Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Got a few things of housekeeping and just news before we dive into today's show with Paris Williams, which I really, really loved. Before we get to that, just a couple things. First is Jake Holland, who I had on the show quite a while back. He's been doing these incredible combo flying and summit assaults all over the Alps, but also in Pakistan. Done some pretty neat things with Antoine Girard and Aaron Durogati. And on the show, back when we recorded it, he mentioned his film that was just getting going in the festivals, The Magic of Freedom. And this documents their journeys over in Pakistan.
You probably saw the highlight of it in Russia. Country Magazine's newsletter this week. But it is out. Go to YouTube. Just Google Magic of Freedom, Jake Holland, and you can check it out. It shows in descriptive detail how they're doing that, getting rid of these heinous, you know, multi-day walk-ins to climb big peaks. And just flying out of Karimabad and putting on their skis in the air and landing up tall and banging it out and getting back for dinner. So, pretty neat. Pretty cool use of our wings and really pushing the sport in an awesome direction. So, check that out. The next thing I want to talk about was just subscribers.
One, really want to thank you all. Just realized recently we're closing in on almost 3 million downloads since we started this madness, this mayhem, back in 2014. So, we're 250 shows in and a whole bunch of bonus content. And I love every second of it. It's a lot of work and there's a lot of cost behind the scenes. And so, for those of you who subscribe and support the show in whatever way you can, also just through buying stuff on the website, through books or swag or XT Tracer videos, whatever, I just really appreciate you. Usually, I say this stuff at the end of every show. You've probably heard that a bunch of times, but I wanted to put it out here.
It's been an amazing journey and we can't do it without you. It will remain ad-free. You get asked all the time to put ads in the front of these shows, as you hear on most podcasts. I can't stand those myself. I think that's one of the main things that's wrong with our digital world. So, you're never going to hear any ads and it will always be free forever. And that's if you can support it or not. If you can support it. I really appreciate it. All we've ever asked for is a buck a show and the best way to do that is if you go to our website, CloudBasedMayhem.com, you'll find the links to Patreon. That's the best way in terms of fees. You can also support it directly through the show or, sorry, through the website and you can just set it and forget it.
But through Patreon, you get a discount if you just support it for a year. It's way less than a magazine subscription and hopefully worth a lot more. Thank you. Many of you still are sending $1 or $2 or $3 per show through PayPal and we've changed that on the website because the fees, especially if you're just giving $1 a show, which is great, that's all we ask for, PayPal gets $0.52 of that and we get $0.48. So, you're paying them more than you are the show, assuming that's not what you want to do. I've reached out to all of you who are doing it still that way individually, but those emails are probably PayPal emails. We're just not seeing them. So, if you do support the show, if you can change your subscription, if you do it at the lower amounts, which is totally fine, that's great, but do it through Patreon or through the new setup on the website.
So, you can cancel your current subscription, resubscribe, and it just bills way less frequently, so there's a lot less fees. Or through Patreon, it's way less fees. So, either one of those two platforms is great. But just change it. So, you're not... I'm sending literally a buck every two weeks because PayPal gets more than we do. Those of you who can't support the show and want access to the bonus content, all you got to do is send me an email. No questions asked. I'll set you up with a lifetime account and maybe someday you can. But just let me know. We don't put out enough bonus content, but there's quite a bit there and I will promise to do more. In fact, we are going to have an Ask Me Anything episode coming up shortly. So, if you've got any questions for me...
Or anybody you've had on the show you've listened to, just shoot me an email and I'll put that in the next Ask Me Anything show. Again, thank you. It's been a wild ride. Really appreciate it and your support does make it possible. I appreciate it in any way you can do it. Even just telling your friends to listen. My guest today is Paris Williams. Paris was described to me by our mutual friend, Lisa Rosella, as a renaissance man, which we get into a bit on the show. I think you'll get why as we get into it. He and I are the same age. He's been flying hang gliders his entire life. So, that gives you an idea for how long, a long time. In the show, we explore the multifaceted nature of flying and its psychological implications.
We really hit the psychological side of things heavy and mental health side of this because Paris is a psychologist and he had a pretty dark childhood. And... He struggled with his own mental health and found real solace in the skies and turned that into psychology and tries to bring that kind of solace to his patients. But he's had a lot of success in competing and talks about how to find flow and the balance between competition and enjoyment and the need to reconnect with the joy of flying. We explore the inner... Intricate balance between striving for success and enjoying the journey in flying and how letting go of the desire for achievement often leads to better performance.
I really latched on to this. I've seen this a lot in competitions and we talk about that a lot. But sometimes the more you want, the less you get. If you just let it go and enjoy the process, the results come. We delve into the intricacies and emotional risks pursuing records and the personal growth that... We delve into the intricacies and emotional risks pursuing records and the personal growth that... flying one's own passion we discussed the impact of personal struggles on professional life particularly in the context of mental health and grief and while we got into this i couldn't help but ask paris for some advice on my own grief you heard about the accident my very good friend terry o 'connor had in the mountains about a year ago in an avalanche and that's been a real struggle for me so i asked him what i could be doing to help that healing and so he talks about that navigating grief and trauma and letting the natural healing process happen i got a ton out of this and he's in paris is really articulate and fascinating there's a real profound joy and love for the sport it's just an endlessly fascinating individual
i think you will enjoy it thanks everybody enjoy the show cheers paris
as usual this has taken a long time to uh coordinate i say that with all of my guests but thanks for hanging with me thanks for having your patience and thanks for coming on the show it's good to good to see you here thanks for having me kevin so lisa brazella a good friend of both of ours she often does the weather for our comps that i run down in your utah on your neck of the wood she called you the renaissance man what does that mean
uh yeah well i've i've had lots and lots of different interests and passions in my life i assume that's what she's talking about so both of the recreational realms and also in the academic realms and yeah lots of lots of different areas okay you're a
you're a teacher in academics or what do you do in academics so
i'm i have a phd in psychology and i'm uh so i'm actually working as a psychologist but i most of my work is teaching so i do i actually i do see some clients um and i work some families and couples and individuals but most of the work i do is supervising other health professionals and running trauma training so i run trainings well i actually have two different kinds of trainings one is trauma so teaching people how to work with trauma post-traumatic stress disorder that kind of thing other professionals and then ecotherapy which is about using the outdoors therapeutically oh wow so those are kind of as my livelihood and that has been my livelihood for uh i got licensed about oh 13 13 14 years ago so i've been kind of in that in this field for about 20 years
okay so very general question um what what's wrong with us as pilots
i'm still trying to figure out why do we pursue this sport
still trying to figure that one out i don't know no easy answer huh no easy answer but uh i i think there's some there's some commonalities obviously most of us love the outdoors no doubt um i think i mean speaking for myself i know i got into one of the things got me into flying was i had a pretty rough childhood and and was very jealous of the birds i just remember growing up as a kid and looking at the red tails and the vultures circling overhead and just longing to join them um and then i made that a reality and and so i know in a way in some ways i'm not alone i mean certainly i don't know what the percentage is but certainly some of us to get in the sport there's there's a desire to leave the ground in that way but uh yeah i don't want to generalize too much because
we are a weird bunch i mean yeah very truly you know you we were talking before we started recording you've done a lot of competition flying and just recently um again but so we'll get into that but it's you know we we always talk about when we're at competition that you know what a group of kooks pretty wide-ranging group a
lot of engineers yeah a real white real eccentric bunch for sure and lots of engineers yeah and lots of diversity no doubt sure and uh people i mean generally i think what you find are people who just really love to celebrate life like you know they're willing to risk their complicated lives to celebrate life right to really deeply and fully enjoy this thing we call it life and and uh you know and soaring over the mountains and circling up into high into the sky and you know so there's that's the commonality i would say is that just that deep love of the natural world and and stimulation of really pushing ourself to the limits in these ways how long have you been doing it i
did my first flight at age 14 so i'm 52 now so does that make it yeah okay so if i do the math 38 years ago um that was just off of training hill my my mom had a boyfriend uh long story but i i was i wasn't raised by my mom but i was visiting her and she had a boyfriend who had bought a an old standard like from a garage sale and we went out to the none of us knew what we were doing i was 14 and he was i think 25 and we just did a bunch of flights off this hill i don't even think we knew about the wind direction and all of that and i managed somehow i managed to fly like a dozen times before i sprayed my ankle really badly and that was 14 but then i didn't really get into it until i was uh 17 and so 17 teaching at 18 um so that was all northern california okay so
you were where the birth of it was let me do some math here real quick 38 years yeah
i mean so it was it was work but real new yeah
it's kind of just sort of been like 90 or no 86 yeah 1986 that's right they're just starting to get out of the really scary dangerous hang gliders at this point although the one i was you know in that example i just gave that was that was a scary dangerous hang glider but they're starting to get a lot safer at that point um they were having you know getting um things like luff lines and tip stabilizers basically the original hang gliders
and then you would end up in a vertical dive and you couldn't get out of it it's called luff dive quite a few people died that way so at this point by the mid 80s they had to actually solve that for the most part that problem so it was getting quite a bit safer and
you you started instructing pretty quick you just said in four years when you were 18 you started instructing yeah
so it was actually well now there's that one day at age 14 and then i didn't didn't fly at all i started taking lessons at 17 up in mount shasta so northern california and i was super passionate and got my intermediate rating and went down to monterey area and uh started teaching so i was 18 now so i started basically they have sand dunes there so just you know taking people off the sand dunes and then a year later ended up in uh kittyeye kites in north carolina doing tandems so i ended up doing lots and lots of tandem flying for them and carried on doing teaching for lots of different schools over the years and then it's had my own school in salt lake started my very first school that i owned um with colleague tom webster we started in salt lake city in 94.
i'm pretty sure point point of the mountain that's right yeah sky's edge hang gliding we weren't very successful we had a hard time marketing it was before the internet and you know yeah yeah we got a few students through anyway huh and
this whole time were you in this period of life was this life flying or were you still pretty heavy involved in academics in your career no
this was all hang so my whole career was flying up until it was kind of uh it turned about in my early 30s that i made a kind of radical shift into something different but up until my early 30s i just lived ate breathed flying that's pretty much yeah that was my whole passion and traveling favorite traveling but i i had um a lot of time with my professor at the club there was a famous author richard bock who wrote stories about traveling around with his biplane taking people for rides and so i was really inspired so i actually did that for a number of years i got a van i got my tandem and glider and i went you know telluride at aspen and i went to mexico and central america and i was just taking people hang gliding and i did that for off and on for a number of years kind of through my kind of early mid-20s um and just did lots of work for almost every major school in the country
one point or another and um and also worked for a couple of different manufacturers i worked for altair um john heine and altair here in salt lake city in the late night mid late 90s um you know one of the they had the predator hang glider which was uh at the time it was the best going king post glider at the time and then and then the topless gliders showed up and then the predators couldn't quite you know with that king post couldn't quite keep up and then they ended up for a few reasons but they ended up going out of business early 2000 i
just had i had john on the show not too long ago and i was out at his uh his holy god his shop uh in uh near elsinore and i mean he's he must have 50 hang gliders in that thing it was impressive yeah all his machine equipment and machine shop stuff it was very cool yeah
he's very inspiring definitely one of my mentors i was in my in those early days the night mid early 90s i was just all about aerobatics i wasn't really into it you know competitively at that point i just i just loved going as fast as i could and getting upside down as much as i possibly could so and i was just um used the point of the mountain was great for that so i spent lots of time at the point of the mountain and elsewhere and john was as i think probably many of your listeners know very a well-known um aerobatic pilot and so he he helped me a lot and i ended up um actually in 98 i ended up winning the tell you right aerobatic world championships i kind of i dabbled in competition for that year but then i ended up getting into it lasted that year really then i got into cross country racing after that
so your first passion with flying was was aerobatics was aerobatic
yeah so i wasn't doing any real cross country i mean i you know i enjoy thermaling and stuff but yeah i just it was for me it was all about the thrill of combination of you know the thrill of racing and and getting upside down but also the sense of mastery of you know just try you know trying more and more advanced maneuvers and i even kind of developed a couple maneuvers myself almost killed myself in that process of doing that but um yeah so it was quite there was quite a shift for me i don't know maybe it's just getting older and recognizing my mortality i'm not sure something happened and i and i was it those close calls maybe i did have a few close calls yeah absolutely absolutely um i mean one of the things i enjoyed so speaking as a psychologist i was you know going back i had a lot i had a pretty rough childhood a lot of a lot of really difficult things happened and i was pretty depressed really in hindsight i was pretty depressed in my 20s and the one time that i wasn't depressed was when i was in the sky and um but it almost became like an addiction for me it's like i had to i had to be on the edge of death to almost like pull myself out of that depression and feel you know the excitement and the rush would keep me feeling kind of high and feeling good and so i definitely got into this thing where i was pushing myself like i i wanted to you know what was it like to come out of a loop at 10 feet or at two feet or you know like just just getting crazier and crazier basically and uh it's not i had a couple times that were pretty close i never i never did pile in but i certainly had a couple of pretty close calls and i had a lot of people complaining a lot of other pilots telling me i had to stop i was going to kill myself and you're going to jeopardize the site and so it's a bit of a yeah it's a bit of a rebel that way and um i actually had a dream it's interesting so it's kind of i was i wasn't making friends people had a lot of people upset with me and my behavior around the way i was flying and i had a dream where i was watching myself do this kind of crazy stuff you know at the point of the mountain and and i was it was just like i was terrified watching myself i'm like what are you doing you're going to kill yourself and somehow i just i kind of woke up i was like yeah i actually i am going to kill myself like i could tell you know by pushing myself harder eventually i'm going to find my limit right and it's going to probably be death or being seriously mean and so that it did shift something really shifted for me and i kind of stepped out of the addiction to the adrenaline and
you know started enjoying other aspects i still kept doing aerobatics but it wasn't about it was no longer about scaring myself and trying to keep that adrenaline rush going it became more about just mastery like just style style and mastery and i kind of got out of having to do just really crazy stuff like i like i had for a few years and which is great i don't think i would survive much longer and i'd decide if i carried that attitude going god nice time to have a dream i know i think
there's a lot of people listening well why didn't i get to have that dream
yes i'm just stepping outside of myself and seeing myself and just seeing the the madness of what i was actually doing was yeah so that was that was that was important and that was a shift and then it ultimately led me to focusing more on the kind of mastery of of you know mastering you know the spins and rollovers and climb overs and laying overs and loops all the different maneuvers we do and hang and in the hang glider um and then that yeah that just felt a lot more wholesome i don't
have any knowledge or background of psychology other than what i took in a community school at some point uh you know i was ski racing so school was quite unorthodox for me and uh but so anyway that that's that's all i have as a background but this isn't a show about mental health but it does seem like mental health is a is a subject that comes up quite a bit in this sport and you know we we use the analogies of when you're high you're high when you're low you're low uh all the time but i we certainly see a lot of people in the sport struggling with with mental health and depression and anxiety these kind of things you mentioned it how did you come
out of the hard difficult childhood uh and move on or were you able to move on from the escapism of the sport to better mental health yeah
it's interesting it was kind of a double-edged sword the sport on one hand i totally attribute the sport to to pulling me out of like a really dark hole that i was in in many ways like it really gave me i think if i didn't get in the hang glider you know what i mean i would have been i would have gotten into you know drug addiction most likely you know i was i was kind of heading a little bit down that path you know drinking too much and and dabbling in some some other substances or a bit too much and um and flying gave me a way to you know have some light some brightness some joy without having to poison myself you know drugs alcohol so that was on one hand that was i think really really great i really appreciate that and it also gave me a way with the natural world you know just generally having that getting outside and connecting with my own body and that kind of sense of you know mind over matter you know that mastery that self discipline that goes with that so all those factors were huge like i think they really i probably saved my life i mean in many ways i mean i would have become an addict or
who knows i might have even got you know i was suicidal at times um and so i definitely attribute that and i see that in my own work now like for people who are in a really dark hole if you can find a way to connect them to the outdoors it finds it doesn't have to be flying but you know something that they're passionate about that's also outside there's just something naturally healing about getting outside and getting under the sun and the wind and connecting with our fellow earthlings and connecting with your own body and and you know mastering your own body and and you're pushing your limits in a healthy way all these things are just so good for mental health i think um and then but ultimately it was like a stepping stone and and and then it was a bit it kind of it you might say in my life it was a bit like kicking the can down the field like it definitely helped a lot but there was still stuff from my past it wasn't really properly resolved
and i ended up getting into mindfulness meditation in my late 20s somebody's you know i was kind of bummed i was in this state a little bit depressed and somebody said why don't you try this 10-day mindfulness meditation retreat i don't know sitting there for 10 days looking at your breath i mean i just couldn't i didn't really get it but but i did it and it really like all that so much of that stuff i was holding actually came out like i could feel it sort of coming coming out and actually i came i felt so much better and it was quite interesting if you look at it in the context of my hangline career i was just starting to get into kind of cross country racing it's my late 20s and i was as most of us do who get into cross country racing you're often rest you know you're like your own worst enemy you know you wrestling with our own you know ego oh i gotta win we get you know or oh no i'm getting low i'm gonna bomb out i'm gonna look like a real ass or you know we we get totally caught up in all of this and it's easy to do and um and that takes us away it takes us out of the moment right in order to fly really well you want to be super present you know you want to be able to see you know the birds circling and the clouds forming and the different you know be able to keep track of the different wind layers and lift layers etc etc um and the more you're you know you're obsessed with that trophy or you know not bombing out you know whatever you get into all the emotional
or you might have a lot of fun with it but it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's egotistical sort of aspect of it it takes us out of that and so i did this i did this retreat and it was like this kind of real life-changing experience on the psychological level but then when i went back to competition what two things happened i was more present i just seemed to not like i just wasn't as obsessed with all that kind of more ego stuff it was just i was just kind of able to just enjoy the flying more i was more present and so i didn't in some ways had less of the eye of the tiger like i didn't have to win i could just go and enjoy myself but just be present do my best and i suddenly started doing so much better like i said i like quickly i actually won the u.s nationals like not long after that and won quite a few more over the next few years and yeah so that was kind of it ended up being a personal healing on one level and on the other level it actually really um accelerated my own uh flying abilities yeah and then i'll just say one more thing that's i learned about the chicago bulls i
and how actually yeah and the coach brought mindfulness practice into the team and that played a huge role in their sudden acceleration you know to excellence you might say so yeah so becoming more present being able to work with my own emotions more skillfully was like a huge contributor to you know actually flying much better interesting would
you would you say that you were just able to find and stay in flow state better absolutely yeah
training yeah because that's basically what mindfulness training is it's really just about presence like every you know when you do something like that you realize your mind is the natural mind is actually really quite wild like it doesn't like to be present it's jumping thinking about the past future here there it's all over the place right and a few moments presence and then it's off again and when you do that training it's like going to the gym for your mind you actually get you you definitely get better at being able to just be more present and more at peace with what you know you're not so obsessed with worrying about doing you know like striving after winning or worrying about losing you know that stuff just becomes weaker and you can just be more present um and so yeah so there's their muscles basically you can you can cultivate those capacities with with that kind of practice and then and then it it definitely bleeds over into you know and to so if you're if your aspiration is to excel and find whether it's competition or going you know maybe going for personal bests or whatever it might be the more you can be present and tame your own you know your wild mind and your own emotions then certainly you're going to do better how
did you transition from the silent retreat you got that out of it how did that manifest in your flying was it automatic because you just done this and then you realized oh wait or or were you just doing this and then you realized you literally bringing something were you using mantras or did you right yeah
it was uh it was was kind of automatic it was a little almost even a little surprising it's like oh i'm actually flying a lot better like well you know it was kind of then it was clear why um so part of it was automatic in that way it was again it was like imagine going to the gym and getting certain strengths and then you go and you do a sport that you've been doing a while but suddenly you find it's easier because you're actually stronger now it was like that it was like that it was like that it was like that it was like oh this is actually a lot easier now because my mind is stronger in certain ways um and also i had the skill so in the methods i did it wasn't mantras it was just really putting your attention on your breath or your whenever your mind starts to get a little bit wild you just bring it back to like your breath or sensations in your body and that use as a kind of an anchor to keep bringing yourself back to the present so when you start for example and so i was doing that intentionally like let's you know i'm flying and as you do you're doing a race and you get low it happens and you start to feel like you're doing a race and you get low and you get thinking oh shit you know i'm gonna i'm gonna bomb out here and then it's easy to start obsessing and worrying about that and then and then that actually creates a self-fulfilling prophecy now you're so worried about that you actually land and it's just like nope back to my breath and just and then back to i just need to be present you know forget about all that yeah i've still got 500 feet you know look around there's something there's something here you know what is there what's the wind doing is there some little three-dimensional feature that i could look for maybe there's a little bird you know so as you get lower the birds become more apparent and so the more you're able to stay present the more you're able to notice all that stuff and and so i would do that intentionally like just keep using my breath as a kind of anchor whenever my mind starts to drift and get a little bit wild my
my nemesis is the last 10 of the race i started to get a better handle on this but if i start thinking i'm in position i'm going to win this one that's that's the death of me exactly
as soon as i
start thinking you know oh it's time to break i've got these guys oh
man that's because now you're now you start you're imagining the podium you're imagining you know you're not i've got the
score i've got the score start thinking about the next day i just want more of this and i've got this one you know and
now you're not present that's not present that's right so that's so those are the extremes where you where we get lost either you know you're doing worse than you hope for you're getting lower and then you start oh no i'm going to get lower and i'm going to blow it i'm going to look like a fool i'm going to have this terrible score blah blah blah or you're doing really good you know and you're like oh this is great i'm going to be the hero of the day blah blah you know either either extreme is going to take you out of the present and and gonna and gonna hurt you right you're gonna end up it's yeah it seems like to me zero
expectation is the death of good flying it seems like you know you know last year at the monarca i've been going to the monarca for a long time and i'd gotten close and close and close and really the year before i just gave it away same exact i mean i was so in position and just gave it away so last year finally won it you know and just had the monitors i've gotten some help from Cody Mittanck you he lives down with by you it was there at the point and we've done some work together and it was just it was beautiful i didn't even need to fly the last day i got it so of course this year i went down i gotta defend my title that was what was in my head and that's just the worst i yeah worst comp i mean it was all awful it was fun it was a wonderful week as it always is in va but
holy cow you know i couldn't get out of my own way
racing racing yourself to the ground that kind of thing
oh god just dumb you're just constantly going i'm smarter you didn't no discipline you know just not only am i gonna win i'm gonna crush and i didn't do either that's
right and every every moment you're you're thinking about the future about when you're not thinking about the present right that's right you're not you're not yeah yeah so that's yeah that's totally i mean that's i attribute that more than anything to you know succeeding just really being present
were there as you know as the years went by and you you stacked up some some nice success it sounds like a number of u.s nationals wins and world team uh memberships that kind of thing were there i'm sure there was but was there times that it was would slip did you do you have a kind of a secret sauce to coming back to that kind of performance i've
definitely you've definitely had some slips yeah um got a lot better but it was basically falling back into those habitual patterns of you know losing presence of letting my mind get wild getting fixated on the achievement rather than the you know present and so kind of catching so i could come out of that a lot faster so i didn't you know the early days i i had a lot more
yeah a lot more where you you know you get in that death spiral you do bad and then you feel like crap and then you do worse you know and then you race yourself to the ground that whole i think you probably know that death spiral most competition pilots know that you see i'm nodding my head yeah that's right and uh and so but it was i was able to recognize getting sucked into that death spiral and how it just pulls you more and more of the present moment right and you just end up all emotional right you're just like uh this longing and this fear of failing and this longing for you know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know success and and i was able to catch myself okay back to your breath just what's happening right now that's all that matters you know this moment all i have to do is just be here at this moment fly the sky forget about everything else so i got a lot better at being able to do that
yeah not perfect no doubt that we had my bad days we're
talking about an interesting conundrum it is a subject that comes up a lot on the show we're humans and we've created things like x contests and races and race to goal and these are all performance-based achievement right it's longer better bigger uh when it comes to proximity flight closer you know the speed flying and in wingsuits you know it's not really that fun and the closest person to killing themselves right who's having the most fun right uh but these are not to my mind very sustainable ways to enjoy this sport you know you it was interesting because you talked about you know kind of the beginning of the of your career was just this passion for the for flying and then you know but you had these mental health struggles uh and then you go to racing which to me is god if you're having trouble with mental health and that could really destroy it i mean god there's nothing worse than just pulverizing yourself at comps you know and we're really talking about the ego aren't we but yeah it's it's quite quite interesting that you know nothing i'm saying is going to be a shock to anybody listening we all struggle with this is that uh you know in the wouldn't it be great if the sport could just be like it is that first time forever you know the first we all remember our first flight it was just remarkable and we didn't do anything which don't uh
but it really does become a you know you're kicking your helmet if you haven't gone more than 200k you know you know what i mean it just becomes this weird can't
can't get no satisfaction right yeah
exactly just you know our desire for more is in everything i mean yeah driving a car i mean just life it's interesting how we're geared as as humans yeah
absolutely and and kind of looking at my own life that it was interesting how that those two coincided the the settling the reducing of that you know that striving that you're describing the striving for more and more and better as that got less i ironically started doing better and so and yeah i definitely noticed that inverse correlation between those two like the harder i really got to win this i got to defend my title with the more the stronger that is guaranteed the worst i'm gonna do i almost guaranteed and the more i'm like hey you know this is great i'm with my you know i'm with my flying mates here and we got this amazing weather and you know we're just crossing over this beautiful territory the better i do like you know it's like so kind of letting that go and just um so yeah in a way that i think that attempts but on one hand there's the conundrum because it's the striving which pulls you to do it in the first place right so there's there's a balance there's a balance there um yeah right we
we wouldn't even go compete if we if we had if we had this totally figured out we just wouldn't give a that's
right like hey i'm totally i am like an enlightened monk here i don't know i don't need to compete i don't need any glorification i don't you know i don't need to prove anything to myself or anyone else right but i think like for me the transition ended up being um fun just coming back to fun like you know and companionship that's one of the things i actually really love about cross country racing is the companionship like whoever you're with is your best friend even if you don't know the person it's like okay well here we are and i've got a couple wings around me well they're my mates right now they're my companions let's you know let's work together and uh and i and i love that we're all going in the same place and you're totally helping each other and you you know and and so for me when i get into that day remembering that that's what it's all about you know getting with your friends pushing your limits and you know enjoying that sense of self-mastery and discipline and pushing those limits and then whatever the outcome is is the outcome is whatever it is like don't be try not to be too attached to that i know it's easier said than done but if you could remember that and i think that's what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to remember the most important thing is the fun of it like you say the first time you flew right what is it it's like we're just like they're talking about presence here's like oh my god the wind passed your face and you know the magic of just floating across the ground and you know can we come back to that and if you stay in that space ironically i think you'll actually perform better like it's by by relegating your achievement to second before fun ironically you often do better certainly the case for me
you you mentioned again before we started recording that you you had this period of pretty intense a lot of comps sounds like i don't know if it's intense but you you do a lot of competition flying a lot of worlds flying and then you you've just come back to it after a big break is that right
that's right so it was kind of it was there was a kind of a flurry from about um so 98 was sort of i did the you know the aerobatic comps hadn't done any cross country yet but then it was after that i kind of a couple things happened i i sort of felt like i achieved what i wanted to it's kind of like
i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure
i felt kind of complete with aerobatics like it's not like i stopped completely but i didn't feel like i needed to do any more comps or anything and uh also i was very poor and i needed sponsorship and it was very hard to get sponsorship for aerobatics whereas at that time cross country racing you could get sponsored so and i was getting more interested in the idea of that whole domain of cross country so so that's when i shifted so from kind of 99 to 2005 i just i just really went for it i really went for it and i was like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna really i did you know kind of all the comps every year i was i ended up getting sponsored first from altair and then from Wills Wing and then from icaro um and then from arrows and then finally i did a little bit of boys at the end but yeah i went through all the major
competitors but um i was i was just absolutely loving it enjoying it but then it was kind of like 2000 it's actually 2002 or three i did have that's where i kind of had this it was a kind of for lack of a better word i had i did the i had done that 10-day retreat things had really shifted for me i was flying better but at the same time it was like i i found a sense of light at the end of the tunnel from a lot of darkness that i've been through on a personal level but at the same time i realized there was something more there's more that needed to be resolved and it kind of all i don't know there's a perfect storm i won't really go into that happened in my life and i ended up having to kind of deal with all that and i ended up getting actually much more serious about the medical field and i ended up getting much more serious about the medical field and i ended up getting much more serious about the medical field and i ended up getting much more serious about meditation because that was the only thing i didn't really trust the mental health system and it's the only thing that really like i trusted would help me to get through what was happening for me got you know a lot of depression anxiety and stuff like that and then um and i managed to work through that and it kind of came out the other side and well i guess my passion shifted it wasn't that i lost passion in flying but it was more that i wanted to help others like that after having gone through that kind of dark night of the soul myself i felt more inspired to want to help other people who are going through their own dark nights of the soul so that that was where my career took a turn so i did keep competing off and on and somehow i managed to keep it like every time i did a comp i would usually do often win or or you know get on the podium and somehow managed to maintain that but um but the the intensity of my competition after 2005 went way down um and then uh and then but i'd occasionally still do a team um you know get on the u.s team that it always would bite me back
and i would still do a team um you know get on the back
and it's usually pretty easy to get on to it and then um and then the last i was in new zealand for the last 10 years and i kind of stopped flying all together for about six years just as i was really focused on other stuff and then when i came back to the u.s i thought i really want to get back into this again so then yeah i went and i did the my first comp in a number of years at florida last year um what the national one yeah that's interesting i
mean with that big of a gap and being away from it for so long and coming back and performing that well was that i often think that distance and getting away from something you can often get better you know because you're just you're not doing it all the time you're you're you you gain perspective that's sometimes i think hard to get when you're doing it all the time i'm not sure yeah
no i can i can totally understand like beginner's mind you're kind of coming at it with sort of beginner's mind yeah it's a different perspective it's true yeah i felt i can resonate with that
a little bit yeah i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point
where i think because i've seen it go both ways where you know you get people really great you know a good record of competition obviously really good pass they get out of it for a while they come back and they totally bomb right it's actually definitely been a thing in our sport not everyone but that that has happened and it's really kind of frustrating and um so but what i think and i've kind of felt that tendency myself when i've taken a long break you think you're the pilot you were and you're not it's been a number of years and you're trying it's like you're trying to um it again you get totally achievement oriented okay i gotta i gotta prove myself again you know i was just i was this kind of legend back then i gotta be a legend again and uh and then it kills you like as you talked about your last call as soon as you have that attitude it's like the worst attitude you can have right and it takes you out of the present and you get all emotional and
um and so i definitely made every time i took these breaks i kind of knew that maybe it's my psychology training i don't know but i knew that that was like bad like don't do that like don't don't get obsessed with when he just go have fun and so i really made that like my mantra my mantra was just have fun just make goal even if you do it really slowly just just make it don't like forget about trying to race um and kind of you know trust that you know as long as you do your best and don't try to really charge that you'll you'll know you know you'll be able to fly efficient and and each time i was able to like i managed to do quite well that way but but i had to make the effort to not let the not get sucked into that i have to win i have to keep the title or get the title back or you know i had really important not to go there okay yeah interesting yeah
so with this coming back to it you were down in new zealand for 10 years you said yeah about 10 years and this was in academia
yeah i ended up um well long story short i i in 2006 i married a new zealand woman oh and out here and we ended up living in the u.s for quite a while but then her family was there and she was there and they were having a lot of problems and difficulties so uh so we ended up moving there i wasn't really enjoying the u.s politics much anyway and all of that so i thought oh i'll go try new zealand out so that was but then after 10 years a lot of combination of things happened you know my my parents getting older over here and um just things fizzling out in our relationship and just i've really feeling the pull to come back here come back home
were you in the south island north island north
island for about four years five years about half the time and then the south island yeah
but no flying you weren't flying down there
very little first few years a bit um and i i just the only comps i basically did was just i'd fly over to australia and they'd give me a light speed the moise you know the moise is over there in australia and then i did a couple comps over there okay um yeah and that was that was a lot of fun so i ended up actually you were kind of you were still you were staying
kind of tuned up i mean you weren't kind of yeah
okay yeah kind of and then there was like the last five years before i moved back here last year i i almost didn't fly at all i ended up getting really preoccupied with other projects i basically we bought some land and we're doing a lot of doing a ton of building work landscaping and building and trying to kind of regenerating this land and that ended up sort of taking up a lot of my passion and time but i was really missing flying like i'm like i was feeling it i was missing it so it's nice to get back into it here do you
get do you get that whole i get this kind of um almost it's a rational stupid fear and i was just bouncing that between my ears but when i maybe it was all the year you know i did the x house for a long time and so i was just kind of in this constant state of training during all those and so now i what's the word i i get uh anxious when i'm not getting better does that make sense you know if i if i if i'm not training i don't know i have this phone you know the Superfinal just happened down in columbia and i was gonna go and then at the last minute i pulled out because i'm not very excited about rule the neo anymore it's i pulled out but i watched every day
it's just because anyway my question is do you you know when you're working on the land are you able to leave the flying behind
yeah i mean um it was it was always the back of my mind or back of my heart where you want to put it you know like somebody was sort of missing because it just became such an important part of who i am and my identity and my you know what gives me joy and so it never really went away like i was always kind of i'm really missing that i'd like to do some flying but i'd made these major commitments and it was kind of conflicting with being able to do that during those those years um and so when i did come back here it was definitely like i'm gonna get back in a flight like i'm gonna you know and and even actually take up paragliding so i did that a year ago to just kind of expand my horizons a little bit oh
wow let's talk about that so you're you're now flying paragliders as well but
they collapse
dude isn't that i
know i know i know i have i have not got over i don't know if i'll ever get over that fear of that actually maybe i shouldn't get over that fear i suppose but but i only i only started a year ago i mean i'm i'm like i just got my uh p3 and uh so i'm i've got 35 hours i did one SIV clinic so anyway i'm pretty i'm i'm really new i'm really new um but the reason i got into it was because i wanted to be able to hike and fly yeah and it's really hard to hike and fly with a hang glider so yes so that way it wasn't that was really the but now i'm in this i'm torn because i love flying big desert air big thermals and i'm actually terrified of doing it in a paraglider like i'm still yeah i just i had uh i've already had a few collapses and and like just even flying inspiration peak not far from here flying over the canyon and and had a had a full collapse 100 collapse over this canyon there was a moment of like oh my god i don't want to throw my parachute here i'm looking down on these rocks and canyons and
luckily it opened you know within a couple of seconds um but still it was like how do you how do you get over that fear of your glider just suddenly out of the blue it seemed like i i suppose that's the thing is as you get better it's it's less and less out of the blue i suppose but yeah it feels like it just happens out of the blue it also
gets to where they just don't do that anymore you know
it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just you know
you're right you get good enough that you just i mean you're still gonna have it you're still gonna you i mean especially in the air that we fly here in the rockies we're gonna put it in a spot that this is good you're gonna take a whack but yeah i think they just become second nature it's like your second skin and they don't you don't really also this is maybe not very good advice that i should you know as you get better and as you start flying hotter gliders things
are they're
giving you a lot more feedback because that's a good way to put it i guess but you know the two liners just don't frontal and don't collapse like lower end gliders do you know they're they're and at least they're they're certainly i mean if they do then of course things are worse but uh yeah i just less likely to much less likely especially if you're flying well if you're paying attention they just you know it just doesn't happen much anymore i remember 10 years ago when i was flying the ncs and stuff i was taking hits all the time but right i think that's a combination of things the wing i'm flying and i'm a better pilot you know but yeah
yeah absolutely i mean well the big risk i see and i know friends of mine who went from hang gliding and paragliding and ended up getting quite badly hurt um a couple things one you forget you know you don't have the same penetration into the wind it's easy to forget that and that's actually what happened when i so when the collapse happened i i got back into this canyon and i just so many years on a hang glider there was some wind and i thought oh it's just i
don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know
i can still glide out and i went to glide i was like oh i'm barely penetrating and i'm in this canyon and this is not a good place to be and so i actually let my hands go up up up on the brakes to you know to get more speed and then of course it made the glider less stable or clap so i mean it was pilot in hindsight it was really all pilot error so i could totally see that but part of it is getting used to the fact a i don't have the penetration that i'm used to and b the glider can clap you know hang gliders don't clap so well that's not harm set true they can tumble which unfortunately is very rare and if that's really bad when that happens but but you just kind of get used to not having to think about keeping your wing inflated it's just you know you don't get used so when you suddenly get on the wing that can collapse it seems
like it's really a restructuring of the approach right it's yeah and i'm not a hang glider but you know i always hear that from hang glider but but they collapse and it's just in our world we don't think about that that much of course we
don't think about they do
they they collapse but it i think it's probably a restructuring i'm imagining of just margin and uh performance and attention
attention right you gotta yeah now you gotta you gotta donate a certain percentage of your we're talking about presence to is the wing inflated and keeping it inflated right and so when you fly a hang glider that's not really you're just not putting your attention there at all so right so that you have to kind of train yourself to have this constant 20 or whatever it is percent of the time you're flying a hang glider and you're not your attention on your wing stability and that's i think that's probably a big part of the learning curve from hang gliding to paragliding doing that sure does that sound would you agree with that or totally yeah 100 i
mean jumping to a completely different i just had a really neat experience out in the sierras uh flying in really really strong wave and we we flew at night with night vision gauls and sold this guy gordon out there's just doing some amazing stuff and and we did a show on it and there was an article on but we uh you know at one point we got pretty proper low really deep in the sierras we were we'd done a northern leg up way past reno and we're coming back down south heading down towards whitney and now it's daylight you know we can see and uh and we got what i would have considered really low kind of dirty low back and and it was really strong wave i mean there was incredibly strong right you know in my mind i we got to get the hell out of here man we're going to get out of here i mean how are we going to possibly get to the runway for me i mean i know in a glider you kind of want to land on a runway and you know for him it was just no and we got a lot of time it's just a whole nother yeah and i'm sure so there's a lot of that just between yeah you know hang gliders and paragliders it's just restructuring you know where i know exactly probably where you were flying inspo back in that canyon you just won't do that on a paraglider anymore you know that just that's not a nice place to be yeah yeah get bent right out of there
and and and the big rocks make it a little bit yeah a little bit gnarlier with the the turbulence kind of right yeah yeah
tough tough lessons that that always is a thing though there there's that uh one of our very first shows in my neighbor matt bieschner we call him farmer he has this great story of flying out in the sierras uh on the the main chain so not over in the whites but the main chain in the sierras and you know getting pretty dirty low and really bad air and had a huge has it has a big cloud of air and it's just it's just it's just it's just and his recovery stories is fantastic but it's that whole we all always oh yeah you could just throw your reserve but yeah but not in some places yeah because you're looking down going i don't think that's my safest option you know that happens in the alps a lot too you're just looking down going yeah this is not a place to throw a reserve of course you at some point you'd have to yeah to try to survive
yeah yeah
those are all mentally those are yeah that's
right so i'm i'm my my plan and i don't want to i don't want to hurt or maim myself i love the idea of that being by wingule um but i'm going to take it easy i'm not going to do middle of july you know middle day conditions for at least a couple years i'd say i'm going to just go back to my hangy for that and so this year i'm looking forward to trying to maybe you know do some long maybe even try to set some records or something here in utah with a hang with a hang glider yeah so yeah yeah excellent like this yeah we're
the same age how but you've been in this a lot longer than than than i have i'm 25 years i guess or so now but uh no no that's not right 20 years a little over 20 years so you've been in twice the length that i have but how how have things changed for you because of age in your approach to the sport yeah
i think well i mean i you recognize your more mortality a little bit more i think you know and the fragility of your body i just remember my 20s it wasn't even a consideration hardly my mortality i mean a little bit of consideration but yeah not not as much as it probably should have been i think there's a lot of luck that i survived that but um so yeah just generally i'm more aware of just more conservative in that regard you know like not not pushing it and i feel like i have other things to live for you know i guess back then too i i mean there was a time where i just really didn't have anything else to live for like it was kind of that was my whole life and so if i die who cares you know die doing our love now it's like uh there's other things i actually do want to live for so so yeah so that's a big shift um and and the priorities again the stimulation isn't like you know at that age i it was that kind of high i was looking for all the time and um i know obviously people might still chasing that but i don't chase that intense i don't need the big adrenaline rushes like i used to it's you know i find the fun is a little bit more i don't know more of a relaxed kind of fun you know just enjoying the beauty pushing the limits absolutely but not i don't need to like scare myself all the time that doesn't that's really something i i try to do anymore so those are probably the biggest uh changes i've noticed you
mentioned maybe going after some records and stuff this summer love that that's fantastic what would you what would your gear be what are you flying these days and the audience obviously not many of them are going to be very familiar with utah so let's not get too specific but uh what are you looking for and where would you you know what kind of what lines are you looking at to accomplish that
yeah so um even though i lived here in the early 90s i wasn't doing any cross country so it's like it's all kind of new to me you know like from the you know the monroe is a really great as you know well a really great spot so you can go in quite a few directions from there um just running along the wasatch so like over i
don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know
the wasatch range again for people don't know is kind of a lovely long north south you know with 10 11 up to 12 000 foot mountains so kind of really running that range um also on the border of wyoming there's like randolph where you can you can launch go over the back and then you just get right into the nice windy plains do some miles there i'm kind of more interested in running mountains in the flats or at least a combination of the two um we have a site called uh over by park city called heber that has been closed but i'm gonna see if i can open it again because you can it's east facing so you can launch in the morning get the morning thermals seeing elage earlier and then you know when the west release kick in you can you can ride those and that's kind of the lines i'm looking at i don't know if that was that the question or
yeah and and what are you flying what will you be flying for the record
yeah so i'm actually um so i really like the idea of having a tail so there's a aeros makes a combat which has a tail on it and it's the only high performance glider that i'm aware of um that actually formally you know it's certified with a tail and all of that and i think i've been thinking over the years that there's a reason why there aren't any that i know of any birds without tails so that's right and when you're flying big big desert mountain air you know sometimes you hit some pretty rough stuff and people do tumble um and i just like the reassurance of that so the combat i like the tail and it's actually one of the it's the it's
got the tail and it's got the slingshot and it's got everything
smallest glide it's the best performing little glider i don't weigh very much and so i've always had a hard time finding a glider that fits me properly but performs well the larger gliders always perform better and this particular glider the combat um 12.7 is the size but it is probably the best sort of blend for me and my weight as far as getting the best performance for the proper size and again that tail is great it's very reassuring when you're you know shooting up at 2 000 feet a minute you go over the edge it's like oh there's that tail okay
thank you but yeah it's interesting you must mention randolph uh i don't know if you ever saw that film we did quite a few years back called 500 miles to nowhere and that was a stop it was called 500 miles north because we never got anywhere we started okay we started down at hurricane and the plan was to bivy to jackson you know just connect it and yeah connected in the air so we like like i did with will and the rockies you know that one was wherever we ended was where we started the next day we weren't connecting it on foot you know and so but the weather was terrible and it od'd every day and it was it was a very late monsoon season but one of the places we flew was randolph and so those of you listening don't know this area is north of salt lake kind of i guess kind of midway between isn't it but it's a big ridge big beautiful river down below it and uh i always thought it was just a ridge soaring site but you're saying you could get up there and ping off the water and you could get up there and go off into the desert yeah
i mean it's it's just a an option i'm looking at yeah playing around i love the idea of of hurricane and hurricane i think is how you pronounce it yeah and just running north as far as you can i mean that that's certainly something else i would love to explore as well but you get into um wyoming had the foot launch world record for for many years actually because you just get these consistent westerlies that just you know pretty strong but it's pretty flat so you know it's not too dainty you
know it's not too flat it's not too you
know you can find quite strong wind but not worrying about rotor and things like that um and so when you get out you get over the wyoming plains you can often just make miles you can go pretty pretty far pretty fast and so i think connecting the dots from you know the mountains into the wyoming flats could potentially you could get some pretty pretty good miles that way i think i was
down in tesima in brazil when was that in 2017 maybe they had just broken the the foot launch record the year before and they had just broken the the foot launch record before uh rafael and all those guys and they from tesima and there were hang gliders there too uh going forward as well is that is that does is that still where the foot launch record is for hang gliding i
actually haven't kept track so i don't know but uh the wyoming one i'm pretty sure was broken quite a lot quite a while ago you know hang gliding foot launch record from wyoming i'm pretty sure that i think it was even broken in australia it was last i heard i think it might have been johnny duran and i
don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't
in north in queensland australia i'm pretty sure got the foot launch record oh wow going but that again that was quite a few years ago so i haven't haven't kept up i'm not sure where the most the latest one is right but i know that i haven't been there but i know the brazil side you're talking about i wouldn't be surprised if you know because it sounds like such great conditions if you it is really
really really tricky start though yeah yeah the big stuff that they've been doing since then has been towing and they're
going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be
they're actually i'm pretty sure the brazilian record now is you know it's now in texas for us for paragliding it's in texas but for for a long time brazil had it forever and i think they beat the foot launch record by towing into sema so they've towed in front of that hill which just gave them more just easier because foot launching from there i think for the hang gliders was reasonable for us it wasn't very reasonable it was pretty spicy and pretty wild and then you know it's really early in the morning you can't get high and you've got to fly 40k really low over this kind of escarpment before it drops away so the way more reasonable flying in brazil is all being done east of sorry uh let me think about the map west of that and they're towing and keiko and other places so you're you know your first moves aren't death defying but then the problem with that is you run into the amazon quicker so that you can't you're not going to get the 600k that they have in texas now
right right
is johnny is johnny's uh and dustin is that still the record in hang gliding as
far as i know yeah so that's the yeah so not foot launch that'll be a tow record done in texas yeah so the they
still have that
and they do keep the foot launch and tow record separately and uh again as far as i know i kind of got out of looking at that stuff for a few years but as far as i know they still have it yeah and that's i can't remember the exact mileage you're getting up they're getting up to like 450 miles yeah yeah yeah it'd
be awesome yeah you know your your neighbor cody has had the foot launch record for a brief second i might have my time screwed i can't remember the the guy that's done it down in texas did it both you know you got the foot launch and then you got the the tow one both in texas but cody had it for a while flying i believe it's from lab you need one of your sites there in wyoming out over the you know if you follow that is that the 80 86 and you follow the freeway 80 east uh-huh yeah but there there you always get that northerly flow that you know late in the day it starts bending it's hard to kind of keep going straight right
kind of stops you yeah so that's paragliding uh yeah
is that right yeah he went for
430 or 440k wow yeah cool pretty sweet yeah
yeah yeah and then you know that's uh
i guess the fun thing about that it doesn't have the same intensity like we talked about earlier with competition flying you know you're just really comparing you know i'm sure you might be comparing old records but you're really just competing with yourself right yeah in some ways it doesn't have the psychological intensity of that you get in an actual you know full-on competition but on the other hand you don't have the companionship so much although you can you get your buddies out to try to set the record together of course yeah
and i mean there's something about that too isn't i mean that you're i think your odds go immeasurably up when you're flying with others right because you're just that's right you're flying faster there's no way you can fly as fast by yourself as you can absolutely
absolutely well it depends if you have good clouds sure i mean if you have if you have really reliable clouds and then you can usually come pretty close but yeah if it's a blue day then absolutely you know having having each other to mark for the thermals and find the cores quickly and all of that it's going to be a lot faster
here's something for with with hang gliding we talk about this all the time so you most of the time in the world west we're flying downwind right we're going we're going downwind especially for the foot launch record stuff you know here's some valley in the wasatch these places it's typically west and we're typically going east and we're flying downwind but when we're flying the wreck going for the records or just flying xc just in in general i use my speed bar a lot less than when i'm racing we all know we could go a lot faster if we were racing you know if there was 20 of us in the sky and we were really trying to belt one out it's interesting isn't it is it the same in hang gliding are you pulling the rope as much when you're just flying by yourself uh
yeah i'm just kind of reflecting on that probably not quite as much right i mean you know in general you do tend to push yourself harder in lots of ways whether it's you know pulling that rope a little tighter making you know which makes the hang glider harder to handle um and also feel a little bit less stable you know with the pitch and stuff when you pull that rope further and when you're a cop you tend to push it a little further than you probably would comfortably do it otherwise that's right and you do tend to find yourself going into terrain where the landing is not as good as you might you know ideally like to go into or getting a little too close to that q and m or you know so that's you do get enticed into things in competition that that you wouldn't if you you know if you weren't in a car absolutely i think most of us would agree would agree on that that's one of the risks of competition is you can get enticed to behaviors that are you know more risky you know you're enticed to push it a bit further than you normally would something to keep an eye on one
more question for you paris if you could rewind the clock to your i guess 14 year old self somewhere in there 50 50 hours 50 hours 13 to 18 somewhere age
17 18 yeah
17 okay what advice would you give yourself now you're 52 now but you get you get to go back and talk to that kid like uh
flying related advice or any advice no how about
anything
let's do both
okay uh i would actually just say good job kid keep it up like keep keep following your bliss you know because that was one thing i somehow had and in the midst of like i was saying there's a lot of darkness in my life at the time was um i somehow trusted i had this trusted if i just keep following what really lit me up like what really i was passionate about that you know like i would enjoy life it would work out somehow and it and it did so i would actually it's kind of interesting as i go back i would say you know just keep it up this is it you know fall keep following your bliss don't lose sight of your passion passion might change from time to time and just keep you know staying attuned to that and following that it'll work out
that can actually that goes both ways that's for flying in from life absolutely both exactly follow follow your bliss answer
and yeah that's right yeah and because it's easy to lose sight you know it's in the keyword there's your bliss you know you can you can still get pulled by you know maybe well-meaning parents or society or what you know that to follow a direction it's not actually like your own spirit calling you in that direction but you feel like i really should do this because that's what my family wants or that's what society wants you know for drop that what do you want what lights you up and so so i think that's the key word in that phrase follow your your bliss and and that's
what i'm talking about That
is one thing I somehow managed to – I think I had a few mentors in the midst of some of the storms in my life that encouraged that for me, which was great. So that was – in hindsight, that was like the best advice. I'm really glad I did that.
Paris, thank you, man. That was a real treat. I really enjoyed that conversation. And me too. I hope I get to join you maybe breaking records or doing some cool flying or – I'd love to go fly a paraglider with you. I don't have the skills to keep up with you on a hang glider, but one of these days, I hope our paths cross.
Likewise. I'll have to work on the paragliding skills a little more so I can try to keep up with you.
Yeah, a lot of fun, Gavin. Thanks for having me. Thanks, man. If
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