Thad Spencer returns to the Mayhem to discuss a very different topic than we did in our previous chat. A little over 18 months ago Thad went out with his friend Alex Peterson for what looked like a pretty good day to go big in western Minnesota. Alex towed up first without incident, then Thad hooked in and began to tow up and things went pretty quickly from good day to lights out. Thad discusses the selfish nature of paragliding and its impact on relationships. He also talks about his experience with the Zeno 2 glider and launching in challenging conditions. He shares his experience with emergency response and the hospital, as well as his injuries and recovery process. In this conversation we discuss various aspects of overcoming fear, taking risks, and embracing challenges as we age. We also delve into the topic of retirement and the process of redefining self-identity and finding purpose in this new phase of life. Thad shares his personal experiences and insights, highlighting the importance of confidence and the journey of releasing and rediscovering one’s identity. The conversation concludes with a humorous story about Bill Belcourt’s halo and a reflection on their shared love for flying. This is a humble and at times very funny story about bad luck, good luck, fear injury, family, pain, laughter, and returning to flying. Enjoy!
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Gavin McClurg (00:00.918)
Miles talking to Thad Spencer, this is kind of our take two after the hit. Should we call it a hit, big hit?
thad (00:08.965)
I like that. It's a big it's been a big hit. It's been a really big hit.
Gavin McClurg (00:10.894)
This. All right. So here we go. If that, uh, good to have you back on the show. This is, is take two. And, uh, as I just said, this is after the hit you, you made a lot of hits in your life with music and now, now you hit the fricking ground pretty hard. So we're going to talk about, uh, we're going to talk about all that. I was just actually this morning thinking.
thad (00:30.478)
Yeah, yes.
Gavin McClurg (00:39.97)
This is gonna be fun, I'm gonna talk about that again. And I remember the call from Alex Peterson, who was incredibly, I don't know if you know this, but he was kind of the first air Jedi that I knew when I got into paragliding. I remember flying out at Bingen on the other side of Hood River for one of my very, very first times. I was a super, I don't even know if I had my P2, I was brand new, cracking the egg. And Alex was...
you know, taken off. I don't think he had a helmet. His shirt was wide open. Just, you know, this hair flowing, you know, and I'm like, oh my God, that's Alex Peterson. You know, I think he had just flown or maybe was about to fly, circumnavigate around Mount Hood and which I don't think had been done. And, you know, just this, the coolest kid on the block, you know, and he, and I was.
thad (01:12.364)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:35.454)
driving up to, you know, so now this is years, years later, that was back, I think that was 2004 or something. And, and I was driving to Chelan for the Nationals and, and he called me up and, you know, kind of frantic and, you know, calm, but frantic and just, hey, man, you know, Thad went in hard, I need your help. And I need, you know, we need to call some people. And I was just, whoa, dude, what?
thad (01:57.553)
Hehehehehehe
thad (02:03.932)
Was he looking for money? Was he trying to profit off my injuries? Do you think that that's what that was?
Gavin McClurg (02:11.059)
Well, you know, it was funny because it was just another, you know, it always, when the shit hits the fan, you're always going, God, I wish I had this and I wish I had this. But basically he was looking for family contacts. You know, he didn't have your wife's number.
thad (02:23.093)
Oh, I know that was a really, that was a really interesting lesson about communication and sort of when we're flying with each other, we should have each other's contact information. I know it sounds morbid.
Gavin McClurg (02:35.358)
We should just have a spreadsheet, don't we? We need a spreadsheet. We need a, you know, we need, we've started these telegram groups or WhatsApp or whatever. Those are really helpful, but yeah, man, it's just always, holy cow, I don't even have this dude's wife's family. I don't have a way to contact anybody.
thad (02:52.005)
No, and it wasn't lovely how my wife found out. So you know this as a man that's maybe been injured. I actually, I wanna ask you about that, but I've never really been.
Gavin McClurg (03:02.93)
Oh, dude, I've been injured so many times, but not from paragliding, knock on wood. But yeah, I've been, oh my gosh, I had nine knee surgeries, both shoulders. And yeah, I've been hurt plenty.
thad (03:06.516)
Okay
thad (03:11.545)
And you want to kind of control the communication of how you've been injured to your loved ones. You know, you want to kind of, you want to spin that to be the best possible. I'm in the hospital, I'm on my back with a lot of broken bones, but hey, everything's fine, honey. How you doing? You know, hey, I'm good. You know, I wanted to be able to make that call. And you know, it takes a while. I was, I was flown by a helicopter into the hospital, then you're in the ER, then you get CT scanned, and then you get told what to do. And then you go to the ICU.
Gavin McClurg (03:28.732)
Mmm.
thad (03:40.709)
All that time I didn't have a phone and Alex was frantically just trying to, you know, play catch up. And so he did get my son's, um, uh, phone number called my son and my son gave him. I think somehow all they got was the address of our place in Wisconsin. So we have a place in Minneapolis and we have a place in Wisconsin. And I had been in Wisconsin left to come fly. So I drove back to Minneapolis, about two hours away, went flying that day. Then got injured.
Gavin McClurg (03:46.708)
Yep.
thad (04:09.385)
And so she's at the other house. And the way that she found out I was in the hospital was the sheriff pulled down the driveway. So she knows I've been flying, right? The sheriff car comes down to two really, yeah, two really nice sheriffs. They've got those hats on, you know, those sort of like Canadian Mountie hats and, and that stiff polyester uniform and the fricking gun belts and such. And they come and they said.
Gavin McClurg (04:11.339)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (04:18.027)
But yeah, you know what that's gonna be.
Gavin McClurg (04:28.523)
Yep.
thad (04:36.977)
Miss Spencer, are you the wife of Thad Spencer? And you know, her knees went under her, you know, she just assumed I was dead and then, yeah, so Alex and I and anybody else I'm flying with, I think we've learned that, you know, maybe we should just share contact information before we take a flight if we don't, if we, you know, if you're in a little group or whatever, you know, when I go to Columbia and places like that, we definitely have that information for each other. But yeah, it's really bad.
Gavin McClurg (04:42.638)
Man, he's either dead or really hurt.
Gavin McClurg (05:04.942)
Yeah, but it's one of these 2020 hindsight things, isn't it? I mean, you don't think about it until it's a little bit too late. We did a show with this guy, Richard Barber, and a couple of his buddies that had an adventure go pear-shaped in Pakistan a while back. And the way their loved ones found out was through Garmin. When they hit their SOS, you know, Garmin has their emergency contact, and that was...
thad (05:11.825)
Hehehehe
Gavin McClurg (05:34.498)
because the information was, I mean, you just, you, yes, Daryl, and something really bad has happened. Thank you very much. Good night.
thad (05:38.569)
sterile. Yeah.
thad (05:45.51)
And you have no way to find out how it's bad or who to... No, you can't call Garmin.
Gavin McClurg (05:47.69)
No, and then just wait, what? Yeah, and so I've thought a lot about this. I think our emergency contacts, A, should not necessarily be our loved ones. It should be who's the best person on earth that can handle an SOS situation, an emergency situation. For example, for me, it's my neighbors. It's Nate Scales or Matt Beechner, guys that are.
really good pilots that know the game, that know who to call, that know how, I know those dudes are gonna come get me. I don't have to rely on search and rescue who are inevitably gonna be slower than us, our community. And then they will craft the message once they find out really what's going on to my wife. I think, I don't know, I've thought about this a bit. I think that's the best way for us as a community to handle these kind of things.
thad (06:43.057)
Well, yeah, I was sitting in the ER pining to get my phone. I knew that there'd be an opportunity at some point after all the hubbub was over, that I could call Sheila and just say, hey, this is what happened and hey, I'm fine, but I'm gonna be in the hospital for a bit, but I didn't get that opportunity. They take everything from you. They cut all your clothes off, they take all your stuff, and you just sort of left. But anyway, I mean, yes, that wasn't great. It was the worst possible.
Gavin McClurg (07:04.499)
Yeah, of course. Yep.
thad (07:13.333)
situation for her to find out. But she was nonetheless incredibly supportive through the whole thing. I remember saying in the hospital, I remember saying, you know, that might be it for me and the paraglider. Because you have that feeling. You have that sense of, you know, this was really monumental. And she said, yeah, she said, oh, don't even talk about that. Of course you will. And that's just...
Gavin McClurg (07:27.06)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (07:30.326)
This isn't worth it.
thad (07:37.009)
That's just the accident talking, you're fine, you know, and she was just really behind me getting back under the glider, which I don't, I don't know if a lot of people have somebody in their lives like that, you know.
Gavin McClurg (07:43.383)
Awesome.
Gavin McClurg (07:48.17)
Yeah, good question. That's an interesting one. I mean, I think a lot of people, typically men, it's just so, it's a sport that there are more men doing it. You hear a lot of stories about, once they get a girlfriend or get married, they stop flying. And for all kinds of different reasons, kids, safety, risk, just also as a...
being a partner, this sport takes you out of being a partner a lot. So I think that that's incredibly self-assert.
thad (08:21.393)
Well, and it's an incredibly selfish sport. Let's be honest. It's probably worse than golf. Those guys that golf that disappear for the day. We disappear for days. At a whim.
Gavin McClurg (08:30.842)
Yeah. And you think you, you know, when you first said that, oh yeah, but golf's so expensive. This sports cheap golf stupid. Yeah.
thad (08:37.377)
Yeah. Well, golf, golf's stupid. Golf's really stupid. We can say that. But, but yeah, price wise, I bet they're comparable.
Gavin McClurg (08:49.242)
I always think of George Carlin when I think of golf. And you're going to do it 18 bloody times. Hey, so rewind. What happened? How'd you hit the ground? Tell us what happened that day.
thad (08:55.751)
Yeah.
thad (09:03.225)
Well, okay. So it starts with the Xeno two coming out. So that came out, you know, so my accident happened June of last year. So is that 2022? Are we in 2022 now? Is it? Yeah. So June, yeah, June 22 and the Xeno two had just come out, Bill and I both got ours and I had the first opportunity to fly it, um, you know, weather wise. And I had a lovely, you know, like seven.
Gavin McClurg (09:15.182)
We're 23, so this was 22, yeah. Year and a half.
thad (09:32.657)
seven-hour flight 150 160 miles really like the glider felt how different it was from the Zeno one I don't know you you're not a Zeno guy but I flew that glider you know into the ground just like five years I think I was on the Zeno and it has very predictable and obvious characteristics and you get the two and you sort of assume many of those
with some improvements, right? That's what you, but it really is kind of a different glider and particularly in just the way that it communicates to you is a lot, cause a lot noisier, really helpful in the lighter lift, a little bit more of a handful in the stronger lift. That's all I, yes, not so tuned out.
Gavin McClurg (10:16.61)
So it's not so stiff. The Xeno one I always heard was really stiff, was really hard to search and light stuff and that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay.
thad (10:25.189)
Yep. It was just a little less talky. Um, and so again, I had one flight on it just this one day. And I remember debriefing telling Bill about it afterwards, like, dude, so great because, you know, the improvements were the kind of improvements you wanted. You know, at the end of the day, when it's light, you can really find everything with much more precision than, than the, the first, you know, which maybe would have flown through some of that and not giving you hints about it. So this is my second flight on it. It had been a week or so, and it was a.
kind of a mixed media day, I would call it. It was kind of a high pressure, but maybe still had really good top of lift and maybe there was a chance there could be cloud. It was one of those kind of mixed in the middle days, but it was showing in XC skies to be a really good one and kind of gusty, you know, wind as often those days are and in that time of year when you wanna get a long flight, you're probably launching with a little more wind than is fun, you know?
down ground handling, it was a little cross. So it was gusting maybe up to 15, 18 and steady at around 10. So it was a handful. Yeah, sorry. I always do. I'm an American Gavin. Okay.
Gavin McClurg (11:32.246)
You're talking miles an hour? Yeah. Yep. Yes, I know. Did you see the SNL skit about the metric system and all that? That was one of the best ever. Oh my gosh. Nobody knows.
thad (11:40.125)
Yes, man, it was so good. So good. Yeah. So yes, I will speak miles per hour. So anyway, you know, it was one of those days where when you pull your glider up, you'd sort of, you know, you slide underneath it. And it was a full on kind of, and it was just Alex and I. And Steve, Serene showed up to tow us.
and he had a friend with him, a hang glider pilot.
Gavin McClurg (12:09.514)
And what's this terrain like for those listening? Where are you? Is it dead flat? Okay.
thad (12:12.113)
Just I'm on a dirt road, dead flat dirt road in Western Minnesota. Um, it's an area, uh, we've, we've found that has several roads facing north, south, east or west two, two to three mile long roads. So like nice long toes. And this day it was crossed. So we were on the east west road facing west and it was a bit north. So it was kind of a, it wasn't a handful, but it was a handful. You know, the, you, you're, when you pulled your glider up, you were kind of at a 45 to the road.
Gavin McClurg (12:31.691)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (12:36.843)
Okay.
thad (12:42.11)
Um, and, uh,
Gavin McClurg (12:44.078)
So not ideal towing conditions, but manageable. Yeah, yeah.
thad (12:45.825)
Not, I, but, but that's what it is. That's what those days are. Yes. And that's what those, if you want to fly far, you're going to have to be in some wind and, and Alex is so much faster at putting his kit together. So he launched first. He has like one of those, I don't know, the thing just comes out of the bag and it's on his back and he's gone kind of guy. And I'm picking and sort of going through checklists and, you know, checking all the straps and just, you know, I'm pokey.
And I've got that big quartel harness, which is, you know, just a lot of stuff. And so he's already in the air and it looks like it's good. And of course it always looks like it's good when you're on the ground itching to get into the air, you know, and he just seems to be a speck and, and maybe even going to the moon and, uh, and any minute will be gone. And I'll just have to chase. Yeah. Time to go. And you got that kind of angsty sort of, and so there was a, there was a guy that came along with Steve that I had met.
Gavin McClurg (13:24.659)
Sure.
Gavin McClurg (13:29.29)
Mm.
So you're psyched. Time to go, time to go, gotta go.
thad (13:42.749)
named Jedidiah Schirmer. I hope I'm saying that right. Sharmer. Really nice guy and he's a hang glider pilot and he wanted to just observe paragliding launching toes because he's thinking about ebbing towards that direction. And so yeah, exactly. This is what he sees. So a really nice guy and we're talking to him and he sat in the back of the truck with the tow winch and just watched. And so when they got back, I'm ready to go.
Gavin McClurg (13:59.218)
until that day.
thad (14:11.921)
And I'm flying one of these. This is a Revis found me this interesting toe bridle. That's very different than a normal toe bridle. No normal toe bridle is, you know, it connects to the Caribbean or is in its two, you know, two webbing pieces of webbing with some sort of a class that comes undone and it's, and so it comes to a triangle in front of you. Well, this, this toe bridle is interesting. It was just a piece of, is it dihema? Di, dihema? Is that what it's called? Yeah. Dynema.
Gavin McClurg (14:37.422)
Dynema?
thad (14:40.157)
It was a piece of Dyneema that attaches kind of like a chicken switch on a, um, on a, on a snow kite or a water kite. You know how you pull the little red thing and then it undoes. So it had two chicken switches on either carabiner and then just a piece of that cord that goes from one to the other, making just an arc in front of you. You run the weak link through that. And now whatever direction you're skewed to the, to the tow line, it adjusts. So you're always balanced.
Gavin McClurg (14:46.766)
Oh, okay. Yep.
Gavin McClurg (14:59.921)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (15:10.227)
Oh wow.
thad (15:11.013)
And I don't know if I'm explaining this right, but it was pretty cool and I was really excited about this toe bridle I didn't use it a couple of times The downfall of this toe bridle is that both of the little release things are right there at your carabiners right up against
Gavin McClurg (15:26.418)
Oh, so you gotta go to those, you gotta take your hands, you gotta hold with one or, oh.
thad (15:29.349)
No, no, they're really easy to get at. They're easy to get up, but they're too easy to bump. And my first launch that day, I launched quickly and, you know, slid under the glider, you, you know, you wrestle it, get it straight, turn real quick and go. And I was about 50 feet up. And as I was adjusting, I don't know if you have this problem with your cartel, but every time I launched in my cartel, I have to kind of push my flight deck down into position and kind of, kind of wrangle it a little bit. And as I was doing that, I.
Gavin McClurg (15:34.436)
Oh.
Gavin McClurg (15:52.626)
Yes. Yeah.
thad (15:57.801)
popped the chicken switch and I was released. Lovely. So now I'm, you know, so, which is no big deal. It's lots of wind. I just went straight down, landed, reset. Didn't even go.
Gavin McClurg (16:00.461)
No.
Gavin McClurg (16:07.774)
Yeah. So there was no big surge or anything. It was fine. OK.
thad (16:11.925)
No, and if there was a surge, you're just pretty good at containing that anyway, just naturally, as I've been towing for 18 years and all of that just seemed natural. And it was just another, it was another, I'm telling you this because it's another kind of loading the gun to what ended up perhaps having something to do with what happened in that I was anxious to get into the air. And that's never a good thing, right? When we're rushing,
Gavin McClurg (16:15.745)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (16:35.078)
Yeah. And then, and then you have this and now you're even more delayed and now you're more anxious and yeah, yeah. Stacking up here.
thad (16:39.737)
Yep, stacking up. So I reset and back in the air. Now on this launch, everything looks great as I make my turn. Do my, you know, you only run a couple of steps when it's windy like that and you're in the air. And as soon as I'm in the air and sort of getting into the seat, I check the glider and I've got a little stick on the left side. And it's little. It's the kind of little stick that in the Xeno one, you almost always got on launch.
You were always popping out those little tips coming in often while you're running off a mountain, you know, as you're, as you're doing your run, you're like ping, ping. Okay. That's clear. Or even if it's not clear when you're, when you've left the mountain, you can still just waggle that out really quick with a little pump. Okay. So now we'll get into my, you know, arrogance, um, in that I saw that and right away, like, wow, pop this out.
Gavin McClurg (17:14.486)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (17:18.818)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (17:25.006)
Sure.
thad (17:37.949)
But it doesn't come out a few pumps and I'm low. I'm probably, let's say 25 feet. You know, I'm just in the seat. I haven't even done anything. I haven't even pushed the flight deck in anything. And, um, I'm, I'm going to get that cravat out and that becomes kind of my focus. It's not a big cravat. We're talking about probably a foot of material. It's not wound in it's just tucked. And.
Gavin McClurg (17:53.654)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (18:00.316)
So leave it alone.
thad (18:02.033)
Should leave it alone. Thank you Gavin and had you been along on the flight? perhaps you could have given me that information from the truck and Because that's really it's really what probably put me where I was It didn't cause the accident as you'll hear but it certainly wasn't a good thing that I was putting on a fair bit of focus on this Okay, so a couple things are going on. I'm weight shifting to the right the wind is from the right, right? It's a little bit north
Gavin McClurg (18:03.858)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (18:20.828)
Yeah, okay.
thad (18:28.729)
And so I'm weight shifting over that direction and I'm futzing. And I started by doing the brakes. Nothing. And I, then I grabbed the Stabilo and, um, cold on that. And all that did was bring in a big ears over the cravat, um, which was quite counterproductive to what I was trying to do. I had hoped that when the big ears popped open, some of that momentum would take the cravat with it. Didn't. Um,
Gavin McClurg (18:32.278)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (18:46.315)
Mm.
thad (18:56.997)
And so instead of being, I'm still in line with the tow vehicle. I know where I am in proximity to this tow. I'm letting myself drift a little bit to the south because that's keeping me on the wind line. This whole thing is, is causing that a little bit. So I've moved a little bit to the south. I'm looking up and I've decided, you know what, I think I'm going to grab this to below and give it a pop and see what that does. I'm just, I'm winging it at this point. And, um,
I still have my right hand on the brake and I've probably got both. I think at this point I've got both brakes in the, in the right hand. And I'm just starting to reach and the whole glider goes away. So I wasn't touching this Stibbe though. I wasn't doing anything to the glider other than weight shifting a little bit to the right and everything just went away. And it felt to me like a, like a pretty large asymmetric. Um, but the glider is gone. I can't see it really. And you know, that's.
Gavin McClurg (19:55.734)
Bizarre on toe. So what? I've never even heard of that. So you so you took a big frontal?
thad (19:57.871)
Um, yeah. On tow, on tow. When is this ever? Me either.
I took a huge frontal and I have confirmation of that. Um, I thought I took a big asymmetric and I thought the ASIM basically just kind of spiraled me down to the ground because from the point of, of it going away and me being asked over tea kettle on the ground, it seemed like a couple of seconds because I was probably 75 to a hundred feet up. Um, so the best part of, well, it's not really the best part, but it's funny. Um,
Gavin McClurg (20:13.763)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (20:21.078)
second. Yeah.
thad (20:34.421)
You know, people talk about your life flashing before you. And I didn't have that. I didn't have the sort of, oh, wasn't that a lovely moment when I was in that play in seventh grade? And I remember when I got the training wheels off my bike, you're like, it wasn't one of those. It wasn't like a Pixar movie. But I was coming to the ground at a speed unrecognizable by any standard I can understand. It was like, it's over. I'm gonna die in this sad little road in Western Minnesota. And then done.
Gavin McClurg (20:57.794)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (21:04.662)
Just boom.
thad (21:05.945)
I didn't feel a thing. I was completely blacked out. And I mean it. I didn't feel a thing. The impact is on, it's like somebody went in and edited that out. I don't have the impact. But just before the impact, I remember sort of maybe balling up a little bit, you know, just sort of, ah, maybe kind of looking away and pulling my, trying to pull my legs up and it hurt bad and so fast. It was so, so fast.
Gavin McClurg (21:26.958)
Just like, oh my God, this is gonna hurt probably. Yeah.
thad (21:35.005)
Um, the, the rate at which I was coming in and, and so I woke up sort of half woke up and Jedidiah is over me. He's holding my neck and it's hot too, by the way, it's hot day. And I remember there's like sweat rolling off his nose and you can see the fear in his eyes and I don't really know what's going on. I'm just on the ground and there's this guy above me backwards to me, you know, because he's behind me. And uh,
Then slowly realize, oh yeah, I was just flying. Oh no, I was just crashing. You know, it all just kind of slowly comes back in your head and he's still holding my head in that kind of way that somebody does when they're assuming you've broken your neck and he's asking me questions. And I guess I answered some of them. Um, he said, it took me a while to become lucid. I was pretty knocked out of it for maybe three to five minutes. Um, and, and of course.
I don't know if it's shock or what it is, but I sort of wiggled my toes and wiggled my fingers and everything felt pretty good. And so I said, yeah, I think I, I think I'm good, dude. Um, we should, yeah, let me up. And I, and, and he sort of got a little tighter on his grip and he said, no, I, you know, I just saw you hit the ground. I think, I think it's, we've got an ambulance coming. I'm like,
Gavin McClurg (22:51.941)
Nope, we're not gonna do that.
thad (22:58.929)
And he said, I think there's a helicopter. I said, oh, no, we don't need a helicopter. Just take me into, cause the closest town was Wilmer. I go, well, we could just get an X-ray of Wilmer. But I still argued with him about getting up. And thank goodness. So it ends up this gentleman that showed up that day was a fireman. He actually.
Gavin McClurg (23:19.285)
Oh man, boy that was lucky.
thad (23:21.349)
So lucky because Alex was in the air. Steve is a really nice guy and I've known him forever. He'd have probably let me get up. He'd have probably been like, all right, well, that knows what he's doing. And I would have probably let him get up. You know what I mean? Well, we're not trained.
Gavin McClurg (23:33.19)
Yeah, you got adrenaline just pumping. You're totally in shock. You're a moron.
thad (23:36.921)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm a complete moron. And so yeah, the ambulance, I guess it took a half an hour of him sort of holding my head. And it's just hot. And, you know, so they got me out of, I think they got me out of my harness without I know they did. They didn't have to cut it. And then The ambulance took me in their little cab. And then after that you hear the helicopter arrive. They've sort of cut off my clothing and
Um, I've got some fentanyl or something delicious going through my system. Cause I mean, like you just, I'm starting to joke around a little bit. It's starting to hurt a little bit more because I think some of the adrenaline's gone and the back pain is maybe coming in, but they've got me on a backboard with the neck thing and I get in a helicopter, which is pretty fun.
Gavin McClurg (24:25.226)
Before this, so the, I had an incident with, you know, Ben Abruzzo, my supporter in all the ex-aps, when he broke his back in Nevada, when the ambulance showed up, they had no drugs on board. They had no narcotics, so it wasn't allowed.
thad (24:40.38)
Mm-hmm. Why? Because of the opioid crisis?
Gavin McClurg (24:43.25)
Cause yeah, exactly. And it was, it was unbelievable because I was, you know, it was clearly he had no injury. There was no reason not to give him drugs. You know, I mean, that's just step one is you got to control the victim's pain, you know, right? And, and he had been lying there because our first day, it was, you know, one of these things, our first day kid wasn't with us and it was in the other car and, you know, and, and it taught me a lot about, man, we have got to, each of us have to have.
thad (24:47.257)
Wow.
thad (24:59.652)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (25:12.478)
at least something to give our buddies if they go in hard. And so, the ambulance showed up and they get you something right away, or was it your guys that gave you something?
thad (25:25.177)
No, they did the ambulance and the ambulance is kind of funny because as they were putting me on the backboard, they have to roll you and get it underneath you and then they kind of roll you back down. And so they're, you know, and what's funny is, I don't know, it's probably part of that job, but I think you're just a slab of meat. You're not really a sentient being that's being put on a board. You're kind of just, and they start talking amongst themselves as they're carrying me to the ambulance about the bulge they have noticed in my back.
Gavin McClurg (25:26.958)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (25:32.909)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (25:45.783)
Yeah.
thad (25:55.405)
One of them says to the other, yeah, did you see that bulge in his back? That doesn't look good. And I'm like, you know, I can hear you. I'm the guy that's got this bulge now. And so your mind is just like, Oh no. You know, you feel like I, in my mind, I think I could think of like alien, that sort of alien popping out of the body and just like, Oh no. And, but they gave me some drugs.
Gavin McClurg (26:01.974)
Hey guys, I'm here.
Gavin McClurg (26:18.471)
I love it that they actually said, that doesn't look good. That makes you feel really good.
thad (26:20.881)
That doesn't look good. And she, and the other one goes, Oh yeah, I did see that. And she's like, Oh my gosh. I go guys. And I didn't, I think I did say something like how bad, what, what does that mean? And they're then they sort of started to placate me a little bit and, um, and then they get the drugs in and you're doing a lot better time goes by really fast because according to the, to the guys on the ground, uh, Jedidiah and Steve, you know, it was like 45 minutes until the helicopter showed up to me, it was two minutes.
Gavin McClurg (26:47.715)
Mm. Yeah, sure.
thad (26:49.405)
Two minutes and I was in a helicopter and I was chit chatting with those guys. I tried to get them to take me to a different hospital than the one they were gonna take me to. They were taking me to the level one trauma center in Minneapolis, which is HCMC, which is downtown. And it's a great hospital, but it's very busy. You know, it's gunshot wounds and car accidents. And so I was like, well, why don't we go to the Fairview Riverside? You know, it's like a little bit more of a suburban hospital, maybe a little quieter, maybe a little bougier rooms. And the guy's like.
Gavin McClurg (27:15.99)
Yep.
thad (27:18.961)
Dude, you're not going there. When you have to go to you, you just fall in a great distance. Yeah. You're going to go to here. And so, uh, they were great. Helicopter ride is really fun. I was, I was, I was wondering, cause it was bumpy because it was a, it was a thermic day and it's high noon probably at this point and they fly low. They're only like, I don't know, five, 600 feet up. And so it's kind of bumpy. And I'm thinking, what's this landing going to be like in these conditions downtown, you know,
thad (27:45.669)
and my back started to get a little more sore maybe, you know, I can feel that giant bump that the paramedics were talking about. And I'm just assuming it's just, you know, wheelchair time for daddy. And, um, and they just put it down. They just greased it. I mean, just, it was, you couldn't even feel the thing touch. It was just soft as, and then you're out and you get in this elevator and the elevator goes to the ER. And the ER is like this beautiful, shiny. And again, this is probably the fentanyl talking, but
Gavin McClurg (28:12.814)
All right.
thad (28:13.093)
Everything kind of glowed in there, and everybody had these cool uniforms on, and there was about 50 of them, it seemed like. Oh yeah, just wasted. And I'm buck-ass naked on a gurney, and I'm absolutely covered in feathers, because they've cut my down puffy off, and it's sweaty. And so I'm like tarred and feathered. I've tarred and feathered myself in my own like greasy sweat. And so I'm naked.
Gavin McClurg (28:19.09)
Your eye is a kite!
Gavin McClurg (28:30.597)
end. Yep.
thad (28:38.705)
sweaty and have all these feathers on me. And they think they've never, the head guy said, you know, we've never had a paragliding accident here before. I'm like, yeah, I suppose you haven't. This is a first for both of us. And they, you know, they were really expecting me to be basically a broken pile of, you know, bones, yeah. And then it really wasn't that bad. There was no blood. I didn't have a scratch on me, Gavin. I'm not a scratch.
Gavin McClurg (28:59.344)
Broken bones, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (29:06.486)
You do, uh, did, did Jebediah? Is it, is that isn't Jeded? Jed, Jedediah. You must have hit perfectly. I mean, you, you literally must have hit perfectly.
thad (29:10.834)
Jed, yeah.
thad (29:16.581)
Well, I came in, I did. And so maybe we should, the rest of the story, there's a little bit, one funny bit in the ER that I'll tell, but let's talk about it. Because what Jedidiah did that was amazing is he, as soon as the helicopter left and he was in his truck driving home, he got out his iPhone and he made me a voice message of exactly what he saw as he saw it.
Gavin McClurg (29:43.406)
Mm.
thad (29:44.697)
Okay, so he gave me as best because I didn't have video I couldn't review the video of this because there's no video I didn't have a camera of course and no one was videotaping me, but he was watching alex in the air Um, and so he gave me a blow-by-blow and I didn't listen to that for about a month Because you kind of don't want to you don't really want to look at your equipment Um, you don't want to do much. Um You're just sort of coming to terms with having all of this confidence stripped away from you, right?
Gavin McClurg (29:50.998)
Right. Alex is gone, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (30:12.584)
Mm-hmm.
thad (30:13.533)
Um, and all that omnipotence has been now, now I'm no longer, I'm mortal again, you know, I can be hurt. And I think that many of us have a feeling in paragliding that accidents happen to others. Good Lord, it's not happening to me. I'm really good at this. How could it possibly happen to me? And I'm careful and yada yada. So he gave me this blow by blow, uh, of, of exactly what happened.
Gavin McClurg (30:26.51)
Mm.
Right. Yeah.
thad (30:40.597)
And he knew enough about paragliding to be able to describe things like a frontal. And he said that described the, the cravat, small little cravat. And then he, then he saw me, you know, Pulled the big gear over the cravat when I was working with the Stabilo. And then he, um, he said shortly thereafter, the whole front of your glider disappeared, you know, and he said, then he called it tacoing. He said the tips taco, you know, horseshoe. Um,
Gavin McClurg (31:06.177)
Mmm.
thad (31:10.141)
and nothing really recovered after that. And then you hit and he said, it looked like you hit feet first, you know, so pointed, which is true. I kind of made a half turn as I was, and then came in on the, so if you think of a dirt road and then you have a little embankment, like a grassy sort of slope, and then it goes down to farm fields, I hit on that glancing part, just that little angle of the grass.
and then slid. So that tiny bit of angle, the, um, uh, the, I think I sent you those spars back in the day when I found, when I finally did get to my equipment and I pulled those straightening spars out of the Cortell harness, they were absolutely twisted and broken. So those things probably saved, probably is why I'm not paralyzed. Are those two spars that come in the back of that harness right behind my spine? They're absolute. I still have pictures.
Gavin McClurg (31:39.758)
Thank God.
Gavin McClurg (31:56.29)
Wow.
thad (32:06.985)
twisted and torn. They're actually torn and they're really strong. You know, they're really, really strong, that kind of corrugated plastic. So the combination of yes, it's honeycomb plastic. I told them, I said, I would maybe even think about making it out of honeycomb carbon fiber, make it even stiffer because that was a, that took a lot of the impact that I think my spine would have had to have taken at that impact. And then my tailbone is still to this day.
thad (32:35.293)
pretty sore. I think that I, and I didn't break it. They x-rated, I had them x-rated three times because it hurt so bad.
Gavin McClurg (32:37.301)
Really?
Gavin McClurg (32:41.122)
Just a deep, gnarly bone bruise or something.
thad (32:44.473)
Yeah. Um, so, uh, that was really helpful that he gave me this, this picture because I had this picture in my brain of what happened and in, in my mind, I thought it was a pretty massive asymmetric that just arced me down towards the ground and couldn't recover in time. Um, but instead it was, it was a big frontal, which is a pretty amazing event.
Gavin McClurg (33:05.306)
You were connected to the toe throughout.
thad (33:08.709)
Yeah, but not when I was on the ground and we haven't figured that one out either, Gavin, you know, why wasn't I still
Gavin McClurg (33:13.07)
I can't understand why you had a frontal. I just don't get it. I mean, when you're towing, your wing's back.
Gavin McClurg (33:22.202)
bizarre. I mean, I'm trying to think about, you know, you've got kind of an unstable aircraft because you've got the tuck on the left side. So that didn't help. But you're leaning the other way and you're toying with that side. Could that have instigated the...
thad (33:38.921)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But at the time of the frontal, I'm not toying with anything. I was just reaching, reaching for the Stabilo. So, but, but what I, what I'm left with as I think about the outcome of this and is that dude, that, that cravat should have just been left alone, get five, six, seven, 800 feet, then start messing with it.
Gavin McClurg (33:46.782)
Yeah, you were just going for it.
Gavin McClurg (34:02.342)
Absolutely. Same as flying off the mountain, right? We don't mess with that stuff until we've got margin. So yeah, okay, for sure, mistake A or B or whatever. That was a miss, but God, the frontal and toe.
thad (34:17.405)
But let me ask you, and let me add one more miss to it. So check it out. Now, what if I was both hands on the brakes, centered position in the, in the, in the harness, not, you know, and this frontal started to happen now, maybe, maybe I would have caught it. Maybe I could have yarded on the brakes and, and I would have been cognizant of it as opposed to ignorant of it because my attentions were spent. Am I online with the toe?
Gavin McClurg (34:30.462)
Yeah, maybe would have caught it.
Hopefully.
Gavin McClurg (34:40.631)
Yeah.
thad (34:45.177)
Am I weight shifting to the right? And how do I get this? And it was just such arrogance, Gavin, that I should be mucking about because I have told so many times my arrogance allowed me to believe that it was okay to muck around that low and not be just flying that glider into, into a more positive place.
Gavin McClurg (35:05.302)
Definitely, definitely, definitely not a lockout.
thad (35:08.953)
Oh no no, not even close. Not even remotely close.
Gavin McClurg (35:10.682)
Not even close, okay. Yeah, that's what always worries me when I see people towing and they start messing with something. You know, you just start, you slide a little bit, a little bit, especially when you're low and there's not a lot of line out yet. You're just, you're getting to that, you know, fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Cause I've seen it once and I was towing. And we were luckily in the ocean over water and it was totally benign. And the pilot wasn't a pilot. He had just seen us towing and he just.
thad (35:28.231)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (35:37.27)
desperately wanted to go. And I thought, oh, okay. I mean, he had done something somewhere. And, you know, of course, as soon as he leaves the ground, he's trying to get in his harness or something and just yanks on a break and just immediately lock out and boom in the water. And, you know, he hit it, but even over the water and even we were just starting, it was almost, I mean, I would have said he had a mild concussion, you know, so you can imagine that on a dirt road or something. So that...
thad (36:01.521)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (36:03.958)
That was the first time I'd seen one, I haven't seen one since, but it gave me a lot of respect for it because it was crazy how fast it was. It was just towing, whack! Just bam, you know? It just, holy shit, it was so fast. And I'd only heard about lockout and I don't have the towing experience you guys do, you know, but it was really frightening.
thad (36:27.281)
Well, and if I was even remotely close to any angle like that, which I wasn't, but if I were Steve would dump the pressure because he deals with it. Oh my God. He deals with it all the time. He gets these, these students up there mucking about with their go pros and trying to get into their harnesses and they're weighing and way to one side of the other. And they just dump pressure, slow the vehicle down. And if necessary, they'll, they'll bring them all the way to the ground offline, you know, and, and then restart the whole procedure. But no, that
Gavin McClurg (36:34.278)
Yeah, he knows about all that. All the time.
Gavin McClurg (36:50.606)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (36:55.03)
I mean, it doesn't fit the story at all. I just, you know, it's just weird. It's just.
thad (36:57.419)
No.
thad (37:00.941)
Well, it was a thumping day and I've deconstructed this with a number of pilots and what we all just keep coming back to is that sometimes you get hit. Sometimes there's just a big piece of nasty air that even though your glider is under pressure. You know, and one thing that maybe pops into my brain as a possible is that could me weight shifting to the right have somehow pushed the harness in a way
Gavin McClurg (37:11.319)
Yeah.
thad (37:30.177)
hit that chicken switch again and I was released. Now I didn't feel that. I mean, that would be a pretty profound feeling. There would be, there would be a surge. First off, there'd be that immediate kind of pop where you, oh, you're, you're released from the toe. Cause like if you break, if you ever broken a weak link or you, if you had a line break in towing, it's a very profound pop.
Gavin McClurg (37:31.956)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (37:45.441)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (37:49.83)
It's, oh yeah, big time. I have had that several times and it's hands up. I mean, it's hands on. It's like, whoa, I gotta catch this thing, yeah.
thad (37:56.069)
Exactly. Yeah, you get the pop and you get time, you know that it's coming. And so you have plenty of time to get on the surge. I didn't have that. I was fully pressurized. And then the glider disappeared in a finger snap. And it was just like a.
Gavin McClurg (37:59.915)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (38:09.131)
I guess you just hit a really gnarly bit of air. Yeah.
thad (38:12.297)
It's all we can think. And that's what Bill seems to think and some others that I've talked it through with and based on what Jedidiah related, he didn't see the glider surging forward and then a cravat. It was the angle of attack was the same and the whole front end just disappeared. And I know we've all had frontals and when you have them at altitude, it's almost a non-event. And you wait for that pressure to come back. And I remember.
Gavin McClurg (38:27.73)
Yeah, okay.
thad (38:41.157)
I remember waiting just a little bit. I didn't have a lot of time to wait, but I waited a little bit. And then I got on, then I gave the brakes just a little pressure like, Oh, it'll be there now. And it was just a sack of nothing. The champagne.
Gavin McClurg (38:49.758)
Whack. Yeah. Your sack of potatoes going down. What's the funny story in the UR?
thad (38:56.337)
Oh, well, the ER is great because they're all expecting probably the biggest drama, you know, in world history in terms of what they, they just know that somebody's fallen from an incredible height. And, and then I show up and I'm, you know, fully naked, tart and feathered and making jokes on jacked up on fentanyl. And, um, so they're asking about paragliding and maybe I'm answering some of the questions again, you're, you're pretty messed up and, um, it's very cacophonous. There's a lot of movement all around you and you're just kind of on the gurney and the
You're watching the ceiling and then I hear this voice come from behind me and she said, um, sir, is there anything you need to tell us about your incontinence? And, uh, I said, wait, I go, I, I didn't know. I, my what? It, your, your incontinence. And I said, um, I don't know what you're talking about. Incontinence, that's like peeing on yourself or you can't pee. Or she goes, well, sir, you're wearing a condom catheter.
Gavin McClurg (39:37.358)
Thank you.
Gavin McClurg (39:42.446)
Wait, what? Yeah.
thad (39:54.877)
Um, right now. And I'm like, I am, I, oh, I am, I am, I am. Oh, oh, oh. And then, yeah, I'm good. So the whole ER has been pretty noisy until I say, oh, and everybody goes quiet and you can kind of feel the head's turn like, okay, how is he going to answer this? What, what is going on with why this is on this guy's dick? And, uh, I explained, okay, you know, when we're in the air for certain amount of time, you need to, you need to urinate.
Gavin McClurg (40:01.206)
No, I'm good, I'm good.
thad (40:22.281)
And this is the method that we've come up with in the paragliding community of how we connect this little hose it runs out the harness and Everybody starts laughing, you know because they're just like, you know, it's just not a thing you run into that's a pretty strange thing um, so uh That was really good. And Here's the best part. I somehow figure out Maybe it would be a good thing to not because you know what they're going to do to you They're going to fully catheter you in a hospital. You know what that is? That's not
Gavin McClurg (40:37.554)
Yeah.
That's really funny.
Gavin McClurg (40:51.358)
Oh yeah. I remember my dad always told me, you know, he was in the military and I went in for one of my surgeries at one of the knee ones early on. And, you know, I grew up ski racing. I think it was maybe the first one, my first big ACL repair. And he said, make sure they don't give you a catheter. It ruins the flap.
thad (40:52.121)
Yeah, that's not good. And I said.
Gavin McClurg (41:13.002)
I remember saying that, it ruins the flap. You'll have to pee the rest of your life all night. He was so mad about his, he had a surgery at some point and had to get a catheter and it ruined his flap. And... Yeah.
thad (41:26.481)
Well, damn, well, so I got to keep mine on. They let me keep it on, Gavin. I was able to pee out that for the first few days I was in the hospital because you're pretty immobilized. So then they give you a CT scan, which you, you know, we all know what that is. And once I had the CT, then I just waited and then the doctor came in and read the butcher's bill. And you know, I think you sort of start thinking, you know what, I'm gonna be fine. There's...
Gavin McClurg (41:32.796)
Ah!
Gavin McClurg (41:36.11)
Fantastic. That's great.
thad (41:55.193)
I bet there probably isn't even anything broken. I bet this is, you know, because I was whisked in and out of that big room pretty fast because they just, they're checking you for, they'd already checked me for internal injuries in the helicopter. They have this mobile ultrasound thing and they were doing that on me. So they didn't see, but they said I had a one lung was slightly collapsed, but they said it would reinflate and it did later that day. Other than that, so the guy comes in. I think, I actually think it was a woman. I apologize.
Gavin McClurg (42:01.812)
Yep.
thad (42:23.953)
I was pretty messed up at this point because the drugs weren't quite working as much and it had been a while. And yeah, and then they just tell you all the things that are broken. And it was nine vertebrae and eight ribs and my sternum and you, you nine vertebrae. And, and she kept, and then, you know, they call them C ones and Rs or whatever, you know, they have these little codes and you're listening and she just keeps saying them and keep saying them and then gets to the ribs and then just like, wait, how many are we talking about? And
Gavin McClurg (42:28.895)
Now you're feeling it.
Gavin McClurg (42:37.014)
You broke nine vertebrae? Oh.
thad (42:53.069)
And I think there's a small tear coming down one eye here, you know, just like, what? And, uh, and no, she said, Oh, that's, I'm sorry. That's the bad news. The good news. These are all stable fractures. And I said, what does, what does that mean? How is that good? And she said, they don't have to have surgery. Like, Oh, no surgery. So I, she said, you'll be in a brace for a while and, and these will heal and you will, you will be back to normal. Yeah. So.
Gavin McClurg (43:11.287)
Whoa.
Gavin McClurg (43:20.686)
and you're just going, what party?
thad (43:22.469)
Yeah, you're, yeah. I mean, you're worried about what, what's all that, you know, what's, what's being in a brace and cause you think those halos and, you know, that kind of stuff and one of my vertebrae was kind of high, but it didn't require neck immobilization. So I wore basically this plastic. Excuse me, this plastic brace, it comes in two parts and it Velcros together on you. And it completely immobilizes your body from basically your, you know, pelvis up to your top of your sternum.
Gavin McClurg (43:30.637)
Yep.
thad (43:52.233)
And Alex's brother had worn one of these. He had broken his back paragliding years ago. So Alex was kind of an expert and he's in the hospital with me now. He was with me when they told me the news. And so we're both just sort of in a little shock and he goes, yeah, I know about these body braces, dude. Oh, that's not fun. I go, what's not fun? And he goes, well, they heat mold these things to your body.
You know, cause they got to get it molded your body goes, it's, it's really hot when they're pressing it on your body. So kind of get ready for that. I'm just like, what? And that's not the case at all anymore. When his brother had one now they, they take measurements or they use like a laser and I don't know, but they brought it and it fit me. Um, so you just wear that for some months and you know, you're in the hospital for a bit, then you're out, uh, into a, what they call the acute rehab where they just make sure you can walk upstairs and
Gavin McClurg (44:28.77)
Oh.
thad (44:46.673)
you know, get in a shower.
Gavin McClurg (44:48.326)
What was your head space at this point? Was it, holy shit, I'm so lucky, holy shit, I'm so unlucky. What are you thinking? Oh my God, I hate this sport. I mean.
thad (44:51.496)
the
thad (45:01.021)
I never hated the sport, but it was, you know what you go through, Gavin, that's maybe even more destructive is I'm a horrible pilot. You suck and I've made terrible, terrible misjudgments that have almost cost me my life and cost everyone around me a great deal because you require a lot of help. My wife just, we had two new puppies in the house and just the mayhem of all of a sudden she had to do.
Gavin McClurg (45:08.735)
Yeah, I suck.
thad (45:28.493)
everything and I could do nothing. I couldn't lift. They wouldn't allow me to lift anything more than five pounds. And you're in a lot of pain. I was in a lot of pain for quite a while just as I healed. And I just felt really incompetent. I guess that would be the best word, like really incompetent. All of the confidence I had built up over the 18, 20 years I had been paragliding were completely and utterly removed.
Gavin McClurg (45:48.586)
Yeah.
thad (45:57.481)
through this incident and then you've got all this time to ponder it. You've got months to just dwell and, and ruminate about it. And that's pretty unhealthy too. But, but also I think like grieving it's part of the process. You have to ruminate about it. You have to see it from all the angles and you have to figure out because there isn't just like your reaction is classic, Oh my God, you're on toe. How could that happen? There's no, I don't, I don't.
Gavin McClurg (46:01.144)
Mmm.
thad (46:25.625)
I don't get a really neat buttoned up little package of an answer as to why this happened. I have to live in this more misunderstanding.
Gavin McClurg (46:28.673)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think from what, you know, obviously because of the podcast and just because we're in this sport, we've all talked to a lot of people who have had accidents. And it seems like the easier recovery is when it's really clear, you know, when you really understand what went wrong, you can identify it. And you know, when it's mushy and gray and that seems then there's a lot more, we like
thad (46:47.858)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (47:02.506)
Your brain seems to frazzle a little bit.
thad (47:06.257)
Well, and you know, like, I think when you get away with stuff, when you get away with little incidents throughout your career, it's easier to sort of rationalize that as, yeah, because I'm really good. Hey, buddy, you can't keep this one down. I'm good, you know, and it's not luck. I got skills and they're natural. I got natural skills. You know what I mean? You can come to so many different understandings of why you've stayed safe all these years. And then when you haven't,
Gavin McClurg (47:16.974)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (47:20.394)
Right, yeah.
thad (47:35.589)
When, when, you know, you're, when your luck runs out, you got a lot of processing to do about, um, a, how you've been looking at the sport for all these years. Um, how skilled are you? And all of that was undermined for me. Just, I really did feel like I had lost. Um, all of my confidence and I did, I think for a while, I certainly wasn't feeling great about jumping in, in underneath a paraglider. Um, Chris Santa Croce, I saw this thing he did. He talks about.
preserving the good feelings you have about paragliding and how important that is. It's like something you have to hold close to your heart and preserve and don't let it get eroded because it's easy for that to get eroded and then you don't wanna go back and do it. You'll see your paragliding equipment and feel bad about it as opposed to feel excited about it. He actually uses that analogy. He says, you'll see your gear and you want to go do that.
And if you're on the other side of that curve, you see your gear and you want to go do something else because it just makes you maybe gives you a little queasy feeling. And I definitely suffered from that after this. And then I had all this time, you know, I couldn't do a thing. Walking for the first month was a pretty big deal. And then pretty soon I could. That was all that was my main activity for the three months that I was immobilized was, you know, taking walks in the hot of summer in a plastic shell.
to sweating and...
Gavin McClurg (49:01.359)
Ugh. And knowing you, I don't know you really well, but you have a lot of energy. This must've just been burning you up. I mean, just to be incapacitated is my worst nightmare. I have to do shit. Yeah.
thad (49:16.225)
It's everybody's worst. Yeah, and I guess what made it feel okay, though, is that I knew that I was getting better I knew that I was healing I had great doctors and they talked about how I would heal and what the Prognosis was and everybody said you will be a hundred percent you will you will be back to doing everything You know, it's just gonna take time and as we're older, you know, it takes more time So that was you know The impatience of it all on top of it psychologically. I had just retired
Gavin McClurg (49:29.518)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (49:37.697)
Sure.
thad (49:45.765)
After 35 years of running a business, sold it, and then was also battling the kind of, I don't know, ineptitude and, you know, insecurity of all the sudden having your identity, if we look at our identity as being work, being removed. And now what, and who am I? Um, so I was just coming on the heels of that into this accident and now I'm sitting, sitting in a chair looking out.
out a window for three hours, you know, with nothing. You know, that's the plan that I have for the afternoon is I've gotten myself, you know, into the chair and then you just got a lot of time to think a lot of time to think whether that's good or bad.
Gavin McClurg (50:25.118)
Yeah. And I, I'm curious, I'm curious about that because it's, you know, I, I've been injured a lot. I've had a lot of these, you know, okay, incapacitated for a while. And I have both fond and not so great memories of, of some of them, the ones that are fond. Uh, I was, I kind of took it on as a challenge and I, and I, you know, read books or, you know, I do, I did things that I don't
normally find easy to do because I'm busy. And I came out of it, I think a better person. And I've had other ones where I've just wasted away in my own misery and I don't do enough. And these days you're on your phone farting around and blowing time. And I don't know that I've learned anything coming out of them. So I've done it both ways. There's clearly a good way to do it, where you can look back and go,
I needed that time. I needed it mentally, I needed it physically, I needed, you know, we get sick for a reason, right? We get a flu and I always think, yeah, it's because I was burning the candle at both ends. I'm tired, you know? This was my body going, okay, dude, you're not gonna relax, I'm gonna force you to relax. Right?
thad (51:26.386)
Yeah.
thad (51:42.001)
Yeah, yeah, I was, it was like forced double retirement. I got retired and then I got double retired. I got retired from everything that I do. And yeah, I think it was, it felt very negative maybe at the time and then that negative feeling started to kind of erode away and a feeling of like, wow, this is so great to be alive and so great that out of all of that could have happened, only this happened. You know, yeah, I broke a bunch of vertebrae, but they're all healing and I'm...
Gavin McClurg (51:46.103)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (52:07.862)
Mmm.
Yeah, I'm not in a wheelchair.
thad (52:11.621)
Maybe my back will be a little, yeah, maybe I'll be a little more fragile for the rest of my life, but man, that's the small price to pay. And, um, I, I think I, I definitely, it was an immensely positive thing, probably for the, for the accelerated, um, version of who I am now, compared to who I was, I look at life as kind of a three phase thing. We have the first phase where we're learning and we're young and we're ambitious and then
The second phase, we take that ambition and we create something of ourselves. And, you know, we have a career and a life and maybe grow a family and grow a relationship. And then I'm in phase three now where it's the back half where we take all that wisdom and perhaps some of the money that we've made and we, we put it towards. This last phase of our life. And, uh, I just, I want to be the smartest version of myself and the kindest version and the most thoughtful and decent.
version of myself in this last phase. I've messed it all up in these other two, but I feel like this is the last one that I can maybe repair some of the dim-witted, ambitious-driven, egocentric bullshit that I've twisted and turned through in the first two phases of my life and really kind of try to get it right now.
Gavin McClurg (53:31.522)
That's kind of a nice takeaway. I mean, I'm hearing that all says humility to me. It sounds like the accident maybe expedited, you know, who are we to say? You may have come to this conclusion anyway, just out of retirement. Maybe you didn't need the accident for this, you know, enlightenment, but maybe it kind of expedited the humility side of things, which is something we all need a little heavier dose of.
thad (53:36.6)
Oh, yeah.
thad (53:59.001)
I need piles more of it. I mean, and what we put our ambitions to, a lot of times we're putting our ambitions out in the world so that then glowing adoration comes back at us, right? Look at how successful you are. Look what you've done, right? Those ambitions are often driven to sort of put a spotlight back on ourselves. And one thing about being in this phase of my life is,
Gavin McClurg (54:01.248)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (54:16.811)
Mm.
thad (54:28.473)
I think I'm thinking a lot less about putting a light on myself and more just enjoying myself and making sure the people around me are enjoying themselves and thinking more about that than look what I did. And I think that really phase two of your life is spent look what I did, you know, whether you're trying to post up a really big flight and make sure everybody sees it or fly the furthest from the launch that day, whatever it is, I've been that guy forever.
Gavin McClurg (54:36.662)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (54:44.887)
Mm.
thad (54:57.213)
having all of that ambition and it is a lot of energy that maybe can be spent more positively and sitting around in a plastic shell on a 95 and 95 degree humid day you know you know kind of biding my time healing gave me a lot of a lot of perspective on that and then also how one approaches the sport of paragliding and why you know I guarantee you that you had very many you've had
Gavin McClurg (55:05.209)
Mm.
thad (55:26.889)
several reasons for why you love and do paragliding through your time doing it from the beginning to the end and How you're doing it? Yeah, and how that changes and I think that Alex put it really well when I was coming back Trying to come back into the sport. He said dude, just do some country club flying for a while and I'd love that phrase country club flying just have fun. I don't like country clubs. I think they're racist piles of shit, but I Don't I don't I don't
Gavin McClurg (55:33.846)
You know, they change.
Gavin McClurg (55:49.601)
Yeah.
thad (55:56.737)
Agree with yeah what a country club is but i'd love that idea that let's just have fun and let's just find days that are enjoyable and that manifests nothing more than fun and that uh, uh can start to build a foundation that gets me back to You know perhaps having a few more goals and pursuing those goals. Um, but right now It would yeah. Yeah. Yeah, i've been yeah and it wasn't easy the very first flight I took
Gavin McClurg (56:01.115)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (56:16.99)
And what's how's that? How's that been? Are you flying again?
thad (56:25.233)
The very first flight was, was really fun, funny in that. Um, so took a long time. I was, we were in California last year from December to April. And in about a month in, I had brought a kit with me. I hadn't flown. Took me a while to even look at my kit. Gavin took me probably two months before I got my kit back out of the bag since the accident, Alex brought it to me because all my stuff was. He, he wrapped it all up. So it still had the.
dried grass and gravel in the bag from the event. Of course there was no blood, which is great. It was nice to not have like a bloody harness I had to clean up, but I hung it all up and inspected the glider line by line and all the cells and everything. And then I did the same thing, hung up the harness and inspected it. And that's when I found those, pulled out those spars that come down the back and they're twisted. But I didn't think much about...
Gavin McClurg (56:59.764)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (57:14.474)
Yeah, that too.
thad (57:20.253)
flying more than just, I know that I'll give that thought, but I need to get some distance from it. And by this winter, so this was last winter, I was starting to feel that way. And I'd been speaking with my flying friends and telling them some of the things that were going on in my head and working through that. And finally it felt okay to go fly. And so I chose, and this is a funny place for me to fly because I am not a ridge soaring.
I just don't I'm not good at it at all. I don't know if you're any good at rid sewing I'm horrible at it and just it's it requires a specific kind of you know, like a little quiver of gliders They have a 22 meter for this and it you know like they're into that and they're really good and I showed up at Tory with my giant Cortell harness and my Zeno 2 and All of my anxiety and my friend my friend Phil Rusman said he'd join me I said, yeah, I just want somebody to be there for this first launch, right?
Gavin McClurg (58:12.589)
Mm.
thad (58:20.977)
And, uh, it was a little light and we had a cup of coffee and waited. And then the wind started to come on. And as it came on, it was obvious. It was kind of like a light switch. It was on, it was blowing like nine, 10. And I started just unzipping the bag was like, how do I do that again? Like unzipping the bag was this foreign thing and all the anxiety was just sort of kind of coming on.
Gavin McClurg (58:40.151)
Mmm.
thad (58:45.893)
And at one point, I think I was just standing over my bag, kind of looking at it, and I maybe got the zippers off and I'd maybe like pulled half the glider out. And I was just kind of standing, looking at it. And Phil comes over and he goes, how you doing? I said, ah, I'm fine. And he's like, are you getting that out of the bag? And I said, yeah. He goes, tell you what, and he saw it right away. And he goes, why don't you stand over here and let me get this out for you. Let me get this set up. And he unzipped the, got the glider out.
opened it up and sort of walked me over. He said, what, come on, come on over here. I'll get you in the harness. And I stood there like a sixth grader getting his snow suit on to go to school. And he kind of, yeah, can't put it on me and sort of did the buckles. Okay. Hope you have a good day, you know, and, uh, yeah, bye. It was so awesome. It was so great. Cause I was, I was kind of frozen. Um, and then the,
Gavin McClurg (59:25.41)
Hehehehehehe
Gavin McClurg (59:33.992)
Bye honey, see you this afternoon.
Gavin McClurg (59:41.771)
Yeah.
thad (59:44.313)
Then the muscle memory comes back. The wind came up. I just built a wall and then that the simple act of just building the wall, it's like, oh yeah, I know how to do this. And she shook, cuckoo, glider came up, did my turn launched, and it didn't feel horribly scary. It just felt a little different and it felt there was more consequence. I guess there's this feeling of consequence that I didn't use to have. Um, and then I just built it back flight by flight. I did a few flights there.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:13.718)
Was there a lot of, oh shit, and weird stuff in your head, and seeing yourself splatter into the rocks kind of stuff, or was it just, okay.
thad (01:00:13.773)
Um.
thad (01:00:22.061)
No, no, no. And that's a really good question. No, but it's frontloaded. When you're in the act of it, it felt more natural. When I wasn't in the act, when I was preparing to, that's where a lot of the anxiety was. It was that first getting the glider out and thinking of, I think I'm going to go fly today. That was the hurdle that took more time for me to get over. Once I got over that hurdle and the act of flying felt fun again.
then it was really, it wasn't simple, but it was simple. It was easier to get back.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:56.426)
And that was last winter. So we're about a year later. Are you, are we still country club flying? Or are we now kind of where, where are you at? We're, you know, compared to where you were when you had the accident.
thad (01:01:06.985)
Hmm.
thad (01:01:10.101)
Well, I think that the person that had the accident definitely always trying to fly something big and long. And I don't know that that's in me so much. I feel like I've done a lot of that flying and I've got some flights that probably will stand for a while. At least one will probably stand for a fair bit of time. Anytime you get over 200 miles, it's going to hold for a while. You know, that's that kind of rarefied air that I'm very happy and proud to have figured out how to get past.
Um, so I don't feel like I'm chasing those ambitions as much, but what I did this summer was I would get up on a cross country day and I would just say, why don't we fly for four hours? Let's, let's go for four hours. And then how you feel at four hours, you can land or you keep going. And I remember the first one I got to the four hour mark and I don't remember what the distance was, but. I, um, the day wasn't great. It was kind of a handful of a day staying, staying up. And I remember thinking.
Four is enough, landed and got picked up right away. And then the next time that all of a sudden I felt like flying a little bit more. And then Andy came into town, Andy Dahl came into town and we had this lovely day where we just flew this big triangle. And by the way, I should note, I also stepped back to a photon initially. That's how I kind of got, uh, my first lights were in the Xeno, but it was at a ridge. Um, but Bill had a good, a good concept. He said, Hey, Thad, why don't we get rid of that Xeno you crashed?
and buy you a new Zeno. And I said, why? And he said, because that one tried to kill you, let's just get rid of that one and get one that doesn't have any bad juju, doesn't have any bad feelings. And he said, you know what, too, I think that first batch had issues with cravats that I've talked to. He said, maybe I've heard, or I can't remember exactly, but he said that I think they've kind of got that dialed out. It might've been a trim thing, I don't know. So we just ordered another one. And you know what?
Gavin McClurg (01:02:43.714)
Mm.
No.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:01.11)
Hmm. Interesting.
thad (01:03:07.357)
Photon on small cross-countries throughout the summer, triangles and smaller, no more than five-hour flights. And until one day, I knew the day was gonna be a little tricky for the photon because the photon's not exactly the best light-lift sniffing glider. And this was gonna be one of those days where it starts light, gets better, and then ends light. And I just knew that, and the Zeno was still sitting on my rack, unopened.
It was just the box was still sitting there. It had been there for a couple of months. And I knew, oh, I want to fly that today. And I wanted to fly it. It wasn't something that I was trying to get myself, like I wasn't trying to muscle through it. Yeah, no, I wanted it. And then I flew it and it was fantastic. And then I think from that day forward, I felt like I was back, like that was it, I'm back.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:46.486)
Mm. Amped up for her. Yep.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:56.686)
So it doesn't really sound like you had to battle through a fear injury here. It was more just.
thad (01:04:03.589)
I did. I felt that way. I felt like I battled back. Yeah, because you have to remember, when you get on launch, you're not really, I mean, I'm supposing here, but you're not really going through a checklist of the dangers of paragliding. You're just stoked to go fly. And I'm still checking some of those boxes. I'm still feeling the ramifications of this act. My first paragliding instructor, Alan Chucalat, used to have this great phrase. He would say,
Gavin McClurg (01:04:04.97)
You did? Okay.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:23.155)
Okay.
thad (01:04:31.781)
Are you ready to commit aviation? And the first time he said that to me, yeah, it's a really good one. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you're deciding whether you're going to get into the air or not. I'm not deciding that for you. Are you ready? Do you feel confident and do you feel like you're in a good place to commit aviation? And I think that that, that phrase has never had more meaning than perhaps now, because there have been physical consequences. I had to go through a long physical recovery. I had to put my wife.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:34.754)
Hmm, that's a good one.
thad (01:05:01.737)
through my incredibly selfish, long physical recovery. And so yeah, I'm taking all that into consideration when I'm launching now. And so I think there are, there is more of a feeling of, and it was a battle, I was completely, absolutely dead set against probably flying again in the early months, for sure.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:11.993)
Mm. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:23.09)
I remember Bill saying that, you know, I've checked in with him many times over the months since the accident. How's dad doing? And, you know, there was definitely a, yeah, not too sure he'll do this again. And then, yep.
thad (01:05:35.949)
Yeah, he was really, he said some great things though, as you know, he's such a poet, you know, he can say a lot in a few words. And one of the things he told me was, you know, we're, we're doing an extreme sport in nature. And there are going to be events that could happen in a paraglider. And many times they don't. And sometimes we skirt around it. And sometimes we
Get hit hard by an event and it has consequences and that's just this we can try to mitigate risk as much as we can but we can't eliminate risk And That was really good for me to hear because it helped me feel like okay. This wasn't so much my fault as it was my turn It was my turn to have an event low In the worst possible, you know worst possible time now could I have helped?
Gavin McClurg (01:06:15.498)
No, yeah. Yeah.
thad (01:06:32.857)
I could I've helped the odds of my event. Yes. Now that I've really, you know, circumnavigated and thought about this whole thing, I should have been two hands on the brakes, focusing on my glider, focusing on gaining safe altitude where an event couldn't, you know, bother me. And, and I didn't do that. Um, so I, you know, I paid a very heavy price and I might've been able to obfuscate this entire issue that I had both hands and maybe
Check that frontal. So, I don't know, build.
Gavin McClurg (01:07:07.038)
I wonder though, I wonder though if, you know, we always talk about that we need cheap mistakes and this was not a cheap mistake. This was, you paid a pretty heavy price, but at the same time.
I don't know. Do you feel, do you look back at it now and go, yeah, but it was a necessary pride? I mean, do you, again, do you think you would have gotten the takeaways that you have on life without it? Yeah.
thad (01:07:27.516)
Yeah.
thad (01:07:32.709)
No, I, that's why I say, you know, we're, we're all on, I'm not some mystic and I'm certainly not religious. Um, but I definitely feel like, you know, things kind of happen for reasons. And, and those reasons are of course. Self-motivated. We were putting ourselves in places that cause things to happen, right? It's not like the world is, is got this master plan and setting us on it. We do things that cause other things to happen. And we all know that we're.
We're trying not to get injured, but we know that we're in a sport where it could happen just as when I get on my bike and go on a 40 mile road bike ride. I could totally get injured. It's not lost on me. Is it going to happen? Probably not. And it's probably not going to happen when we're in our paragliders and we're flying in weather that's within our abilities and we're flying equipment that's within our abilities and we're flying distances that are within our abilities. You know, we have this checklist of all these things that make us feel comfortable when we're flying. And when we're in situations where we're not...
feeling comfortable. Sometimes we muscle through that discomfort to get to a goal. And sometimes while we're muscling through that, we might get hit, we might not. And then we grow from that. And in this case, I'm kind of growing from the opposite. You know, it's, you know, pile driving in the ground. I learned a couple of things. By the way, if you're ever in an airplane and it crashes, you're not gonna feel it. That's kind of a little blessing. If I'm in a, you know,
Air bus and it goes down. You don't feel it when it hits. You're just, you're, you're like, it's punched, you know, you're, you're out. Um, I don't have, I wouldn't say that I have less fear, but I guess I have a more. I don't know, realized look at the consequences of this because I lived them and you've lived them, you, you know, the consequences of blowing your knee out, right? You know what that is that one of the injuries you had?
Gavin McClurg (01:09:22.89)
Yeah, multiple times. Yep. Ha ha ha.
thad (01:09:25.445)
Yeah, and so you're probably pretty careful with that knee on certain things you do.
Gavin McClurg (01:09:30.282)
Yeah, it's interesting how I'm more careful just in general with age. This week I'm getting a colonoscopy and a hernia surgery. Welcome to your 50s, dude. And it's amazing how much I operate now. I mean, I just did the X-ops for the last time at 21. It hasn't been that long, but I'm way more aware of... just because the...
getting hurt sucks. There's always the recovery. I don't want to get hurt. I've been hurt a lot. And so you're just more careful, which is interesting too, because in this sport, that's maybe not the best approach. I think a lot of times we need to be just absurdly confident and you don't want to be sitting in the back seat in this sport ever.
thad (01:10:18.853)
Yes.
thad (01:10:25.618)
No, timidity is a death sentence. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:26.914)
timidity is a death sentence exactly. And so it's, you know, it's one of these things where you have to start, you know, you want to be Belcourt. You want to be, you know, approaching your sixties and going, I'm going to fucking crush all these kids that are, you know, trying to chase me. I want to be, you know, I want to go big. I'm going to, I'm going to go big.
thad (01:10:39.825)
Yeah. And, and, uh, I think even though he has, he has come to a place of, um, softness in his hardlined approach at, you know, I think that he's realizing, um, yeah, I'm 60 coming up on 60 and, and I'm not always going to be able to keep banging on it as hard as somebody that's in their twenties, you know, and it's not going to
Gavin McClurg (01:11:04.683)
Yep. Yeah.
thad (01:11:07.377)
And moreover, I think that he can sit back and look at the achievements of his career with great pride and an understanding that that's a body of work that will last a long time. I'm not speaking for him. I've just had some conversations with him. And I know that he's in a more retrospective perspective about, as you are when you're getting to be this age.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:24.786)
Yeah, sure.
thad (01:11:37.125)
And until your point about confidence, I think that was one of the things I really had to come to terms with is that I knew I did not want to fly Fearful and in fact My wife asked me how you doing when I was packing up to leave for that first flight How you feeling? I said the biggest fear I have is being afraid When I'm flying that was my that was my biggest fear and that was the best part about that first side I wasn't afraid when I was in the air
Gavin McClurg (01:11:57.906)
Yeah, yeah, good one.
thad (01:12:05.841)
I was a little bit afraid beforehand because I was afraid that I would be afraid. And it's a real kind of Escher painting feedback loop of trouble that you don't want to have. And I was really, really excited that wasn't what I had. I didn't. Once I was in the air, everything felt normal again. And your muscle memory and the feeling of your skill and your awareness of what you were doing came back. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:09.734)
Yeah, interesting.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:31.99)
Dad, I want to end here on something I think a lot of listeners can really relate to, or certainly I am at the point in my life where I can, and I'm just fascinated and curious by this subject. We talked about this a little bit before we started recording. You had this kind of double whammy, but one of them was retirement. You had this very successful business that was your life, kind of defined your life. Maybe there was the paragliding in this.
thad (01:12:43.965)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:02.234)
you sold it and suddenly you've got all this time. At one point you came back into your studio, which I can still see behind you, you still got it obviously. You came to the studio and you thought, yeah, I'm gonna do something. And you explained that, but we all get to, hopefully we get to this phase where we suddenly have more time.
And, you know, we can participate in more pleasure because we're not working all the time, but that's, that can be a pretty hard transition. And a lot of people don't do it very well. A lot of people retire and within six months they're dead, you know, because they don't have something to strive for, to achieve for. And that's kind of what we're built as humans. We do, we're not very good at sitting around.
thad (01:13:55.365)
No, well, I think for men I can't speak for women, but I know for men That because I have a lot of people ask me this. Hey You you you've retired haven't you? Yeah, i've retired. Hey, how's that going? I'm really i'm really nervous about that I'm like, what are you nervous about? Well, I mean what will I do? And and I always answer that with whatever you want right now You do what your job tells you to do or what your career path?
Gavin McClurg (01:13:59.906)
Mm.
thad (01:14:23.329)
has in store for you and when you're retired, you get to decide. And I think a lot of people have fear about that. They'll have no ideas about what to do with their time. And that might be part of what's spinning in your brain a little bit. It's like, well, what am I gonna do? And I think that what you end up doing, first off, you talk about that six month paradigm. First off, I think it's a one year process. I think that...
from retiring to where you feel comfortable as a retired person, it's probably a year, because you have to get past all that ego and past all that self-worth stuff. You're also, by the way, while you're retiring, you're also becoming an invisible man in our society anyway, because we're aging, right? You're not attractive to women anymore. You're a transparency, you know? And coming to terms with that and being comfortable with being.
Gavin McClurg (01:15:05.637)
Mm, mm.
thad (01:15:15.529)
Transparent in our society is kind of step one like that's all right. I'm old and Most of the people below 40 think I'm worthless. Okay, you know, I don't think I'm worthless and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with their feelings, you know, and I'm not gonna let those feelings sort of make me feel negative about myself So I think you have to come to terms with that too. We're we're aging we're disappearing, you know as From being vital important parts of our society in a way
Gavin McClurg (01:15:44.608)
Mm.
thad (01:15:45.533)
But the career thing is tough because we put so much of our self-worth into that, and to those accolades, and to those achievements. And for me, that was a big thing. I ran this thing. I started something from nothing, created something that employed a fair number of people, and did a fair amount of business per year, and grew that, and then at its height sold it. And the engine that
Inside you that did all of that is still purring away and there's nothing to point it at it's like this engine That's revving and it's not in gear. You don't have anywhere to put it and And so I think what happens is you have to get that engine to a slower idle first off You have to just get that to stop being sort of adrenalized by all of those Things that all those attributes about you that helps you build that business and strive and succeed are not necessary
Gavin McClurg (01:16:18.661)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:24.176)
Yep.
thad (01:16:44.653)
to strive and succeed in retirement and being in a body brace and sitting about um was a really great sort of um uh pressure cooker of getting that motor to that engine just to start revving at a lower pace and then you've got time to figure out well what is it that I want to do and I like to I like to make things and by things I just need anything whether it's a piece of music or
Gavin McClurg (01:16:47.488)
Mmm.
thad (01:17:15.029)
a shed or a greenhouse for my wife or paint. I started to paint. And like, I just want to make something from nothing. That's a really interesting and important thing. Otherwise, I feel like I haven't. I don't need to come up with a lot of, I don't have to have this big checklist that I've completed by the end of the day for me to feel worth. I can do very little in terms of accomplishments and still feel like I've had a good day.
Gavin McClurg (01:17:22.199)
Mmm.
thad (01:17:43.769)
If I've had a good day and I've been around some people and I've had some social interaction and I don't know. I don't know just lived a simpler more quiet life. That's really good You know, and if there can be some flying in that You know All the better all the better and the risk of that being gone That's I think what was really painful was that maybe i've lost my identity as a as a, you know, uh a functioning
Gavin McClurg (01:17:57.391)
Mm.
Oh, better.
thad (01:18:12.193)
Working person in our society and I've lost paragliding, you know losing both of those two things was that was a I was myself worth My yeah, I can you imagine what that would feel like if you if flying wasn't on the table anymore Who are you Gavin? You know what I mean? Like what is it that you really excel at and that's what I was faced with it Yeah, then who am I and would I be okay? And the funny thing is I got to this place where?
Gavin McClurg (01:18:15.758)
Mm.
disorienting.
Gavin McClurg (01:18:23.201)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:18:28.247)
Mm.
thad (01:18:39.549)
to get back into flying, I got to a place where I was completely comfortable not getting back into flying. I felt confident and quiet in my heart without that in my life. I could see myself without it. And then I started to crave it. And then I found a path back to it. But it had to be almost off the table.
Gavin McClurg (01:18:45.729)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:19:02.366)
Yeah, he almost had to kind of throw it away, give it away, hand it off. Yeah.
thad (01:19:06.141)
But that's what retirement is too. So to answer your question, I think that answers it more than anything. You can't see it until you don't have it. You have to release it and it has to be gone from you. And then you realize, oh, well, I'm actually this guy now. I actually, I care about these things. And, you know, I'm, yes.
Gavin McClurg (01:19:15.739)
until you release it, let it go.
Gavin McClurg (01:19:22.798)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:19:26.09)
Hey, that's okay. That's, it's all right. Yeah, okay. When you realize, okay, but, doesn't have to define me. Fine, adios. Yeah.
thad (01:19:36.441)
Yeah. And then you are who you are in that phase and you get to be that guy for the rest of, you know, till you want to be another guy. And I think that we get to invent ourselves. And when we lose sight of that, when we think the world is inventing us or our work has invented us, that's when we're misguided. It's like, no, you invent yourself. You decide who you're going to be, how you're going to be, what you're going to be every day. And if that happens to be someone that wants to fly really long distance in a paraglider, awesome.
But if you're okay, just flying a pretty good distance in a paraglider, you know, then that's really awesome too. And I think that's, I wanna make big flights, but it's not gonna be the end. It's not gonna be the sole reason I get under a paraglider. And maybe that's the perfect thing for a guy that just turned 61, you know, and still feels a little stiff in the morning from that injury, that injury keeps me. And I took my back brace and I packed it up and I put it.
Gavin McClurg (01:20:21.741)
Right.
thad (01:20:33.921)
in with like some of my other Paraguay equipment. I just kind of keep it in there. It's like a nice little like, yeah, just that, that was there, you know, don't, don't put that on again. Don't ever be in a place to put that on.
Gavin McClurg (01:20:39.401)
Just a little reminder.
Yep. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. Thad, thanks, man. Oh, go ahead.
thad (01:20:48.793)
I got one quick, yeah, yeah. Well, I have one really great story that Bill told me when I was in the throes of like trying to figure out what to do. I was like, I don't know what to do. And he's like, well, cause he broke his neck and he wore a halo, full on halo, you know, bolted to his skull. You know how those work, right? And he said, all I could do was walk. Cause he said that you just, you want to get out and walk. I'm like, all right.
Gavin McClurg (01:21:01.815)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:21:08.254)
Yeah, those things are gnarly. Oh yeah, nasty.
thad (01:21:17.261)
He goes, that's all I could do. And it really gave me peace. He said, I got to the point where I was walking like 10 miles a day. And I said, really? Because I was walking maybe two and I'd be all kind of clammy and sweaty. And, and so he said, yeah, but when I first started walking though, he goes, I go out it's summer, I got the halo on and it's kind of gray colored. It's kind of like a gray titanium. And he said, all of a sudden in my head, I can start to feel a burning ache.
You know, where the bolts connect in, because it was taking the heat. The metal was heating up and then going into his brain. And so he started to walk with a, he'd just take a t-shirt and lay it on top of the halo. Now, I mean, you, you know what he looks like. Oh, and he said that, um, late, late in the season, he said wasps would get under the thing.
Gavin McClurg (01:21:53.314)
Oh yes.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:02.338)
The neighbors, man, I wish we had a picture of that. Ha ha ha.
thad (01:22:11.925)
And he said, you couldn't swat. You can't move quickly and swat the washboard way because you're wearing this thing that's bolted your head. You gotta be really careful. Oh my God. So he sent me a photo. I will send you this photo. He sent me a photo of him in the halo. And he was in that for the same amount of time that I was in my brace and he couldn't, he could never take it off. You can take a body brace off when you're laying down. You can take it off and sleep without it. And then you put it on when you get up. So at least you got to respite
thad (01:22:42.581)
He did not. Yeah, really brutal. Anyway, I'm sorry, I wanted to jam that one in because that was a great story for me. It was a good one to hear.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:46.806)
Oh, good story. I'm picturing in my mind him walking around Dana Point in Salt Lake City with a wasp-filled heat.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:58.87)
Heat tent. Bad, thanks man, appreciate it. And I'm glad, interesting 18 months for you. And last time we flew together was out of Blackhawk. So I'm looking forward to wherever we fly together next. Love it. Cheers, bud. That was great. Awesome, man. Love it. I'm glad.
thad (01:23:02.769)
Thank you, it was really fun.
thad (01:23:14.173)
Yeah, let's do that again. All right. Cheers.
Comments
2 thoughts on “#209 Thad Spencer- the Comeback”
Hey guys. Thanks for this podcast, I crashed my paraglider about 6 months ago and broke my back and stuff. Short story is I’ve got L2-L4 fused but otherwise I’m okay. I’m hoping to start some light running in a couple more weeks then hopefully flying soon after.
Many things resonate with your story, the love of flying and the courage to get back in the air, and the awareness more than before about what it means to fly. I’m nervous about it but it’s what I want to do.
Hey guys. Thanks for this podcast, I crashed my paraglider about 6 months ago and broke my back and stuff. Short story is I’ve got L2-L4 fused but otherwise I’m okay. I’m hoping to start some light running in a couple more weeks then hopefully flying soon after.
Many things resonate with your story, the love of flying and the courage to get back in the air, and the awareness more than before about what it means to fly. I’m nervous about it but it’s what I want to do.
Shit buddy sorry to hear. That’s a bummer. Be safe, take your time!