Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem. Got a great show for you today as spring is kicking off. Hopefully, you've all been getting some of that goodness over in Europe. My gosh, a whole series of hammer talk days over there. I had a pretty nice flight the other day, and I was page four. My God, look at all these huge FAI triangles, mostly over in Austria and Anthels down in northern Italy. But yeah, congratulations to all of you, and good to see some huge flights going down. My guest today, Anthony Dillon, reached out after listening to the show with Serena Raunchy, where she mentions the benefits that she has experienced with EMDR therapy, which I was using as well when I was doing the show with Serena to help process the death of my buddy.
And I'm going to try to say this. It's proving tricky. It's about the fifth time I've tried here, but eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. That's what EMDR stands for. But it's basically retraining your brain when it's gone through something really traumatic to get away from the trauma and not just dive into the negative side, but try to pull your brain back and align it with positive things. And so it doesn't send you into darker places. And Anthony reached out because he had used it to process pretty radical PTSD after a really major kind of life-altering paragliding accident.
And then when he reached out, he mentioned in the email that some of the places he'd flown, he started learning to fly in Zimbabwe. That's where he's from. Spent 15 years, I believe, or more in China. Did a whole bunch of flying in China. Really good friends with the pilot who died. And now I should have notes up in front of me. They got sucked into the QNIM that Eva came out at over 30,000. This was back, I think, 2007 when she came down like a popsicle. But the other pilot in that same cloud died. They were good friends. And he just has a whole bunch of amazing stories. So I wanted to get him on the show. Yeah. Just talk about some of the places he'd flown and now doing it with his kids.
He was actually, his son was going to race last year in the X-Red Rocks. He had a little mishap before it, but he's going to race this year. So, and of course, we talk about his accident and how it went down just full. It was just completely his fault, but that really set him back. And Anthony's just had an incredible love affair and passion with flying since the very beginning. Well over. Over 30 years now. And I learned a lot from this and was really inspired and made me want to hop on a plane and go fly a bunch of new places. Spent a bunch of time in Bali. Uh, yeah, Anthony's been everywhere, but now he's residing out in North Carolina. Yeah. He's good friends with a few folks we've had on the show and he was very generous with his time and his story.
And I think you're going to dig it. Keep sending, have fun in the spring. Uh, hope you're getting all. You're all getting some good weather and some good flying and yeah, enjoy the show. Thanks for listening. Cheers.
Anthony, thanks for coming onto the show and making this work before your trip with your kids out to the Alps. We're going to be talking about that. You reached out because of the show with Serena, uh, the second one we did with her and she mentioned EMDR, which I've been using, uh, as well in, in therapy lately with, uh, the death of my good friend, Terry. You. So you reached out, uh, sounds like you had a pretty bad accident in 24 and that's been super valuable to get you back in the sport. So bit of a teaser here, cause we're not going to talk about that right away. We're going to throw that into the end of the show for all of you listening and interested in that. That'd be a cool conversation, but I, I wanted to do a podcast with you because you mentioned some things that were, that sounded amazing.
You spent 15 years in China. You learned in Zimbabwe, which is where you're from. Uh, you were down in Manila and, and, uh, you were good friends with Xiong Ping, the, the pilot who died when Eva was sucked up and went over, what was it? 30 grand, you know, famous story from 2007. So yeah, we've got some cool things to talk about, but, uh, that was a long winded. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Gavin. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
Yes. You're out in North Carolina. You're buddies with Cone, who was, uh, one of my good, good friends. The relentless pilot who, uh, likes to send it big. And we did a podcast with him a little while back. So are you in that kind of the same zone?
Yeah. Cohen actually lives in Charlotte, not too far, but he's the local legend that we occasionally are graced to be able to join the air with. We all get up together, but Cone's gone before, before any of us can, can bench up.
Well, let's, let's rewind the clock here a little bit. You've given me this great, uh, kind of timeline of your. You're flying and it's just, it's fascinating. You learned in 92, 93 in Zumb, Zimbabwe. What was that like? What were you flying? Who taught you? Did anybody teach you or did you just grab something and knock yourself off?
Yeah, I was actually living in China at the time and I was due to go back to Zimbabwe on four weeks leave. So I reached out to my dad. I said, you know, what do we have planned for the visit home? And he said, well, he had given a hitchhiker lift back from South to Zimbabwe and the guy had persuaded my dad to buy what was called a paraglider from him, which my dad. He got home to Zimbabwe, he found a local instructor, signed up for a course, and he wanted to know if my brother and I were going to join him. So I knew nothing about it said, absolutely. You know, we, um, we grew up in a pretty hairy environment in Zimbabwe during a Bush war, and we were all about adventures. So went back to Zimbabwe, did the course, spent a week, pretty much ground handling the instructor, had his hands full because it was myself, my brother, my father was doing it, which my mother was much against at the time.
Cause he wouldn't, he was in his late fifties. And, uh, yeah, we started chasing it and, um, we had some pretty epic adventures back in Zimbabwe. The instructors were terrified about, you know, how much they taught us. They wanted us to basically take off, fly straight down, radio guidance. One of the first flights, one of our buddies landed in a Vukoviki thorn tree. Everyone ran up. Nobody was really interested in helping him get out of the thorns, but we unclipped his risers so we could get up the hill and, and jump off the next guy. So, so yeah. It was not for the, it was not for the faint of hearted. Anyway, we progressed through the sort of first week. My dad had his first proper flight off, uh, off a decent hill. My mother put her foot down and said, okay, you've done it. You'll now watch your sons do it.
And we left it. So, um, ordered a glider from Safka, it was a copy of an old Eagle. It was called a nuclear 33 glider, arrived in Zimbabwe. My brother and I were. Is
that cause it had 33 cells? Yeah.
My brother and I were keen as mutters. He was a real bastard. Obviously no reserve, no real seat board, anything. It was mostly just straps. And my brother's first flight, he kind of took off and lovely African winter day took off. And he just, I said, fly straight. Just going to land. He was like, yeah. Well, he took off. He must've climbed 800 meters. Without a single turn. Just going straight. Just straight up. And I'm standing on the hill watching this and going, oh dear. Anyway, he eventually, I guess, flew out the back of this thermal, probably a kilometer or two out in the valley. Turned around. Floated around. Landed. We got to him and we were like, that was epic. He was like, I'm done. I ain't got to do this again. So we never got him back in the air. You
never did? That was it for him?
Never got him back. Well, I think what didn't help was a week after he went back to university in South Bend, Cape Town, and a friend of his was doing a hang gliding course and broke his back coming in to land on the beach in Cape Town. And that was kind of the icing on the cake. He said, no, I'm done with this.
Nothing worse than going up. It's tough when you want to be going down, isn't it, especially when you have no idea what's going on. That must have been terrifying.
And boy, did he. I swear he was in a three to four meter a second climb. It wasn't like a gentle rise. He skyrocketed. Unbelievable.
Just shitting himself all the way to cloud base. All the way.
All right. But you kept going. That didn't freak you out.
No. I had a few flights, obviously, in Zimbabwe off our training hill, and then I packed up my gear, headed back to China. And I was basically - What were you doing in China? So I was working for an American multinational up in the northern provinces, helping work with the local farmers, kind of grow tobacco and various other crops. So I was on the road a lot, traveling the countryside, and I kind of took my paraglider along with me. And on the weekends, I would try and find a suitable hill and just send it. And yeah, it's what we don't know, isn't it? It's looking back at some - Was there anybody
else flying? Were you the only one there? I can't imagine there's too many other people. There
was nobody. There
was nobody.
I didn't come across another paragliding pilot for another five years, and that was a guy called Zhang Changyi who became sort of the... He was able to get China Air Sports Federation to recognize paragliding. But prior to that, the first sort of five odd years, I flew in China, not a single pilot.
Wow. That must have been a special time.
Yeah. Look, there were some tough learning curves. I broke my leg.
Oh, I
bet. I broke my leg. Oof. I'm trying to remember now. Probably end of 96. Flying a coastal site, wind was probably above my pay grade. This stage, I probably had one or 200 hours. I got blown over the back of a rather high mountain, dealt with the collapses and everything else, and just I was focused on getting on the ground. And kept the wing open, landed in a plowed field that had a lot of furrows, and unfortunately rolled my ankle and broke it. So I flew down to Hong Kong, got a pin stuck in my ankle, continued working. Two weeks later, I was traveling around Russia on business, and it was a bit of a handicap. But yeah, I got a bit of a break. I got through it. Keenest muscle to get back in the air. Really? And then I ended up back in Zimbabwe. I wasn't sure if I was going to fly. I was on sort of leave and stuff.
And I did have my glider with me. And what
are you flying now? What was the wing then?
Yeah, that was still the same wing. It was the Nucleus 33, the Nucleus 33. A South Korean sort of knockoff of the Eagle. Okay. And some buddies kind of knocked at my door while I was on leave, and they said, hey, we've got a friendly comp going on here. Get back in the air. Get back in the air with us. In Zimbabwe? Yeah. This was back in Zimbabwe. Back on leave again. So. Wow. Against my better judgment, I joined them. And that trip didn't end so good. I ended up having a multiple compression fracture in my low back flying in this comp.
Ooh. And the ankle was all healed at this point. That's good.
Yeah. The ankle was healed. Unfortunately, not having a reserve, not having a seat board or any kind of back protection, I paid the price.
And what? Like a low stall or just coming in hot? What happened? So we flew
in the morning, and it was a spot landing. My first time being back in the air, obviously, for several months. And I just boomed up. I flew out over towards the Mozambique border, came down there to take some photos of them. Guys were running around with AK-47s. I said, to hell with this. Went back up, flew back, and landed. So I was very proud of myself from my morning's excursion. And then the afternoon was a point-to-point, and there wasn't enough lift to fly straight there. So I was timing the thermals coming up the face there at world view. Got quite aggressive on takeoff, got up in the air. And I stole the glider. 100 % pilot error. I was just being too aggressive. Stole the glider. I was worried about getting gift-wrapped. Caught the surge. And as I caught the surge, I hit the edge of the hill. But I was obviously still cognizant of my leg that just had pins removed.
So I had that leg up and took most of the weight on my other leg and my coccyx. And that's what fractured three vertebrae.
But at this stage in your flying, I mean, how many hours would you fly? How many hours did you say you had at this point?
Probably 200 or 300 hours.
Okay. And you're XC flying. You're piecing it together. Is that what you guys are doing then? When you would launch, what was the goal?
One, just try and get as high as I could. It wasn't really XC at that stage. It was really just because most of the flying I was doing - So you're thermaling. Yeah. Most of the flying in China was around ridge sites, occasionally inland. But no real established sites. So it was kind of find a hill, look at binoculars and look at a mountain, hitchhike up and then try and get off and get down safely. So no real ambitions at that stage. It was more kind of learning all the stuff we don't know.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ignorance is bliss. Yeah.
All right. So then your next entry here is, well, actually, so you broke your back. What was the recovery like there? Were you stuck? Were
you still,
okay, I don't know about this flying or you wanted to get back into it? Or where was your head space? And where was your physical space? I wanted to
get back, but I wanted to take a bit of a break. I wanted to make sure my fitness was there. I wanted to explore reserves and harnesses, which had back protection, because that was something I'd never flown with. So I stepped out for a few years and then I had a big team that reported to me in China and SARS hit China, I don't know if you remember, back in 2003. Yeah. We had to ship all our expatriate staff families out of China. So I had a bunch of young guys and I had to find some way to keep them out of the bars at night. So I reached out to my old friend who had subsequently made great strides with getting paragliding recognized in China, Zhang Cheng Yi. And he introduced me to a local club. He said, yeah, contact this club, cool group of fellows.
So I contacted the Beijing club, said, hey, I got these, I got four or five foreigners here. I want them to learn how to fly with you. And they said, well, bring them along, but we don't speak English. So you're going to be the point of contact for them. So I helped the guys, you know, go through their weeks training and everything. And during the course of that, the guy said to me, well, why don't you start flying? So I did a few hops off the local hill, you know, the training hills. Next thing I knew, I'd ordered a new glider and this time got a Woody Bailey harness with an airbag. I got a reserve, which I was delighted about. And I started, started fly again. And the Beijing club were amazing, absolutely amazing group of guys. I was sort of the only foreigner, took me under their wing, super sensitive about when they would or wouldn't let me fly.
And I, you know, that first year I racked up probably 150 hours, I started chasing it hard again, and then started looking to upgrade my wing, wanted to, you know, this mistake all of us make. I'm like, well, I am super hero, give me a high performing wing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you're, but physically the back thing at this point, it's non-issue. You recovered fully. That was fine. A
hundred percent. A surgeon in Zimbabwe wanted me to fly to England where he wanted to operate. My father had experience with back injuries and other things. And he took me down to South Africa to see a specialist before I went back to China. And he said, don't touch it. He said, as much damage as you've done, he said, you're young, you fit, it'll recover. And it did touch wood. So yeah.
Oh, so you didn't have surgery? No
surgery on the, on the mouth for compression. Fracture just healed up in time, but I did put on a bit of weight, um, wasn't that active. I was limited in many ways, wearing a corset for nearly six months. So when I got back into it in 23, I was too heavy for a solo glider. So the club had me sort of do my first flights in a, in a tandem wing on my own.
Right. Right. I, I'm looking behind you. Are those all lures? Are you big into fishing? I
am. I have a fishing rod company called Hunter Rods and Lures. Um, during my, I left China, I moved to Indonesia. Did a lot of a particular type of fishing called popping and jigging, and then started a company when I moved here to the States.
Oh, wow. And so were you living in, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, but were you living in Indonesia?
So no, we had been on holiday, on holiday to Bali during my stint in China, um, and done a lot of flying around Timbus, you know, the site there in Bali, absolutely loved it. And then in, um, 2005, the corporation I worked for merged with a non-profit. Another American corporation gave me a chance to get out of China after 15 years, and they transferred me to Indonesia. Well, I was like, well, hell yeah, there's good flying down there. I'll take the Indonesia posting.
In Bali?
Well, so it was actually in, um, Surabaya on the Eastern tip of Java, but part of the Denali negotiated with my company at the time was they would give me a villa in Bali to spend my weekends at.
Ah, there you go. So you would fly, what was it? Kuta? No, not Kuta. It's that South, that South side in Bali. I've flown there. I forgot the name of it now.
Timbus. Timbus. The ridge
soaring site.
Timbus is the ridge soaring site. And then Chandi Dasa is flying over the black sands a little bit further north.
Yeah. And did you ever fly the volcano? I
did. So that's actually, so I was doing a lot of ridge soaring. My sons were itching to get at it, but we had a, we had a mark on the kitchen door and I said to my sons, when you reach this height, I'll take you. Well, they, they shot up like bamboo in the spring rain. So then I figured, well, I better get my tandem license. If I'm going to be able to fly. I'm going to be taking these little buggers flying. So I got tandem, got tandem certified. And then I started taking Douglas, my middle son first, initially ridge soaring and Timbus. And then obviously we were living in, on Java, the main Island, and that was predominantly volcanoes. So I started flying with him there too, as my kind of passenger and we started exploring.
Cool. Yeah. That's fun. And what'd mama think of this?
Mum was okay with it. She saw initially I was very sensitive about doing it only on coastal sites. So very stable winds. When we started to move inland on Java and started flying some of the volcanoes, uh, she understood how much it meant to me. She saw how much it meant to her sons and anytime the discussion came up, I would suggest she discussed it with Douglas, who obviously was just adamant he was going to continue flying with dad.
Yeah. And we, yeah, we got to talk about Douglas here in a little bit, cause he's, he's going to be competing in my, uh, X Red Rocks this year, it sounds like, and he was going to compete with you last year and then it had an unfortunate accident. Well, let's get to that in a sec, but under 2003, SARS China, you've got, he's on ping. And I don't know if I'm saying, I'm sorry, I'm butchering his name probably, but you know, he was the pilot that was killed when Eva was sucked up in 2007 at the worlds. But why have you put him in at 2003? Is that when you guys met?
So when I started flying again during the SARS period, this, this group of pilots from super wing that took me into the wing, one of them was heard on ping. He was one of the top pilots in China. Extraordinary fella. And I did a lot of my sort of early discoveries as you know, starting to fly further, fly higher with him. And he was just an amazing pilot. He was conservative, but very capable. He flew a boomerang at the time. Um, and he was one of the guys I was closest with. So I stayed in touch with him when I moved to Indonesia and I was still, you know, frequently going back to China on business and I would still see him and fly with him. But, um, when we lost him in 2007. Wow. It had a big impact.
Yeah. It is. It always does. The year. What was 2004 first cross country in China? Was that your first crossing cross country? That
was my first sort of real adventure. I had upgraded my wing and I had a couple of hundred hours under my belt. The Chinese were giving me a broader range to, to go walk about. And um, yeah, I think at the time I was flying like a Sigma six, loving the performance got stinking high one morning, pretty early. Like nine, 10 in the morning I said, okay, I'm going to go in and, you know, check out these other ridges, which are 18 kilometers away. And I just went on full speed bar and set off on my own. Well, I didn't, it didn't go as well as one might've hoped. I got over the first ridge and just hit massive sink while in the valley between was a Christmas tree farm. So I looked at the second ridge and I thought, well, I could make it, but there's high tension power lines running all the way along. So I thought, okay, it's high tension power lines or Christmas tree farm.
So I went into the Christmas tree farm and I was kind of unclipping myself from my harness and a local farmer came up in a sort of three wheel motorbike. And he said, what the hell are you doing? So I said, why? I need some help. Yeah. By that stage, my Mandarin was getting pretty good. So he disappeared. Came back a few minutes later, saw, cut the fir tree down, packed up my glider, put me in the back of his, what the Chinese call Toraji is like a three-wheeler tractor. And he said, I'll run you back to wherever you've come from. I said, well, it's, it's, it's a good 15, 20 miles. He clicks away and he was like, well, we'll figure it out. Stop for lunch at his home on the way. He fed me, met the family. And then he, we continued on to drop me back to where I'd come from. So that was my first, I would say real cross country didn't end too well.
I haven't been, I
haven't, yeah,
you can't, yeah, you can't, yeah, I haven't been to, to China. Uh, I haven't flown in China, but from people I've heard that have gone there for world cups and events and that kind of thing, you just get treated like a King. It's, it's really kind of highly respected there. Right. And we're, I've been getting a lot of Chinese pilots at the red rocks wide open every year. Uh, you know, there, there, there's some really good pilots.
Oh, even, even back in the day. So when I really started flying a lot with the super wing club and these guys were absolutely amazing. Um, I think the head of the club was the dealer for Jen at the time. Uh, he's still running, you know, the super wing club, although he does a lot of flying in the South. Um, just an incredible. Yeah. Just an incredible community of people, hard to describe Gavin. I was obviously the token foreigners that they were, you know, they kind of treated me. They didn't want anything to happen to me because I was going to impact their sport, but we traveled all around the country and flew together. I flew the Linjo site where a lot of the PWCs happen. Um, frequently with the guys, we flew a lot in Yunnan province. I flew a lot in Shenzhen province, Guizhou province flew all around the place today. I mean, there's a huge community in those days, a lot of these sites were just opening pilots.
We're discovering new sites. It was now regulated under China air sports federation. So we had licenses. We had to go through, you know, proficiency tests, that kind of stuff, but, um, amazing place, highly recommended. Anyone has an opportunity to fly in China, give it a, give it a go. They got some amazing places and some amazing people.
Hmm. And, and tell me a little bit about, you know, paint a picture for, you know, if I just rocked up in Beijing and I wanted to fly a big line, let's, you know, cause I've looked, they've got some big lines to fly and there's been proposals, you know, up in Tibet and that kind of thing. But, you know, I know for example, in, in Japan, it's really tricky, tricky because of the airspace. I mean, again, very friendly and a wicked place to fly, but the airspace makes it really tough. Is there, you know, could, could you just show up in China and make it work or is it really restricted? You know, like Australia is kind of tricky when it comes to this, there's so many rules and radio stuff and you know, it's, it can be kind of tricky. Yeah. But it's, it's hard to just show up and send it.
So I haven't flown in the last few years, so things might've changed. But from my time there, it was very sensitive. We had to be very careful where we mostly did our flying in Mengshan in Beijing. We had a, we had a cylinder of about 20, 30 clicks. We weren't supposed to, to exceed and air traffic was kept away from that by Beijing airport. That said, we did have an occasion one day, several of us got very high and the guy driving the van got on the radio and started yelling. He looked down and the JAL 747 came in underneath us approaching Beijing international.
So that anybody who wants to send the big lines, I don't think it will happen around Beijing. At that time we dealt with a lot of inversions, but when you start to move out to some of the provinces like Qinghai, we always thought had great potential. Xinjiang has great potential. Some of these areas are not, you know, still not that open, but I would just get hold of the local clubs, local pilots, and there are guys out there sending it. Yeah. And some great pilots and great pilots.
Very cool. Okay. So then Indonesia, you're doing some tandems with Doug, your middle son, and let's, let's pick it up from there.
So yeah, I was chasing it hard, obviously flying on my own, mostly on the east side of Java around the volcanoes.
My daughter was born in December of 26, that same week I had a solo flight. No, not 26. Sorry. December 26. 2007.
2006. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yep.
I had a solo flight. It was a day that appeared to be an average cross country day. You know, take off in Malang, fly across to some of the sides of volcanoes and then, you know, try and do small triangles, nothing big. Well, I was halfway across the first volcano and I just, I just got snatched as we, as you know, we often do. Well, I had a GPS. I figured I'd be okay. I got ripped up into the clouds, was not comfortable with where I was. I knew a volcano was pretty close, tried to spiral out of it, tried to big ears, still climbing, you know, three or four meters a second. So I did a V-line stall and I did a pretty hefty one. At that time I was flying one of Bruce Goldsmith's wings. He was, at the time it was a big wing, it was like 33 square meters.
Did a V-line stall, which took a while to come out of, and it was a bit of a hairy, hairy ride. And literally, as I came out of this cloud, I was probably 50 yards from it. A volcano called Penang Gungan. So I opened the glider again, got stabilized, tried to move the other direction from the volcano and again, got into cloud suck. Well, I went on full speed bar, just managed to get out of it, landed, shaken badly. Although I felt at the time I was very current, you know, over the last year, I probably had 100, 150 hours, at least of airtime, landed, got home. And my wife at the time saw I was shaken and she said, you know, you've just had a newborn child. Which is my daughter, Claire. She said, you need to think long and hard about this because you now got, you know, four or five miles to feed.
That night I had a call from the China crew and they gave me the, told me about her, John Ping, having been caught in the, you know, the storm in Australia. And I spent a very sleepless night. I woke up the next morning. I said, you know what, I need to step away from this for a while. And my wife at the time said, that's good. She said, do that until Claire's 18. So I was like, well, that's a long time. So I regrettably packed up my wing and, you know, I'd, I'd been very shaken by the flight the day before and the loss of her jumping and thinking about obviously now my obligations responsibility as a parent. So I stopped, um, completely. And then we got transferred to the States in 2012, came over here six
years later,
came over to the States, did, made some inquiries about paragliding, heard about a site in North Carolina called Tater Hill. But it was like a three hour drive. So I thought, you know what, I'd agreed to step away until Claire was 18. So I honored that. And I did. Well, lo and behold, now my kids grow up. Douglas goes to live upstate New York, you know, he was living in New York at the time. Next thing I hear, he signed up to take a course at Morningside.
On his own. He did this on his own. He did this all on his own. So I said, well, before you do the course, come home and I'm going to try and give you some basics about ground handling and stuff. So I got out. One of my old. You know, solo wings, which is still big considering my boys are pretty light compared to me. We went ground handling down near the coast and they got dragged all around and loved every second of it.
Wow. Cool. So
Douglas did this a few weeks later, his brother came to me and said, I'm going up to Morningside too. I was like, oh dear, now I've got two of them doing it.
How old were they at the time?
So I think Douglas was probably 24, Ben was 22.
Okay. Okay.
So
I think Douglas signed up for his course in 23.
23. Okay. So it was three years ago. Yeah. And then for you, is it just, and Claire's now she's over 18, right? So you're, you've got the green light. You're
getting close. So I sat her down. She's getting close.
We can mush these things a little bit.
She saw her brothers chasing it and she could see I was angst. You know, any time the boys send me a video, I'd get super excited. And she came to me one day and she said, dad, you missed this course. Don't you? I said, you have no idea. She said, well, why don't you fly? So I said, is that the green light? She was like, yeah, no, I'm obviously now single. So I didn't have the other half of the equation to worry about that negotiation. And I said, well, yeah, I think so. And in the meantime, I found the local North Carolina sort of crew, Lucas, Cohen, Buck, and a couple of the other guys. And I started driving for them. So I'd drive up the hill cause I have a nice truck and occasionally my boys would fly with me. And one day I decided, you know what? I got my old gear out. I got my old Mustang, my airwave Mustang out, started ground handling, repacked the reserve.
And one day I went up to the hill with the guys. I said, you know what? I'm going to, I think it's time. It's been far too long. I'm just going to have a nice takeoff, glide out land while what happened was a completely different experience. But I got back in the air for the first time with my sons on the hill, rather apprehensively watching me.
What was the completely different experience? Well,
they had given me this long lecture about what I was to do. Get it up, fly out, go and land. Well, I had a beautiful launch, got up in the air, straight into a thermal, looked around me. I was like, hell no. Cranked it up, got up. There was another one of our guys who I think, you know, Lucas Sola and Lucas was in a thermal further down the ridge. I got up, we joined, we hollered at each other and I knew that my boys were going to be going mental. So reluctantly I flew out of the thermal, it was bearing in mind, this is still a high performance glide and I hadn't flown in like over 15 years. So I flew out of the thermal, went down, landed and yeah, that's kind of where the journey started again.
And was it, was it just love at first sight again or was it, Ooh God, this is kind of freaky. I mean, 15 years is, you know, man, I go through, I fly a lot and you know, every, every spring I go through this and you know, flying in Idaho in the spring is pretty sharp, but, but still there's this, there's a, there's a couple of weeks there of kind of getting tuned back in. That are nerve wracking. I would put it, it's just, you know, it's just, Oh God, Oh God, you know, and it's hard to control that irrational voice between the years.
So I think what helped was I was spending a lot of time around the other pilots. I was on the Hill with them. Any chance we got, I was doing the retreats for them in between, I was doing a lot of ground handling, a lot of ground handling. I always felt that was critical for any pilot, irrespective of skill level. I then ordered a new wing, which I was able to find a company called McParris. McParris was really the only company that made a wing that went up to my size. They made an Eden seven, which was a high B that went up to kind of 145 kilos. So I ordered, I ordered the Eden seven and I was just, I loved it. First time I got back in the air with it was actually the first time I ever flew with my two sons and they were very nervous about me. New wing, you know, many years, not flying anywhere. I took off, had a great launch.
Lovely ritual.
The tech has changed a lot in 15 years. I mean, you must've been. Absolutely.
There I was a few weeks prior, I'd been flying my airwave Mustang too. And I think Bruce only made one or two of those because it was so big, it was uncertified. I went from that to onto this Eden seven and it was like a completely different game. One the glide was amazing. It wasn't always trying to bite me. And the guy said, I remember Lucas asked me at the end of that, he said, how was it flying at that high performance wing after so many years? I said, it felt like I was wrangling a, a spitting Cobra. Yeah. Yeah. So I was, I was, I was all for this new gear, all for the new gear. And landed after that flight with my two sons, it was just the most incredible experience. Any man who's flying with his children gets what I'm saying.
That was in that, that's what you're talking about here by your greatest memory. Yeah. Just flying with your kids. God, that would have been special. Wow. And kind of this full circle moment. Right. I mean, wow. I mean, in a sense of a lifetime of flight with this huge break. Yeah. And then you get to do it with your kids.
Yeah. And we've always, our family has always been about adventures. So, you know, I was back in the air again, flying any chance I got with him. Next thing I knew, Douglas had signed us up for an SIV in, uh, at Lake Garda with Flying Carlos. So we packed up our gear and in spring of 24, we went to Lake Garda to do, for my boys and myself to do our first SIV.
And then you did something to your shoulder there. Was that on here? I can't remember. I remember that from an email. Yeah. What were you doing? You were walking around or something? So
we, we got to launch the first evening. It was, wind was blowing very hard. The two, my two sons were able to get off and do basically just a sled run. We went back up the hill the next day and it's quite a long walk to the top of Mount Boulder there. Yeah. Wind was too strong. So the instructor was with us, said, look, let's, let's walk down the bottom and see if we can take, you know, move down the hill. But there was about, you know, a foot or two of ice and snow on the ground. So Douglas and Ben. I was, he put the packs on the run down the ice. I have a few spine by now. I had a herniated disc shortly before I moved states up. I'm a little bit sensitive on ice. I don't want to, you know, end up with another spinal fusion. So I gingerly walked down this 150 meters. I get down the last two meters and what happens? My feet got from under me.
So heavy, heavy pack on land on my right elbow and I dislocated my right elbow, my right shoulder. Well, I figured I've come all the way here. I'm potentially the whole trip's going to be a mess. I said, well, you know how to fix this dirt because I'd helped guys on the rugby field as a youngster, but put back in discussion. So I put my shoulder back in and just bellowed while the boys had turned around and they saw me just writhing in the ground and agony. Well, I got over it. Shoulder was back in very painful. An hour later, you know, my boys took off. I then took off too. And it was a, it was a really, really interesting flight. You know, I got over the water. Carlos gave me the instructions. What do you want me to do? And we started with the spirals and natural exit, rapid exit, and I was coming in to do the approach.
And I don't know if you know that site, but in the morning and midday winds move from different ends. Well, I was approaching from the south end and set up my approach and the instructor at the time thought I was flying a very high performance wing. So he encouraged me to move further out over the water. So I did that reluctantly. Look, my fault. I was a pilot should be making my decisions, started to move further away from the landing and all the time. I'm looking back at the LZ guy. I ain't. So I said, no hell with this. I turned back. One on full speed bar to try and make, try and make the edge of the grass. Well, I felt probably a meter or two short in the water. So the airbag goes off, I'm pissed with myself. Now that, you know, I obviously made this mistake. The guys ran up the jetty and they grabbed my right arm to try and lift me out the water.
Well, as they grabbed my right arm. As they grabbed my right arm. I started holding. hollering like a wounded buffalo they let me go and carlos came up to me what's wrong i said well i dislocated my shoulder 30 minutes ago on launch um god but fortunately it was back in place i had a great muscle analgesic with me called diclofenix sodium voltron is the the trade name so i kind of stocked up on that and we continued chasing it you're
a legend i love it you've definitely i know you're from zimbabwe but you've you in my experience you've got some south african in here or something my goodness you go for it all right and then uh we teased about this at the top of the show but now the reason you reached out so what happened in 24 so
we came back actually from that SIV i chased it hard you know several weeks with my sons and then i had a very bad accident 100 pilot error i was benching up at a local site here in north carolina i had two surges you know your sort of instinct i caught the first surge kept on flying second surge a few seconds later caught that exactly the same way and i had 100 symmetric collapse i was probably 100 150 feet above the trees and i did everything wrong they talk about disassociating your arms from the glider i did none of that in that very short period of time i went into i stole the wing i went into back fly i did it i went locked into locked and spiral eventually got came out of it but as i came out of it i smashed into the trees i figured at the time you know it's not the end of the world my glider's going to hang up in the trees well a really big tree it's probably three or four foot across broke and i came down with it through the canopy and hit the ground really hard now fortunately there was a sapling growing behind me which prevented this log rolling over me but i was in bad shape i was in bad shape i was in bad shape i was in bad shape so i broke my left clavicle i ripped off my left bicep i broke 11 ribs and i shattered my spleen
so the guys got me up the hill air ambulance into emergency surgery i lost six liters of blood long story short i recovered pretty quickly had to have a second operation a couple of months later to repair the broken clavicle and reattach my bicep and then i started you know obviously the mental game am i am i going to get back into the air or not and i struggled gavin i really struggled it was kind of do i don't tell my boys were encouraging me ultimately it came down to discussions my daughter and she said look dad this sport means a lot to you you love your adventures she said why don't you start doing it again if it means that much to you just try and mitigate risk wherever you can so i said okay so we my glider had been torn to shreds obviously i got a new glider new mac para the eden 8 and my first time
i got a new glider from flyer had amazing sov really enjoyed it and he's one of the best yeah the boys chased it hard especially ben my youngest had you know his best flights there in nrc came back to the states continue to fly but i was having terrible anxiety mostly driving to the hills like debilitating i'd get on launch i'd find myself having to sit there for a long period of time and the mental game i i really struggled but one day one were you just
were you just i mean i i i've gone through this you know and i think this is really common but you just you visualize the horrible horrible shit splattened into the rocks and stuff like that or what were what was the i had the tension about i
had the whole the whole accident on insta 360 oh so i shared this with flying carlos and carlos very kindly had given me feedback showed me you know what i could have done differently and everything else so i spent a lot of time analyzing this as part of my sort of preparation or decision making process am i going to fly fly again or not. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was, but I was having this terrible anxiety. Once I was in the air, it abated, but it was getting to launch and on launch. A pilot here in North Carolina was with me one day on TED. His name is John, amazing guy. And he reached out to me that night and he said, you know, I saw on launch day, you were struggling. He said, have you thought of something called EMDR? I said, look, I've tried to research different types of trauma therapies and things, but now I don't know about EMDR.
Well, I ended up finding amazing therapists here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I said, went in to have an interview and she said, yeah, you have classic PTSD. She said, I think this can help you. So I signed up and I ended up taking six or seven courses with her. And it was a complete game changer for me.
Wow. And are you using, are you using like the little vibrating balls or using light or what are you using? To kind
of induce. For me, it was the clickers you put in each hand. So I had a clicker in each hand. So it's the visual as well as the sound, sorry, the stimulus as well as the sound. And initially you start sort of reprocessing your memories, your negative memories associated with the trauma. And then you take your mind to a more comfortable place. I had a, you know, I had this picture in my mind of a place I used to fish in Indonesia on an island called Sumba, beautiful sand, calm. Yeah, I
know Sumba well. I've done a lot of surfing down there. Oh, you know,
Sumba. I fished heavily around Sumba for many years with my son. So anyway, that was my magic place. And then we started with the clickers and slowly we reprogrammed. We broke down my accident into the, you know, the memories, which had the greatest trauma. And slowly we reprogrammed it and it worked magic with me.
Wow. Absolute magic. Yeah, that was, you know, when Serena said that that's what she was doing, it kind of caught me by surprise. Because I had never heard about it for that kind of use, which of course it makes perfect sense. You know, the first time I'd ever even heard about it was I recently started going to therapy for this death of my buddy. And I just, I knew I wasn't processing it well or correctly. And it was, it was, you know, it was just leading to other issues in life where I just wanted to get a grip on this thing. And she said, well, have you ever tried this? And it's been, I would say similarly, it's been amazing. I mean, within, it was two sessions where I was able to just say a very natural goodbye and, and go through the whole experience.
And she actually brought me back to the site of the accident, which I wasn't even there. I wasn't with him that day. It was a very good friend of ours. And, and she was obviously very traumatized by this thing as well. It was ugly, you know, and, but I was, she had me visualize, you know, just being there with them and, you know, digging him out and seeing my friend and knowing that he was dead. And, and, and, but also then also reprogramming it to my, my place is this local pond that's right down the street here with the flowers and the, the ducks and the geese. And it's just, it's one of my favorite places on earth to just go and hang out. And it just suddenly, I suddenly found it all. There wasn't any trauma with it anymore.
It was very, it was, it was really an interesting process to go through. I
initially thought my trauma was associated with, you know, this particular site I flew and flying here in North Carolina, September of last year, my work carried me to Switzerland. I, I flew, I had several flights there around Villeneuve in Switzerland, again, nervous going out, having to wait on launch for an hour. I went out to fly in Monroe at the Red Rock sort of friendly flying. And I was quite intimidated in the big mountains. They obviously the low oxygen. And I had several flights, with, with Lucas and a couple of guys here from North Carolina. And I wasn't right. But once I got to sort of my fifth or sixth session of this EMDR therapy, I had a flight where I went with my son to Eagle Rock, a site in Virginia, and we couldn't drive up to launch. So we hiked up. So I was a bit wary when we got up there, but my mind was all of a sudden in a completely different place.
We had virtually no wind. I had to do a forward launch. And when you start to get along on the tooth like I am, you know, that can be a bit intimidating, but I had a great forward launch, flew off, landed, and I started to fly. And I was like, oh, I'm going to fly. And I was like, oh, I'm going to fly. And I said to myself, you know what? That's the first time I haven't felt any anxiety since my accident. And I said, it's amazing.
Wow. And are you doing anything active? I mean, I know that you and I in our correspondence back, back and forth, you know, you initially reached out and just said, I think it'd be really great to have somebody who's a professional that understands this stuff, you know, the, the psychology of it, not just me. I'm, I'm just doing it. I don't, you know, I don't really necessarily understand it very well, but, and, and, and I am as well, but are you doing anything actively between these sessions? Are you practicing it? Are you doing any kind of mindfulness training? Are you doing anything before you launch now to remember the fishing place in Zumba or?
Well, initially the, the therapist had given me some things I could try on launch. He said, look, this is going to take a few sessions off the first, second session. You know, when I was on launch, I'd tried breathing exercises that another friend, Daniel Ochimoto, had kind of done. And I was like, oh, I'm going to do this. He finally walked me through. I found that helped a bit trying to feel, you know, what's under your feet, trying to observe what's around you, really take your mind away. But it wasn't until I got through sort of five or six sessions that the mind really started to calm down.
Wow. What a cool story. What do you think? I wanted to ask you this before we even got into this part of the talk, but what do you think is embedded in you with this love of flight for so long since the early nineties that, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, And just the sense of freedom that this sport, you know, when your feet leave the ground, nothing comes close. And I guess that's what keeps bringing me back. You know, it's a sense of adventure, the freedom. Violetta, I think, described it very well in an article she wrote a couple of years ago. But what draws us back to it? That's a million-dollar question because it is so unique.
It is so unique. What do you see in your future with your sons, with your daughter, with flying? What's on the agenda? So
we've got some adventures planned.
On Friday, we head back to go spend some time with Fab in the French Alps. So we're actually going out a couple of days ahead of time. So the boys and I want to chase it. I think Douglas and Ben have a plan to run the RV highway and try and get to Chamonix. So I'll let them do their thing. And then we do the SUV for a couple of days and come back. And then in October, I've got a trip to Cape Town with another North Carolina legend here, Bubba Goodman. We're going out on a sort of 10-day paragliding safari. So we… Ah! We've got a bunch of paragliding adventures this year.
Look, so you'll do Porterville and fly the rock there and…
So I actually flew… Yeah, cool. I flew Porterville way back in the day, sort of 96, 97, 98, around that time. I did a couple of short-distance flights from there. But, yeah, it's basically Porterville, hopefully flying off Lion's Head, Signal Hill, around Table Mountain, Sedgefield, Wilderness, Solari's Pass. I mean, at that time of the year, we're going. You can pretty much… You
can pretty much fly
every day. And the guy we're going to fly with, Barry Peterson, is an absolute legend. So he hosts, you know, pilots from overseas for 10 days and puts you up in nice digs. It's very affordable, and you don't have to worry about your retrieve. So Bubba and I are going to go and have some fun. Just send it.
And that's October?
That's in October, yeah.
Ah, wicked. I think I'm going to sign up for that. That sounds great. Yeah, the last time I was in Cape Town, I was buried in bilges and bottom paint. On the boat. On the
boat. On
the boat. On
the yard,
yeah. I didn't have any time to take advantage of even looking around. I was kind of buried in work. So, yeah, I got to get back.
And that's an amazing place. I got to get back for the prize.
I have a brother out there, so we're going to visit with him. Actually, my boys and I were out there in July last year. I was obviously back in the air, struggling, obviously, with the PTSD. But we had a chance to fly in Cape Town at Cardusi, the other end of Portable. But it was not working that day. So we just had a couple of slaters, then went up to Zimbabwe. And then, you know, conditions in Zimbabwe, I wanted to re-fly Worldview, but wind was coming over the back. So, yeah, it's one adventure after the next for the Dylans.
Yeah, wicked. Final question, and I don't want to hammer away at, you know, negative stuff, because there's been a ton of positive here, too. But your son was going to race, Doug, your middle son, was going to race in the X Red Rocks last year. He was training with Ben and doing all the right stuff. And then he had an accident. Just briefly, we talked about that before we started recording. What happened to him, and what is this, did that put any, was it different having, you've had some accidents, but was it different having your son having an accident? Did that change how you approached flying?
Yeah, it was very different. And it may sound malicious to say this, but I think Douglas had a cheap lesson. So he was pushing his, people who know Douglas, he pushes it hard. He's a good pilot. He's into the sport a hundred percent. That particular day flying Tater Hill in North Carolina, not great conditions. He was flying his high-performance wing. He got over the other side of the valley and he didn't leave enough room or margin for error coming in to land. Instead of just landing on the big fields he had below him, he tried to skip over this last sort of hill and get into launch. So he went on speed bar, got over and didn't make it. He went into the trees and unfortunately he fell through the trees and then had a compression fracture of three of his vertebrae. Yeah. He recovered incredibly quickly from it, taking a peptide called BPC-157, APT, I think the trade name's Wolverine.
Well, the boy was back in his feet in two days. A week later, he kind of saw the orthopedic specialist here and he was negotiating with the specialist saying, you know, in two months, this guy called Gavin has this race out in Utah. He said, you think I'm going to be good for this? And the guy was like, are you mad?
I remember some of the correspondence from that. I think I'm going to still make it. Really?
He's been training hard and I think he's looking forward to coming out and flying in your comps this year.
Wicked. Oh, that'd be fun to host him and hopefully you can make it as well. I think the Red Rocks flying remains the biggest one in North America, but they're tuning things down here a little bit this year. I think it's going to be less people. It'll be more intimate. So we'll have the ex-Red Rocks the same week. It's always the same time, so it'll be fun. Anthony Legend, dude. I really appreciate you sharing all these stories and reaching out. Just an interesting thing for us to discuss and I'm sure something that is valuable to the community. There's unfortunately no short, that we're not short of these kinds of situations in this sport. And so I think it's something that folks that are having trouble with the mental side of things can really tap into.
You and I have both certainly had some good results from it.
I found it so valuable. Yeah. You know, if anyone has any questions, I'm happy to share my experiences, but highly, highly recommend it. And Gavin, thank you for having me. I appreciate you giving me the chance to sort of share some of my shenanigans with the broader family out there, but specifically EMDR. It was a game changer for me.
Wicked. Wicked. Well, hey, have fun on your trip to the Alps. I'm glad we were able to sneak this in before you take off. Say hi to Fab and the boys over there for me. They are awesome. And enjoy Annecy, man. It's one of my favorite places in the world. One of the best places on earth. I
will do, Gavin. Thanks very much. Cheers, bud. Cheers, man.
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