Hello
everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloud Base 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 Menarca 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 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 uh so i'm a sales guy so i'm a sales guy so i'm a sales guy and there's flying places all over the continent so so that helped also in terms of keeping me motivated after 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 uh you've seen the video yeah okay let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go let's go and just as he's going back to the boat this it wasn't a cop cop it was 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 quichada 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 kishida so which was almost 400 it wasn't 400 it was 380 or something and then but that put me at kishida and stayed at kishida 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 kishida kishida 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 kishida 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 kishida and then the third day i flew from kishida 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 kishida 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 kishida 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 kishida 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 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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