249. Koen Vancampenhoudt and gaining knowledge through passion - Koen Vancampenhoudt

Hello

everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. For this show, I sat down with Cohen, I'm going to butcher both of his names, Cohen Van Kampenoot. He's a Dutch pilot, but he's been living in the States, out in the Carolinas, for an awfully long time. And he and I had a really cool conversation. I wanted to reach out initially, because it was recommended to me, because he's just a fiend for paragliding. And I've been following his amazing flights over the years, down in Brazil and all over the world. And then this year, down in Valle, a lot of big flights went down. But then he broke the distance record, one-way record, flying in a lot of wind. And basically flew a good length of Mexico, up over the plateau, and by the Toluca Volcano.

And way, way, way beyond the tasks that we often do up to the lake up there. To the north, and a phenomenal flight, and really interesting, and kind of captured all of us who were interested in Valle, because it had never been done. And then from there, we talk about risk and the wind, and just how that day played out. And we get into his, he had these really cool goals before he turned 50. He and I are the same age, to complete Dylan the Infinite, to fly over 400K. Really fun talk. Super ambitious, and just has a really nice take on this sport we all love. A lot of takeaways here that I really enjoyed.

So, please enjoy this talk with Cohen. And I can't imagine you're going to have time to listen to this during the X-Alps, but we will get it out. Like I said, hopefully during the show, or during, yeah, it is a show, during the big show, the big race. And hopefully you're enjoying all the great footage we're capturing, and the live stuff. And engaging in the craziest race on earth. I love this thing. I'm really excited to go. So, enjoy.

Cohen, it's great to have you on the show. I was psyched your buddy reached out and said, hey, you got to get him on, because I've been kind of meaning to do this with you for a long time. I know you're a very persistent paraglider. You put a lot of hours into this. And this year, you know, the records have been falling year after year after year. And, you know, I'm not going to lie. Mexico, it's been awesome to see what people are doing down there. You know, Valle is a place that's very close to, I know, both of our hearts. You know, I go down there for the Monarca every year. And you go down and send it. And this year, you went bigger than anybody had ever gone. Why don't we start there, and then we'll dig into more of your history and past. And some of these crazy stories you sent me.

You know, learning in Fiji in a forest fire. That would be great. Welcome to the show. Thanks. And, yeah, what happened? What went down in Mexico this year?

Well, first of all, thank you, Gavin, for having me on the show. It's a great honor. You know, it's great after so many years of flying to feel a little bit of, get a little bit of recognition of a couple of these things I've done. You know, I'm in kind of a small corner of the world, tucked away here in the Carolinas. Nobody knows much about flying around here. So, it's kind of, it's been hard over these years to get out of this little bubble here. And, you know, fortunately, I'll tell you later about that. I've had my opportunities to fly in many, many different places. And

go to jail.

That too. We'll get to that also. Well, yeah. Indeed, there's a couple of stories in that whole history. But, yeah, Mexico. Yeah, Mexico. We both love Mexico. We've both been there a bunch of times. I love the place for many reasons. But this year was evidently really special for me with that great big flight I was able to do. Which was actually kind of interesting because I was totally not planning on that. My goal for that day was big, but much smaller than that. But I was hoping to be able to follow, you know, the hot shot there on that typical triangle they were pushing. You know, the 150, 200K triangle out to, what's the name of that place at the end there? And then back, you know, I'd never done. Out

past Ljubljana.

Ljubljana, yeah. And then way further to, what is it? Yeah. The southwest from there. Out to

Narco land.

Yeah. Well, I got, you know, I don't inform myself over such things because I would. Then, you know, you kind of limit yourself. You

wouldn't go. And

sometimes it's better not to know certain things, you know. Which also. Also applies to the flight I did. You know, so I launched early. That was my first time, I think, launching that early. I'm used to launching early in northeast in Brazil and all that. But I hadn't really done that in Valle yet, kind of securing and flying with my buddies and all that. So this day, I'm like, all right, you know, I've done all the other kind of flights. I really need to try to push for this big triangle. So I'm going to launch together with, you know, you know, all these Henze and Cedar and all these guys that were pushing it day after day, you know, to get these big triangles, which was my goal. And we launched, you know. I launched with them. Everything goes well. Conditions are on. But, you know, sort of. I was not on the same radio frequency as they were. So I didn't know what they were actually doing. And I get to the end of Divi Zero by myself and I don't see anybody anymore, you know.

And I'm like, well, you know, something went wrong or they changed their plans. I couldn't see them. I didn't know where they were at. And it was a windy day, way windier than expected. And when I got it, I really didn't feel like pushing hard against the wind all the time, all day long. And I was looking backwards. You know, like on the west, northwest side of the lake of Valle. And the sky looks just like classic. I mean, it was like early and it was already fully set up with beautiful cumulus clouds and everything. And the natural tendency was for the air mass evidently to push that direction. So I'm like, hell, you know, I'm just going to give this a shot because I actually coincidentally just a few days before that, I had to visit a customer of mine because this was theoretically sort of a work trip a little bit. You know, so I went to visit this customer in Querétaro.

Which is a couple of hours north from Valle. And I rented a car for that, went there, drove through these planes. I've been there before. I saw those planes. I'm like, man, I mean, this must be epic flying here. It reminded me of northeastern Brazil, which, you know, I'm very familiar with. So I kind of had it in the back of my mind as a possibility to try to get there someday. On previous trips, I've gone past, what is it, Lake Victoria or something and had some pretty nice flights in that direction, but never was able to really push further than that. And this day, I mean, I'm just like, well, heck, I'm just going for it. You know? So I got high. And

that's high. Those that are listening who don't know where we're talking about, let's give them a little bit of, you know, so Valle is down a little bit. There's the little reservoir there, the lake and the town. And then north of that, the terrain just goes, kind of keeps climbing, climbing, climbing to get up to the, I don't know what they call that plateau. Is it the Toluca Plateau? Yeah, I'm

not sure what it's called either, but it's a very, it's right where Victoria or, you know, Lake Victoria is. From there on, it just flatlands. You know?

Flatlands and high and high and there's airspace too, you know, the Toluca airport there is that's a, that's a pretty major airspace that we always have to be wary of when we're going to Lake Victoria and it's always windy. It's always windy out of the south. So going north makes sense. Well, you know, but yeah,

before getting there, you know, like I said, I was at DV zero, which is kind of that point where you have to make those decisions, what you're going to do with your day. Right. So that's where I decided to basically just go north, northwest, north from there to, what is it? This place, I guess, Santa Barbara and all that. I mean, there's this canyon, you know, you cross it and there's this canyon, which looks, it looks kind of scary. It doesn't look inviting at all, you know, and I thought it was super high because in the middle there, right past DV zero, there's a town there. I think it's Cieneguillas, is that what it is? Or something or, I don't know. There's a, there's a very marked town where everybody always goes out, catches the thermal and goes back usually. Right. So I just got cloud-based there. I'm like, oh, I got it. Perfect. Glad to make it to the other side of this canyon or whatever. So I went there and then started hitting like massive sink, you know, like just, oh, it's just going down like a fricking stone, you know, I'm like, holy shit, this is not looking good.

And I basically made it to the side of the canyon and I got really low, you know, got parked over this little hill where I was just able to sustain for a little while, hoping I was going to get something, didn't get anything. I was kind of starting to think, you know, this is the end of my flight. Then I saw two buzzards or vultures, whatever, go and kind of like a little deep. And there was this one terrain I had where I could just land, land before actually having to dive into that canyon and I followed them like, well, you know, they must know what they're doing. So I'll just follow them, you know, so I followed them realizing that if I didn't get anything after my first turn over that field, I basically had to abandon and just land there and forget about it. Right. But I did get something. I mean, this was light at first and then I started just working it and I got into something and I started drifting with the terrain, like on the terrain as it climbs.

And as I started drifting a little bit, you know, more landing options over there. I opened up and I started feeling more comfortable about going deeper and deeper and I just followed it and, you know, then I got out of there. And then from there on, you know, there were more landing options. So it wasn't that tight anymore in terms of like, you know, landing out. I didn't know that whole area was not recommended for landing in terms of like safety and all that. I heard that afterwards. I'm like, glad I didn't know that. Yeah,

ignorance is bliss, man.

Yeah, sometimes it is. So I kept pushing and then just kept climbing, like, you know, scratching the terrain at times and all that. Because like you said earlier, it kind of, you know. The terrain goes up there before you get to that plateau and the flatlands. Eventually, you still kind of got parked real low. Like I'm talking 30 feet over a hill basically in the wind. You know, basically you have speedboat working just to stay there. You worked it, went around it, eventually got it. And that was my last really good climb before I actually hit the flatlands. And once I did hit the flatlands, it was like the lid came off and cloud base came, you know, became real high. And it was just, I mean, I won't say it was easy because it was hard work. But it wasn't hard in terms of getting lost. It wasn't slow and saves and all that. I just stayed high the whole time. It

was pretty

straightforward. Oh, it was classic northeastern Brazil, you know. Cloud support.

Clouds were working. It was just pointed to the next cloud, the straightest possible line with the wind, optimizing my speed. Climbs of like plus seven meters per second, you know. At some point, my GPS showed 125 kilometers per hour downwind speed. So that was about the fastest I've ever flown. Wow. And smooth. It

wasn't bad. It was just nice. Yeah,

exactly. It wasn't like, you know, scary, radically turbulent or anything. It wasn't smooth. But I mean, it was totally handleable. It was totally not scary or anything. The only thing that was scary was the idea of landing out in those conditions. So my only concern was to stay high. Keep going. But like I said, the clouds were working. It was just automatically pointed at the next cloud, you know. And there's landing fields all over the place there. So once I hit those, you know, once I went past Lake Victoria there, I mean, it was fast flying. And it was like high. Cloud base was super high. And there was like no concerns. I really just kept high. I don't recall being low at all for that whole, you know, for this whole, what is it, 200 kilometers almost probably. Until I started to get to the other side of the plateau, which was already then towards the end of the flight. But, you know, it took me like two hours to get to the beginning of the plateau.

And then it probably took me like two hours to cross the whole plateau. You know, it was so fast.

It was fun. We'll have the link up on Xcontest to the trip. We'll have the link up on the track log because it's quite remarkable. You know, we feel like we've gone a long way when we get to Lago Victoria. Whenever we have a task set up there, it's always a handful of people make it. You know, it's never a big quad. You know, it's never that many folks pull that off because of the wind and the low. And, you know, it's just a tricky flight. But when you look at yours, you have to kind of zoom out, zoom out, zoom out. Like, holy shit. You went a long ways. I mean, that plateau is huge.

It is. It is. And I think it is also because I went to the west of it, you know. And also, I mean, that helped me with the airspace, which also was kind of luck because I hadn't really studied that. Like I said, I wasn't really planning on doing that flight, so I kind of just went for it. Yeah. But I've done the same sort of thing, like you said. Actually, I think it wasn't a competition. I don't do a lot of competitions, not because I don't want to, just because I like the time and all that. But maybe two years or something, you know, ago, there was a task that had, you know, the goal was… Near Lake Victoria, and I went that way. And it's like, you know, once you go past like near Toluca and all that, there's like two air masses there. And if you're a little bit too far to the east, it's just a sinkhole. You just… Yeah. It's like a blue hole or something. Yeah. So, you know, I tried that a few times, and it never worked. On the left side, I was basically almost like on the foothills there for a little while until I hit the plains, and that worked just fantastically.

So… Yeah. Yeah. You know, like always in paragliding, it's always, you know, I see it as like… There's always a factor of luck involved, right? Sure. Often it's planning. You have your plan A or plan B, but then, you know, you have to have that flexibility to kind of adjust your plans to what you see and has actually happened. And, you know, if you're not in a competition at least, you have that freedom to choose what you're going to do with your day. And I think I was just lucky in that I recognized that opportunity and kind of just went for it without making, you know, too many questions about it. When I was at that critical point there at Divi Zero, it was hard work initially to get there, but then once I got there, I felt like, you know, I'm a salsa, you know. I felt at home in those conditions. I like flying like that, you know. I'll be honest. I think triangles are incredibly admirable. I mean, they're also very technical, maybe more technical, evidently more technical than downwind flying.

But, you know, I enjoy downwind. I just enjoy the big number. Like, you know, I know doing a triangle and it's fun. You're landing right next to your car and close to the, you know, launch or something like that. It's very convenient. It's elegant. It's beautiful. I love it. And I'm focusing on it because I've done my share of downwinders, you know. So, my new focus was to do bigger downwinds. Bigger triangles. But I still just enjoy freaking putting the gas on and going down as fast as I can, you know.

And we don't have, you know, typically the days aren't super long down there. You know, it's the middle of winter. I mean, you're closer to the equator, but you're still a long ways away. So, I mean, we don't have those huge long days. What did the flight end up being lengthwise, timewise?

In time, six hours, I believe it was. Something like… Yeah, that's a long time. Yeah, six hours.

Yeah, I don't know that I've ever had a flight six hours in flight. That's pretty good. And what put you down at the end of the day? Was it just… Did you get the last final epic glide or did you make a mistake?

No, no. I mean, it was the end of the day for sure. That was one thing. It was… While I was super high, you know, the thing is I was literally running out of land basically. That's what put me down. You know, the point where I landed, there weren't too many landing places left ahead of me. And then the terrain steeply dropped off. It was like the end of the plateau. And I couldn't see over it. I was pretty high, but I couldn't see over it. And I had no idea if there was like… I mean, it looked like just a drop off with like some mountainous areas and then a drop off into probably the jungle or something. I don't know. Whoa. I have no idea what was past these mountains. And the wind was blowing like stink. And I saw a big, you know, big field where I knew I could set up at the beginning of the field. Actually, my whole setup was like from five miles ahead going backwards, kind of working between speed bar and just to kind of backwards approach in the field because I was evidently kind of worried about that last part.

So I started the flight. It was really windy. And I landed on probably 50%, you know, 50 % speed bar or something like that. Vertical, you know, down like that, kind of working it. Wow. Once I got down, I killed my wing and it was fine, but it was definitely a little bit scary. It was the most scary part of the

whole flight for sure.

Oh, it would have been scary to then

drop off the plateau and be more down in the lee and stuff. Yeah, I got you. Yeah.

I could have gotten over it if I knew it was there. If I knew there was a landing field there somewhere, I would have gone for it. But I had no clue. I hadn't, you know, prospected it. I had no clue it was there and I wasn't going to throw myself over the edge, you know. What

was the wind blowing when you landed?

Oh, it was honking. It must have been 35 kilometers per hour or something like that at least, you know. Like I said, I mean, you know, my approach was going backwards and I was on 50, 75, sometimes 100 % bar, just working it to kind of position myself, going backwards the right way. Man, good thing you stayed in

the air all day. That would have been ugly to land two hours earlier and that kind of stuff. I know,

I know.

It's still ripping off and thermic and stuff. Yeah. Wow. Wow, man. Well done. Thank you. Yeah.

You sent me an email with some really, really funny stories. When, let's go back to your first, was it your first flight literally in Fiji?

It was. Yeah, yeah. So you did a tandem? I was backpacking, you know. I finished studying. I'm originally from Belgium, you know. I grew up and studied in Belgium and then I just wanted to see something of the world. So I bought a backpack and a plane ticket, left to Latin America and started just traveling basically, improvising as I went along.

I hadn't been exposed to paragliding up to that point. You know, I kind of knew that it existed, but you know, in Belgium's flat, you know, there's no paragliding. What year, where,

when was this?

This was 96, 97. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, so, you know, I get into Fiji on a Pacific ticket that I got, you know, jumping several islands there. And I meet these French travelers, backpackers, you know. Once traveling with this huge backpack, never seen one like that before. I'm like, what's this guy carrying along? You know, it turns out he's got like evidently his tandem glider, you know, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear and that was about it. You know, so I'm like, oh, well, interesting. And he was a super cool dude. And he was a pro, you know, professional tandem pilot in France or Switzerland or something. And so he offered, like, if we find a place where we can launch, I'll take you up. And I'm like, yeah, I'll hold you to that, you know, for sure. So we were staying with this local family, this Fijian family in this bay somewhere in the middle of nowhere, me, him and two other guys.

And we went up with the local guy, Bob, with his machete on this hill to kind of see if we could create a launch there. Which we did.

Was this on the main island? Was this on Savu Savu? Or was this up on the north one?

I think it was the north one. I'd have looked at this a long time ago. I don't remember the exact location. I don't know. I went to a couple of these islands. They're all beautiful, by the way. But yeah, so we did find this place that was with a little bit of work, an hour of cleaning up. We were able to launch from there. So Christophe first took the other guy up, the friend, the English guy, tall dude. Within 15 minutes, the guy was puking and hanging lifeless in the harness like that. You know, I'm like, okay. So then he had to do a bunch of top, you know, wing overs and all that to top land and then set it down right on the hill again because actually there was no landing. I look at it back now and I'm like, that was kind of crazy. We launched from there without even knowing if there was a landing because he assumed we were going to be able to land on the beach apart from top landing. But we hadn't explored the beach, so we didn't know that actually. I was concerned.

I wasn't concerned. I trusted the guy. Yeah, you didn't know.

You didn't know

anything. I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I'm like, he knows, you know. So it was my turn. You know, and we launched. We fly around for a little while and I'm like, hey, can you do some of those wing overs? That looked like a lot of fun. You know, we're doing the wing overs and now all at once we're getting a little low on the launch and we're not getting back up. The wind started dying off. It was the end of the afternoon. And so we're starting to glide out towards, you know, the trees where we assumed that behind that was the beach or evidently was the beach. And then he sees this open spot in the jungle and he's like, we'll put it down right here. I'm like, yeah, fine. You know, perfect landing. No problem. We pack up. You know, by now it's 530. Almost 6 p.m. It's starting to get dark.

I mean, Fiji gets dark at six. Yeah.

Yeah. As a pro flies, we were probably, I mean, half a mile or a mile away from the place where, you know, the family, the hut was where we were staying at. But we had to cross this hill or mountain or whatever and then kind of go over it and then, you know, turn the other way to go back there, which seemed pretty straightforward. So we packed up and started hiking up that hill. But within 30 minutes was, you know, totally dark. It was like 85 degrees humid. Like we had no water, you know, nothing to eat or anything. The only thing we had was he was smoking cigarettes. So he had some cigarettes and like six matches or something. That was the only thing we had in that big backpack. You know, we're sweating. We're holding up this backpack, you know, changing around. You know, he's carrying it. I'm carrying it. You know, after like two or three hours of not getting anywhere and then freaking tripping over stuff and all that, we're like, let's just sit down and just like, you know, smoking a cigarette.

We're sitting around. All right, let's go. And he's like, all right, let's go. He started going in this direction. I'm like, dude, we came from this direction. We need to go this direction. I'm like, no, let's just go that direction. So, you know, another two, three hours of freaking, you know, climb and slide and whatever in the middle of the night and touching, you know, slimy animals on tree bark and all that. It was like a mess, you know. But, you know, I don't mind such adventures, you know, as long as we're not in any danger or anything. We didn't feel like we were in any danger. And he was also kind of an optimistic guy, just laughing with the situation, you know. At some point, you know, we're seeing fire, like just briefly, just like some fire. We're like. And then we didn't see anything. We're like, oh, man, we must be like hallucinating. We're probably like becoming dehydrated or something because we've been hiking for five hours with nothing to drink in the heat. That was just weird. You know, we kept it up for like another hour, go through like bamboo forest.

Eventually we decided it was maybe a better idea to go back down to the beach and then try to like swim or walk on the beach or whatever. Well, there was no beach. There was only mangroves, you know. So we thought maybe there's only a little bit of mangroves. We'll try to climb through them and then swim or whatever, you know. Like we're climbing through these mangroves half an hour in. And, you know, it's like like one of these matches, man. Let's have a look if there's actually an end to this. You know, we looked and anywhere around us is like mangroves like we were in this natural prison or something. It's like, oh, no, we're never going to get out of here. So we went back and eventually decided to just open the paraglider and sleep in it right there in the jungle, you know. So I love that you

did a bivvy on your first paragliding flight. I mean, it's that honestly,

that totally set the tone for the rest of my adventures, as you will get to know. But, you know, anyway. Yeah, this guy definitely influenced me in a wrong way as far as, you know, making the right decisions about certain things sometimes. Anyway, so the next morning, you know, it was easy to find a way back. Once we had daylight, you know, we started hiking up the hill back and there comes our friends are totally worried. You know, they almost were at the point of calling the Coast Guard because they thought we'd crash. And we didn't know where we were at or if we were safe right now. We're good. We're good. And we're looking and there's like smoke coming off the side of the hill. The friggin half of the hill is burned down. We're like, what happened? Well, these guys, they went looking for us at night. And the guy, he pulled up these branches or whatever from palm trees and lit them up just for natural torches, you know, for light. And stuff must have fallen off and lit it up, lit up the forest.

And it burned literally down this half half a mountain, you know. Oh, my God. So. So, yeah, we were actually, I mean, thinking about it. I mean, that was scary in terms of like if we were sleeping there, we could have been surrounded by a fire or something. Yeah. You know, we could have been enclosed afterwards. I mean, in hindsight, it was like, well, that was kind of not such a safe situation, honestly. But it was a good adventure and a good story to tell. Yeah, totally. So that was my introduction to paragliding. And honestly, from the second my feet lifted off the ground, I knew I had found my thing. You know, I've tried a lot of things before. I've always loved a lot of things, you know, to experiment different things and sports and all that. But that one, I had zero doubts that that was going to be my main thing for the rest of my life, pretty much. And it has been, you know.

Awesome. OK, so cool. You. You have this wild experience in paragliding and you don't die. So you decide this is great. What do you do then?

Well, then I went back to Belgium after I finished my traveling another six months or a couple of months more of traveling. No, actually, sorry. During the same trip, I ended up in India on the coast in Goa. Yeah. And I saw it. Well, actually, I was in New Delhi and in a youth hostel. I saw this ad, you know, learn to paraglide for a hundred bucks on the coast of Goa. I'm like, well, that sounds like a good proposal. So I went there. And I'm talking. This is. And. Was that Jim Mallinson and John

Sylvester and those guys? Were they? They were there. No, no. Those

guys were up in the mountains. This was on the coast. This was. Yeah, but they did a bunch of stuff

in Goa. They. He would spend. Jim Mallinson would spend time out there. Man, I bet you guys crossed paths and didn't even know it.

There were two instructors there. One was a Swiss guy. Guy. No, Guy was the English guy. And then I don't recall the other guy's name. He was. One was English. The other one was Swiss. And they had like their little school there. And I had two days of ground training on the beach, you know, and then 10 hops of this. I don't know, 300, 200 foot high dune or whatever, where basically it was still, you know, that was the early days of paragliding, where if you kind of had the glider more or less above your head, they kind of like just push you up the hill, you know, that was how it went. And, you know, it was basically just flying off approaches on the radio, left, right, boom, flare and done. Right. So and I walk away from there with my pilot's license, you know, from Western, Western India Paragliding Association. I've

been talking about

it for one year. I'm like, I got it in the pocket. I'm a pilot. I'm legit. I'm legit. Exactly. So I was totally stoked, you know, finished my traveling, went back to Belgium with my license in my hand. And it so happened that a friend of mine had this old glider that I don't know where you got it, but it turned out to be this LDK. Remember that brand? LDK. It's like a French brand or something, which was like literally mattresses. You know, it almost looks like a parachute basically, you know, in these bright, you know, day glue colors and all that. Yeah. But the thing is, there was no serial tag on it. There was no identification weight wise or anything on that glider. It was like a prototype or something. And worst of all, it had -

It's like buying a glider off eBay back in the day. I mean, eBay didn't exist back then, but he just, yeah, sweet. Pretty much. He just

like, he just like gave it to me. It's like, you can use this one. I'm like, great. You know, I'm ready for Latin America. You know, I'm ready for the, for the Andes with this thing. So the thing is the glider had this, I mean, it was kind of ahead of its time because like I said, it was a prototype and then it had this like rod in the leading edge. Only that now the rods, you know, run like this. At that time there were two rods open, keeping the leading edge open, like sort of like that over the span of the whole wing. Yeah. It was a bitch to get that, pull it up and get it in the backpack and all that. I'm like, man, I'm just going to cut that out. I thought somebody like retrofitted that in there, you know, out of insecurity or something, you know, I'm like, that's bullshit. I'm just going to cut that out. Took the rods out. Not a good idea. So I actually took that glider to the Pyrenees with a friend and flew it.

You know, it was raining. I even flew it in the rain. I don't know how that thing kept open, you know, partly because there was no turbulence, but did a couple of sled rides with it. And then next I, I wasn't done yet with traveling. So I, after a couple of months of working and saving up some money, I went back to Latin America and spent, you know, with the idea of doing some flying in Colombia and Ecuador. And also I'd met my girlfriend at the time, which then became my wife. She's Colombian. So I kind of tried to combine both things, becoming a pilot and, you know, becoming a boyfriend, which didn't go that well together in hindsight, but you know, but so here I am. Oil

and water.

Sort of. Yeah. It was, it was difficult in many ways, but so I ended up in chasing the weather in Colombia. I just ended up in the wrong places at the wrong time with rain, getting frustrated, you know? So let's go to Cali. All right. Cali, you know, Pied de Chinche was at the time the big site, you know, and a great place.

I think I was in the top of

that mountain like 20 times. And now what year are we? This is 98. Oh, you're still early. Okay. So

it's still fully, it's fully happening there even then. And I didn't know that.

Well, there was not that much going on yet. Like Roldanía, I don't know if Roldanía was already a thing at that time, but Pied de Chinche was definitely, I mean, it was mostly locals. I can't remember seeing any foreigners there, but the locals had their club going and hang gliders were still there and all that. And it was good conditions. The thing is, you know, the first so many flights, there was no thermals or nothing. It was just kind of like sled rides. And I would just never make the LZ. And my glider didn't have a good glide ratio and I would always have to land in this dry river. People are like, why don't you land in the LZ? I'm like, I don't know. I just can't make it there, you know?

So anyway, so this one day there was finally some thermal activity, which I didn't know how to recognize that except for that my glider folded up in the air. So that was my indication of turbulence, you know? So, and the worst, the worst thing of all is I thought I didn't have money for a reserve parachute. So I went flying without reserve parachute also. Of course you were. So I'm flying straight out. I'm not literally doing anything. And all at once the freaking glider collapses like 80%. And I'm like, immediately starting to, you know, like one turn, two turn around and it opens back up. I'm like, holy crap, what was that? You know? So I'm like, I mean, I was going to go to land anyway. That was my flight plan anyway. So I'll keep flying. The same thing happens again. It collapses a second time and freaking reopens by itself. And I managed to safely land and all that along. Are you crazy?

What are you doing? I'm like, I'm not doing anything. I don't know. And they noticed that the leading edge had like this point to it, which without those rods were like the basic component of the safety of that glider. It was clearly not meant to be flown without those rods. So yeah. And that's where the girlfriend thing didn't work out because that was the first time my girlfriend, you know, Monica actually joined me on the hill and she saw me dropping out of the sky. People were like, call an ambulance. This guy's going to die. This and that. So it was not a good experience for her to, you know, and I understand ever since she's not been a great fan of flying. And that's been a problem for sure. Are you guys still together? No. Well,

we actually,

we've been together for 25 years and we ended up deciding that we'd better split our ways. We've done that in peace and good harmony. Just recently, beginning of this year, actually. And it was not because of paragliding. I mean, I'm sure paragliding has not helped. Right. But it's just a personality thing. It's unrelated. You know, it's just. But that's amazing.

I mean, she saw you damn near kill yourself and stuck with you for all these years.

Well, unfortunately that was only the first time of

her life. You know,

two times that happened, you know. And anyway, like, you know, I actually evidently discarded that glider, you know, got myself a flight air. What was it? An air design? No, a flight design. Remember the flight design? Yeah. It was probably also pretty rotten. You know, I eventually ended up flying it in Crescita, in Crescita, in Ecuador, on the coast. And at the end it was so poor as that I would pull big ears, then it would automatically go in a parachute. You know, like it wouldn't fly anymore. So I had to get rid of that glider also. So at 90 hours of flying. Yeah. And it actually ended up changing to like a DHV 2-3 glider at the time, which would be like a, you know, like an E &D right now, which was also a very stupid move at the time. I mean, I loved the glider, had a great time with it and all that until things didn't go that great, you know, which inevitably happens when you fly a glider over your level, right?

Still, I still hadn't had the smart idea of buying a reserve. I was still trusting things were going to go good without a reserve. So now I'm back in Europe, you know, my wife's with me again, you know, we're in the Vogies, you know, the Vogies. The mountains in the northern part of France, which are the closest mountain to Belgium.

And it's an excellent day. I wasn't really into XC yet at the time, it was just into maximizing airtime. So I didn't want to go XC because the risk of bombing out was too big. And as I didn't get much airtime, I just wanted to have hours and hours of flying, not distance didn't interest me much at the time, you know? So I'm thinking, I've been flying for three hours, four hours, whatever. I'm like, I got to go land, but I got like, you know, 6,000 feet to work with. Let's do something here. Let's try something. So I started doing like the biggest ring overs I'd ever done. And, and one of them, I just way shifted wrong or wrong input and my whole inside of the wing collapsed. And before long, the glider was all around me all over the place, left, right, boom, you know, I'm trying to control it. The more I do, the worse it gets, you know, fortunately I never got twisted around or anything. But I pretty much dropped, I'd say like probably three, 4,000 meters out of the sky before it opened up.

And I'm not going to like, you know, take credit for that because the glider did it by itself. Right.

You just,

you finally stopped messing

with it and it straightened itself out.

Probably there was probably this five seconds I didn't do anything and it, you know, started flying again. Uh, but yeah, same thing, you know, I landed and my wife saw it, she came at me and I think she slapped me in the face or something, you know, so, you know, she was like, just because she's like, you know, what are you doing? Yeah. Well, then I had to make two promises and I mean, by then I'd learned my lesson, you know, then first thing I did is buy a reserve right away. That was a smart decision. Of course. Um, you know, the stupidest thing I'd ever done was to fly without a reserve. Very stupid. Uh, and then I got the IV shortly after also, which was also, you know, that took me to the next level. And I mean, SIVs, I've always been a huge, uh, you know, proponent of them. I think actually it should be mandatory for anything like P3 and up or at least P4 because I mean, you know, you don't know what kind of glide, you know, I see all these people flying two liners even seas, you know, that, I mean, I'm not judging anybody's skill level or anything, but, you know, you don't know what you have until things go wrong, you know, in terms of a glider, you know, And I've experienced that in a few situations where you can fly—anybody can fly, even a competition glider in the right condition.

I mean, people do it in Holland on the coast, you know? People with no experiences are flying Enzo's on the dunes, and it's all fine because nothing happens. But when that thing goes out of control, that's when you know what you got in your hands, you know? And that's also when you're starting to get, you know, confronted with your lack of skills, if you don't have the proper, um, skills to, um, to handle a situation like that. So, um, yeah, go sideways.

Quick on those high aspect wings, for sure. I mean, I think, I think also SIV instruction has gotten so good. Uh, you know, I, it's, it's not cowboy anymore. It's really, right there's, there's great, there's great instructors, you know? There's different instructings out there and different approaches, but you know, I think for the most part, those who are doing it are doing a pretty good job, yeah.

And honestly, I don't think you can call yourself a serious pilot if at some point, you know, the earlier the better, and multiple times you don't choose to do an SIV, you can say, "Oh, it's a bunch of money, this and that." Well, you know, dying or hurting yourself is even more money, you know? So it's not a money thing, it should be a basic requirement. Some people like, "Oh, I don't need to do an SIV." You know, I think that's—that's fear talking, you know? People are scared of doing full stalls, they're scared of stuff, and it's logical. It's not the first time you do them, it's not a fun sensation to feel your wing fall backwards and you fall backwards and everything goes to crap, and maybe you get twisted around this or that. But, you know, you're flying a glider that can collapse, you know? You don't know what's going to happen once that—and it's going to happen sooner or later, unless you choose to fly only in evening conditions or this or that. And there's people that do that, and it's fine, but still, even then, you don't know when something's going to happen, where all at once some evening wind picks up, or—or the wind shifts and now you're in a turbulent zone, or you get pushed back, or, you know, I mean, it's inevitable.

If you're going to fly, if you're, if you fly XC, it's inevitable you're going to get into a place that you don't want to be. It's just, it's not, if it's, when, uh, well, I, you know, before we move on to the next question, I'm going to ask you a question. This jail stuff and towing and private property, because that's a great story too. Or even just before we move on, your approach early on mirrors many in that, you know, in that era that there wasn't a ton of instruction. There wasn't a ton, but it sounded like, you know, your kind of auto approach, or independent approach, solo approach. Obviously, that's personality driven, but was it more personality or, or, uh, you know, ego, or was it just lack of resources? It

Was I would say that mostly a lack of resources and also just situational. I mean, you know, I spend all my money on traveling and then I spend all my money on that, you know, flight design and the other like, I wasn't, you know, I didn't have an excess of money at the time. And also, there was just not that much like, most of my flying has been always in Latin America, and Latin America was, if you talk about cowboy land, that I mean, there was no controls or no, you know, there was hardly anything going on, you know, no schools or anything. So I just kind of went with the flow and, you know, took my opportunities as they came along, uh, just learning as I went along, not because I didn't want any instruction, but just because, you know, I wasn't in France or Switzerland where the schools are, and I didn't have the money to pay, you know, 1500 euros or something for a week-long course or something.

Uh, which honestly, uh, if I did everything all over again, I would do several things differently, you know. I would definitely, uh, buy reserve right at once, uh, you know, and don't get, don't go to Indy glider after 90 hours of flying, that was also not a smart move, you know. Uh, and just instruction is good instruction. I mean, it's worth working, even if you don't have the money, you know, save up instead of buying that new wing, you know, get a, get an SIV or an instruction course, because I mean, I feel the same thing right now. I've always liked acro also, you know, um, I'm 50-50 between, I mean, right now I'm more 75 XC, 25 acro. As I get older, I'm not having those great goals anymore in acro, but I love acro and also as a means to stay in the game. I'm not having those great goals anymore in terms of skills, um, but I've my acro, I mean, I've done one acro introduction course, maybe 2013 or something with Denlo or Connor out west somewhere, and, uh, and it was great.

I learned a bunch, but all the rest I've learned by myself and like, I've been trying to learn the infinite tumble for the last three years or something and I'm stuck like, I don't get certain a past point. Uh, part of it is fear, but the fear is also not, not fear, fear, but just the fact that I know that I don't, don't feel

the building blocks, sometimes I have a tendency, and that's not personality, to run when I can't even walk yet, you know? And that's and an acro, especially in all disciplines, but especially in acro, if you do that, you know, you're just, you're not a help of your progress, you know? I have another friend in our, in our toe club, who's got the opportunity, more time and resources to actually do like a full month of, uh, you know, coaching in, in Turkey, twice a year. I mean, his progress, I mean, you know, when we started the, he was just doing like sets and whatever. Now he's actually nailed the infinite and all that, so he's way gone past me, uh, in terms of skills, because he's like persistent and very meticulous and just repeating the same thing over and over and over again until he's got it clear, and then he moves on to the next thing.

I'm like, I've done stuff where I don't even know how I did it, like this joker corked whatever, you know? I'm feeling intuition, I'm going in this, you know, asymmetric or rhythmic set, and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do an opposite, this is gonna work, and I'm like, just pulling on the other side and my glider Underneath me, I'm like an asteroid, so I had to look up what kind of maneuver that was because I didn't know what I did, you know? Stuff like that. So, you know, yeah, I kissed my glider a few times in the air and stuff like that, and I wouldn't recommend it. I mean, it's my, my style, but I think you can advance much quicker and safer with proper coaching. That would be my lesson, uh, learned, you know, out of all this, yeah.

Of course. Uh, so what brought you to the States? What is your work, by the way? What do you do?

I'm in sales. I'm a sales guy, so I'm a traveling sales guy. Um, that's what took brought me to the states. I was working for a company in Belgium; I was doing export sales to Latin America. Um, uh, so I got the job. I actually studied law, uh, and then when I finished law, I realized I didn't want to do law the rest of my life. I like traveling; I'm good with languages, so I figured, well, you know, sales will take me traveling, you know, uh, they can pay my tickets to go flying in different places. That sounds like a good setup. Um, so, so I got into sales and I, I actually liked it because I do like to deal with people. I love languages, I love culture, I love traveling, and I love Latin America. And there's flying places all over the continent, so that helped also in terms of keeping me motivated. All these years. So, uh, in '01, the company I worked for at the time, uh, few had a fusion merger with another, uh, company, and we had like some headquarters here in Charlotte, near Charlotte in North Carolina, which is why I moved here just to be closer to my market in Latin America, the same time zone, and all that.

Um, so yeah, I mean, I hadn't planned on that. I was always dreaming of moving to Brazil or Mexico or some place, and I kind of thought this was going to be like a stopover, a short stopover, and then move on further south. But that didn't happen for several reasons. We ended up having kids, and then, you know, once you have kids, you gotta not think about yourself just anymore, but about the consequences and of living in Brazil or Mexico, and you know, trying to provide the best environment for, for them to grow up. So we ended up staying here, and it's been great. It's been 20, you know, 24 years now that we live in the Carolinas, and, uh, apart from the, uh, yeah, apart, yeah, apart from the flying, which is really frustrating around here, it's, it's a good place, a healthy place to live, you know, and grow up. Yeah.

Charlotte's a great town, fantastic place, good, good food. What's the... what's the towing you set up there? And then, how did you... uh, have some run-ins with the law? Well,

Those are two different. Well, actually, yeah, um, so the run-ins with the law came from the fact that there's just not a lot of flying places around here in the Carolinas, and it's always very delicate. We actually just happened to lose three sites and, uh, over the past year, uh, one of them, my most frequented, so that's been extremely frustrating. Uh, but it's always been like that, you know? It's always been hard. It's always private, uh, you know, property where you have to have permission, and even then it's hard to keep it once you have it. Um, so I've always been, you know, surfing Google Earth, trying to figure out if there was any other places we could go explore and fly. I spent a lot of years putting a lot of energy and time in, both, you know, exploring my laptop and then going out and checking these places out and, you know, pretty much banditoing off of those sites. I've got a whole list of sites that I've, you know, I've been doing a lot of research on and I've been doing a lot of those

Were tried out like that, that are listening sites with air quotes, right?

Yeah, yeah, um, so, so that actually did, uh, create a couple of problems here and there. Um, one was, um, where I discovered this place, um, and try in North Carolina, and there's a beautiful, beautiful grass field that I found that was perfectly launchable in the perfect wind direction. Uh, I was so stoked, I couldn't contain myself, you know? I just went there and launched off of it and had an excellent flight and went back and did that, like, I don't know, five times and had like a 80, 90 kilometer cross country flight, never had a sled ride, it was always right on. So I'm like, I started to get so excited that I contacted those people, homeowners associations, there's like three of them involved in the same mountain. Um, I didn't know how complicated they were at the time yet, so I thought they would share my enthusiasm about how great this place is for flying, you know?

So I sent them a letter like, "Hey, this place is like magic, you know, for flying, would be fantastic, we can fly to records here and do tandem flies and this and that." They're like, "No, thank you." Uh, they sent me a letter with the lawyer and I'll say basically, uh, telling me I was not welcome and please do not come back. Wow, because, uh, yeah, so I mean, you know, either way, I would have approached it, there was no way we would have gotten access there anyway, but I still felt I was absolutely certain that a North Carolina record could have been flown from there and would be flown from there. So I had that in the back of my mind and I was on the lookout for a good day with a good forecast. You give that one more, one last shot, even after getting that letter, you know, a little bit persistent sometimes in a, maybe in a appropriate way, I would even admit, but, um, and I had made contact with a guy who had like a house that was kind of abandoned and in bad shape right on top of the ridge.

I didn't have the money to buy such house, but I maintained a conversation just in case he was ever going to sell it or something. So, so I, I hiked, I rode up with my car, dropped my stuff up in his backyard, um, then drove back down, hiked up the mountain, so I would not leave my car in sight or anything like that, put my gear together, you know, in his, in the woods basically, and then waited long and I'll, I would wait long enough to not risk sinking out and launch it too early. But the problem is, it's a bit of a cliff launch, so I waited too long and the conditions turned on too strong and now the place right on the road, which is technically public land where I was hoping to launch from, was not launchable, it was turbulent, it was rotor and I couldn't get my glider up. Uh, so I had to go on the grass field, which is, you know, the private property, the HOA, and even then I couldn't get my glider up, it was bad cycles, it was turbulent.

I mean, I tried a couple of times, I went to crap and by then I've been there for 15, 20 minutes and now a guy pulls up right in front of me on the road where I had to run over and cross in order to get airborne And I first thought he was just going to look at me and thought it was pretty cool, but uh, when I actually started running and to try to launch, he drove his car right in front of me, so I had to stop. And then he's like, "Stop, hold it. You know, I've called the cops. You know, you're trespassing again. We told you not to," and this and that. So effectively, before long, a couple of, you know, police vehicles came up, and there was soon enough there was like 15 police around me, all this and that, and they freaking handcuffed—they even handcuffed me—and then took me down. And then, and then, you know, this was, this little jail literally is like, you know, 10 feet by 10 feet. It literally is like from a movie or something, you know? This little, little town in the middle of nowhere, and I'll get literally handcuffed to the bench, and I don't know what they thought the risk was, I was going to run away or fly away from there or something.

So they had me, but I mean, they were like, "Yeah, these people on the hill there, they're kind of like, you know, they've been there forever, and they don't want nobody to come in there and mess with them," and this and that. And they were very sympathetic to me, but I did have to show up in court for that one and pay a fine for trespassing, you know? And that was the first time—that was not the first time, um, that I got convicted for trespassing. Once was with Green Peas, that I did like a anti, uh, carbon, you know, uh, they were building a Duke Energy here was going to build another carbon, uh, fueled, um, electricity plant, and and I joined some people to protest against that, and we literally crossed the line, you know, the property line of Duke Energy's headquarters to in order to hand over a letter asking him not to, and this and that, and and I got, you know, I basically got arrested that night for that.

And then there was another for you, I like

That one, that's a good one.

Yeah, yeah, I've had my years of, you know, and I'm still trying to, you know, yeah, yeah, uh, but there's another situation. So that, that was number two, but uh, in between there was yet another one. And then we're getting back to the towing, um, because now I'm like, I found this lake, uh, like an hour south from my house in South Carolina, and it looked like perfect. That's huge grass field. I'm like, man, somebody built this for paragliding. That's fantastic. Let's go try it out. I can convince my buddies to go on a Sunday morning when I assumed everybody was in church and there would be no one there. We didn't read any of this fine print or anything. Around that lake, there was a couple of signs up. Was like, let's just not read that and just go for it. I don't know why my friends always follow me, you know, but they did. And then the one guy had was the owner of the boat because of the stoke.

man i

follow you too

He is fired up. We gotta go see what happens.

Well, exactly. And it was fantastic. I mean, you know, so that was me, Dimitri, and his wife, just the three of us, you, the boat, and um, his wife's also a pilot, and uh, so I did one flight and it was magic, was epic. I mean, I got high through a bunch of acro, landed right there. Let's do another one, all right? And then the third one, we already started kind of intuitively feeling like we were pushing it, but I'm like, "Man, it's just so perfect, let's do one more." We should have just gotten out of there, but anyway, um, I did one more, uh, and by the time I landed, some guy came up with a pickup truck, dude. You know, I'm just warning you, but uh, the cops are underway and security's underway, you're in trouble. So, uh, I don't know why he said that because there was no one there, and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm gonna go time to get away." Anyway, um, within five minutes effectively, you know, the local security was there with like an AK-47 or whatever, and I was gonna be friendly, you know, took my helmet off, "Hey, wanted to give a hand?" Like, "Whoa, whoa, stay there, don't move." You know, they didn't even allow me to pull my glide or anything.

Uh, like, "Wait, the sheriff's on their way," so you know, police department's on their way, you know, you guys are trespassing. This is a nuclear plant right here. This is, uh, off-off limits, you know, you guys can't be here. This and that. "Oh, we didn't know that." Actually, the worst

case a line would break or something was actually right next to this nuclear plant. Like, if I would have had a line break, I would have gone like, and landed right near this nuclear plant, which they might have shot me out of the air, probably. I don't know, because I mean, it had one nuclear reactor and there was a second one in construction, you know? And I had a GoPro on my helmet, so was

the lake being used for cooling, or something exactly. It's a

cooling leg. Yeah, so there was actually no boating allowed on that lake, so, so yeah, so that was. And then, and then meanwhile, you know, my buddy Dimitri still in the boat, wait, he came up and like, "Oh, is everything okay?" And then the other girl, "You two, stop, stay there." Wait, so now he's also involved in legal problems, you know? Um, before long, you know, there's like a couple of police vehicles come up, there's like 30 police officers around us, this and that. The Department of Natural Resources is there, there's security from the plants there. I mean, there's like 50 people around us and it's like, you know, and I had the GoPro, so, and I—they must have looked up my record and saw, you know, my protesting with Greenpeace, or they're like, "This guy is probably like an eco-terrorist or something," you know? Maybe he's, or they thought we were spies or something, man. Yeah, so they confiscated my GoPro and this and that and, and then we had to go to court for that one too, which was actually real funny because, um, again, a little small town in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina, backdoor negotiating basic, you know, because, um, we're there and, and, uh, the judge or the police officer, I can't remember what it was, you know, he, uh, he's like, "All right, well, that's gonna be like 400 bucks each or something." I'm like, "What?

You know, dude, you said if we showed up in person that it was gonna be a small fine, and it's not a small fine, man." I mean, so, well, he's like, "Well, just, you know, just wait a minute." And he went back in the, in the back office and talks with another guy or something and then comes back. He's like, "How about 130 dollars? Does that work for you guys?" We'll take that, you know? So he negotiated our finder, which was kind of unusual, you know? It was kind of funny, but we got off with a 130, you know? Do you get, does

That go on your record? Is what trespassing, or what would you get, man?

I got more records in the CIA.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Now, I, I don't know, I honestly don't know. I think the other one went on my record because that was a second degree trespassing, the one of the mountaintop, you know? Yeah, that one, because I got a formal warning. Is why it was, I didn't know there was degrees.

In trespassing? Wow, yeah.

Yeah, now I'm formally a serial trespasser now, so uh, but that, yeah, that ever since I've kind of stepped away from exploring places where I'm not supposed to be, you know, I've kind of had my share. That I'll leave it to someone else, to the newer generation, you know? But the funniest, the funniest thing of all is like, like I said, I can be pretty persistent and, uh, my, my friends can be pretty crazy and following me because, you know, when we were there, the guys with the DN, the Department of Natural Resources, uh, I asked him like, "Look, you understand this part of the lake here is like, you know, the cooling area and the nuclear plant and this and that, but I've scouted some other areas on the opposite side of the lake. Like, if we go there, would that be fine?" And these guys were like, "Yeah, yeah, as long as you don't call them on this side of the lake." You're right. Oh, and so, so I convinced Dimitri and some other pilot, local pilot, to come with me some other Sunday after that, court settled and all that, and, uh, somehow they decided to come with me and, um, and we were like, we were really efficient and putting the boat in the water within, uh, again, Sunday morning, you know, we're there, drop the boat off, you know, within 15 minutes, we're like, you know, putting along on the water.

And all once this other boat comes at us and some guy goes like, "A Cohen?" Like, yeah. Oh, some guy in like, in a, in a, in a suit, you know? I'm like, in a suit on a boat on a Sunday morning waiting for me? This is really strange. So, so he was one of the—he was like, I don't know, an undercover police or whatever. And he's like, "Dude, I thought we were clear last time we talked." I'm like, "Yeah, but the DNS guy said this and that." No, DNS guy don't matter. We told you not to come back here and you're not welcome. You guys, you guys need to leave. So, I think they've been monitoring my phone messages or something because they were there when we got in the water. I mean, they couldn't have not gotten there after us and got in the water and intercepted us halfway, you know, when we were going out. So they must have, they must have been, uh, yeah. So I was, I was on the for a little, for a little while.

I hope I'm not anymore, but, uh, I don't do stupid stuff like that, well.

Now you're over 50, you gotta, you gotta rein it in a little bit. You okay? Before we move on, I'm gonna ask you about your goals, your two goals before you turn 50. But that reminds me of when I was first learning, you know, I went, I got my license from Santa out at the point and Chris Santacroce, who has been on the show and everybody on this side of the pond knows about Santa, but he, he used to do these towing fly-in slash SIV clinics, but also kind of, uh, expect, what would they be called, uh, event X, X expos, deals up and, uh, on Sammamish Lake up by Tiger, you know, big launch for us up in Washington. And he was driving his boat from Utah up to Washington and I was living in Hood River at the time with my girlfriend Jody and he was just driving through and I mean I was a 15-hour pilot, I was brand new, brand new and, and, uh, and he had given me his DVD or CD or whatever it was back then to watch the SIV, so I had watched how to do SIV but I had never done any SIV and he calls me up, "Hey, I'm driving through the gorge, you want to do some brotos down on the Columbia River?" You know, so that's the event site for kite surfing and wind surfing, it's right there in Hood River, it's where everybody kaiser's and so, yeah, that sounds awesome.

So Jody and I jump in the car we Park in the parking lot, and we meet him, and he's already got the boat set up. He does all the towing by himself, you know, so he's got the boat and the boat's, you know, in neutral, engines on. He's got the, you know, he's up on the, up on the, the event site, which is this grass site. It's perfect for towing, and you're going to tow out on the river, which, so it's not a lake, but the river, it's Columbia River. It's pretty big, and, uh, I mean, I'm shaking in my boots. I haven't gotten any kind of an intro, or he's just, you know, here, you know, hooks me up and you've seen the video. Yeah. Okay. Let's go. And just as he's going back to the boat, this, it wasn't a cop cop. Kind of a security guard kind of guy, he comes down and he goes, "Hey, um, you can't do that here." And and and Santa goes,

"What are we doing?" The guy goes, "Well, well, I don't know, but you can't do it." And and Santa, and Santa could just tell, he didn't actually know. The guy didn't know what we were doing, but he was just saying no. And so Santa goes, "Well, we're gonna do it because you don't even know what we're doing." So he runs back to the boat and just starts speeding away. And I'm standing there in the forward position, I literally don't know he does. I mean, I think he did have me on radio, he did have me, but he's driving the boat, you know? There's not somebody else sitting there. And I'm looking at Jody, who's standing right next to me, going, "What do I do?" And she goes, "I don't know." And and you know, as soon as it starts the tensioning up, she goes, "Run!" And so I start running and get up in the air and I'm figuring it out. And now he's got me on radio, you know, follow the boat and doing all the thing, but because we're on a river, you know, he's got to do some turns.

And so he's, he's now he's instructing me and I'm kind of getting it. And I come off tow and I start doing stuff, you know, asymmetric collapse and frontal, and he's guiding me through all these things. And now I'm starting to get pretty low and he gets, comes on the radio and he goes, "Hey, um, so you might see that there's a whole bunch of cop cars back where we took off." And I'd seen all these cop with the sirens going, just one after another, after another...

I'm out of here. Wait, what? And and he just speeds off up the river and oh, now what do I do? And so, instead of landing at the event side, I go land at the parking lot at McDonald's, and I'm on the radio with Jody the whole time and, "Hey, come over to the McDonald's, come over to the Donald's, pick me up." And she picks me up and we hightail it out of there. I mean, it felt like we were base jumping off something in Vegas, you know? And we got a ditch. I mean, that was my first SIV experience ever. It was so awesome, it was so amazing. Yeah, you see all those cops, go somewhere else. I'm out of here. Well,

You know, sometimes like they say in Mexico, sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. You're never going to get the permission, you know? Sometimes you just have to do it right.

Exactly. Oh man, it was so fun. I just thought, man, you are such a stud. What is it? Yeah, you know what? Are we doing It was the perfect answer. Okay, so you and I are the same age. A couple years ago, you, you set a couple goals for your 50th; what was that all about? Yeah,

Yeah, so um, you know, since maybe 2012, 13, or something, I've been starting to go to Northeast in Brazil because I did get eventually fascinated by, you know, long distance flying, and that was evidently the place to be. It was actually also kind of crazy because the first time I went there, then my best flight was like 120, 130 kilometer flight or something, and I went to Quixadá. You know, this was must have been 2013 or something like that, or 14, maybe. And um, so I, you know, same thing, I had really afforded myself too. Well, you know, I was pretty good at ground handling and I was pretty confident of my launching skills and all that. I got there by myself, midday conditions. The first day I arrived, I'm like, I'm just gonna go to launch with my rental car and see how conditions are. There's nobody there. I'm like, it's pretty strong, but it looks perfect, you know, cumulus all over the place. Well, I'm just gonna launch.

So I launched, you know, wild launch, but all safe and all good, and I get up and sky out, and and now I'm flying like, I don't know, 40, 50 kilometers until I decide to land just to not make it too far because I didn't know how to fly, and I'm like, I'm just gonna fly and I'm where I was going or anything. Uh, and I had a retrieved driver hired for the next day, so it was just like a warm-up round, uh, but I fell in love with the set down from then like right away. I mean, the people, just the incredible potential for flying, the conditions. I love strong, rowdy conditions as long as you go up and far, you know, it's all good for me. Um, so I had a couple of good flights, made my first 200 plus, I don't know how much, 240 kilometer flight or something on that trip, double my previous distance, you know. And then I've just, I think I've gone back like every year the last two years or something, you know, really well. So, and each time I went, I've improved my personal best, you know, from 240, it went to 320 and through 60 and 380 until, evidently, you know, once you start getting into that game, you started to realize, if you can fly 300, you can fly 400.

It's just a matter of, you know, planning your day a little better, launching a little earlier, flying a little faster, you know, stuff like that. Um, so my goal, one of one of the two goals I had before I was turning, I turned 50, it was to fly 400 kilometers, which I thought was now 400, you know, not that special anymore. People fly, you know, they're hitting 600 now, so 400 is still, it's still sort of a select club. 300 is not a reference anymore, you don't want to even mention it to anybody, you know, 300 is nothing unless it's a triangle, but uh, but 400, I mean, you know, and you know people go like, "Oh, it's downwind flying, it's got to be easy," but northeast in Brazil is not easy at all. Um, it's very hard, uh, for multiple reasons, uh, first of all because you launch super early Evidently, because you want to take every possible flying hour of the day to maximize your potential.

That also means in the morning, the thermals are still light. There's a lot of winds, the thermals are blown apart, you're not getting real high. The terrain's unforgiving, you know, you've got a couple places where, I mean, I don't know, you've flown in this time, I'm not sure which places you've been, Tasima.

Is the only place I've really, I mean, I ended up, I my, I finally got out at Tasima and it's just vicious, man. It's so tough, but uh, the scene was the hardest of all. Flew to Quixadá, so, which was almost 400—it wasn't 400, it was 380 or something—and then, but that put me at Quixadá and stayed at Quixadá because it was so much easier. But I mean, Tasima is brutal. God, it's horrible. I

I got a, I got a similar story. I got a, I mean, I flew from Tasima once also, and um, actually I went there twice because the first time I didn't get one nice flight at all. It was cross conditions, and like you say, it's super low, and I mean, 80 was the best I did on my first trip to Tasima. And then you have to sit around for multiple days because it's blown out, you know, and

A hard place to sit around. I don't know what it's like now. I was down there with the guys, uh, just I was by myself, but I was with, with Salad was there, and Nasi Manto, and they had broken the record the year before this was the before they started towing it to seem like it was still just purely foot. What year was that? That was 2016, I think so. They, well, that he set the record, didn't he? Do it? I mean, a number of records, but the, the big one was 2016. So I think I was down there in 2017, and, uh, I had showed up by myself, and those guys were there, and they had said, "You know, last year we were here for 37 days, and we got the one"

week in. I mean, the forecasting is ridiculous, there isn't any. And so you go out there, sun up or before sun up every day, and nine days out of 10, I was back at the hotel by eight. You know, yeah, yeah, either I—either we couldn't launch because it was way too strong, or you'd fly 5k and bomb out, you know, because you have to go over that plateau that's 40k, and it's hot. And and then Nasi Manto hit a fence and screwed up his arm, and they—they were only there a few days and they just said, "I can't handle it this year, we're going home." But I mean, I'd be there at eight o'clock and there was no internet, there's no AC, there's nothing to do, the food sucks, and you're just sitting there all day. I mean, it was—it's—it was a job, it was work.

It'll, it'll, it'll drive you to drinking, yes.

Exactly, yeah. There was a lot of drinking; it's not that

kind of a place, but I, I was lucky one. The next time I went back to the seaman, because you know, that was after recently, shortly after that big flight of days, guys said, I'm like, I gotta try this again, you know? And actually got there, and the next day it was, on the conditions were great, and uh, I managed to do like a 280 kilometer flight or something. Not huge, but I mean, I went past Patu, and then what I did, what I decided to do, is I spent the night in Patu and launched next morning from Patu, and then broke my personal record with it, and that was actually the site record at the time, with a 382, I believe, kilometer flight. I

remember which actually

reopened. They reopened Patu as a potential site because I don't know if you know, but they created like this artificial lake, uh, like I don't know, maybe 100 kilometers north of Patu. And then I went back to Patu, and I went back to Patu, and I went back to Patu, and I kind of shut down the area for a while. But I guess this lake was now way more down the water level, or so, and or smaller or something. And I kind of, after I went and broke that site record, everybody started going back to Patu, like seeing the potential again. They kind of thought, but it was done. And then because Quixadá, Quixadá is a pain in the ass to launch, also to seem to forget, I mean, you know, not only the conditions are real difficult to nail a good day, but then the launch, the launch is also brutal, you know, and dangerous. Quixadá is also dangerous. Patu is also dangerous.

Have you flown in Patu? I've

Never flown Patu, no.

It's, I think it's the most enjoyable town to stay in, and it's also the best launch of the tree, you know, um, and then, then the next day, so I flew 380 something all the way to like the border of, um, Siara and Piaui, and then spend the night in Quixadá, and then the third day I flew from Quixadá and did another like 300 kilometer flight, so I basically flew 27 hours and three consecutive days and 925 kilometers, so then I was toast, you know, then I, I was finally tired after three days, and then I flew to Patu, and then I flew to Quixadá, and then I flew to Patu, um, but yeah, I've been so, I've been going back for a year after year and always one, and then the next step evidently was a 400 kilometers, um, which I had, I've probably done between 15 and 20 kilometer flights of over 300 kilometers over these years, always trying to hit the 400, and it would just never work out, and then, you know, the last day I had one more day before I literally turned 50, and it was also the day I was flying back home, I, I nailed it, I mean, and it was, it was from Patu

Uh, no, this was from tow, actually. This was from tow from Masu, okay? Yeah, then, yeah. Um, so this time I, I mixed, you know, I went a couple of days from Patu, and then I went a couple of days from Masu, uh, from towing, and um, I

Mean, I've never done it; I've never done the towing in Brazil, but that seems way more reasonable. I mean, these, these foot launches that you do down there, they're pretty frightening.

They are, they are, yeah. And the towing is super easy launching. I mean, there's, there's no drama, there's no, you know, scenes and all that. The only thing is, you know, and the biggest thing is, you know, the advantage is once you're off tow, you're immediately in axiom mode. It's not like in quiche d'arpa too, where you gotta hang around the mount for an hour, sometimes two hours, before you feel the conditions are good enough to go for it. And by then, it's like eight, maybe 8:30, or something. So with the towing, you're off tow, there's no reason to hang around, you just have to go for it.

Kohen is the reason you're spending so much time in Brazil rather than Texas is because it's just more consistent; you're just getting a lot more hours. Why aren't you chasing Texas?

No, to be honest,

I travel to, to Latin America, and especially to Brazil, to Brazil. I travel maybe four times a year, sometimes five times, in function of how much business there is. So, you know, once I'm there, my tickets paid for and all that, I can easily take a few days off. And the disadvantage of that is I only get, you know, a handful of days—four days, six days, whatever. I don't go for like 10 days, two weeks in a row, usually, also because of family, you know, obligations and this and that. Uh, but it's just convenient for me because I'm already there, and I love the culture, you know? Retrieves, it's not cheap, but it's way cheaper than like in Texas. Seems like I've never been to Texas, but it seems like the logistics are a little harder. But I mean, it's on my list. I'd love to go to Texas, I would say.

The logistics are way easier that you know. The the big difference between Texas and Brazil was there's several big differences, but one of the big ones is the roads in Texas are great. So you know that whole Brazil taken all night to get back, you know, you're back pretty quick. The roads are paved; you've only got the one little hiccup with the hill country, but even through there, it's pretty good. In my experience, I've only been once, you know, I went down there with Cody a few years ago and we were trying to snap it, but it's just inconsistent, you know? It's, it's not, you're not flying every day like you are in Brazil. Part of that inconsistency might have been that we were too picky, you know, I think you really just got to go for it. But there were just, there are a lot of days just like in Tasima, you just show up and it's blowing too hard, and I think also, you know, Sebastian proved that

With good forecasting, you can show up and nail it, and I—I'm just too far away to do that, you know? So it's, and I think that whole drought index is really important down there. It's got to be a really dry year, and it seems to be, you know, these days things are dry around here, so probably getting pretty good. But yeah, it's just—it's a huge commitment. I mean, if you could, you know, for me it's a 30-hour drive. Uh, you know, if you could show up, you know, Donna Zete, I think put a winch out there. Uh, you know, if you could, if you could show up, you

know if you could show up, you know if you could show up on

A good forecast and do it then. I think it's got huge potential, but I don't know anybody other than Sebastian that's figured that out, yeah.

Well, I mean, Brazil is, I would say, it's definitely way more consistent. Like Tasima is the exception, but Patu and Quixadá, if you go in a season and maybe all year, I've just haven't been there outside of the season. But for the big flights, let's say September, October, November, I mean, I, I think there's potential for flying a 300 kilometer flight from Patu or Quixadá like pretty much six days out of seven. I mean, I've seen it happen, like either I've done a 300 plus flight or somebody else that, that day, you know, I don't think there's all, you know, there's the occasional blown out day or whatever, but I mean, it's like flyable nearly every day, I'd say six days out of seven. Yeah, and you don't have that in

Texas, I think it's the reverse of that. Yeah, so that's—that's a big difference, but

At some point, I mean, you learn, you learn. Like, you know, initially I'm like, "Okay, you know," but now I'm at the point I don't want to do another 350 glowing the flight. It's like, and because of what you said, I mean, the retrieve is brutal, you know? You land out freaking 6 p.m. or whatever, you know, if you're lucky. You drive is there more or less at the same time. This guy's been driving for 12 hours, also the whole time he's—the whole day he's tired, you know? Yeah, I really felt like

It was, I felt like it was pretty unsafe. I, I, what we participate in is not very safe, but I don't like that kind of unsafe, you know, where I don't have any control. It's just, uh, you know, the roads are tough, they're exhausted, there's a lot of animals. It's just, I don't know, right? That's just no

It's, it's extremely tiring. The retrieve drives is way more tiring than the flying itself. I can fly 10 hours every day and not be tired of it, but I mean getting, getting to the hotel after, like you said, and then I got to take the steering wheel because the guy's freaking literally falling asleep, you know? So we switch drivers and, like you said, it's potholes, it's animals, it's like you can't go fast because any given moment there might be a freaking, you know, six feet diameter pothole in front of you, you know? So you get to the hotel at 12 o'clock, one o'clock in the morning, and evidently you want to fly the next day, so you know, you got to charge your batteries, get your stuff ready, you go to sleep. I mean, I can't sleep, so I sleep maybe one hour if I'm lucky, and at four, it's like time for breakfast, let's go. All right, day after the day in, day out, you know, you can only do that for so many days before you're trashed, you know? Well,

And you're, you sound like you're uniquely wired for that, you know? Uh, your buddy that you flew with down in, he said he just kept calling me just every day we were gone, yeah.

I mean, honestly, yeah, I, I'm lucky and that, I mean, I keep up, you know? I do a lot of workout, a lot of cardio, and all that, so I'm in physically in good shape. I can keep going, uh, that's something, and I just want to keep going. I mean, you know, if I'm in Mexico and it's liable, I'd feel so bad sitting around not doing anything. I mean, hell, I'm here for flying, you know? So it doesn't tire me more to be flying than it is to, you know, I don't know, do something else in town or something. So why would I not fly if it's liable? And if I'm flying, I'm going to try to push to get the most out of the day, and I'm not worried about retrieve because, I mean, especially in Mexico, or even Colombia, or Brazil, wherever you land, there's going to be somebody that gives you a ride, or, you know, you can find an Uber, or I mean, it's never been a problem. I've landed out all over the place, invited Bravo, and like as soon as you walk out of the woods, somebody actually literally stopped. I hadn't put my finger out yet, and they're, "Hey, you want to ride?" Like, "Yeah, sure, thanks." You know, it's so easy.

So I'm not concerned about it, and I speak Spanish, so that helps a lot too. I can understand somebody who doesn't speak Spanish might be a little bit intimidated, you know? But other than that, it's super easy. So, yeah, I just go for it, man. There's a second goal. So, so like I said, I've always liked acro pretty much almost as much as XC flying and all that as any form of flying really, but in acro, I really wanted to nail the infinite tumble, and I've been trying and trying and trying, you know... true reserve a bunch of times trying, you know, and never nailed it. And then there was, I felt like I was so close. I was like at 11 o'clock and I felt like I had to dial in, you know, the rhythm and all that, and I just hadn't pushed through because I felt I didn't feel 100 secure, and I felt like I needed one more session at the end of the season to get it done. And then the weather didn't cooperate and I didn't get it done, and then I was 50, and now I'm like, all right, yeah, I'm still working on it, but I'm like, if I can do it, fine; if not, and maybe one day I'll do some coaching.

You don't have

that you don't have that 50 motivator now, so it's in back backed off a little bit. The design, well...

I'll still try for a big flight before my 60, maybe 500 might be a little ambitious, but you know, I want to reconfirm the 400 kilometers in terms of XC. That, that would be fun, uh, but acro, you know, I'm just having fun, and we hadn't touched on that yet, but I've, uh, put a tow club together, and that was one consequence of fun trying to find these places to fly in the Carolinas and realizing that even with places to fly, the climate here, that would just never cooperate. It's just so hard, and then if it does, you know, you don't have a tree to fly. It's just so hard, and here it is really hard to get back from where you launched from. There's just no public transportation, no Uber, no nothing. Uh, so I started realizing, man, if, if you want to be a good pilot here, you either have to travel, or we got to put a tow club together, you know? And I figured if we have a tow club, uh, and, uh, we can, we can be on the lake where we also can go XC if the conditions turn out to be great that day, we got full flexibility.

We'll never have a lost weekend; we'll just go. If it's not good for XC, we'll be, you know, doing SIV and acro and this and that and all at once. It turns on, we can just switch gears and take off and, um, go fly XC, and the potential is huge. Um, and miraculously, there aren't a lot of pilots in the Carolinas, but I even drummed up some paramotor pilots and this and that and somehow got like 15 people together and convinced them to, uh, chip in 1500 bucks and put a club together like a non-profit. Uh, this was in 2019, was it? And, um, we call it to aces. A friend came up with his name, to aces. I thought it was a fantastic name. It's a

great name the

Official name is Carolina Carolina Tow Club, that's our legal name. Yeah, um, so, so the other idea I had was, I've seen people tow and it always ends up being the same story, you know? One guy is a tow operator and he knows how to operate it, nobody else knows or wants to know how to do it and just shows up for towing and then go back home, and the guy on the, on the never gets to tow and gets frustrated and within five times you're like, "Fuck this, I'm not doing this anymore," you know? Yeah, so I figured if this stuff is going to work, we're going to have to do this in a way that everybody gets trained as an operator so that we can just take turns, and we're going to store your boat right next to the lake so we find the storage like the boat's like half everybody in the club is, uh, tech operated, you know, and tech rated. Um, actually operating the winch is the easy part, there's not much operating once you're in the air, it's mostly the boat is the hardest part, you know, just adjusting the speed, you're the way you take your corners, understanding how, what the wind's doing higher up because you know you hit a different layer all at once, you get this 20 kilometer now, you know, tail, tailwind or something which can mess you up and get slack in the line.

So it's, it's been, it's been a tough road in terms of making it work, but now we got it dialed in. Um, we've reduced club because we had a lot of sitting ducks, or what do you call that, people that are just never showing up and it just, you know, I mean it's great that they were there to get it started, they were, you know, fundamental and getting it started, but now we have a core group of people that are really interested in doing it and wanting to go out, so we're still not getting enough flying, but at least we have an opportunity where we can continue going and, uh, you know, I got a couple other buddies that are really stoked about acro and now I want to start exploring the XC potential there because I'm sure I can fly 200 kilometers from, from there, uh, someday if it's windy and, uh, but, uh, we'll see. Yeah, I'm really that, that honestly, you know, the 400 flight and all that is great, but I think my biggest accomplishment in paragliding is having started this towing club, uh, first of all because it opens up so many more possibilities, but also because I mean, I, I do appreciate and love the community part of paragliding.

We don't have a lot of that around here because everybody lives somewhere else, we all live two, three hours apart, there's not really a core group that gets together and, you know, and if we're going to fly a mountaintop, you know how it is, you know, you set up

a plane, and you know, you're going to fly a mountain top

You're looking at the conditions, you're focused on what you're going to do that day. You fly, you land, try to get back to your car, and then your wife's calling to get back home, you know? So there's not that much opportunity to hang around and and have that community feeling with the tow club. You're 100 depend on these other guys. I mean, you're doing it together, you know? I'm towing, you towing, we tow each other up. You got to trust each other, yeah? You know, you get to know people, their fears, their skills, their lack of skills in certain areas. You help each other and build up on each other's skills. Everybody gets better. Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's it's really, it's my baby.

Man, you get the 20 you got, I'm all fired up, man. I'm gonna go out and like attack on a mountain or something right now. You get the energy of a 20-year-old dude, I love it. Uh, well, thanks for everything you do, thanks for building the community out there. That's amazing. We've been struggling here with our community, you know, with the insurance problems and all the stuff, and so, and I know what that takes, but uh, appreciate you, man. Appreciate you keeping the pedal down and uh, sharing these incredible stories. Awesome, man. And uh, I can't wait to fly with you again, bud. Me

Too man, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Maybe by you, or hopefully before that, somewhere else. I'd love it. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show, Gavin. I really appreciate it. It's been a fun, fun talking with you. It's

Been fun talking to you, man. Appreciate it. Cheers, all.

Right, cheers. Bye, if

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