i flew one in silmar that didn't do too well but i had won three comps there before
um when i got oh susan bought me a new glider a 2011 glider one time and i had to have air time so friends were coming down it was a little one-day comp running back and forth doing uh pylons and i said okay i'll go i'll just go fly it for uh to just to get some air time and went out there and they said hey well you don't have the right kind of vario it doesn't ping these cylinders i go oh okay i'll just fly the fly the meat anyway don't worry about it they said oh we'll give you a vario that does it well i won the meat in fact i was the only one to complete the task and and i hadn't been up i hadn't flown up there for like 10-15 years and nobody knew who i was and i was the only one who i mean i didn't knew that i used to fly there how much or anything like that but before uh i remember i'm doing the last turn point i said susan i'm coming in about about five miles out and she goes are you still in the air you won everybody landed i said uh okay but i was and then they looked at my track and i was way down in ravines and stuff like that but i was having fun it was the stuff i used to do anyway and uh they were used to racing it was it was
super marginal conditions and i'm really good at scratching for a hang glider what
not compared to a paratrooper
but for angles where
do you think you got that skill from that was that from those early days of worthington
george worthington i was about ready to go
down yeah
you did i
think we've we've learned over the decades that the british are are really good at scrap you know when especially when comps are really light because they take off these tiny hills and they got to survive and really light conditions you know it's the opposite of the owens and they're they're but man that's a good skill when you can just survive oh
yeah i was sponsored by uh a british of uh a british company on a hang glider and i i hung out with the british team and and uh i said i gotta do this well we we have the the english way of uh flying i go what's that if it's 100 up turn if you got zero up turn
100 about 100 down think about it you might need a turn because 100 down is is not uh you know at least you got something pushing up it's something and and and i i always remember that i mean they they're just good scratchers yeah
yeah they they hang with it they're very very patient and that could be yeah they're
flying in dreary conditions a lot of times that's
it and
they're they're weaving into all these i mean the the brits are nazis about all these air uh you know these these air spaces they can't go into they can't do that can't do this i don't know i mean that that that's a lot of basket weaving
yeah that's right i mean i think they just they get good at flying slow which is an important skill sometimes uh butch if you could rewind the clock i get this question i didn't answer ask this for years i used to ask this all the time but lately i've been bringing it back because we just had chuck smith on the show wanted to ask him this one and i'll ask it with you if you could rewind the clock to your 50 year self so somewhere in those 73 74 75 i guess it would have taken quite a while to get 50 hours when you're taking two three minute sled rides back then all the time but if you could rewind to that that version of yourself and uh you know come down out of the sky and say hey butch uh i got some advice for you what would you say you
mean the advice for myself yeah
knowing everything you know now you know so your 77 year old self gets to go back to your whatever it was 26 27 28 year old self and say hey i got some advice for you what would you say
oh that's like anything just do what you love and and don't let don't don't don't let life get in your way go do the things you love to do you just i mean we we get drawn into there's so many paths to go on and in life i mean there's a you know you got family and and friends and relationships and stuff like that i mean i i that's a track i took when i ran into susan then i found somebody who was in tune with the way i thought and she flew if she didn't fly i wouldn't have married her anyway i was 43 when i married i didn't i didn't i wasn't going to get married so i followed that i mean
and we never had kids because we're all the same tune we're too self-centered selfish and non-nurturing even though she teaches school so we were just like we want to go play and if you're that kind of person i meet them all the time uh that's what the paraglider guys they're they're always going down to columbia they're doing this they're flying uh in in the italian alps uh what do they call it there what's that one place it's a great uh great place i want to go there but you know it's just i got my advice and then i just continue it just do the things you love and now i i mean and you get married yeah you sure you know you did you end up being part but marry somebody who or get get with somebody who loves what you love it i mean we're all hot when we're young but it's have somebody that has a lot of things in common and i mean i
remember one time i was out at tory pines and this guy said this talking suit says oh butch is so lucky he's not that you married him she goes why is that well he can talk tell you talk about a flight and your eyes don't glaze over but find somebody that your their eyes don't glaze over when you talk to him about what you love oh
man you're not making me feel very good about my relationship
i i took took her for a tandem and about two minutes into it she's looking back going okay so what are we doing on friday yeah you're not that into this are you oh no yeah no i'm not that i broke
a girlfriend's uh arm on the training hill like god i love this so much everybody should do it no i even got my mother to fly a hang glider i put her on a training hill she ran down the hill launched the thing landed flared stopped the glider and i'm running down after i said i said how was it she goes i said you want to do it again no and
she was 57 years old she was not athletic person
yeah that's
pretty funny yeah
that you know gravitate toward the people who love what you love that's that's that's that's a uh that's a definition of happiness instead of a tug war tug of war
yeah tug of wars are not uh not fun and
i've trained so many drivers i would get a girlfriend and i would just groom her i would have these i would have i was trainer and how to we started on easy roads to drive and to retrieve retrieve retrieve and then we'd end up i just work our way through up and then they end up a couple of men of really good uh owens valley drivers that that was the test that was the ultimate uh place to uh you know they were using cb radios and later on two meters but i i would i would groom girlfriends to to drive
i bet you ripped through a few girlfriends doing that though what's that i bet i bet a lot of them didn't make it too far uh
yeah i stopped i even kind of backed that driving isn't for everybody but
i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure
yeah i backed down hang like this for a while a couple years i'd only fly a little bit and i said well maybe you know i'm going through too many relationships and i i you know i was doing all the ground things playing tennis taking dance lessons doing stuff with her friends and all that stuff it was okay i'm a social guy i'm a really gabby guy but uh but then uh then she goes ah this isn't working i said great i went bought a glider and flew a cop love
it love it butch i appreciate it man thanks for your your time i'd love to keep chatting here but uh i've got a role but uh i really appreciate sitting down with you and look forward to flying with you i'm hoping to get out there in late february earlier march and uh i'd love to fly with you in your your home site you can show me around yep
yep whatever you do you may not be right but do it with enthusiasm i love
it perfect place to end enthusiasm love it thanks buddy all right appreciate talking to you cheers man if
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