It's not about overcoming your fear.
It's about embracing it, figuring out what's going on and
then making yourself actually strong.
Now I see this in every sport I do.
It's like the guys, you show up and they're like, I'm going to
overcome my fear. I'm going to huck my carcass,
whatever. They don't last very long.
They either get killed or they wash out because they are
actually afraid. You're an idiot if you're not
afraid. I believe risk taking is, is
individual and super important. Try, listen, learn, adapt, do
better. That's the kind of mantra that I
fighter pilots call it an ODA loop.
Observe, Orient, decide, act. And you know, my, my personal 1
is like, you got to try. That's the first thing.
Nothing cool happens if you don't take that little risk and
try and then you got to get out there.
You got to listen. Like, what's the world telling
me? What's shaking with like what is
really going on? Not the bullshit in my brain.
What's really going on? You know, you got to listen to
it, figure it out, then you got to learn these things will
happen and have we built the capacity to manage them or not.
You know, you're going to get sucked into a qnem if you've if
you are not paying attention to the environment around you, this
will happen. There's this is qnems are you
know, it's just part of flying. They're out there.
But if you've developed the tools to pay attention to your
environment and look at your phone, now you're developing
capacity to avoid this situation, not just go.
Little God, this is such a big honor for me to host you on
Paragliding Atlas. Welcome to the show, Sir.
Thank you for having me. And it's an honor to be here.
You're you're the next big thing, right?
So it's going to be great. Looking forward to it.
Before we got rolling here, we had yeah, it's good.
It'll be good. Something will happen.
And before we get going here, just I enjoyed our conversation
leading up to this as well. And you're trying to do
something cool and. And I admire that.
So yeah, looking forward to. It well, you happen to be one of
the biggest inspiration behind that dream and you know, this
also is first topic that I wanted to dive into Inspiration
is something that we all seek when we start visualizing our
goals I mean, of course goal setting is one thing finding
meaning, but getting inspired is the one which sets the ball
rolling. So my my dilemma, which I'm sure
a lot of other pilots will also relate to, is that when you
start looking for inspiration, is there a blueprint to finding
the correct inspiration? Because of course, I can get
inspired by some of the top pilots in the sport.
And for example, if I want to be an Olympian, it's like get
inspired by an Olympian, start training like an Olympian, start
acting, behaving like an Olympian, and then you become an
Olympian. Paragliding on the other hand,
especially, you know, some of the few competitions we have
pilots who have a huge time where they've put in their
effort and resources, which we do not see yet.
The inspiration is just like it is in other sports as well.
While getting inspired, what is the way to do it safely?
Oh, that's about 10 questions at 1:00.
So I don't know where to take that one.
I mean, I would say that that the first thing to ask ourselves
maybe is, is what do you actually want to do?
Like, and for me, that question is, is what is the coolest thing
I can do with my life? What would be the ultimate
thing? And it changes.
You know, when I was, I left a pretty successful career in
publishing and research and other media PR stuff when I was
in my late 20s to chase this dream of being an adventure
sports athlete because that was the coolest thing I could
imagine doing. And I was like, I'm willing to
go back to waiting tables, to building houses.
These are all careers things I've done to make money, you
know, and, and like, I'm a hell of a dishwasher if it comes
right down to it. But I am going to do these
sports to the best of my ability.
And if I have to wash dishes or whatever to do it, then I'm
going to do it. That is the coolest thing I can
see doing with my life. That's what I want to pursue.
So you, you have to answer that question and, and what, and it's
not always sports. Some people it is, but a lot of
what I do is also the business side of things and a lot of
writing and a lot of filmmaking and a lot of things that are not
doing the sports. The, you know, the pyramid, the
sports are at the top, but the 90% of it is not doing the
sport. It's all the other stuff.
So that I think that inspiration is to answer that question for
yourself. And you know, it, it, it's
conflicting and you have to sit there in that conflict and in
that lack of knowledge and, and try things out and go sideways.
You know, I've, I've tried to be a pro athlete in my early 20s.
I was a sponsored kayaker. And so I was kayaking, you know,
getting free boats of the occasional ticket or something
to go kayaking. And I couldn't make a living at
it. And I was also competing at a
high level in sport climbing comps.
But all I could get for that was a free pair of shoes and the odd
ticket. So I couldn't figure out a way
to make it work. But by going through this sort
of publishing PR world, I then understood how to make it work
as a, as a pro athlete later. So it wasn't a linear path and I
don't think it is for anybody else.
But that basic question is, what's the coolest life I can
imagine living that you really feel?
It's not just about like, do you know, whatever it is for you
that everybody always has like, you know, eating ice cream,
sitting in bed, It's like that's like whatever it is, but it's
not actually, it's something you got to actually feel that like
has beauty to you and then and then to go and try it and you
have to figure that out. Nobody else knows that.
You know, I quit my job to be a professional icicle climber,
right? Let's remember this.
What a ridiculous job description because I was on TV
for the X Games that I could turn that into media impressions
and money. Everybody's like, you're an
idiot. That won't work.
Everybody said that to me and you know, I've done it.
And so it's not what everybody else says you can't or can't do,
but and how much are you willing to sacrifice, you know?
Dude, you know, this actually helps me clarify my question
more, which is like when you are chasing your like you've set a
goal and you're chasing that goal.
Is there there is a fine line between pushing too hard because
we naturally do want to excel at things that we, we like or we,
we plan to and then pushing too hard and going into self
destruction mode or destructive pushing is very difficult to
identify because hard work means more results and influential
sports like hockey, soccer or running.
It's like, you know, just just go out there and, and do the
10,000 hour theory or something. But when it comes to chasing
adventure sports, pushing too hard is a bit, it has to be
pulled back at some point. So identifying that your
inspiration isn't causing you to switch off and forget where the
fine line is drawn. How do you answer?
How do you navigate that kind of a dilemma as an athlete who was
growing up in these sports? I think the first thing is to
have a realistic appreciation of both how dangerous the sport is.
And this is an idea in statistics called the base rate.
So this is like just the base rate of accidents.
And everybody says, well, I'm not the same as the base rate,
but everybody kind of is. I'm sorry.
It's like, well, I do it differently.
I got it off. I got the secret sauce, which is
almost universally not very accurate.
So how dangerous is this? And given that, how do I want to
proceed in this sport? And that is a, you know, that's
a it's, it's an individual thing what somebody is doing in at a
high level competition or in a long XC flight where it really
matters, you know, our world record chase or whatever.
You know, as long as you have that knowledge that things don't
go well pretty regularly in these high risk sports and
you're making decisions with that knowledge, then things
generally get better. So the another one that is
really critical, another tool you can use is, is ask if you're
making the decision off of probability or off of
consequence. And what I've seen in a lot of
sports and a lot of industrial settings, I do a lot of
industrial risk work and so on as well.
It's another part of my life. But the the amateurs tend to
make decisions based off of probability.
So this will probably work out and it probably will.
But if you're a professional, you're going to be exposed
hundreds of thousands of times to that individual hazard.
So if you're contemplating, you know, should I Chuck this turn
really close to the hillside, you'll probably get away with
it. But if you're thinking in terms
of consequence and you know that you're going to do that a lot
and start hitting those little probability numbers, and then
maybe you want to give yourself an extra 10 meters in case you
take a big deflation, you don't hit the hillside.
So I tend to think in high risk, high hazard environments in
terms of consequence rather than probability.
And can I increase my distance from that consequence, whatever
it is? So if I'm coming into a Ridge,
do I need to be on full bar or could I go back to feeling the
glider and slowing it down? You know, is it might save me 5
seconds or 10 seconds if I stay on full bar, but I can decrease
the consequence and severity, then I will.
So thinking in terms of consequence rather than
probability. Probability is for people who
are going to do something a few times.
If you're going to be a professional, you need to think
in terms of that consequence and that number is going to hit.
Everybody I know who's flown for more than 10 or 15 years, you
know, has crashed, and we all are going to do it.
So right here, right now, your job is to avoid that
consequence. And, you know, that's one way to
think about it. And then another tool that I
think is really useful is to build capacity.
And, you know, in risk management for a long time, it
was here's the problem and here's the mitigation, and we're
done. But most of our accidents don't
come within this really defined box of, you know, hazarded
mitigation. The serious ones tend to come
when something unusual starts happening or suddenly we haven't
seen before. And so how do you deal with
that? And the answer is capacity.
That's really, really helpful. So, you know, in paragliding, we
do things like take a SIV clinics so that we have more
capacity when our wings blow up. But you can develop capacity a
lot of ways. And I think that's one of the
main reasons that I've survived as long as I have is I've
approached all the risk sports I've done and I didn't have a
term for it. I just did it this way as trying
to build capacity. So in kayaking, you know, white
water kayaking, my friend would flip me over while we're
standing in a lake and then he'd try to hold the boat upside
down, right. And if I did manage to roll,
roll up, he'd hit me in the head, you know, a few times and
try to knock me back over. That's this sounds insane, but I
don't miss roles paddling to this day.
And that was 40 years ago when I learned how to roll like that.
I roll up no matter what. And in paragliding, I did some
really unusual things like I practice crashing people like
you're an idiot, you know, but I went into a gymnastics facility,
have mats on the floor, and I told the gymnast guy who
happened to be a rock climbing friend of mine who's a gymnast
coach. I was like, how do you, how do
you teach gymnasts to crash? Because gymnasts crash all the
time, right? They, they do stud soft bars and
things. They get lost in the air and how
do they survive that? And he, he was like, OK, you got
to translate this vertical momentum into horizontal
momentum. And here's how you do that.
And so I'm in this gymnastics facility, jumping off this bar
that's like 3 meters above the ground, wearing my paragliding
harness and learning how to crash.
And when I crashed, you know, I got banged up, but I didn't
break everything. And that's probably because I
had developed capacity to deal with that.
So these are these are some, these are some tools.
It's like think first about consequences and not just
probability and then develop capacity so that when you still
get it wrong, you could develop, you can have better outcomes.
So those are some tools. Does that answer your question?
100% I think you're saying mitigating the risk in the most
effective manner, which is making peace in your head is the
way to navigate risk versus reward spectrum is?
You're so you're out there, original customers, you're out
there and you're thinking, you know, I'm in this competition
and I, and I'm going to do this glide into the Lilo and, and,
you know, if my glider blows up, you know, I could go in, But if
I, if I pull it off, I'll win. And for me in that situation,
the usual, you know, first of all, if I blow my glider up, I'm
not going to have my glider and that's going to be a pain in the
ass. I'm going to have to call up gin
and say really sorry, you know, can I get out of the glider or
whatever, and then I might get killed.
And it's not about any one day, you know, it's if you're making
that, if you make decisions like that, you're not going to live
very long. But if I look at the consequence
and I'm like, OK, well, I could blow up and I could crash into
those rocks and I don't have it. I'm going to do three more
circles in this thermal and then glide.
And if I don't win, I'm OK with that.
I made the decision that having a functional glider and a
functional spine was more important than winning that day.
And when you back up just a little bit, of course, that's
really obvious, right? But if you're thinking about
probability, it's like, I could probably get away with this.
Then you don't make good decisions and you don't balance
that risk and reward at all. And then, you know, if you've
still decided to go for it, you take a big frontal and you've
practiced that 50 times in an SIV, then you can recover the
glider fast or maybe you crash into the trees, but you don't
break yourself. So in that situation, knowing
your goal is to survive that day, that's your first goal.
Like if you land at the end of the day and you survived, you
could be frustrated, but at least you survived.
But if you're way out those consequences and are thinking
about probability and and don't have capacity, then you're going
to get bad results. I think this does make it a bit
more clear for me. But what I'm really curious is I
was racing in Macedonia with 150 other triple C's and I was on a
2 liner C. I'd just gone to two liner C's,
full bar house thermal. You know, we're, we're racing
towards the first turn point and I'm kind of shitting my pants
because it's my first few days on A2 liner C, whereas everybody
else around me is like 500 hour plus pilot at least.
But there's a bit of a herd mentality coming around me that
hey, all the gliders are sailing smoothly.
There's no visible turbulence in the air.
So the probability, I'm not talking about capacity here,
this is this was a bit stupid on my part.
The probability of me going down is also almost negligible
because everybody else is handling it well, regardless of
how much effort they have put in versus what I have put in.
And yes, what happens, I get a full frontal right away.
Of course, I come come off the bar.
You know, thankfully I had the capacity to deal with full
frontals and then I pull back. I was not an official part of
that competition, so that's why it was easy for me to pull back.
But what I do see is that regardless of how much ever
practice I do, something in me will say that hey man, 150 other
humans are going out and pushing it and you are no less than
anyone of them. So just go back on full bar as
soon as possible. So when your gut knows that
you're doing something out of your comfort zone, yet the herd
mentality is trying to, you know, push you towards it, is
there a way that you can be very honest with yourself and say
that you don't want live to fly another day?
Or is this something that only wisdom and age will brilliant to
you as the time passes? You know, it's interesting, when
I was younger, I always wanted to be more brave to, to push
harder and, and be more comfortable, you know, like the
other kids or, or whatever would just do something and I'd be
like, no, I can't do that, you know, and, and I would build up
to it. So in your example right there,
I would say that you'd, if you're feeling that fear just
because you're on full bar, you have not built the capacity to
handle that situation well and you probably should be afraid.
And if you're feeling that, I guarantee you that the person
who's leading that day, the 10,000 hour pilot who who's a
test pilot, he is not afraid. If you're feeling fear in that
environment, a little bit of nervousness is fine.
You know, that keys you up, gets your central nervous system
going, all good, a little bits good.
But if you're like honestly having fear, I have learned over
decades of high risk sports that if I am feeling fear, bluntly,
I'm fucking up and I need to step back, figure out why I'm
feeling that fear or detune the situation.
You know, when I was 16 or 17 and paddling very serious first
descents in Canada, I used to throw up in the eddies at the
top because I was so afraid to run the drop right.
And I paddled horribly as a result.
You cannot paddle or fly a paraglider well when you're
afraid. So if you feel that fear,
doesn't matter what 150 people are doing.
If you feel that fear, you know, if you get off, if you, if you
get off the bar and you're flying along and you're, you're
like, well, this is really boring.
I could be on a little bit of bar and you want to be on a
little bit of bar, great. Get on a bit of bar.
You're not even in the competition.
Doesn't matter at all. But you know, what matters is
what's going on on you. So get off off the bar and when
I started paddling drops or flying in conditions that I
wanted to fly in, then I performed way better.
And that meant stepping back and not paddling like class 5 first
descents in the middle of nowhere.
But you know, paddling class 3 or 4 water and developing
capacity in that water to hit any line I wanted perfectly.
And I have, I am not afraid. I'm paying attention on a river
today or in the air. But if I'm feeling afraid, man,
that's a sign that I need to back up, slow it down.
It's not about overcoming your fear.
It's about embracing it, figuring out what's going on and
then making yourself actually strong.
And I see this in every sport I do.
It's like the guys, you show up and they're like, I'm going to
overcome my fear. I'm going to huck my carcass,
whatever. They don't last very long.
They either get killed or they wash out because they are
actually afraid. You're an idiot if you're not
afraid flying a paragon or in some conditions, you know you
should be. I'm sorry, but if you don't feel
that you're not going to last long, you're going to hit the
hillside. You know, if you've got that
fear, then ask why and and back it up until you don't have it
and progress when you want it. You know, I remember I won the
US Paragonic nationalist what year we're all flying toward
goal and I was down by like 6 points or something.
I knew I had to win the day by especially against two other
people on that meet. And we're flying along and it's
fairly rough and I'm on full bar and I blew my glider up.
I did not care whatsoever. I was back on that bar within 15
seconds. Yeah, that was, I wanted it and
I was going for it and I was high.
Whereas if I were racing in fear, I never would have won
that comp. And I knew I could deal with
that glider blowing up. And it blew up.
I was just annoyed that I was going to lose 50 meters.
I'm like, I didn't care. Like got the glider back on the
park. That's where you want to be.
The funny thing about that is that one of the guys, as I was
racing against watch that happen and he watched me blow up and
then he later I saw him at the ward ceremony, wherever and and
his exact it was Bill, Bill Belcourt, another well known US
pilot, and he said, if you want it that bad, man, I'm just going
to give it to you because it was clear you were going to go.
So internally I was at peace with it.
And also as a competitive tactic, it was very clear that I
was, I was going to go that hard, but I was definitely not
afraid. Like you can't be existing in
that space. That's a really long answer to a
short question. But if you have fear about
anything, embrace it. You know, it's normal to be a
little bit worried or to have a bit of a bump in your, you know,
when I get up in front of 1000 people to talk, it's something
man, I'm ready. But I've prepared well and I'm
solid and I'm going to go do it. And if I'm feeling that on a
paragliding launch or below a big climb or at the top of a big
drop, not in like I'm out, I don't want feel that way.
Quickly, before we move on to the next one, fear of unknown is
very made. That can be defined because of
course known fears where to put in the effort, where to put in
the hours you know round handle airtime.
Everything else answers that. But yeah, I think, I mean I
think unknown was sorry. Go ahead.
Turbulence, clear air, which you can't see, you know?
Yeah. Like, for example, yesterday I
was flying at my local site, flown there hundreds of time,
came into land. My ground speeds was 53.
That was weird. Never happened to me before on
that site. And I ended up landing hard on
my left hand, which kind of had to be bandaged up for next 24
hours or something. So now I'm kind of like, you
know, if it's too thermic, should I even give this a try
with a comparison which is being 7 kilograms.
So, fear of unknown, how do how do I navigate my way around
that? Well, I think the fear of the
unknown is just the fear of the things that you don't know to
fear yet, you know, And so you could talk to other people about
it. But for me, when I have a
situation like that, the debrief is really important.
And you know, there's there's a so for how I would approach
this. And this may not work for
probably, I guarantee it won't work for everybody.
But when I have an incident like that and they become further and
further apart over my decades of doing these sports, but I still
have them, I would go, OK, So what happened there?
Did I, was I paying attention or the wind socks pointing the
other direction the whole time I came in to land and I just
didn't look at them. Was my situational awareness,
you know, did my scan fall apart?
Like why did what happened? So I just I'd ask you that
question. Why?
Why did that happen? For just collecting the data
points, analyzing them and then trying whatever it is to not
repeat that unknown factors which you missed when the first
incident happened. But did you actually?
So this is a philosophical, it flawed conversation, but did you
actually miss any factors? Were the windsock's pointing
completely like what happened? Winsock just doesn't exist in in
that it's a soccer field. And but the approach that I made
was the usual approach, but the sink was substantial and the
wind was probably from the tail. And by the time I realized its
tail, it was too low to turn. So then I was like, I just have
to go in and slide. So it was an XR7 and it just had
its own momentum. So I just hit the deck pretty
hard. So this is the place you
normally land. Every day, you know there's no
wind sock. No, No.
So this is the first thing. It's like, OK, this is a place
you land every day. Why do you guys have a wind
sock? You should have three or four of
them. It's a soccer field.
It's like this is so this is not no, and this is like this
happens when you don't know what direction the wind and and you
know, strong and variable day. You could have huge thermals
ripping off that will change things.
But if you're going to lad here regularly, my man, you got to
get some wood socks. Like that's so to me, this is
like a lesson in in what happened is never very
interesting to me when so when a pilot says, oh, I crashed going
downwind, like OK, great, crashed going downwind.
Awesome. What you know, this is what
happened. Why, that's the more interesting
question. And sometimes you just get
fantastic luck in paragliding and sometimes you get bad luck.
But in this situation, it's like, quite clearly, you guys
need some wind socks if you're going to land there a lot.
And then the other thing is, you know, if it's an unknown place,
you, you had an idea in your mind of, of what was going to be
happening in that, in that place maybe.
But the whole goal is to adapt to the environment.
And it's a very, it's a very, there's the, the Buddhists call
this like beginner's mind or whatever, but you have all these
preconceptions. And I find that the pilots who
tend to last longer and have less an incidence of the ones
that are not operating off of, you know, they have a plan, they
have a goal, they're doing something, but they're also
very, very attuned to the environment and change fast,
whether it's in a competition. The person is like, wow, the day
just changed. We're not climbing at six meters
a second now we're climbing at 1m a second.
I need to slow down. Whereas people are hammering and
don't take that information on board.
They dirt and they're like, what happened?
And, you know, so the digging into the why of something and
what is going on there versus what you thought was going on,
that's much more interesting to me.
So in your situation, I you should have fear, like that's an
incident. You should have some, you hurt
your hand. Like this is a really good call.
Like something didn't work the way you thought it was.
And it's not the world's fault. The world's not going to change.
So how are you going to change so that you have less of these
in the future? And I think that's a much more
interesting question. OK, just a very small follow up
because the wing sock is, you know, very obvious, like the
listeners must be thinking what a stupid person doesn't just
allow city doesn't allow us to put wing socks there.
So it's like either you let you give up on flying in this
beautiful spot over Oslo or you deal with this unknown that can
take you by surprise at some time.
So I'm like this unknown is manageable for me.
Like okay it was a sprained hand, could have been a back.
I'm not denying that it is still stupid.
But giving up on the flight because of that unknown was too
big of a trade off for me. So that's why I went ahead.
Now should I look back at this and say that hey buddy this is a
warning call, Do not repeat such unknowns again.
Or it's like life is full of these anyways, Like how many
variables can you really try and control?
I I, I to me in your situation again, I would go deeper.
I wouldn't just go after accept the shitty risk.
It's like, OK, can the first pilot who lands put up a wind
sock, a temporary one or hold up a string or something?
Right. You're you're not going to put
up a flag. Sounds like that.
They don't want you to do that. But ask them, Hey, can we put up
a, a streamer on this? You know, it's the city doesn't
own the whole area. It's like, I'm sure there's some
place you can hang a streamer in a tree or something that will
give you that. Like this is not a very good
excuse. So I'm sorry, my friend, there
was a way you could get some vindication.
But even all of the things being equal, how could you change the
outcome when there's absolutely no signs in the landing zone?
Is this a Ridge soaring site? What is it?
It's a small mountain and then the landing zone is a soccer
field right by the sight of it basically.
OK. And you?
Use a kind of thermic. OK, great.
So when you come into it, it's a mountain, even a small mountain.
So you can come in with an extra 30 meters to do a circle in the
LZ and that'll tell you right away what the wind speed is
doing. Like that's what you do on cross
country flights in the mountains when you, it's not obvious, you
can do a 360. And if it still isn't obvious
and it doesn't matter because of the winds, 5K an hour, whatever
direction you deal with it. So you, there's multiple ways to
solve this, but accepting the risk is not really the way
forward. If you just like, oh, I'm going
to accept the unknown. The deeper lesson is here, when
I land in places that I can't, that I don't have indicators, I
need to allow enough altitude to do a 360 and figure out what
that wind is. That's a deeper lesson that you
can then put into your hierarchy or OK, now I've, I've done that
and I've still, you know, the thermal from hell has kicked off
right in front of me and, and has been training all the air
behind it. Now I'm doing, you know, I'm
coming in at 50K over the ground.
How am I going to land this? And you know, am I going to
surge it and then use some energy to, to stall it extra
hard and run it out. I can run 10 kilometers an hour.
Even with a, even with 20 kilos of shit on my back, I could
still pull that off probably for a short distance.
So this is still OK. Am I going to try to slide it in
and risk a back injury or if I have lots of good protection and
I can, it's a perfect field thinking it through and spending
a lot of time. I very seldom just accept, oh,
that's the risk. It's like breaking it down and
planning. So next time you go in there,
it's like, OK, if my if I'm if the ground isn't going that
fast, I'm going to I'm going to do an extra.
I'm going to take an extra wrap like landing a tandem in a
downwind situation and I'm going to like flare extra hard and I'm
going to run it out or I'm going to surge it and slide it in and
I'm going to slide on my ass. Can the grounds too rough for
that? I'm going to really, but again,
stepping back up, it's like I'm gonna do a 360 above it and try
to figure that out. You know, seldom does a thermal
pull more than 10K an hour into it.
It's, I don't think that really happens very much.
That'd be a rather amazing thing of the dead.
So again, like it's not about the fear, it's about listening
to it and solving the problem. Does that make sense?
A. 100% And I, I just realized my mistake is that I tried to
circle too low and then eventually I got too low to do
that S or box approach to figure out where the wind was coming
from. So the lesson learnt is that do
not push in areas which don't have the capacity or the the
buffer that you will push. Because I just kept on circling
until I was like it's either now or I have to land on the roof of
the houses. So.
Yeah. And then leave options.
It's like it's better to land land, probably better to land
downwind than hit a house. You know, most people LED
downwind. It's just funny or they spray
their thubs or whatever, right. But if you hit a house, that
kind of hurts. I've hit several.
Don't do that. It's not but yeah, having that
again, listening to that fear and it's not the unknowns.
It's an unknown is just something you haven't figured
out yet. You know, there's, there's base
rates and accidents and you got to, you got to know the base
rates because you're, those are that's really important and, and
everything that we do, but also then thinking about it, most of
the flying that I do is not on my paraglider.
It's while I'm out, you know, I'm playing soccer with my kids
in the field across the street and I'm feeling that wind And
it's like, when did it switch? When did it go adabatic?
When did it go catabatic? There's a Canyon.
There's two canyons right above my house.
They switch, you know, and I land in that field all the time.
And so I'm learning the whole time I'm out in these
environments, learning and learning and learning.
And that has applicability for ski touring, that has
understanding instability. Every, every, you're just the
more we know about the natural environment, the better we can
perform there. So most of my learning doesn't
come from doing the sport necessarily, It comes from being
attuned to the world as much as I can, just walking around.
Indeed, and I think when when it comes to learning, I quickly
want to hit upon the topic of risk assessment because
obviously all of us have our own way to decode how risky a
situation is. And that is based on the
perception from our experiences, from what we consume.
And social media is easy to blame here because it puts all
sorts of things out there. But if we consume, or I mean,
we, we barely can choose what we consume because, you know,
algorithms feed us all sorts of exciting things to play with our
brains so that we stay on them. Are we subconsciously reducing
our risk assessment by seeing radical things being normalized
on platforms which host such things?
Probably 1 interesting I think I've seen across different
sports, though, is that it's one thing to watch somebody do
something really radical and it's another thing to stand
there yourself contemplating doing it.
You know, it's your break could go, I could do that.
And and then you walk out there and you're like, wow, this is
actually really, really dangerous and full on.
So I think on an individual level, if we listen to that when
we're out there, again, it's it's our own software that we're
running and we get out there and we listen to it, you know, are
we actually afraid or do we have even the knowledge to judge the
situation? I think the progression is
certainly accelerated radically in all the sports I do based off
of YouTube and, and social media.
You know, the things like how to launch differently or how to do
a trick differently, whatever it is, those are communicated so
fast now. You know, when I was learning,
we'd we'd get like a magazine or something and there'd be like 6
photos and we'd have to piece together the entire thing.
And now I want to learn how to like do whatever.
I YouTube it from my fixed, see my brakes on my car to Infinity
tumbling or whatever. And there's a video.
So I think those things can, but usually people have some sort of
experience when they try to step up above where they are.
Again, it's about you and listening to yourself and not
not necessarily sort of instinctual, but on some level
listening to that fear or lack of it and then asking, is that
what you actually wanted to experience?
You know, have you done some BASE jumping?
You said at the beginning that you wanted to be a wing seat
BASE jumper. Not yet, paragliding is taking
all my money for now. Yeah, well, I mean, I wanted to
be a wigsuit base jumper for a while too.
And so I went out there and learned how to BASE jump at a
very low level. But, you know, everybody talks a
big game. They're like, I'm going to huck
it and I'm going to do this. And then you get out there and
it's like things get toned down fast when you're looking at it
in the eye. So I, I think there probably is
some social media push toward doing more, more extreme things.
But what I've seen is that most of the time when people get out
there and get confronted with the reality of it, they slow it
down pretty quick. But the progression certainly
happens a lot faster. And it's one thing to read and
watch a YouTube video about how to recover a really violent
collapse on a on a on a on A2 lighter at speed First.
What do you have? Those is pretty memorable.
Yeah. Like, oh, yeah.
This is not like the test pilot. Yeah.
Now we, you know, it's the holy shit.
Things happen really fast and violently.
And it's like you get a little more respect for it.
And now you have a more accurate picture of the world.
And that's the goal is to just to, you know, develop our idea
and our model with how the world works and then test it and
refine it and get better at it. And then also recognize when the
world just isn't working the way you think it should.
You know, you're you're in that cop and you think it should be
strong and it's not and you got to slow down or whatever.
And yeah, so figure it out. What's?
My, my question came from the fact that I, I was listening to
cloud based with Gavin when I was growing up in the sport,
early, early years. And he was telling that Kregel
goes out and ground handles and not the ideal conditions.
And I was like, boom, buddy, you want to get there, go out, put
in the effort. So I go out there, put in the
effort. And this there's of course a
lack of knowledge which I don't have Skregel has done, has put
in the work and I get plucked over throned and next thing I
know my ACL which was already blown is just like over the top
and requires associate to get back on crown handing again.
So while this was happening, it was a lot of adrenaline in that
ground handle session, but it was No Fear.
So what I'm wondering is should I have had fear because I was
doing something which I did not have enough hours for?
Or is adrenaline tool which kind of masks the fear and does make
you do the stupid things because you're not nervous at that point
of time. I mean, adrenaline's a really
interesting drug. And if you study the Physiology
of it, a little bit is a good thing.
It wires you up, gets you go on like a little dose is good, but
a big dose of it, like after you broke your ACL, you probably got
a big dose of adrenaline. And I'm going to guess it wasn't
that fun. You're like, you felt clammy,
your skin felt cold and sweaty, and your heart rate went too
fast. And this is the usual response
to too much adrenaline. So adrenaline, adrenaline is
generally not the drug that gets people to do really stupid shit.
It's probably testosterone more so that gets as especially as
bad to do incredibly, you know, the number of women who do
incredibly stupid things with in any sport that I've involved
with is a lot lower than the number of men.
And I don't know if that's straight up testosterone or
social conditioning or whatever, but I fear that.
And you and, and to your credit, you were out there trying to
build capacity and you didn't kill yourself and you did find
some sort of limit when you know you did hurt yourself.
But it's better to hurt yourself ground handling and blowing ACL
than to try and be creagle and launch in ridiculous conditions
and kill yourself. So I would say you maybe learned
an unfortunate but perhaps less costly lesson by doing that.
And you do have to ground handle in stupid conditions.
That's on my list of things that I, I am, I don't feel current on
right now. Is it?
You know, I'm, I'm flying, I'm just not flying 350 or 500 hours
a year anymore. And I'm, my ground handling is
junk. So I'm looking out the window
and I'm hoping that later today we get a nice choppy, messy
valley flow goal and I go ground handle.
And I may hurt myself, but it's lots better to figure out your
limits doing what you did than to try and do it on the side of
a mountain and have it go bad. Like it's kind of a failure.
But you actually learned something really useful there.
So I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about that.
But just one thing you just said there, just back up one second
here. But what you just did there is
you didn't fail totally safely and that you got hurt.
But there's a big idea in risk management about failing safely,
setting up environments so you can fail, in our case in
paragliding, not get killed or really badly injured.
And you set that environment up and you built capacity, you
know, for the 1st 20 minutes before you hurt yourself for
however long it was. You learned a lot.
And that is going to save you one day for sure.
And you need to go do more of that, maybe detune it a little
bit, 5K less, you know, or whatever, just a little bit less
cycle conditions or a better place.
I don't know how you hurt yourself, but you did fail
safely before you failed catastrophically and you built
capacity. So yes, you got injured, but you
also learned a lot, and I think that's useful. 100% and because
that was the only thing that I was telling myself, but I was
like OK, my knee is getting swollen up and it's painful and
whatever and I still have to pack up this gear and walk back.
But now at least I know what not type so.
Yeah. And the other 10 times you can
and the other 10 times you control the surge or the
asymmetric and got stayed on your feet.
Like that's pretty awesome. You learned a lot.
So maybe detune a little bit, but you've got to do that.
If you don't have the capacity to handle bad conditions, then
then, then when you beat them, you'll, you know, maybe you save
yourself from getting killed that day.
So I think that's could be and you also learned an important
lesson about how far is too far. So I'd look at that as a super
successful day. Yeah, you got injured a bit, but
you didn't get killed. So right on.
Well, thank you for boosting my confidence.
Well, helps a lot, yeah. Oh, it's really most people
don't do that. Everybody goes out and ground
handles in perfect conditions and it teaches them nothing.
It's like you put the glider up and like you get yeated off your
feet and slammed. You learn something and you
learn it in a way that's relatively safe.
You know, I've crashed my paraglider a few Times Now and I
credit both that crazy gymnastics training that I did
with building capacity and learning how to crash and then
also knowing how to control my wing and non standard
configurations, you know, and I for sure would have crashed so
much harder if I didn't, you know how to do that.
So yeah, you. OK, this one's probably more apt
for young pilots out there who are listening to us.
But is there a way to what do you say, navigating the
invincibility syndrome, where Estesteron versus experience is
like the only way forward that you know, Experience will tell
you how to pull back, but when you're 1617, you're like, I will
take on the world and I will win.
If anybody tells me otherwise, it's a fool.
I think there's two ways to answer that.
There's a there's AI think it's George Bernard Shaw that says
the quote from him that says the reasonable man knows that
progress is impossible. Therefore all progress depends
on the unreasonable man and 1617 year old young men are
unreasonable and that, but they're the ones that are going
to change the world. That's kind of their job is to
is to is to do that. You know, they're the people who
get out in the streets and protest and, you know, shake up
the old guard like we need that in both sport and politics in
life. I I think that's true.
So that is kind of the role of that when you are that age.
But I would say that the same thing applies in terms of
building capacity and being honest with yourself about how
something went and why. Not just what happened, but why
and digging into that. The people who tend to live
longer in these sports tend to really think about what they're
doing and why and what happened and not just go that was bad
luck or I was really good, so that succeeded.
You know, both those statements are not very useful.
It's not just good luck and it's not just bad luck.
It's like what happened and why and debrief it.
And if you look at the people who are winning the PWC's or
setting world records, they tend to be pretty thoughtful people.
Usually they're not just. Yeah, full Sandman.
You know, that doesn't work. They're like trying to
understand things and figure it out.
And they do it in different ways.
Some people over very intuitive and instinctual, but they are
thinking about it hard and other other people are like, well, the
the T skew that's there sort of an instability in whatever.
I don't think that way, but some people do.
So for the young people, it's like, yeah, think about it and
decide, you know, if you want to push, great.
But if you're pushing to overcome fear, then maybe have a
look at that. But again, it's everybody has to
come up with their own SIS software, right?
Their own model and be honest about it, that it's like, it's
brutal honesty with yourself. It's like, why did this happen?
And, you know, sometimes it was completely unforeseeable and,
and now you're like, OK, now I've got a bit more information
to foresee that or I have an area that I need to build more
capacity, but it's your model and and you have to develop it.
And then so, you know, to those young people, just be honest
about what's going on and what you want to do.
And, you know, if people want to do really dangerous things like
wing seat, base jumping 6 inches off the ground AT200K, go for
it, man. As long as you're really clear
that like pretty much everybody does that for a long time, dies
is are you cool with that? You are go for it.
I feel sorry for the rescuers have to scrape your carcass up,
but that's where your mind is at giver.
I mean, I really do it's shit thing for the for the rescuers,
it's no good, but in on an individual level, I I believe
risk taking is is individual and super important.
Long answer to a short question again, but I think about this
stuff way too much is. That that's why you're on the
show. Will you know it's your neural
podcast was dream. I ask you one thing, you answer
20 others along with it. Yeah, sorry that's ADD 2 bad.
No, love it, love it. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure the
audience members listening to this are also having a ball of a
type. But you know, this brings me to
dilemma. Another one which I had is like
differentiating inclusion from anxiety because your heart rate
goes up. And that's a little bit of fear,
right? But if your heart rate goes up
more than your comfort level, then you reach a point where you
say that, hey, my heart rate is lying because there are, there's
a pseudo risk as well or something.
I'm not sure if I'm able to put my question correctly, but
intuition from anxiety is when I, when I find it super hard to
understand that, Hey, do I, I've trained enough, but there is
still something that tells me maybe I'm not good enough.
For example, this interview right now, I had prepared for
this for three or four days in a row.
I, I looked up all your podcasts, I watched all your Ted
talks and, you know, sat on your website.
But right now when I'm asking you.
I am stammering inside. My heart rate is shooting up.
There you go. So, so when this happens on the
action or like the day of action, or you know in the
moment what is the way to hold back or still make peace with
your reality and change your goals as planned.
So a lot of different answers to this and, and I, I try to figure
out the best way to come at this.
So the classic sports psychology way to come at this.
And this is a useful tool for sure.
It has limitations, but the, the most useful thing is you're,
you're thinking about a paragliding competition or
whatever, something that has meaning to you, but also is
maybe risky in whatever way. And and you're you, it's really
easy to spend a lot of of time worrying about the worry and so
on and all the things that you can't control.
What if I make a mistake? What if I do this?
You know, what if I asked this will Gad guy really stupid
question, You know, like he can't control any of that
actually. So the basic sports psychology
thing before any, anything you're going to do is to worry
about the things you can control and have thought through some of
the things maybe you can't control and have solutions to
them to the best of your ability.
But game day before you go out there, it's like you have to
focus on what you can control. So in a paragliding competition,
it's like, are you actually hydrated?
Are you actually fed? Do you have calories if you're
going to be in the air for the next 6 hours?
Is your gear in good working order?
Have you spent a lot of time working on your launching in in,
you know, thermal midday conditions?
Have you, If you haven't done some of these things, then then
maybe it's time to ponder if you should really be there.
You know, but if you've done the work and you've decided it's
important and you show up and if you're still terrified, then I
don't think you've done enough work.
You, you need to maybe stand down or go, right?
I'm going to back off. I'm going to launch last today.
I'm going to chase the gaggle. I'm going to see what people do
and I'm going to be OK with that.
I don't want to fly in terror. This is not a high performance
state. So sports psychology is control
the things you're going to do and then back it down if you if
you can't, you know, take some load off and you can do that a
lot of different ways. And then afterwards go, OK, I
showed up there. I was terrified and I didn't
feel like I blonde there. And you know, I felt that way my
whole life. Most paragliding competitions.
I'm like, oh, these people are all way better than me and they,
you know, more fancier gear or whatever.
You know, I'm from small town Canada.
You know, I should be like, you know, driving a taxi, which is
I've done, but it's like it's, you know, I'm not, I never show
up there feeling like I know what I'm doing doing.
But I, and then I'm like, well, OK, is my gear together more or
less, you know, and I've put the time in and that's just basic
sports psychology. And then when you learn how to
do that, it's the same tactic I use when I go out and do a
speaking engagement. It's like have I, you know, I
use that worry to prep for it. It's like, OK, this group is
really into thinking about things in these ways and I'm
going to try to give them some tools to engage here.
OK, so how am I going to make that work and breaking it down?
And when I get up there, I'm really worried about presenting
the ideas or executing well, but I'm not terrified of the
experience because I've put enough time and effort into it
and recognized that terror and kind of dealt with it beforehand
so that I don't if I'm terrified in the air and my heart rate
spikes, I'm basically my primary problem is now not the other
competitors. My primary problem is what is
going wrong with me. Maybe I've missed something too.
Maybe that's my body's way of telling me that I've missed
something that big Q Nam over there that I've been not paying
attention to you because I'm paying attention to all the
other competitors and so on. Like I should be in my hurry,
should be like, it's massive. And I've got like 6 minutes to
get on the ground. Like, OK, well, how am I going
to do that? You know, like, yeah, so long
answer again, but sports psychology, worry about the
things you can control and make sure those are done well.
And then listen. Listen to that fear and engage
with it. Don't ignore it.
You know, as we come to the closing one, I'm so glad we we
spoke about this because I think I was listening to your your
talk with Alex Arnold another. Great.
Yeah, he's he's interested character.
Yeah, I love how he put on like some beautiful shots about you
guys having 5 minute conversations on YouTube and
then the whole thing. And I think there you spoke
about practicing risk taking or increasing risk endurance, where
the analogy was that if if you don't pick up the phone and call
up your date, then it's a definite no.
So what I'm wondering is finding the courage to pick up the
phone. I mean, of course, this can be,
you know, how parallels can be drawn in various adventure
sports and this. But how do you practice picking
up the phone and calling in with sole confidence rather than
shaking while picking up the phone just because that if you
don't do it and even that option is gone from your life?
Yeah. Did I make my question clear?
Yeah, it's and it's, I think it's a really good question.
I think a lot of people get stuck on on the looking at the
phone and don't pick it up. So a couple different things in
every worthwhile activity, the best thing to do for that
activity is to do it. And then the next best activity
to get better at is something that closely approximates it in
some way. And then then you sort of move
further and further away and maybe you have to do the
necessary physical therapy or job training or whatever that's
way down there. But so if you, you know, if you
can't pick that phone up and actually dial it and make the
call, you can pick it up and practice what you're going to
say and you can detune it again, detune the situation to where
you can handle it. And I do that with a lot of
different stuff, you know, whether it's it's kayaking and
I'm like, well, what if I'm stuck upside down against the
wall and I can't roll up? What are my options?
It's like, OK, well, you know, I can, I can go to the other side.
Maybe I can grab the wall And I think through 10 different
things. Or just sticking with the
analogy, what's the worst thing that the person can do?
They can laugh at me. I've been laughed at all my
whole life. People tell me I'm an idiot and
what I'm going to do is impossible.
That's a pretty normal reaction, but at a certain point, every
time that happens, you get better at dealing with it.
You don't take it personally. You're like, either this person
thinks what I want to do is crazy and they think I'm an
idiot. Well, that's happened before.
It loses its impact after a certain point.
And when you've gotten up there and failed, you know, whether
it's public speaking, flying a paraglider or whatever, when you
screwed up enough times, you get more comfortable with getting
up. I agree.
So if you keep trying, you get better at trying.
You know, if you keep working at things, you get better at it.
So pick that phone call up and the first time you get rejected,
it's terrible. I used to be in sales.
Call somebody up. Hey ABCDEFG, what do you think?
Nah and don't call me again. Click first time.
That's devastating. The 50th time you're like, OK,
one in ten of these calls hits. That was call #9 I got 8 more to
bake. Here we go.
You know, so you keep trying, but you do have to learn like
why didn't they respond well to what you were offering?
Or or maybe you need to listen to them more.
Like you got to learn, you know, try, listen, learn, adapt, do
better. That's the kind of mantra that I
fighter pilots call an ODA loop, observe, Orient, decide, act.
And you know, my personal 1 is like, you got to try.
That's the first thing. Nothing cool happens if you
don't take that little risk and try and then you get to get out
there. You got to listen.
Like, what's the world telling me?
What's shaking with? Like what is really going on?
Not the bullshit in my brain. What's really going on?
You know, you got to listen to it, figure it out.
Then you got to learn like put it into its place, put it into
your Matrix and your software and your brain.
And then, you know, it's burned actually.
And then you adapt, you change your game, you know, and what
you're doing and you do better. And then you just do that over
and over and over again. And sooner or later you, you
either get, you know, get to where you want to go or you
realize that where you want to go is actually less interesting.
This other thing you need to go for.
Well, love it. What was the mantra of the
fighter Fighter? I'm going to like put this in
show notes after Googling it up. What was?
Oh, it's just it's called an ODA loop, OODA.
And so that the classic fighter pilot ODA loop is you.
You, you observe, Orient, decide, act.
So my personal version of that is just, you know, try, listen,
learn, adapt, do better. That's like every situation.
It's like you got to try, you know, and I respected that you
tried. You sent me an e-mail and, and
said, Hey, you gave me a little bit of an interesting story
about this. And I was like, Oh, this guy
seems interesting. So he tried and I listened to
that. And that's that's that's the
first part of it. And we'll run into each other
somewhere on a hill, hopefully in five or ten years and be
like, Oh, we did that podcast topic.
What podcast you'd like? The one with the what with the
guy? I've been Oslo and you know, I
come for brought back. Oh, you're that guy.
That was awesome, you know, and and we'll develop something
cool. So anyhow, but try, listen,
learn, adapt, do better. That's kind of mine.
Well, thank you. Thank you for the kind words
girl. Is this the same thing you do
with your kids when you go out and ask them to the risk factor
thing and forget where you ask them that what the factor we are
and and then they revert back to you with the findings?
Yeah. Well, this is, this is, yeah.
I mean, this is something I've been doing with my kids.
Like we're all running risk management software, right?
Like everybody is, whether we realize it or not, we're making
judges about what's appropriate, what's not.
And so I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm out in the mountains a lot
with my kids and, and we have sort of three level system that
we developed together by listening to them.
It's not something that's like bide, but you know that our
basic system is, I'll ask, you know, what hazard level are we
at? And they'll be God dad bumps and
bruises. This is casual.
OK, What do we need to do about it?
Because we also need to mitigate it.
Well, not much here. You know, this is like a
playground and I'm going to attack this playground and
awesome. And there will be someplace a
little bit more hazardous, you know, maybe we'll be hiking in
the mountains and there'll be a drop off and I'll be like, OK,
we're hiking along here. There's this drop off.
What do you guys think? And they'll be like, you know,
was this is definite hospital train, dad.
Like you fall off of here, you get you could get really hurt.
And OK, So what are we going to do about it?
Well, we're not going to run. We're going to hike on the
inside of the trail, you know, and, and those rocks over there
are slippery. So we're going to slow down and
maybe keep a hand on the wall here or whatever, you know,
that's hospital train. And then we'll be in some very
dangerous place like downtown Oslo and the bars let out at
night or something, you know, and, and actually Oslo is pretty
good, but it probably be in some, some hideously maybe we
don't know the environment very well.
We'll be getting ready to cross the street and you know, like,
OK, what hazard level are we at now?
And the kids would be like death, Dad, death.
You know, if we run out there, we'll get smoked by some drunk
Oslolia, although you've got really hard drinking laws there.
So that probably won't happen, which is probably a good thing.
But anyhow, that's, you know, it's bumps and bruises, hospital
death. What are we going to do about
it? Oh, we're going to let those
drunk Vikings go 1st and see what happens to them.
OK, cool. You know, this is how we're
going to play this game. And the idea is not to terrify
them in the world. Like I don't tell my kids, be
careful. I, I, you know, we get to a
playground and I'm like, all right, what's got any issues
here? And they're like, well, if you
fall off the top of the buggy bars, you might break yourself.
So we're going to be a little more heads up and keep oriented
our feet. OK, great.
And then they attack and I watch other parents get to the
playgrounds like, OK, kids don't don't do anything dangerous.
The kids don't even know what is dangerous.
So yeah, the idea is to develop good risk management software
and define it and redefine it and develop it throughout our
lifetimes. You know, And so when I'm not
watching the kids that they can make good decisions.
And it's the same with the people that I coach in, in
mountaineering or paragliding or kayaking or whatever.
The whole goal is to give them good systems to make good
decisions in life and then get back to what we were talking
about at the start of this conversation, which is to is to
live our coolest lives. That's what we're all trying to
do. That's what you're trying to do.
And I think that's super cool. That's the psychotic ideal.
The unexamined life is not worth living, man.
You've examined it and you're going for it.
So I wish you the best and and everybody's making these
decisions. Best of luck with it.
Thank you. Thank you for such kind words.
These are going to stick with me.
And I'm going to be the Seals for my, you know, oncoming
journeys. I hope I make myself and
everybody else around me proud. So fingers crossed, yeah.
Well, you're giving people, you're trying to give people
some meaning. And I think as I've gotten
older, that is more important to me.
And if I just think about these things in a vacuum and we don't
have these kind of conversations, then it's not, I
hope that people listen to this and, and you've given people
some meaning and that's the that's the most precious thing.
And in some ways is to to give that and share that.
So right on, man. And thank you for the time and
doing the research that you did and you did a great job.
And so the next one you like, I interviewed that guy Will Gadd.
He's kind of a pain in the ass and I kicked the ass, man, so go
get it. I love it, love your energy and
your thoughts will. But before I let you go, will we
have a tradition on the show where I request my guests to
share one flight from their life that has stuck with them.
You know if you have to choose one out of all these amazing
airtime hours or not so amazing, whatever.
Oh boy, so many. I mean, I've flown I don't know
how many thousands of hours, but so many good moments, you know,
and it's, it's interesting, so many good moments.
I think one of my favorite moments would be chasing records
in, in Texas. I was at about 18,000 feet
really late in the day and you never go, very rarely do you go
that high over Texas. It's very, very rare.
The base is normally just not that high and but I'm up there
and I didn't set a record that day, but I remember being up
there and the light was just stunning.
It was the the ground below me was already after sunset and for
some reason I'd hit AI don't know why it happened, but I'm
just being up there in the sky so high over Texas, the ground
so low. I about like 5000 meters, the
grounds like 200 meters and just that much space between me and
the earth. And then still thermaling and
these Swifts came and they're eating bugs in the thermal and
flying between my lines. And I was like, man, this is
pretty special. Like this just doesn't happen.
And that was a but so many just that, that memory being so
specked out tall like that. And you know, it's almost night
and it's really, really beautiful with these birds
eating the insects. They're flying to my lines like
fighter pilots. They would just go a lot of
lines and the gliders at that point.
So it was harder. So they were like zapping
through the line sideways, eating bugs.
And I just thought, yeah, I'm pretty much the luckiest person
on Earth right now to be here. Wow, pretty cool and the the
most beautiful part is that no matter what technology we
invent, such things usually happen and our best absorbed
with naked eye and being in the moment and living the so I think
you know, I'm so glad I could rekindle that and thank you for
sharing it with our audiences. I'm pretty sure they'll you
know, appreciate that thought before we close.
Did you I? I was listening to your Gavin
show where you said that you were in wave and you got super
high where you were getting a pinhole visioned.
Oh yeah. Yeah, it's, it's when things are
happening like that, I mean they happen fairly quickly.
Does it make sense to do the risk management talk during that
time or should you just, you know, make them like make the
best out of situation kind of a thing?
Like when you're in that kind of situation.
So two things. You've got to do your best to be
a participant in that situation as opposed to like a package.
See, even when things have gone horribly wrong, a 30%
improvement and outcome is often quite meaningful, right?
It's really, really important. Or 10% or 2%.
It can be the difference. So you to stay engaged and to
stay focused on on getting things better.
And in the industrial world, they have an acronym which is
sticky STKY and the acronym stands for Shit that can kill
you sticky. And it's a really useful
acronym. Usually when you're in one of
those high intensity situations, there's only a few things that
you actually need to manage. You're not worried about your
bank balance, your mortgage, your love life.
You got to worry about like, am I going to hit the hill?
Like that will kill you. And what am I going to do about
it? How can I make this better?
You know, if I, if I flare really hard because I've
misjudged my circle, you know, I'll hit it less hard.
OK, that's what I'm going to do. You know, when you're downwind
landing situation, it's like if I fly into the high tension
lines, that'll kill me. So I can't do that any outcome.
But that is probably best. So you know that in those high
intensity situations, knowing what's going to kill you and
avoiding that is, is probably the useful thing to do.
But you know, I just wrote a big article about this, but the
people always want to know what to do in these high intensity
situations. Like what do I do when I'm
getting sucked into a KUNIC? I'm landing downwind in the, you
know, my local LZ. What do I do?
It's like, well, don't do that. You know, what happened is you
got sucked into AQ Nim. You didn't get sucked into AQ
Nim, You flew into AQ Nim. I have never seen anybody get
sucked into AQ Nim. You know, they flew into them.
I watched Ava go to 9000 meters. She thermaled up underneath that
Q Nim. You know, so rather than it's
useful to think about what I'm going to do in these super
extreme situations, but the best thing to do is to avoid them and
to think about, you know, I've thought a lot about this.
It's like, OK, you know, I flew the Texas dry line for 20 years.
This is the biggest Q&M Tornado Alley area possibly in the
world. Every day it's going to go
ballistic, but I'm planning to fly there.
So what do I need to watch there so I don't fly into AQ and M?
You know, there's this, this really bothers me.
People are like, well, I got sucked in.
No, you didn't. You flew in.
And once you start taking kind of real responsibility for the
outcomes, then you then you could fix those outcomes.
But this is a problem, especially for some reason in
paragliding where people are like, you know, I got sucked
into a cloud. The clouds suck.
This is a bullshit like every it's a thermal that goes into it
like don't do that. Like yeah, OK, how are you going
to not do that? Well, I'm going to start my
glide out earlier in a day with with that it's overcast and I
can't see the Q&M's. I'm going to check the radar on
my phone because you know what you can do that in 90% of the
world Well look at that. The 150K in front of you is now
going to 12,000 meters publishing go land.
So it's it's yeah. Anyhow, long rant about that.
But do focus on avoiding those situations and building
knowledge to avoid them rather than just solving them.
But people tend to want to solve them rather than avoid them.
Yeah, I think, you know, this is a bit personal to me because I
think within my first or SEC first year of flying I was 90
hour pilot or something. I had a deployment over
Dharamshala in B and that was just asymmetric going into
cascade and went into double twisted auto rotation.
So what I might like I my, my brain said fight it until it
reached G point where I was like, hey, man, either deploy or
you're passing out. You know that that maybe that
blackout was coming in. So my thing is, there was a
point in time where I just accepted my fate and said that
now it's either the handle or it's over.
So if you are going towards an impact or a final like
undesirable state, is it OK to give up and brace for impact or
should you kind of keep on fighting until the last bit?
Because that has eaten me up since that day that hey, why did
you just give up when you were 2000 thousand meters at least to
clearance and bracing for impact.
When should that come and should be peaceful when that comes in
your mind so. Thank you for telling me that.
And it's it sounds like it was personal and emotional and still
driving you a little bit today. So, so a couple quick responses
to that. The first is that you did the
right thing. You you're in a situation that
you did not see how it was going to get better and you're getting
G doubt and you know, you 3 reserve, most everybody I know
that's thrown the reserve has walked away.
A lot of people, I'd say most everybody I've known that hasn't
thrown the reserve but has braced for impact has gotten
really messed up. So in my books, you did the
right thing. You were, you had a solution to
a problem. And you know, if you're a very,
very experienced pilot, maybe you have other solutions to that
problem, but you didn't have the capacity anymore.
So you did the logical thing, which is throw your reserve.
I think that's awesome. I wish more people did that.
If more people threw their reserves earlier, we'd have a
lot less fatalities and paragliding.
That is really clear to me, you know, and, and people like, oh,
but you could go into a power line.
Well sure you could, but you could go into the power line
fighting your glider all the way into the dirt and hit the tower
going 120 K an hour and break everything in your body.
Like very few situations are improved by riding the
paraglider into the dirt. So you threw early and I think
that's awesome. I guess the second thing I'd ask
you is a question. If if you took that ace same
asymmetric today, what would happen to you?
Easy. I hopefully know how to come out
of it. And why do you and how do you
know that? It's just went out and put in
the work. Yeah.
So you built capacity to handle that.
So your problem wasn't what should I brace for impact to
throw my reserve like these are not neither what are these are
like? Like by the time you've gotten
to that point, you did the right thing, you threw your reserve.
But the bigger picture here is again to build capacity.
Asymmetrics are an expected part of paragliding.
So are frontals on speed bar on two line gliders.
This is these things will happen and have we built the capacity
to manage them or not. You know you're going to get
sucked into a QM if you've if you are not paying attention to
the environment around you, this will happen.
There's this is QMS are you know, it's just part of flying.
They're out there. But if you've developed the
tools to pay attention to your environment and look at your
phone now you're developing capacity to avoid the situation,
not just go and I read I listened to this article.
This guy got sucked into a he flew into a QM and he's like, I
need a faster glider so I could fly away faster.
This is total bullshit. You need to not fly into Qdibs.
You need to have the understanding of the systems.
It doesn't matter whether you're on a, you know, the hottest cop
ship in existence or an A wing. It the difference is like not a
lot really in terms of getting, you know, the inflow to Acunium
is going very, very fast. I've been in a couple of them.
It's shit. I screwed up.
And you do not want to have this experience.
Doesn't matter what you're on. So, you know, avoidance and is
capacity is good, but avoiding it is is more is more better,
Yeah. Love it.
Will.
I think this is one of the most comprehensive talks we have had
on staying safe and yet having fun without, you know,
normalizing or obsessing risk assessment or something.
So yeah. And that what you just said is
really important. It's like people forget why
everybody wants to make paragliding safe, and it's not
safe. I don't care who you are or what
you do, you're going to hit the ground sooner or later.
This is what happens. And some of the people are like,
I've got it all figured out. I've got the perfect sauce.
When I fly safely, they hit the ground, man.
I've seen this happen several times.
Word that over the years. So you got to think that this is
fun and worth that possibility. Like to me it is.
Flying paragliders is awesome. It's worth the risk to me.
And I know that it's very likely that sooner or later I'll get it
wrong and I'll hit the ground. I'm not doing this safely.
It's really dangerous, but I can make it somewhat safer and I can
make good decisions and focus in the process of making good
decisions. And then if it goes bad, you
know, like, well, I, I really did think about this and I made
a good effort and, and I, you know, I didn't hit it, but you
know, at least I put the work in and, and tried.
So being process driven, failing safely, you know, some of the
tools we've talked about, I, I hope they resonate a little bit
with people and with you and it, and then the ultimate goal is to
come up with your own. I'm just making this shit up.
It's like based on a lot of experience, but it's just my
bottle and you got to develop your own and everybody does.
And I and I wish them luck with that.
Thank you for those words of wisdom and kindness for sharing
them with us, Will. And all I can say is that you,
your lifestyle and the way you impart knowledge is, is an
inspiration. So keep rocking and we will keep
getting inspired. Thank you once again.
Thank you. Pleasure you.
Thanks. I'm really glad you threw your
reserve man. You're here.
Good decision. So right on and look forward to
seeing out a hill somewhere. Likewise, will likewise.