Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloud-Based Mayhem. I got a different one for you today with Bonnie Hobson. She and her partner, Jared, are the little cloud importers here in the States. And I had a fan reach out a while back and said, you got to get Bonnie on the show. She's so passionate. She's so into it. And it's also great to get a perspective from somebody who's a much smaller pilot in stature. And she just rips the dunes. And I thought, wow, that's interesting. I don't do a lot of interviews with Wagga-style pilots.
And that's certainly a big aspect of our sport. And this gal, this man said, you know, what I was told, she's from the Midwest. And they soar the dunes out there a lot. And you're going to get bored with that so fast. And Bonnie's never gotten bored. And that's what she does every day. And she's done it for years and years and years. And she just makes the best games of it. And she's super passionate about it. Bonnie cut her teeth, as you'll hear in the podcast, out in Hawaii. She's a total noob. Made some crazy mistakes. Had some pretty scary incidences out there, including landing in the ocean. But she figured it out. And now she's out at Muscle Shoals, or more widely known as The Dumps, just west of San Francisco, which is where one of the places I flew when I was a total noob.
I was with Enloe O 'Connor and his son. And we were kind of chasing each other around, doing top landings and stuff. I still have really fond memories. I still have memories of flying out at The Dumps. So, yeah, usually we get pilots on who are, you know, sending huge lines or competing or, you know, in the X-Alps, that kind of stuff. And this was a totally different conversation and wicked fun. Her journey is really inspiring and her passion is really infectious. And I found myself wanting to get out and get back into that coastal game. I don't get that out here in Idaho. I don't get that out much. We're always trying to fly big, and often it's pretty scary, and it doesn't have to be all that way. And there's lots of different ways to enjoy this sport.
Bonnie hang glides, speed flies, flies the parakites. We talk about all that, talk about, you know, an audio version of how to use the Cobra and how to launch in high winds. And it was all just fun. And, hey, one little bit of housekeeping before the holidays. If you go to the Cobra, you'll find a lot of stuff. If you go to patreon.com forward slash cloudbasedmayhem and sign up as a subscriber, if you don't support the show already, or if you do and you want to upgrade, if you go to the $3 or more option per show and then choose the annual subscription, which will give you a 10 % discount on that. So that for the year is about $54, less than a cup of coffee every month or so, and hopefully worth the value.
I will send you a free Patagonia t-shirt with the Mayhem stuff. Follow over it or a Recaps Mayhem trucker hat, which is about worth the same value. But Merry Christmas and get on over to patreon.com forward slash cloudbasedmayhem and support, hopefully, your favorite show. So enjoy this conversation with Bonnie Hobson, the little cloud importer in the U.S. And I'll have links up in the show notes to all her amazing videos. She has a great YouTube channel. You can check out all of that. Happy holidays, everybody. Enjoy.
It's nice to see your smiling face. I'm really excited to talk to you about our shared passion. It sounds like you've got more background in different types of wings by a lot than I do. So I'm excited to hear about skydiving and hang gliding and everything you do and little cloud. I understand you're the U.S. importer for little cloud. I don't know much about the little cloud wing. So, yeah, we got a lot to talk about. Thanks for coming on the show. Hey,
Gavin. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited.
It'll be fun to talk to you about. Everything, actually. And
I thought you were out in the Midwest because you've had several people actually reach out to me in the last couple of years. You got to get Bonnie on the show. You got to get Bonnie on the show. And the most recent was, I understand, bought a wing from you out in the Midwest and then came out to California and did some flying with you. But your Muscle Rock, where are you doing your jam?
Yeah. Ironically, I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Indiana. And, yeah, I live in California now. Muscle Rock is five minutes away from the flight park. So, I'm there every day that it's flyable. So, I get to fly.
I'm not familiar with Muscle Rock. So, where is it? What kind of flying?
It's a coastal ridge. So, it's also known as the dumps. A lot of people know it from that. It used to be a dump. Okay, I've flown the dumps. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.
That was one of my first two weeks of flying. I went through the dumps and flew to the Pacific. So,
yeah, I live right by there. I'm there all the time.
Okay. And you fly a lot of different canopies. Yeah.
So, I started paragliding in 2009. And, you know, when I was a little girl, I think all of us have that in us. I wanted to fly something somehow. I didn't know what. I thought flying planes was not very practical. Logistics were hard. It's expensive. A lot to learn, you know, things like that. And actually, growing up, I grew up in Indiana, like next to cornfields. But my neighbor had a plane. And he had a small airstrip in between the cornfields. And every time he took off, I was like, wow, that's so cool, you know. So, it was cool. It was always a part of me. And then in 2009, I bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii. And my first day on the island, I saw them paragliding at Kahana. And I looked up. I go, what is that? I want to do that. And I went on a tandem and then took lessons. And I was hooked ever since. But, yeah, since then, while I was in Hawaii, I went on a tandem hang gliding flight with Dave Godo.
Best in the world, you know. I was excited about that. But, again, I didn't think it was very practical and logistics and things. I never thought I'd get into hang gliding. Fast forward years later, 2021, I took my first lessons in hang gliding. I've also dabbled in skydiving. Also, on the island, I took my first tandem skydive.
Good God, this trip to Hawaii was a big trip.
It was. Like, it was life-changing. There was something part of me, like, I just got off a long relationship and something was changing in me. I knew something needed to change. I was bored in the Midwest, drinking too much. And, like, something's got to change. I need something to find another passion. And there it was. Yeah, it was there all along. So, you know, Hawaii was amazing. I ended up living there for four years. And I flew a lot. I flew as often as I could. And flights were long there because you could just stay up forever. So, one - to three-hour flights were very common when I was very new. So, I got a lot of flying time in. Did
you move there right after that trip? Or was this kind of a wholesale, previous life, start new life kind
of thing?
Yeah. I
bought the one-way ticket. And moved there. And I ended up staying for four years. So, it was a pretty cool experience. It was pretty special.
Did you ever get any kind of island fever? Or did it ever become, this is kind of feeling like Indiana? Or was it always just stayed special?
No. I mean, it was hard to, like, because it's kind of expensive to get on a plane and leave. When you're living there, you know, you're not making much money. And so, living was hard because everything's really expensive there. It's a beautiful place to live in. But it was a really special time. I met a lot of great friends. And the Hawaii Paragliding Association is the best in the world. They actually had a few write-ups in Yuspa Magazine about their camaraderie and their hospitality. And their ohana, you know, their family. You go visit the island and they take care of you.
Yeah. Because that's a special crew over there. They're awesome. What was the initial hook? What was the, you said you did a tandem. What was the, we all kind of have this different experience right off the bat that can be pretty compelling. Yeah. Right.
So, like I said, I knew something in me wanted to fly. I didn't know what. So, I initially thought, oh, maybe I'll do it. I'll become a tandem skydiving instructor before I knew what paragliding was. And growing up in the Midwest, I actually did see a couple of paramotor pilots, but I never thought I would be able to do that either. And I just didn't really think about it too much. But as soon as I saw paragliding at Kahana, I was like, that's it. I know. That's what I want to do. And so, then I just started taking lessons. Right. I asked. I finally met them and I was like, how can I learn and how can I become an instructor, which I never ended up doing. But I'm a tandem instructor now. And I like to mentor and teach as much as I can on the ground. I don't feel comfortable in my heart to have someone else's safety in my hands.
So, I'm really careful about when I mentor, you know, things like that.
What kind of ways do you mentor? What are the things that you've seen in your own flying that help you? What are the things that you teach flying, even though you're not an instructor? I put that in quotes. But yeah, what's that kind of looked like for you?
Yeah. So, three years into my paragliding, my mentor came to me and was like, look, your ground handling sucks. You need some work. And so, I was like, will you help me? And he said, absolutely. So, every day, we would spend at least an hour on the beach at Kahana in strong wind, ground handling and skiing and popping over and boosting and having all this fun. And it's three-dimensional. And it was like, really, it was like all these elements that I didn't know existed in kiting. When I first learned to fly, I thought kiting was just get it over your head, look up at it and stare at it. And you're like, oh, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. It's not all about that. It's all in your hips and it's control. And it's, you know, just being ready to know what's coming with the strong wind, you know. So, I want to pass that on after he taught me all that.
So, I've muscle rock. Rock has some strong wind. And there's a lot of students that come out that learn from the mountains and no wind, you know. And so, I like to teach just like a little bit of kiting tips. It goes a long way. But also, I'd like to do side intros and show you where you can fly here. You know, you don't want to go over there, things like that. So, that's easy for me to do. I really enjoy tandems in general. So, I'm happy to do that and pass that along.
And is your kind of passion for flight more? Or soaring, coastal stuff, XC, acro, where do you fit?
So, the one thing I like about flying is landing. So, I have a lot of fun. Like, at Muscle Rock, we can top land everywhere. So, lots of different places, I mean. So, I have a lot of fun with that and challenging myself. Where can I land? And sometimes we play a little game called, like, top landing horse. And, you know, we'll follow each other around and someone will land there. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to land there too. Or top land at all the different takeoff spots and the top of Green Monster as well. And that's the hardest one. But we'll fly down the range and top land, like, stables close to Fort Funston. Or down south is Chit Chat Cafe. There's a little dune there. And we can land and, you know, get coffee and warm up. And the trick here is to fly back with the coffee in your hand and sipping it as you're flying along and then land with it.
And so, yeah. And besides the top landing, I love, like. Coming in and swooping landing and having fun. Coming in really fast and just seeing how far you can swoop. So, I love working on that. So, the thing about flying and all the different dimensions of it is you're always learning. So, I've been doing this 16 years now. I'm still always learning. So, yeah. Coastal is my main jam. I learned in Hawaii. It was mostly coastal. It was actually, like, ridge thermals. But back then when I was learning, I didn't understand that so much. And I was mostly just coastal flying. You know, I wasn't really utilizing the thermals there. But, yeah. Now, you're always learning. I'm actually doing more and more thermal flying. So, 16 years, I don't have a lot of thermal flying under my belt. But I'm getting better and better at it and enjoying it more and more.
So, I always like to know where I'm going to be landing. So, I don't like to put anybody out. Like, oh, can you come get me? And do all that. So, I'm getting better at it.
So, XC. Yeah. That's. You kind of never know where you're going. So, that's. Right. That'd be trickier. I remember flying at the dumps. Like, really early on. And I was out there with Enloe. And his son was, I don't know, 10 at the time. He was pretty young. And we would just play follow the leader. Which meant I was following him. Because he was a much better pilot. I was, you know, I was two weeks in. But I loved that. That was so fun to just get in the sky for 30 seconds. And then land where he landed. And then take off again. And just follow him around. That was great fun. Where I live now, we don't do that. We live in Idaho. It's all big XC. And we never get kind of those. Those kind of conditions. So, I'm kind of jealous. That's a perfect spot for it.
Skydiving. Do you still do quite a bit of skydiving?
Not really. I learned that in, let's see. It was 2017, I think. 2018. I did the lessons. Again, it wasn't. It was super fun. I loved it. But it's really expensive. And waiting around for the plane. And weather. And just having to pay for a plane every time. I like to be flying. A lot more. So, I didn't end up pursuing skydiving. But I have like five tandems. And eight solo jumps. So, not that expensive skydiving at all. But I did it. And I did my solo jumps. And it was really fun. But yeah, I didn't pursue it.
A lot of people get pretty bored of coastal soaring, ridge soaring, you know, pretty quick. How do you keep... I mean, you just talked about you kind of play these games and that kind of thing. But before we started recording, you said one of the reasons you haven't become an instructor. Is you just love to fly too much. You just want to be in the air all the time. How do you keep the passion going? What is it about flying that kind of flying that just keeps you humming?
That's a good question. A lot of people think it's not a huge ridge. How do you not get bored all the time? Well, I'm really special. I'm lucky that I have lots of different gliders. So, if I get bored, I just switch gliders. So, I'm always flying something different. Different aspect. You know, the kite risers are a big thing now. So, I'm always looking... Learning on those. And so, I'm just switching it up all the times. So, that's one thing. I fly lots of different wings. I'm a huge fan of Little Cloud gliders just because they make smaller ones. So, they always fit me a little better. I'm a really small pilot. 53 kilos or something. Not very heavy at all. So, I like smaller stuff. But also, with the strong wind here, I can soar the smaller stuff. So, that's really fun. I can fly... I can soar 8 and 10 meters, like, easily.
So, stronger wind and, you know, downsizing once you work your way up to that. I like to push that, you know, you need to work your way up to flying in stronger wind because you got to do it safely. You don't just want to go out on a 20, 25 mile per hour day and, you know... And it starts with ground handling. Ground handle, ground handle, ground handle. Kite, kite, kite. Get better at it. And then slowly work your way up to the stronger wind. A lot of the times when it's strong here, it's crossed. So, it's really tricky. And there's different rotors and things like that. So, yeah, different conditions. So, the thing about Muscle Rock, another reason why I don't get bored, is every day is completely different. Actually, every hour is different. The wind is always changing. And a good pilot will recognize that and know, oh, the lift is changing over here. Oh, it's getting lighter.
Don't play and get too low. Also, a lot of playing. Like, I do a lot of... I like wing overs and spirals and things like that. So, I like to play and I call it free refills. So, I'll go to climb up, you know, play and get down. And so, I'm always moving, always keeping energy in the glider. Keeping it challenging. Yeah. And then, you know, you can do the chill days where you go up and down the coast on the good west wind days where it's straight in and you can fly up and down. And that's fun, too, to just go to different places and top land along the way. That makes it interesting. But, yeah, I mean, I always say, if you're bored red soaring, you're doing it wrong. There's so much you can do. There's so much more you could learn. You work on top landing, work on wing overs, you know, spirals, whatever you want to do to play with the energy and energy.
And then, you know, you have to do a lot of management to get down and then climb back up again. I
mean, it's the best way to solve what's most, where most of the risk comes from, isn't it? It's just launching and landing. I mean, you can do hundreds and hundreds in a day, which is, that's some pretty good training.
Yeah. And to elaborate or continue answering the question that you asked, I did do a little bit of acro training while I was in Turkey in 2021. But I realized how much of a mental workload that was. And then, coming back here, we don't really have enough altitude if I'm still learning on maneuvers. So I'm super conservative and safe pilot. So I want to keep it that way. And I don't want to do maneuvers that I'm mediocre on and do something wrong. I don't want to throw my reserve here. So it's
just too bad. What does that mean to you? What does it mean to you to say you're a really safe pilot? What do you do to be, to give yourself - So what I meant
by that was when we met some really, really experienced acro pilots, in Italy, they were, in Switzerland and Italy, they were telling us that their hard deck is 1,000 feet. That's where they stopped doing their maneuvers. I don't want to start my maneuvers here at 800 feet. That's what I meant by being safe. Like, I'm not going to risk it. Like, I don't want to mess something up. And then I like to preserve, you know, take care of the site too. I don't want to put the site in danger of, you know, throwing reserves or having accidents, things like that. But that's what I meant by that.
Gotcha. I remember stories of people getting blown, blown back at Muscle Rock a lot. Is that still just part of the game there?
Unfortunately, yeah. We're trying to address it more, just talk about it more. But usually it's people that don't check in with us. They're foreigners. They're coming from Europe or other places, or a lot of it's students too, that just aren't understanding. Oh, I got too far behind the ridge, things like that. So we're trying to address it more. We have a huge Telegram chat group where we talk about it a lot and say, hey guys, it's the higher you go, the stronger the wind is. You need to make sure that you're staying low and out front. But then I started realizing when I'm giving site intros, just saying stay low and out front probably isn't enough. They probably don't know what I mean by that. So I'm starting to rephrase it and say, you know, fly over the water, stay over the beach, you know, and don't go, don't get high.
You know, it's fun to challenge yourself to try to fly low. You don't have to be the highest one in the air at a coastal site. That's not challenging at all. And. I think some people, oh, I want to get higher. I want to get higher. But the higher you go, the stronger you are, the stronger the wind is, and the less penetration you're going to have on your gliders. Just keeping that in mind and trying to tell others that and communicate that is helping.
We should probably just describe the site for listeners who aren't familiar with it. As I remember it, you know, it's a big cliff and you're right on the ocean and there's, you can launch kind of anywhere at the base of the cliff on kind of that, ice plant type stuff and, you know, grass and it's really friendly. And, but then, you know, at the top of the cliff, just behind that is San Francisco, basically. I mean, it's very densely populated and it just goes completely flat. And then it kind of starts dropping a bit behind that. Is that right? Yeah.
So Daly City is the town right behind it. But then further on is San Francisco and SFO even. So we do have airspace there as well that we need to stay below, which isn't. That hard. Go ahead.
Hearing planes. I'm hearing planes quite regularly wherever you are.
Yeah. I'm not far from the site at all. So it's actually faster for me to ride my electric unicycle to Muscle Rock than it is for me to drive the car because I have nine stop signs and two miles along my way. So otherwise there's a trail that goes underneath the freeway and I can just hop on the unicycle and ride down. So that makes it really fun too.
Unicycle. We should have, we should have started with that. That's fantastic.
Oh, that's a fun pastime. I didn't know they had electric unicycles. Of course they do. That's. Yeah.
So I started on a one wheel and unfortunately my one wheel got stolen when I did a hike and fly one sunset flight at Muscle Rock. And my buddy was, had a unicycle, electric unicycle. And he's like, why don't you try this? I was like, okay. So I did. And I was like, okay, it has more power, more range. You know, it can go up and down the hills easier. I ended up learning and got one. And now I take it out there every once in a while. When I only, when I'm only taking one wing with me, if I'm taking a quiver, then I'll drive the car. But I like to have demos on hand in the car. So in case somebody wants to try something.
What do you do outside of, so you, you bought the distributorship, you're the little cloud dealer in, in the States. What did you do? I mean, back in Hawaii days or Indiana days, what, what's your side hustle or main hustle? I don't know if that's your main hustle now, or how do you make a living?
Yeah, it, it, it is at the moment. In Hawaii. In Hawaii, I was a tour guide and that was really fun. So Kulo Ranch is a really, really cool place. Lots of Moyes and TV shows are filmed there. And the most famous one, of course, is Jurassic Parks. That's where it got its fame. It was a beautiful spot. When I just here, I was, I actually got into dog, dog walking and dog training. So that was my side, side gig for a while. But last year I recently stepped away from that and I did that for five years. And I stepped away from that to focus on Little Cloud USA because I purchased that. Jared and I purchased that from Jeremy Bishop, 2021. So I like to be able to travel around and offer demos and try the wing and try to, you know, sell, sell Little Clouds.
So with that and flying tandems is what I'm doing nowadays. Tell
me more about Little Cloud. Is it, I think a lot of people aren't very familiar with the brand. It's, it makes small gliders and they're, they're a smaller brand. If they got a whole parakite line now too, that looks pretty wild. That looks fun.
Yeah. Yeah. You got to try it. It's fun. So yeah, Little Cloud, it's a small company. So Tom Bordeaux is from France and his wife now is, they run the company and Tom does everything. He, from testing the gliders to making them and the factories in Sri Lanka, but he's based in France and Brazil. So part-time France, part-time Brazil, his wife is Brazilian. And so it's a small company. He doesn't advertise very much. And, you know, I got hooked on it when I moved here to Muscle Rock. I actually got my. First Little Cloud, it was a goose and it was 21 meters, but it was a fast 21 meters. So it was trimmed a little faster so I could actually penetrate on stronger wind days. And then he ended up making like a 16 meter and that I found was my everyday glider. That was my full size. And I was like, this is amazing.
Like I'm heavy. Uh, I can penetrate, I can fly in stronger winds. And then from that, it progressed to smaller and smaller. And so he actually made like a 10 meter and I could soar that. So yeah. So yeah, he makes. From eight square meters to his biggest, we're biggest gliders, uh, 27 square meters, I believe. He doesn't just make small wings, but they're trimmed faster so that smaller pilots can penetrate. So that's what makes it kind of special. And yeah, they're not well known, but they do. He makes a wide variety from beginner wings, which is the GT to a little more advanced is the Gracchio. After that is the Uribu and that's kind of their XC gliders. That's what I'm flying right now on it as when I do thermal flying or go to the air. So that's what I'm flying right now on it as when I do thermal flying or go to the air. And then the parakite wings is the puffin. The puffin is cool because you could, well, all little clouds, you can, he made little, um, kite risers that you can integrate to any of the little cloud wings.
So you can even put them on the cross country Uribu and fly it in strong winds. And it's really fun. You can, you have all the speed at your hand. So I call it speed at your fingertips. So all the speed range is, uh, in your hand. So it's derived from kite surfing. Tom actually started in kite surfing. So it was cool for him. To bring it over, um, make these transitions to just adding it to any glider. So we, they're modules. So you can change the light, change the risers out and make it standard or add the kite risers, which I like when it's stronger wind. I like flying kite risers in strong wind, but yeah, you can put them on any one of them. And so the puffin is my all time favorite glider. I could fly it in lots of different conditions. Now I have a 14 meter puffin V2 Proto, which has been working for me in many conditions.
Even it was like. About eight to 12 miles per hour, a couple of days ago. And I was soaring with all the full size gliders and it was no problem. I was doing free refills and so they're not only just small, but they're efficient too.
When you're launching in really heavy wind on a, on a parakite, what's the, what's the difference? Are you still doing cobras and that kind of thing? Or you can just kill it a lot easier, like a kite surf kite.
Yeah, I don't really need to do a Cobra. I do sometimes otherwise without kite risers, I'm always using a Cobra, but kite risers, um, because the speed is there. And Tom has done something different with the profile of the glider. So the Lama wet, which is the dedicated, um, kite riser wing has semi closed cells. So it actually doesn't pull you when you pull the glider up. So you want to pull it up with some, with some speed and some power and get it in the air. But once it is, it's not pulling you at all. So we go hands up and then you're adding more speed to it. So it doesn't really pluck you or it shouldn't pluck you. It doesn't effectively. Fuck you. As much. And
so you're sinking your hands and you're just taking off.
Yeah. Yeah. So you put your hands down and you can pop away. So it's pretty cool. Cool.
I got to get one. Yeah.
Come out here and try one. We'll show you. Yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's not too far. So I'd, I'd love to. That'd be, that'd be great. Well, what's the community size there these days on a, on a normal day? What are you seeing out there?
Probably like on a, a normal day, probably about 10 to 20 pilots on a really good day. We're about 40 or so. 40 to 50. It's not too big, not too small. It's fun.
I want to dive into a little bit more before we started recording, you just had this look of, you know, when we started talking a little bit about flying and the, the folks that said, I really want to, you need to reach out to Bonnie because she loves flying so much. What is it about flying? What is, what is it that's so it's just kept your focus for what, what'd you say, 16 years now? Yeah. I,
at this point, I think we joke that it's like a drug got to have a hit, you know, got to get my feet off the ground. Yeah. When I was little, I remember my brother would throw me up in the air and like catch me and my eyes would get real big and I was real scared, but I've loved it every time. Like do it again, do it again. And then I remember in high school, I was a little older. I did we went to six flags and they, I think it was called the dragon's wing where they raise you up like 200 feet and then drop you and you swing down. Yeah. And I was like, Oh my God, this is it. Like there's something here. So, you know, it's always about finding your passion. When I was a very little girl, probably two years old, I was passionate about basketball of all things. I grew up in Indiana. I was a Hoosier and I was very passionate about basketball and then, you know, went to college and played and then, you know, I had to find something else after that.
As I mentioned earlier, like I was bored in the Midwest, needed to find something else. Like what, what was after basketball, you know, and then I found this and it's, that's it. Like, so yeah, sharing, sharing the passion. I love doing tandems. I was really worried about getting my tandem license because I did, I was like, okay, it's going to be work now. I'm not going to like it anymore, but actually it changed. I was like, I love it. Like, let's go. You want to go tandem? Like, let's go with, like, I'm up to like almost 60 tandems or something now and I enjoy it a lot.
What about it? Do you really enjoy? Is it, is it, are you feeding off more of the energy of your passenger just there? Yeah. Or kind of minds being blown?
Yeah. That, like the most memorable flights I have are when someone cries or they won't shut up. They're like, oh my God, like we're in the air with no motor. There's no engine. Like, this is just physics, you know, and I'm like, yeah, it's like, it's really cool. But I mean, that's the thing. That's the thing about it. It's like, but I love it when they're screaming, they're happy or they're crying of joy. You know, everyone's really afraid. They're like, I'm afraid of heights. This isn't going to work for me. I was like, trust me, give me three seconds. Three seconds. We'll be in the air. If you don't like it, we'll land. Um, even my, no, they've never gotten too scared out of 960, something, whatever, none of them have been scared of heights or, you know, oh, I'm scared.
I want, I want to go land. Even my, um, my niece and her husband came out and I was really excited to, to take them. And he's really, he was really nervous. She, she had a great flight. So I top landed. I was like, okay, you ready? He's like, no, I don't want to go. I was like, okay. I was like, Elizabeth, do you want to go with me? I'm just going to launch and fly back to the car. And he's like, wait, you're just going to fly back to the car. That's it. I was like, yeah. He's like, okay, I'll go. I was like, sure. He was like, yeah. I was like, okay. And then right when we got in
the air.
Of course he had one
stop at the car.
Yeah. No. Well, I was like, well, I have to bench up a little bit and, you know, climb a little bit. So we make it to the car. And so we got in the air and he, he was like, oh, this is cool. And I'm telling you, it was within seconds. He's like, oh, I'm good. This is cool. This is fine. I
had this, uh, it reminds me of, I had this really special moment with my mom. We were, this was back in my sailing days and we were getting close to the end of what was called the best Odyssey. His best kite boarding was this was the sponsor and we were up in the outer Hebrides in Scotland and it wasn't, you know, this was a kite surfing expedition and the water's cold up there. And it was really gusty and it wasn't really working very well for, for guys. I mean, it was, it was frequently just not windy enough and, uh, but that made it great for flying. And I had my tandem kit on the boat and I've never been a tandem pilot. I'd never gotten a rating, but I had all the, I had the tandem gear. And so I was taking all the clients flying every day because it was perfect. You could just walk 10 minutes from the boat up a little bit of Pete. There's no trees in the Orkney islands.
It's all just Pete Moss. And so that's why the Scotch is so famous up there. And you just walk up a little bit and launch and then fly around. And so I had all these clients and as they got more and more comfortable, I started doing my wing overs and having fun. And my mom would just sit on the boat and she was in her mid sixties at that point. And she was just watching. I we'd come back, you know, you, you fly all day and it never gets dark in Scotland in the summer. You fly whenever you want it. And so you, I fly and come back for lunch and fly and come back for dinner and fly and come back to go to bed. And, uh, about the third day of doing this, I just never imagined that she'd want to go. And about the third day of doing this, she just had this look on her face, mom, do you want to do this? Oh my God. I thought you'd never asked me. Yes, please, please, please, please, please.
And, uh, and so we went up and she had really bad knees at the time. Now they're all been replaced and they're fine, but she, it was kind of hard for her to. And so we go up just a little ways and, uh, and it was pretty windy this day and launched and I'm just kind of boating back and forth. And 90 seconds in, she's going now, Gavin, start doing, do that stuff I've been seeing. What do you mean, mom? When you bang it, you know, when you're doing stuff, you know, we're just floating, do that other stuff you were doing. You want me to do some acro mom? Yeah. Do the acro, do the acro. Just my little tiny mom. She's five foot one and from, from Arkansas, it just never occurred to me that she'd be into this stuff. So, you know, I start banking and I'm not even not close to doing wing overs. I'm just doing more kind of turns.
Now, Gavin, I've seen you do it. Go do that stuff. And so eventually I'm doing proper, I mean, way over the top wing overs and she's just hooting and hollering and more, more, more. I couldn't believe it. So she still talks about just how special that day was and that was so fun. It was such an amazing experience for, I think more better for me maybe.
Yeah. I think my mom is my favorite passenger, but all my, I've taken most of my family and those have been my favorite flights hands down. So. So my mom used to say, she's like, go do wing overs, do wing overs.
Bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. That was, that was really cool. Tell me about, so you're, you're not an instructor, but I understand you, you do a lot of, that's called mentoring. When somebody shows up at Muscle Rock having flown, how do you, how do you teach, how do you get people into it? What, what are the most important things people are listening right now that are thinking, I want to get into this sport. What should they know? What have you learned? That's the most important thing for people. People to digest about learning how to become a pilot. I
think hands down fundamentals is ground handling. Like, I think it's skipped a lot in instruction, unfortunately. I don't want to, I wouldn't knock any instructors by any means, but I just think that it's skipped a lot and we need to focus more on it so that we can mitigate injuries. I think understanding your glider and doing that on the ground is the best place to do it, but feeling it, moving side to side, feeling the energy, and then working your way up to, to, to strong wind handling is important. And then understanding the stall speed, but of course, so, and that takes place when you're top landing and things like that, it'll, it all circles back. Hands down fundamentals. Like I learned that in basketball, like I'd always do these drills and I hate it. I'm like, oh, this, these drills suck. And I never understood the importance of them, but it's like the background of, you know, the basics of what, what it's leading to, you know?
And then I realized that later on, like I said, my three years into my flying, like, I was getting. Picked up, plucked and slammed all the time. I didn't understand why. And, um, then, you know, you get better and you get in more control, your launch when you're ready. And it's, it's really important. So I start there. But then knowing where to fly, like. Rotor is huge here at coastal sites. When you're ridge soaring, when the wind changes, which it does throughout the day, all day, the rotor changes. So that's important to understand. And the wind also picks up and slows down. So if you don't want to land on the beach, you know, if the wind is getting lighter, then you need to understand that too. But understand this big thing is number one here at Muscle Rock. What I like to do is look at the Hawks cause we're flying with the red tail Hawks and they point themselves and hover like in the direction of the wind.
I'm like, okay, that's it. That's the wind direction. So that's one place to look, but you can always look at if other people are, are kiting or flying or we have lots of wind socks, but they're always changing. We always want to look at that. Or if you don't have that, then you notice your ground speed and always check your penetration. How fast you're moving into the wind. So that's important.
You said you use the Cobra a lot. How did you learn it? How do you teach it? How do you set it up? This is tricky because this is an audio podcast. So it's a challenging thing to do without showing in your arms and all that kind of thing. But yeah, take, take the listener through Cobra.
So my mentor taught me that when we were doing all the kiting and ground handling in Hawaii. And so mainly. Yeah. It's not really that hard, but you set it up perpendicular to your body. So the wing will actually be straight up the hill because essentially what you're doing is raising one side of a glider at a time. So you're not lifting both sides of the wing at the same time and you're slowly bringing it up. It's so crucial to do this when I'm doing tandems, because we don't get pulled and drugged and I usually don't have any assistance. And so I just pull the glider, lay it out perpendicular on the hill. So the wing is above me. And then I'm down. It's below it. So your position is actually important too. So the wing is perfect. And how, how down
wind of it, wind of it, how cross, where is it laid out in relation to you and the wind?
I kind of lay it like 90, like straight above me up the hill and then get under it. And then I'm just pulling that one a and then walking under it slowly and you're right under it. Um, it, yeah, it's when
you, when you say, when you, when you say 90, so your back is to the wind. Yeah. And, and the, and the, the, the wing is directly uphill, but it's basically dead downwind of you.
Yeah, exactly.
So then, so then you don't need somebody holding it or cause I, I used to get pretty confused with this in the beginning, you know, say a really strong ridge, I would lay it out 90 to the wind in other words. So the winds off my, one of my shoulders, that's what you see in videos a lot too, where, but then somebody kind of has to hold it and tease it and it took me a while to figure out the downwind thing.
Yeah. I mean, it helps. It helps if you're, if you have a slope, like, you know, an angle on it that helps a lot. Otherwise, if it's kind of flat, then yeah, you kind of need somebody to tease it. If it's a flat takeoff, it's a lot harder for sure. Or you could like jam the a and like pull it up in the air, but give us, is
that just your, your go-to regardless when it's really strong.
Yeah. Even when it's really light, I'm usually doing a Cobra. You just pull up one side and walk under it and it's pretty smooth.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, what other little high wind tricks can you pass on? What are, what are some things that people, A's and C's. Yeah. Yeah.
So you're holding the gas. Spends on
the wing.
Yeah, it does. Yeah. Um, so A's and we'll call it C's, A's and C's, um, or rears, I guess you could call it. Yeah. You're holding the gas and the brake at the same time, but you really want to hold the brake a little bit more as you're pulling it up. So then you're not, so you're slowing the glider down and then slowly releasing it. Yeah. As it's coming up. Otherwise I see people, I was using A's and C's and it's like, well, you weren't really using your C's cause it was still pulling up too fast.
Still pops. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're getting plucked, you're not using enough C's. Yeah. Rears.
Right. Okay. Exactly. Yeah.
Uh, you talked about, it's a lot more hips and body and feet. I think this is another thing that I certainly see beginners struggle with, you know, they're, they're, they're all about their hands with the wing rather than movement. How do you teach that?
Yeah. Another thing you mentioned hands, but it's, it's finesse. It's not too much, not too toggle happy. Like I saw one guy like doing this, I was like, what are you doing? You're like boxing. No, no. So slow down. So everything's slow, finesse. Um, and then I'm moving your hips around because depending on the wind you're, you know, turning, if you want to turn your wing away from the wind. Yeah. You can drop the hips to one side, get it, you know, kind of like a Cobra and then you can do it the other way. But just moving your hips just a little bit is going to turn the wing ever so slightly. So it'll help you turn into them and then doing it slowly so that you're turning into the wind and getting ready to take off in control. A lot of people do it way too fast.
Are you in the kind of place where, you know, you, what you see a lot of is kind of an upside down Cobra. I don't know if that's the way to describe it, but you know, when it, when you're on snow, you can just have. The A cells straight down on the ground, you know, so it's, it's upside down of how we would normally launch. And then you can just pull a break and kind of wind it around and that's quite sexy, but you really, do you ever do that on it? Do you have the kind of terrain for that?
Not the terrain is key there, but sometimes we have the ice plant and it just gets stuck and everything, but you really want a lot of wind for that too. And bigger gliders. It's a little harder, but yeah, we do do them on the mini wings sometimes, but I find a Cobra works. A regular Cobra works okay for me, but definitely you'll get less plucked if you do the upside down Cobra, but it's, that's a fun one too. When we'd go up on green monster, sometimes it's really, really strong up there. We'll do it up there.
Green monster is a launch.
Yeah. It's the top. So that's about a 600 foot Ridge and the trees up there top of the cliff. Yeah. We, that's one of our nicknames for it.
Yeah. Gotcha. Green monster. Yeah. That's gotta make the newbies kind of nervous. You want to go to green monster?
It's a heck of a hike and you have to pass through poison Oak and things like that. It's 600 feet. It's not that bad, but people think, oh my gosh.
What is the Bonnie? What does the future flying look like for you? You said you got into, you're getting into hang gliding. So you're way reverse of the normal trajectory, using people hang gliding and they get into paragliding if anything, if they get into flying, but you're going the other way. Why? Why? Why? And where did the hang gliding come from?
Yeah. So my friends were doing it and Jared, my boyfriend wanted to do it and I was like, I want to do it too. You know, it'll be, you know, add it to the quiver and you know, something new, something different, you know, always learning is, is fun. Yeah. Just adding it on. I'm taking it really, really slow just because I don't want to get hurt and I'm very conservative and you know, Fort Funston can get really windy. Yes. You can penetrate a lot easier in a hang glider, but still it's a beginner hang glider that I'm on. So it's not as fast. So I want to make sure I can penetrate and land safely because when the, when it is windy like that, it does get very rotary. So and then can cause, you know, complications on landing, you know, I don't want to break my arms. So, but yeah, it's, it's fun adding something, something, something to the quiver for sure.
Are
you, are you taking the hang glider inland at all as well or just, just coastal? Okay. Oh yeah.
Yeah, we do. We do. I haven't really thermaled one. There's this crazy video I posted on YouTube. We, I took it to Hole Mountain in Lake Pillsbury in Northern California and it was a boomer day. It was in June and I didn't know because I couldn't see the cumulus clouds behind the hill behind us. But my friends were telling me if you could have seen the sky from the ground, you wouldn't have launched that day. And our buddy launched in, in his hang glider, he's very experienced and you know, he's poured it and got super high and we're like, oh yeah, it's on, you know, and I was to the point where I was just like, okay, I want to launch and land, you know, I just want to get my practice down and you know, fly in the mountains. And I launched, oh my God, I went up in the thermal, I'm also light on the hang glider of course, cause they don't make them small enough, but so 145 square feet and I went up and then I fell off the backside of it and I went down and I was like, oh shit.
And I just like knew I had to stay in control cause you know, I could have like flipped over and you know, I was like, look at the LZ and I'm like, pointed myself to the LZ. And I was like, fight it, fight it, fight it. And I just flew through that thermal. It was so big. I was so scared. Everyone was so scared. They're like, my God. And so I went down and it took me 17 minutes to land. That's how far away the LZ was. I was like, oh my God, I just went down now. And so, yeah, I mean, that was one of my scary stories, but it was fun.
Nothing worse than being in the air and wanting to be on the ground. Yeah, exactly.
Where did you get this conservative slash safe, uh, modus operandi where, where did you get hurt? Did you have an accident or is this just ingrained?
Yeah. I got really lucky in the beginning. Like I probably should have died multiple times. Everybody watching me thought I would die because you know, I wasn't in control as my kiting wasn't any good. And I just, I was very, very ignorant coming into the sport. I was very like, you know, I bought this one way ticket to Hawaii. I'm gung ho. I'm excited. I want to change in my life. And this was it. No
fear. I
had stoked. I had zero fear. Like I didn't understand. The fear or what could go wrong in this sport because everyone around me and flying you, you know, some people make it look easy, you know, and I just didn't understand. I was excited. I came off as cocky, but that wasn't it. I was just simply ignorant. Like I didn't know any better and I was excited. And so I, I had some crashes for sure. And I landed in the water in Hawaii and I had some crazy stories, but you know, I've survived him. I laughed him off, but that came across as cocky. Like, you know, you're not understanding that. But stop laughing at yourself, like, look, open your eyes, like, look. And now I look back, I'm like, Oh God. And now I'm that person. I'm like, Oh, what are you doing? You know, you idiot, like, you know, you need to be safer about it.
And so now I'm like, I'm a little too serious when it comes to the sport, but I don't want to see people get hurt. I've seen a lot of death, especially coming into the speed flying scene. I started, I learned to speed fly in 2017 and you know, you just see a lot of accidents and they can be prevented. And. And a lot of it is like, not necessarily beginners, but inexperienced pilots doing low barrels. You know, everybody thinks speed flying is barrel, barrel, barrel and like, yeah, barrels are cool. Barrels are easy, but you can mess them up so quickly and it's unforgivable. Like really, you know, people are becoming paralyzed and we're, you know, we've seen, we've seen death and it sucks actually like Jared had two of his mentors within one week barrel roll and hit the ground.
And that slowed him way down. So that slowed me way down. And so when we do barrels now, we just do them out away from the train, like even with as many flights as I have. And, you know, I'm still a little ignorant, so I'm like, I don't know where I'm going to come out in that barrel. So I don't want to be low. So you know, I'm taking that as far as safety goes. So yeah. Yeah.
That's it. That's the problem with wingsuit base. Isn't it? The rush is the ground and the closer you just want to get closer and closer. And so there's really zero margin, you know, so that doesn't leave much room for screwing it up. We're humans. We're all going to screw it up. Aren't we?
Miscalculations or the wind changes and you don't expect it. Things like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You mentioned that you had some pretty scary stories. Tell me the scariest and also tell me your best flight, you know, and that's a hard one. I know. But if there's something that just sitting in the back that keeps the, keeps the fire alight. What was, what? The
scariest was my 25th flight actually. So I was really new and I got blown over the back at Makapu in Hawaii and I ended up going, going, going. I noticed the terrain was going in front of me. I was like, that's kind of weird. And I got on the radar. I'm like, Hey guys, I think I'm going backwards. And they're like, push your speed bar. I'm like, okay, that's not working. They're like, okay, go across the wind. I was like, nope, still going backwards. It's not working. They're like, turn and burn. Like, you got to get out of here. I was like, oh shit. So I was like, okay. So I turned around and I was like, okay. So I turned and I'm on this like super slow A wing that's too big for me. I've been flying for an hour. I had a great flight, hour and a half. And I just got too close to the ridge. Like, like these students that I'm telling you at Muscle Rock do too, like you just don't know any better. I didn't know any better. And so I turned and burned. I flew through massive rotor that felt like a washing machine.
My wing was all over the place and I was like, oh God. And I kept it, kept it open and kept flying and I was pretty high. So I, when I flew down, downwind, I'm like, oh my God. I'm like going pretty far and I'm new. I don't know what to do. And I kept flying and I'm like, oh man, I should probably turn into the wind at some point. So I turned into the wind and I'm still going backwards. I'm like, oh God. And now I'm over the ocean and I'm like, okay. And I got on the radio. I'm like, hey guys, I'm going in the water. And they're like, what? Why? Like you passed all this field that you could have landed in. Don't go in the water.
Don't go in the water.
Yeah. Like, don't, no, no, no. And my instructor was like, okay, start unclipping your, your harness. I was like, okay. I was like, okay, I'm going in. And like, that was, that was it. And because of my ignorance and stupidity, I was way out of the water. So luckily I wasn't in the big surf, like it was huge surf at Sandy's beach. Oh my
God. And
luckily for me, there was a lifeguard on the beach and he got on his jet ski. He knew what was happening. He's like, this idiot's going in. And so he got on his jet ski and he came out and he got me and I was calm as a cloud. Clam. And there was a turtle swimming around me. I was like, oh, hey buddy. You know, I'm like unclipping my harness, but I had foam in my harness. So it was like turtling me over. So I'm like trying to keep my head up and it was fine. It was like non-eventful because I was in the calm part. Like I wasn't in the waves and the jet ski got me. And then I was like, and he took me to shore and I'm like, can you get my gear for me by chance? Like we got to get it out of the ocean. He's like, sure. So he went and grabbed it and threw it on the beach and we got it. It was fine. We washed it out. And you know, that was it.
That was that. But. Oh
my God. You're so lucky.
You're so lucky. So stupid. Everybody always
dies when they go in the water. That's incredible.
I know. It was, yeah. Stupid luck. But yeah, a couple of other like mishaps I had just reiterating on that part of it was just trying to top land, like slamming into the hill and like jamming my ankles in things like that. It was just things like this that were happening. I'm like, I need to get better. I shouldn't be having all these accidents and stuff. So, but. We
like our cheap mistakes, don't we? Yeah. Yeah.
I never had any. Yeah. I never had any, like, I never went to the hospital. I'm a super nerd now and I keep a log book of Google sheets and I have, I'm coming up on 12,000 flights and never been in the hospital, but you know, I had some, some injuries that I had to walk off for a few days and stuff, but, but you were asking me my favorite flight. One of those would be because I worked at Kualoa ranch going cross country was super fun, but I launched Kahana and then made it across the huge bay there at Kahana bay. It's a huge crossing. This was a special flight because I did it on a 16 meter puppet and I didn't go back to the back of the range to get to the tallest point, which is Puu Pei, 1700 feet or something. I did it from working my way up the front because you know, everybody's going back there and they were getting hammered.
I was like, I don't, I don't want to do that, but I really wanted this flight. I'm like, I'm just going to try it. So I got up as high as I could. I was fighting and fighting for a long time and finally I'm like, I'm just going to go for it. And cause if you don't make it, you'd go and land at the beach and you know, it's, it's okay. So it's
not, not each penalty points for not making it, you're okay. If you
turn in time, but I knew I needed to turn in time, especially being on a 16 meter wing. It's 5.3 aspect. It's nothing major, you know, so 16 meter puppet and I, I'm like, I'm going for it. And so I make the, Jared had always already crossed and come back and you know, he's like, want me to get this flight too because Kualoa is so special to me because I actually lived across the street from there too. So it was like my backyard and it's just a beautiful, you know, Jurassic Valley and it's just really special. So finally I was like, I'm going for it. And I'm like, I get, I'm going, going, I'm like, oh my God, I was like, I think I'm going to make it. Like, and I'm pushing, pushing across the huge bay and I made it. Once you make it across and you're high enough, like you're established already, you're going to Kualoa. So I get, get over there and I made it and I'm like, yeah, I got it.
And so I got up higher and I flew the ridge and I'm like flying over Jurassic Valley. I'm like, this is, which is called Kualoa, Ka 'a 'awa Valley, like, this is so cool. And you know, I'm taking pictures and stuff and like recording, documenting it. And then I landed in at Kualoa Beach Park in the front, away from the trees and then everything. And I said, yeah, I made it. And then here comes Jared and he follows me and he lands there too. And so it was a really special flight. It was super fun.
Yeah. Like
I said, nothing too big, but.
But a cool accomplishment and really beautiful. You, and I'll have a link up. Uh, just. Yeah. For those of you listening, you make a lot of really cool videos. And so I'll have a link up to your page and those of you listening, you want to see some of this cool terrain, we'll, we'll show you, uh, Bonnie, thanks. I appreciate you and thanks for coming on the show and I'm excited to come out and fly with y 'all. It's been, uh, 2004.
Oh my gosh. That was the last time I was at the dumps. So it's been a bit, it's been, it's been a minute. I should get out there again.
Yeah. Come on out. It's fun. You know, there's other places we fly to that are really fun. We can go inland in the mountains too. And then sand city is super fun at the sand dunes. So that's one of our favorite go-to spots as well. It's only an hour and a half or so.
Good, good Wagga going out, out there. Yeah. That's awesome. Super
fun. Yeah.
That's really fun. I appreciate it. Thanks very much. Thanks for coming on the show.
Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.
Cheers. If
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