Ari Highlining at sunset in the Cascades- Photo Zack Doleac
In this entertaining and thought-provoking podcast with Ari Delashmutt, a big mountain skier, world-record highliner, paraglider, film maker, and pursuer of the absurd we take on what is sometimes the hardest question of all. Why? Why do we pursue activities that can quite easily go wrong and kill us? As Will Gadd often says, it’s the question we all need to have an answer for and the answer often changes over time. “Truthfulness is a muscle we have to flex.” Let’s flex the muscle we often neglect. Enjoy, ponder, discuss and send your comments. I think you’re going to dig this one.
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What does maturation (becoming more mature) look like?
It’s time to grow up- as people, as a society
“We paraglide for an emotional response”
The identity loop- we all only exist in relationship to one another
Knowing the reasons you do what you do
Maturity- taking what is unconscious into conscious
“In paragliding we’re having a hard time talking about safety”
How do we support one another in a way that addresses one another constructively?
Using paragliding as a tool for transformation- can we use it to change the world?
The egoic pursuit
“Personhood is an achieved state of being”
Doing it for the right reasons- bringing reverence and gratitude to the game every time
How does free flight compare to other high-risk sports?
What is true in paragliding is true interpersonally
Extending the awestruck
The requisite virtues of a good pilot and the 4 cardinal virtues
Knowing the path vs walking the path
Why do some people have such an affinity for high-risk activities?
Why paragliding is so much better than kitesurfing:) Why the 3rd dimension makes the experience so much richer
You have to walk the path!
Mentioned in this episode: Sketchy Andy, Discovery channel, the Turkey Boogie, GGBY, world record highline, Super Frenchy (Matthias Girard), Jon Malmberg, Jeff Shapiro, XContest, John Vervaeke, Red Rocks Fly-in, Will Gadd, Cody Tuttle, Nick Greece, Matt Beechinor, Nate Scales, USHPA, Josh Cohn, the Matrix, Sage Cattabriga-alosa, James “Kiwi” Johnston, Bill Belcourt
Speaker 1 (0s): Everybody welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem I'm sure most are. All of you have heard that we found Kiwi and after almost a month and had very little clues, this has been a bit of a roller coaster ride, but fantastic. To get some closure, you just condolences to Kiwi's family and his family isn't just is direct family and New Zealand, but this family around the world and this pilot family has burning man and family Kiwi had an impact on so many of us.
And I'm grateful for the time that I had so grateful for the time that had with them in the last few years flying. And this year in Texas and Nevada was with those guys just the weekend before this whole incident happened. And Sharon Hotsprings under the big Nevada skies with him just the week before, just an amazing human being and someone, of course, we'll all miss, but fly free and fly far, buddy. And thanks for your contributions. And for those of you who don't didn't know, Kiwi want to hear more.
We had just put up a podcast with him on some great stories of is 30 years free flight. Then we put that up back in July. So go back and dig into their, and that it will make you laugh. It's a great storyteller. So we'll miss you buddy. And many of you have reached out to me asking for more details and they will all be forthcoming I'm sure, but of course, being sensitive to the family, crazy amount of learning and an unbelievable effort by people from around the world, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of man hours went into this search, not just boots on the ground, which is what we were doing here, but from all over the world, help came pouring in immediately soon as they kinda the alarm went out.
So it just humbled to be a part of this community. And it was really an amazing thing to watch an effort. And of course we all wanted a different outcome, but fantastic to get some closure on it all. And I am right now, actually working on an article about some of the takeaways and some of the things we've learned in this search. Unfortunately, many of us have been involved in a few of these and we are learning as we go and of able to get better and better with each one of these, which we want to be able to pass on to the community.
So again, thank you all for a being a part of this and helping and really grateful for this incredible community. We have. My guests today is Ari Delashmutt. He is out in band a big time skier and highliner and gotten into paragliding a few years back and has been crushing out some, some good distance. And he's had me on this show has a show called area in the air.
And he's had me on his show a couple of times, and I wanted the reach out to him. This just seemed like a, the right time to talk about why we do this. And this is more of a area is really a kind of a philosopher. And especially in his views and thoughts on undertaking high risk activities, which is certainly what we're doing here in Free flight. So yeah, we kinda tackle why do we do this and what it's all about and go down some pretty fun rabbit holes on risk and the community and the power that our community has in what we're capable of.
Maybe what, what we're not gave the glove. So a fun talk, a really interesting guy that I think you're going to Enjoy and the timing of it in some ways is perfect. So hope you enjoy this talk with Harry Delashmutt area. We are, we are doing this a bit later. The man, this is kinda fun and exciting and we've, I've done done a couple with you on your show, and now we're going to do it on the Mayhem and, but it's good to have you on the show.
And we were just chatting they're for a bunch of minutes before we started the official recording here. You've had a wild, a bunch of days. Let's start there. Cause we're going to be talking about philosophy. We might as well talk about philosophy, man. Yeah, I guess philosophy and intimacy really aren't we can be too divided if you, and it's like, if I, if I guard myself, then I can't really be talking about the truth for sure. Truthfulness is a muscle we have to flex and that leads you to philosophy.
So yeah, the girlfriend is a moved out and moving out of my house and heading out on a big road trip, filming a TV show for discovery channel. So yeah, I've got a, I've got a metamorphosis ahead of me. Yeah. It sounds like you're going down to do some, some stunt stuff with sketchy. I understand. Yup. Yup. I'm going down. Making a high
Speaker 2 (5m 58s): Lining TV show were going to be doing all kinds of different stunts, highlines and space nets and base jumps and probably some paragliding, maybe some cliff launches and maybe some soaring who knows, who knows.
Speaker 3 (6m 13s): Is that, is that going to be a part of the, I don't know what they call it down there, but they always have this fall. Okay.
Speaker 2 (6m 20s): That Turkey buggy, the Turkey buggy, the Turkey or boogie is the base jumping one in GGB Why which stands for a gobble gobble b*****s. Yeah. That's the Highline festival as the high line, fast in a row. No that's neither of those are officially happening this year. So I don't know. I guess there's a global pandemic or something I heard about I I don't pay attention too much.
Speaker 3 (6m 44s): Well, lets spend a few minutes. So we're going to talk about the philosophy of paragliding, which is been nerve racking to me since you pitched this because I'm pretty much the opposite philosopher and I, yeah, I just do and don't think about it and I'm mindless in a lot of ways. And so I'm going to let you guide that and I'm just going to say every once in a while, like yeah, sweet. But before we get to that, just for those who don't know, cause I think a lot of the people in the States of course are familiar with your name, but maybe not so much to the listener base.
Cause you know, paragliding is this one of the things you do, but just once you do a lot of others, so you just briefly you, you know, what are we talking? And a, and what's your background that allows us to talk together. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (7m 36s): Interesting. Okay. We were talking because of big, do you to be on your show for three years now?
Speaker 3 (7m 42s): Persistence pays off. Right.
Speaker 2 (7m 47s): But yeah, so I've grown up in bend Oregon, which is kind of like adventure, Mecca. And I grew up skiing. I did my first flip on skis when I was 12 and started skipping high school and then college to be on the Hill all the time, doing freestyle skiing, which for me looked like the biggest jumps I could find or build and flips skiing backwards, loved all kinds of switch tricks and yeah, and then one year it didn't snow very much here.
And I learned how to Highline high lining is a type of SLAC lining. I have been Slack line in since I was in high school. And yeah, we have learned how to Highline and rig these Slack lines up over the void, whether that's from cliffs or over canyons or you name it. And that has been a crazy six years, but it's taken me all the way to the world record project that we did last August in Canada, where we did a two kilometer long Highline and somewhere in the middle of that highlighting career, I learned how to paraglide my paragliding kind of started in a crazy way where we, there was this a French base jumper who lives here in town, super Frenchie and him.
And Bambam came up with this idea to do a rope swing, basically tie a rope to a solo glider and then get the handle to the tandem and have Mathias jump out of the tandem to do a big rope swing. And the sky off of the solo glider Let go fall. A thousand feet pole was parachute. We made a film of that. I have been a film maker for a while, so that man, and then paragliding took me around the world, have flown in, I don't know, dozen countries in five years and have done all kinds of started chasing acrobatics pretty hard and then have gotten into cross country pretty deep, which I'm pretty grateful for the, that series that it went in that order and learning acro first.
Yeah, that was great. And so now I've started a podcast I have had for a couple of years and a YouTube channel where I'm kind of talking about philosophy and on the podcast have been talking a lot of too, a lot of psychologists and philosophers and writers and yeah. Kinda of like I crave depth in my conversations and my relationships like we were talking about. And so that's kinda what has manifested on my podcast. And so here we are Gavin
Speaker 3 (10m 19s): Yeah. And I mean, I really enjoyed you this last one that you had, you know, don't kill yourself paragliding or something. It was, you know, it was real in your face and super fun and kind of funny and also very self reflective. I don't know, but that's not the right word. You were, you're a very open with your own traumas in your past, in your life and the stuff that we all deal with. And I think that that vulnerability was wow.
It drew me in, it was very appealing and not something we see a lot these days in our social media b******t world, where we're always just advertising the latest, rad thing that we've done. And then this constant in this age of FOMO that were all living in because everybody's posting the greatest of the greats. So I, I think I, I think you're onto something there and I'm hoping that that's kind of some of the stuff we can explore today, but, or is it
Speaker 2 (11m 30s): Philosophy your background,
Speaker 3 (11m 33s): Is this, or is this just something, I mean, is this something you studied? Is it something you've just been personally interested in? Cause you're, you're quite your, your quite good, that's your, your, what am I looking for? You're quite articulate about how you think and talk and,
Speaker 2 (11m 51s): And thank you. Yeah, we appreciate all of that. And I appreciate all that. No, I, I never studied philosophy in any formal way. And, and I think that this kind of started with just growing up, liking to talk, having the gift of gab being curious. I don't know something about that. You know, it's hard to look back and know exactly where the seeds of that are, but I think in general, it's like mollusks are really hard. They have hard shells and are unresponsive to the environment and mammals are soft than the outside, hard on the inside.
So it makes us very responsive. It makes us sensitive to our environment and stimulation. And so I think that a cultivating a sense of, or how to say coming into right relationship with my own vulnerability has definitely been, I think, one of the most liberating things that I've ever done. And so what do you notice on that video? So where I'm talking about my own traumas and the reasons that I paraglide and all the stupid s**t that I've done, and it's really like, I'm just trying to come into right relationship with the reality that I am not as strong or as hard or as cool or a smart or talented or any of these adjectives that I could come up with that I could maybe paint some kind of picture for people on the outside.
And definitely my own personal experience inside of myself is not that of mastery and of confidence and certitude. It's a much more filled with uncertainty and doubt and self deprecation and inner critic and fear and all this s**t. That's like, I don't know. I guess I just, it's kinda like, like, man, once you go there, once you start really like connecting with people on a really deep level where you let them in and they let you In, it's like something that sets precedent, it sets precedent.
It's hard to go back. It's hard to go back just to shoot in this s**t real shallow with everyone, you know, and philosophy is more just like, it's almost just a framework for those things to fit into so that we can look at them so that we can use these tools for introspection and for growth and for connection and, and to see what is it and actually real in our world. Yeah. And this is it it's, it's honestly so beautiful because one of the things that, what if I look back and I look at these seeds of, of, of in my life that have been flowering into a conversation of philosophy lately, it's like when I say skiing, skiing was that first thing that really set me on fire, that there was like this really obvious challenge, this desire to do a certain trick.
And there was a very, there's like a hard limit of reality where like gravity is gravity just is right. And my body just is so like, what is possible is not completely fixed, but like, it's pretty fixed, man. You don't land on your head and stop it. You know, like dumping, it means that you land perfectly right on the right spot of the landing. And like, and so there's this path, there's this next one, exercise, this practice that I've been a part of that it's taken me literally more than a decade to realize that I've been in this practice that is coming into right relationship with reality.
That is that I am a vulnerable, fragile person inside of a vulnerable, fragile body. Then taking that and making like the best of it. And like in skiing, you want to do the trick, you go up to the jump and you're scared. And you're like, I want to try it. You're want to, I want to try it. Am I going to do it? Am I going to do it three, two, one, do it. Or don't, you know, and it's like, you Huck yourself off of the jump, you go into the Air and then there's like this judgment moment where you come back to earth and it's like crash your land.
Right. And it's so obvious. It's so like, like you either did it or you didn't do it. And you can kid yourself all day about how it felt or how good you did it or whatever. But there's like a, that was like an objective, a judicial element to reality there. Right. And I kind of got addicted to that. And it was like this addiction to this progression and this growth, and also the subjective experience of pushing myself, of managing my emotions of fear, but also of collaboration of connection with my friends, right?
Like your on the Hill all day with the same six or eight people that you ride with all the time, and it's watching them go off of the jumps that shows you what's possible and inspires you. And then you imagine what you're capable of and you ask Spire to do that. And then when you do that, you basically complete the cycle of inspiration that is see you and someone inspire you and then aspiring and by aspiring, you inspire and the wheel keeps turning.
Right? So there's all these different ways that this first sport that I practiced for so long, it really like helped me grow up. It helped me mature. And it really, it put in like metrics for how I would be maturing because not only is there a metric of like how many tricks you can do, how big of a jump, how cool, how much style, all of these things. There's also like the subjective experience of like, what is your attitude like on the chairlift?
Like you, when you crash in a competition, do you slam your ski down in frustration or do you laugh and smile and laugh when your buddies laugh at you, you know, like what energy do you bring to your community? What kind of advice do you give the up and comers? You know, like I used to coach all kinds of Free writers. So like what kind of presence do you hold to strangers? What kind of presence do you hold to onlookers? How do you respond when someone tells you did something good or when someone makes fun of you?
Right? So there's like all these metrics that started popping up in my life of like different ways that weren't just whether or not I stomped it, that helped me understand what maturation looked like. And this, when you boil it down, this is like a really small, the sport that I'm talking about is like, from the time you drop into the jump to the time you land the jump, that's a really small period of time, right? It's like a fear and a anticipation and a progression. And then like a judicial, like declutter didn't do it crashed or landed.
And then I started highlighting and highlighting, took this fear and this emotional management and this progression and it elongated it instead of being like a three second time interval. From the time you started to go up the jump till the time you landed. Now we're talking about, you know, in the beginning, the, the lines were a 100 feet long. And so it would take me five minutes or eight minutes. And I would have to be in this insanely intense Headspace where my body is just like, if you fall, you die, you can't fall.
It's like this hyper arousal. It's like, you want to fight flight and freeze I'll at the same time, I do highlighted as a crazy thing to do. And then it just grew and grew and grew. And now it's like, you know, like I walked across the world record line and, you know, an hour and 45 minutes. So to hold that space, to hold that emotional awareness and space and focus and all of those stuff that stretched out. And then I started paragliding, man. And then I started paragliding then, and now paragliding is like, I had a seven hour, 40 minute flight this year.
So it's like, how long can you manage your physiology? Your attitude, your emotions, your focused, your sharpness, the whole thing. It's like, it's just this whole progression of these different practices is essentially the same practice. And it is like becoming aware of what's happening inside of my mind, my body, like my desires when I'm on the Highline. It's so obvious to me now when pride arises like that, I'm like that I'm, that I'm feeling like I'm I've achieved something or I'm going to achieve something.
Or the thought pops into my head of like, who's watching or like, how fast am I going? Or how impressive is this right now at this point in my life, that's so obvious to me. And the whole practice is to watch that arise and to watch it fall. And it's just up and down, stupid, relatively meaningless in objective reality activity that really can, if you use it right. And this is what the philosophy of paragliding video is about. If you use it, right, these sports can be a tool for transformation in your life.
And literally where we are in the world right now. I don't know if you've looked around, but we kinda got a political system. That's crumbling, an agricultural system. That's crumbling an education system. That's crumbling a meaning system. Like our communities, like just the whole thing is kind of like, it's like, it's time to grow up. It's time to grow up. I saw this in paragliding. You know, I started doing acrobatics because I wanted to be flashy and fast and crazier and more dangerous than people were willing to be.
Right. I still love to do acrobatics. I just try to do it for different reasons. Sure. I've done it for every reason. I've done all of this for every single reason. Right. I've done it because I was sad. I've done it. Cause I was mad I I did it because they wanted to show off. I did it because I wanted to brag. I've done it for all of the f*****g reasons, man. I've done it for all of them. So it's, this is not a, Oh, this is not a I. My soap box is a very short hear. My soapbox is a very short it's and, and that's what you, you reflect on is like, there's a vulnerability here without that vulnerability.
It's just hubris. It's just, self-righteousness sure. Right. I'm using my own experience and introspection as a way to glean insight into the way that we are.
Speaker 3 (22m 24s): You brought up a point that you just made me think of something that I haven't thought of in at least 25 years, probably more. I, you know, I also grew up ski racing. I was, I was more speed in Alpine then the trick side like you did, but we used to go out to this big downhill at the beginning of the season, a big mountain in Montana every year and things were starting to look pretty good. It was, you know, I was gonna make the team and, you know, things were kind of going the right direction and yeah, I'll just say it like, it was, there was, it was a training day and we didn't get very good, you know, as it was dumping as puke in snow.
So instead of, no, we were boot pack in the course of the morning and then Huck and cliffs in the afternoon. And you know, that there's this very different, there's this huge disparity between the East coast skiers and the West coast skiers. And we we're all just like, yeah, powders go. And, but for some reason, you know, the first day of the, of the down of the race, I just, you know, really, I had trained hard. I wanted to do well. I needed to do well. You know, I had all these, like I was playing that way too serious.
I wasn't playing it. The West coast style, I was, I was, I was deeply into it in any way. I I blue a turn coming in to a big jump and, and Ms. Gates and just, just sort of this thing. And I landed and you know, in the air, I just started going, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k. You know, cause knowing that I'd blown my race and I thought, you know, you're going 60 miles an hour. I thought that no one could hear this. I thought I was doing it to myself and came back around and got on the chair, left, came back around and my coach was just like so furious with, with me.
And he took me aside and he, and on all the coaches of all the teams, we're all standing and this one spot, cause it was like, where you won or lost the race that was this big jump and a lot of speed and a big corner and a guy. And he was like, do you know how much of an a*****e you just were? And I mean, he just laid into me and I was horrified and I'm still horrified. And so when you were telling that story, it made me realize how much of a tool these things can be.
I mean, I, I'd like to think I haven't done that since now. Certainly I've had some moments bombing out in the world cups or whatever where I'll be like,
Speaker 2 (24m 53s): Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24m 53s): And you know, a little kick of the helmet, you know, but I, they can be, they can be really good tools in that regard, in terms of, yeah. And it's hard to get that kind of life lesson, other ways. Of course we can and in many other ways, but that was a real good one. Like, Whoa, you know, are you taking this a little too seriously, man, that you need to go back and check a child?
Speaker 2 (25m 17s): Yeah. Well you were a child, so we'll give you a pass on one. We appreciate your sharing the story as it was. But you know, I think Shapiro on your podcast is set a number of times that we paraglide for an emotional response. And I think this is at the heart of what we have to realize for us to use this sport as a tool for transformation as powerful of a one as it actually is, you know, that emotional response that you were looking for that day in the race was something that was, is definitely powerful.
It's definitely powerful. And it's like, or if we just look at humanity or is it just like evolution of humanity in general when we're born, we're just so useless. We're so useful. You say, you know, the, so viscerally now as a father, children are just impossible and useless for so long and we, we have to give them life essentially. And so what this does to our psyches is this instills in us this deep, knowing that if we fall out of grace, socially with our family, we die, that's it.
There's nothing else. There's like, there's like, it's just true. If your parents don't love you and they don't care for you, you die. Right. And so this is something that I don't think we're actually like facing and contextualizing enough in our lives. And I think that this is one of the things that is inside of us, both neurologically and experientially, that leads us to need the validation from winning the ski race. Right?
This is one of the things that like one of the reasons that, that I have paragliding in the first place that I've done flips on skis and the first place it creates in us, this identity loop and this identity loop. If you give it a voice, it sounds like, am I doing it right? Do you love me? Am I doing it right? Do you love me? I've told you this before. Right? And so its like, we try so hard to do it right. And we really need to be loved.
We need to be cared for like that. That is at the bottom of R of reality is that we only exist relatively to everything else. Like there's no Gavin without earth, right? There is no Gavin without a mom and dad, there is no like mom and dad without more people, its like we all only exist in relationship to one another. And so this is just a really important thing to contextualize before we launch our paragliders because essentially this is something that I've kind of like in the aftermath of releasing that video of what we wanted to clarify is, is like the fact that I paraglide because I want to be appreciated and acknowledged and validated is not a reason for me not to paraglide it doesn't mean that I'm, that I'm infant tile and immature.
No, but if you paraglide for those reasons and you don't know those reasons, it also doesn't make you some horrible idiot. It just means that it's unseen. It's unconscious. It's immature. Right? So maturity is we have to define maturity as taking what is unconscious into conscious, like what is unseen into the scene. Right? And so if we can just see the reasons, then it just kinda makes the whole thing a bit more sustainable.
It helps us close our own identity loops of am I doing it right? Yes. I love myself. I'm doing it right. And I love myself. And also it helps us understand each other, right? Because there's this horrible thing and paragliding where we can't talk about safety, we can not talk about safety and paragliding. This Podcast that you have is one of the substrates in which people are willing to listen to it because Gavin is a studio so far away and he's actually not going to see me f**k up.
My launch is not going to see me. He doesn't know that I only have a hundred hours and just bought a
Speaker 4 (29m 39s): He, you know, not to see in any of this s**t.
Speaker 2 (29m 42s): Right? So I can listen to Gavin talk about safety, but no, no, no. Having someone approach us on launch and be like, Hey, can we talk about safety? You know, no, no, no, no. This is to break the identity loop of, am I doing it right? Do you love me? This is to say you are doing it wrong and I f*****g hate you. You suck. You're an idiot and your going to ruin it for everyone else. Right? This is like the ethos of American Paragon. You're going to run it for everyone else. Your going to get our site closed down. This is like a reason for a safety that should not exist. Like this is just, that's an infant tile reason, right?
Like someone's personal wellbeing is so vastly more important. So vastly more important than the site being shut down. Yeah. And so in paragliding, we were having a hard time talking about safety because we don't know why we're paragliding. We can't contextualize this risk. Right. And we've talked a lot about it in our Podcast like justifying the risk, but contextualize in Why contextualizes the justification or a scene beneath and seeing into our own need for justification is something we haven't gotten down there yet.
So we're having a hard time supporting one another in a way that acknowledges the things that are actually happening cognitively and in this identity loop so that we can actually address each other in a way that is constructive. It's a really, it's a huge f*****g ask Mann. It's a huge ask. It's like, I think the vast majority of us who know best practice in paragliding, we'd rather just not deal with the emotional overhead that it takes to approach and address someone who we think is doing something that could harm them.
It's a really big thing. And if we do, we tend to muster up the courage and it, it comm we muster it up, we muster it up, it festers inside of us. And then we kinda of like blurted out at them. We're like, Hey, don't f*****g do that instead of Hey man, like maybe you could tell me what your thoughts are on this. Or, Hey, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions about your pre-flight Hey, do you mind if I give you a piece of advice here? And it's like questions before answer is typically the way that we do this, especially males, I mean our sport is vastly vastly males.
And so like how we give each other support, like how do we support each other? This is if we just take paragliding and we just imagine that paragliding is just an analog paragliding in is only a metaphor for how we relate to one another. It's like the fact that we can't give each other advice, it means that we can't as men support one another, we have no way to support one another. And this is essentially if we take it from paragliding and we expand it all the way out to macroeconomics, to a governance to relationships, basically what is happening here is we have ourselves in this headlock, like geopolitically, we've got ourselves in a headlock, right?
Like America can't back down trying to, is going to take over China. Can't back down. Roger can. In fact, we're a geopolitical geopolitically. We got ourselves in a headlock, right? Like we have the macro in a macro economic multipolar traps where like, if you don't pull the whale out of the ocean than the next guy, he's going to do it. All right. So there's all these different ways where we're just kind of like we've trapped ourselves and we can't support each other. And if we're to use paragliding as a tool for transformation as a, as a of a powerful one, as it is, we can actually expand this out and we can start to think of how we can use paragliding to change the world.
And this is something that I've been ruminating on for a long time. And I haven't felt like it's congealed all the way. So I'll just jump off the diving board here and see if I just belly flop or not. It's like if we can't support each other, like if we can't support other pilots in our community, if we can't see them for what they are and address them where they are and see the parts of ourselves that motivate us to address them, help them protect them, educate them, inform them, correct them, reprimand them.
Right. Then we're basically just like keeping ourselves in this headlock. And the headlock is self terminating, right? Like the macroeconomic system of like, we have to race each other to extract resources at an exponential speed. Like the race is the headlock and it kills us all. Yes. So like the race towards, I don't know what the racism paragliding, but
Speaker 3 (34m 31s): I think that could be X contest, distance numbers, you know, podium
Speaker 2 (34m 38s): Quick one. It's an egoic one for sure. And it's an emotional one. It's an emotional one. Right? We are striving for this. Like we're striving. We are racing to extract these emotional resources. Right.
Speaker 3 (34m 50s): And is it any different? I would pause it that it's not, is it any different than someone in a rat race by and s**t that's going to okay. That car is going to make me happy. No, that house is going to make the same, that there is no end to that stupidity that we all do it, but there's no end to that. Stupidity. If you're not they're there is no self-actualization at the end of that line, whatever that line is, it's you don't do it for the ascetic and for the fun and for the beauty and the community, if we don't do it for the right reasons, we're doing it for the wrong reasons.
Right. I mean, is that, is it, is that equation that clear?
Speaker 2 (35m 32s): Yeah. And I think it's dangerous to demonize the wrong reasons. Right? I don't want to demonize the wrong reasons because then I've, like I said, I've done it for all the reasons I've done it for every reason. I'm unlikely to do it for all of the reasons in the future. Sure. Right. Yeah. We do like the chance that I'm not going to paraglide in the next three hours because I'm sad is about 0%. You know,
Speaker 5 (35m 60s): I'm going to paragliding this afternoon. I need a f*****g escape. All right. Like, yeah. It's okay. I'm not, I don't need to like kill myself.
Speaker 2 (36m 6s): You need to like hurt myself over that. We don't need to like condemn myself over that. But if I had this, I have this a somehow I've gotten Jon on my podcast. He is a psychologist for the university of Toronto. He is one of the smartest people I've ever interacted with. You guys should definitely look them up on YouTube. Or as Podcast he says to me area, we have to realize is that personhood is an achieved state of being a person who doesn't achieve state of being a infant is not a person.
We treat a child as if it's a person, because that's how we bring about personhood. But personhood is an achieved state of being, which is to say that manhood is an achieved state of being right. Just because your nuts dropped into your SAC and you have some little Tom Selleck starter kit on your chest and your upper lip that doesn't make you a man. Right? Like in the Amazon, they take their late adolescent males and they make them put their hands into those myths full of bullet ants. Let their hands be a bit by these things.
Speaker 5 (37m 10s): What are these hands be a bit by these ants and a lot
Speaker 2 (37m 12s): You like the North American Indian tribes would like make their late adolescent males go on these like big vision quests after fasting for 10 days and make them eight eat 14 buttons of payoti as like this huge disruptor. And like, there's like this, like caterpillars don't grow wings, Gavin caterpillars,
Speaker 5 (37m 36s): A f*****g dissolve and a cocoon. And this is
Speaker 2 (37m 39s): Some transformation that needs to take place as adults, as like, for me right now, like I've come to the painful realization that no one is going to write a list of the requisite virtues that I need to embody to become a man. Not only do I have to write the virtues out, like, what does it mean to be a man? I have to like facilitate the transformation myself. I have to like tell myself what it is like, how many
Speaker 5 (38m 11s): The button's a pod, how long do I have to fast? And how many coyote is do I have to bring back? You know, it's like, and so
Speaker 2 (38m 19s): I guess my point is that if we really want to like mature, if we want to grow up, if we want to give our gift to the world, we can totally use paragliding as a tool. One of the tools for transformation, it is only up to each and every one of us for us to imagine what the requisite Virtus of personhood AR that we want to embody so that we can step into this new level of personhood, right? Because we all know that we look out at the world, we look at all this s**t happening.
We all know that we need a higher state of being like the world needs to be in a radically different way than it is, which is to say that I need to be in a radically different state of being than I am. And the transformation does not take place by rah rah on social media, pointing fingers, outwards the fingers, or have to go inwards. Like our only agency is within ourselves, right? That's not to say that there's no action.
You can take to make the world a better place outside of yourself. The reality that if you are not maturing, developing, looking inside of yourself, trying to grow up the chance that you will take action in the world, that actually makes a positive change is pretty low. Like you might get lucky and do something good, but realistically you have to be good so that you can do good. And that's the same thing, a paragliding man. It's like, it's really such a gift, man.
It's really such a f*****g gift. It's such a privilege to be able to paraglide at all. And it's even more satisfying to be able to paraglide as a way to develop myself as a person and to grow up. It really is. And it's like, I don't want to do it for the wrong reasons. And I want to stay focused on doing it for the right reasons. And I want to bring my reverence and my gratitude and my, my, like my highest self. I want to, like, I want to unzip my glider bag with that version of myself every time.
Right? Like NFI. I'm convinced that if I do that, I will take small steps towards embodying the person that I can be like becoming the person that I can be. And by doing that, I'm just creating myself as the node in the network of humanity that strengthen in the node, strengthens the network. Right.
Speaker 3 (40m 52s): I had an experience last year at the red rocks flying, which is coming up, let's say awesome group. And it's mostly lower ours pilots, you know? So then they brought me and to give a talk and I'd been wanting to go to the sing for years and been there and I'd never been down there. I never even flown Monroe. It's a amazing place, a little a pitch for that. Right now. It's, it's an awesome event. They are running it this year, which is cool. But you know, there was a guy on launch who was kind of struggling with things and it was kind of windy and kind of cross and people have been blown, some launches and stuff.
And, you know, I could just see he wasn't quite in the right frame of mind and, you know, went over and I kind of them an out like, Hey, you know, if today doesn't feel right, don't worry about it. Its going to be Epic up here tomorrow. And I could just see him like so thankful for that. And cause we'll brought it up on the podcast I did with, with him and Jeff and we talked about risk and you know, there've been, I think it was right after Cody's accident this year. And I really wanted to do something for the community that was kinda like, you know, from, from to people that know a lot about risk and have seen a lot of accidents and they, they both had fantastic advice, but that was one of them that we'll had was that, you know, in his early days he had a much harder time, you know, he saw stuff that he was like, man, that ain't right.
And I should say, but he didn't, you know, for all the reasons you just said, and then now he's like, you know, now I don't care. Now I'm old enough that, you know, if it needs to be said, it needs to be said and they might not appreciate it, but at least I can live with myself if they hook themselves off and die. And I think that's more of the approach we have to have. And I think, you know, some are more lucky than others. Like when I went through that whole kind of like sketchy time of my flying kind of 300 hours to a thousand hours where I was pushing really hard and I was starting to think about the X outs and that kinda thing.
I mean, luckily just luck and blind luck. I was in sun Valley and I had people around me who were willing to say something, you know, farmer and Nate and NIC and you know, these, these mentors of mine. And I just had to say it wasn't, it was never, I mean, it was never like, I guess I want to encourage everybody to do that because if you don't and something happens, that's something you got to live with forever. Like you're encouraging people to speak up when they see it.
Yeah. I mean, and in there is, there is a balance here and you don't want to be ground suck Joe up on launch and talking about all the bad stuff. For sure. We don't want to do that either. But you know, I think that many of us are pretty good at witnessing and seeing how it shouldn't be done. And you know, we're all learners at some point and we're all learning in this sport forever. But you know, I, I guess what I'm saying is those times when those people call me out, what I, what I don't like now is that they're not calling me out on it now.
Now I'm going to be some expert, you know, now I'm supposed to, Oh, you've done the X out. A lot of stuff. No, I still want to be told do, and I'm looking, I look like an a*****e and I'm doing something wrong. I mean, I think it's, it's good for our longevity. So this is just a public service announcement part of this podcast that I think that we are a community that we do have to look out for each other and we do need to be okay with that. And just stepping in. And like you said, I there, there are more tactful ways to do it than others.
And you know, if you have a moment to think about how could be tactful about it, you know, due that way. But
Speaker 2 (44m 34s): Yeah, I think that one of the things that I think you're right, and I appreciate that. And I hear from you encouragement that I should use discernment to speak up when it's necessary. And when it, when I see it and I agree, that's one of the things I've been talking about, you know, it's like, it's a hard thing to do, man. It's not, I don't have the answer. I don't have the answer as to like, this is how you should talk to people on lunch. It's really difficult. It's like, but I think that if we start acknowledging some of the reasons why it's hard to talk to people on launch, why it's hard to receive criticism or constructive or not on launch, then I think that will be leaps and bounds further towards a space and a community that actually self supports rather than self regulates, because regulation is only needed if you're blowing it right.
And support is required when we were like bringing everyone up into a new level of personhood regulations, like the idea that we need to hold people back from stupid things, as opposed to the idea of support where we need to like pull people up and out of those.
Speaker 3 (45m 49s): Yeah. Yeah. I have just, you know, I, I have to handle all the Oop of stuff for our site and every year go through their risk assessment thing. And so you have to do this mindbogglingly slow, tedious process of, you know, this launch requires it can handle this much wind at the low end, in the high end, in this much cross. And it's just so ridiculous. How many, one, I'm the only one that's ever going to look at this? No one else will look at this. Even any students, you know, we have to give people ownership to do what they know how to do is just, there is no way you're going to read the Bible every single time you go to, before you fly off the mountain, people have to just learn these things kinetically and see other people do it and have mentors and in all of that stuff.
And I mean, I think to your point about being on launch and not say something, I think very often we are so overloaded, especially when we're new at this sport with what's going on and what's happening that you don't even know. You're not really that present. It's not a bad thing for Ari for Ari to come up and go like, Hey man, I was thinking about grabbing some pizza later on, you know, you could approach it that way, you know? And, and I just wanted to make sure, you know, are you here right now? Or is there anything, you know, cause sometimes we are dehydrated or low on energy, wherever we're thinking about our business.
Something else we're not really there. We're not planned by that whole Shapiro thing. And this flight you're about to take is the most important fight of your life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47m 19s): Yeah. That's it's it's I think that it's just a call to recognize like the, the size of that ask, right? Yeah. Like it's hard, we're like up against lot of different things. Like we are just these like such complex creatures and our emotional lives are so incredibly complex and they compound on the complexity of the other person. And so like are it's like, it's like we're trying to watch some kind of eight K IMAX, three D thing.
And we've got like some kind of Atari processor that we're trying to like render these images out with a, you know, a f*****g world is a big man. Our heads are small. It's a hard to fit all of this stuff in not to mention. We're like trying to fly through this invisible substrate and not lose our lives. And now we're, and we're also like, have this, am I doing it right? Do you love me thing? And we also have this like decades of like trauma and not being accepted and not being acknowledged and being bullied and picked on and, or bullying and picking on, or like fighting with my brothers or like any of the f*****g b******t.
It's like, f**k man, I got a lot of baggage. I've got a lot of baggage man. And so it's like when you come up to me and you're like, Hey, Ari your reserves laying on the ground. Maybe today is not your day. And I'm like, no, shut up. Gavin just give me the pull cord so I can put it back in now we're going flying. It's a big ass. And so I think we just gotta have a bit more reverence. We just gotta have a bit more reverence for this whole thing. And how does this,
Speaker 3 (48m 54s): This area, how does this community, this sport compare to the other ones, your, you know, your going to shoot this film with, with the folks that do a lot of base jumping wing suiting, you know, other kinds of shorter intensity, but high risk deals. I mean, obviously highlighting for two kilometers is not short. That's a really long one, but how do they, how do they compare? How do they sit with you in your being of pursuits?
Speaker 2 (49m 25s): Hmm. It's a great question. You know, it's funny. It's like paragliding is like, I can, I can definitely get to launch by myself. I can launch by myself. I can fly all day pretty much by myself when I land on my need a ride. But it's like, you don't, you cannot rig a Highline by yourself. Like if there's not someone on the other side of the thing to pull the rope across and to secure it, like you ain't Highline in. So there is a bit more collaboration in that.
Generally. I think that the highlighting thing also has this stupid, like route establishment thing. We were like, people are drilling bolts and they're placing them permanently. So there's a lot of drama around that. And, but in general, Gavin I think I don't, I just don't think they're that different. I think that we're all doing these for similar reasons. It's like the emotional draws they're in all of these and the type of people that do 'em is pretty similar. It's like you're climber and you're also a kite boarder and you probably can, right.
A mountain bike, well enough to hurt herself and all these different things. And it's like, there's like, you know, I just don't think there that are that much different. I think the circumstances are different, but I think the essence is generally the same. It's like it still hurts. If someone walks up and tells you that you've tied the knot wrong or like tells you that you've backed clipped or you know, any of these number of things. And it's like it really, as I say this out loud, I think that we're actually getting closer to the heart of it because I think that what is true in paragliding is just true interpersonally, right?
Like what is true about it? Being difficult to make constructive criticism on launch is that it's difficult to support one another in life constructively. It's difficult. Yeah. It's difficult and we don't f*****g practice it enough. Right? So philosophy, one of the techniques have philosophy is you take what you think is true and you expound it out to the extremes. And that's essentially what we're doing here. We're like taking the community and that we're distilling it down to like, what is the essence?
What is, why is that difficult for us? Why is that difficult for us? What, what is it about our bean? What is it about my personality? What is it about my wounding, my upbringing, my conditioning, my relationships, my nutrition, my blood sugar. That makes it hard for Gavin to say something to me on launch, right? This is a tool. Paragliding is definitely a tool we have to grow up. Like we have to f*****g grow up and like, we're speeding towards the edge of the cliff.
If we don't grow up, we all die. And it's like, we're going to have a transformation one way or the other where either going to die. And on the other side of it were going to be like, Oh, the white lie, Whoa, that was a crazy ride. Or we're like, before we skid off the edge, we'll be like, Whoa, lets turn this thing around, you know, the sixth extinction of earth, maybe we can keep it at 50% biodiversity loss and not go all the way to 99. It's kinda of a crazy thing. Right. But it, it really, it really just makes the, it makes the journey more meaningful.
And I think that we're all looking for meaning in this, whether we acknowledge that or not, we're all looking to like appreciate beauty and to have surreal experiences and to like kind of be AUSTRAC. And I think that if we know that and we can face that for what it is. I think that the moment we actually are awestruck, it can hit us a bit deeper. It can stay with us longer. We can realize what is important. The helmet kicking can be limited and the, the criticisms can be more constructive.
The community can get stronger. The support can get deeper. And if that happens in paragliding, like the chance that you become a more vulnerable, authentic, truthful, mature paragliding pilot, and that you go home and you're the old a*****e that you were is zero. Like if you grow up in paragliding, you f*****g grow up, man. Right? Like you don't become like a really wise person and one sect of your life and go home and hit your kids. Like that's not how it goes.
So like, if we can, like, I feel like this is just like my chances to like, okay, paragliders I love you. I am, you let's grow up. We can do this together. We can support each other. Like we can do this in a way that like, we actually acknowledge the emotional side to our sport, to our nature, right. That I am like an emotional creature. And I feel all this s**t and it, like, I have a f*****g race car for a mind and it's like, it's crazy. Right? But like, if we can acknowledge this and support each other in it, we can literally change how we are.
And that trickles down into every single thing. That's like trickles down into your business, how you run your business, whether that's humanely and with equity and all these different things, man, like the maturation that we can bring forth and paragliding can literally change the world because let's face it. Paragliding is full of doctors. It's full of entrepreneurs. It's full of engineers, its full of software dudes, its full of podcasters, its full of fathers and husbands and brothers, right.
It's full of sons, its full of families. It's like, man, if we can make transformational change in this small little tiny sect of people, the ripples are like, shouldn't be underestimated. The ripples shouldn't be underestimated. I think I just like every time we talk, I, I commend you for the Cloudbase Mayhem because I think you've done a really great thing. And in bringing the safety and the,
Speaker 3 (55m 27s): The technical side of it
Speaker 2 (55m 29s): In a really powerful way. And I think that people have responded in a way that is now supporting you, you know? And, and I, I really commend that and I think that we can keep going and we can keep digging in and like, okay, like there's a technical aspect that we need to address. There's an emotional aspect. There's a nutritional aspect. There's like a sustainability aspect. There's a community aspect. There's a personal development aspect. It's like, there's really no limit to the types of growth that you can have personally using paragliding as an anecdote.
Speaker 3 (56m 6s): No, I dig that man. I mean, it's a I I keep going back to your idea that it's a tool for personal development as well. You know, w one of the, one of the things that has come up a few times with, you know, kinda the real expert and world cup pilots, you know, the ones that are consistently on top, an observation of that kind of 10 people in the world, there's a couple of women now that are constantly in that realm as well.
They're all like super chill. These are very calm people about how their approach they're, you know, these are not the people that bomb out and kick their helmet ever. They laugh about it, you know? Cause they've been there long enough. They know that you bomb out. It doesn't matter how good your, you know, and what their approach is. Very it's, they're, they're, they're, they're always the ones that are the most chill. And if that's the approach we had with all the problems you just mentioned in the world, we'd all be better off one way, you know what we could, we could peacefully protest and be chill about it and you know, and everybody could understand and walk and in its interest step into their shoes and yeah.
And not get angry.
Speaker 2 (57m 31s): Yeah. So maybe I'm curious, I'm curious, like the validity of the causality, their like, you know, I've heard the joke, you know, Nick grease before I was in my first competition was like, Arie, you just need to calm down, just calm down. He says, we joke that Kriegel takes beta blockers. All right. So just pretend you're on beta blockers. So, but at the same time, it's like, I dunno the chance that you just like the Gavin shows up and he's just like super calm is really low, but to chance that you show up and kick some serious ass, it's like, it's their, you know what, I have to be calmed to kick ass, but I think you're right.
And like the experience that I have like around Josh Cohen is a relevant there. He's a very, he's very calm and soft spoken, but I don't necessarily think that, that I have as good of a window
Speaker 3 (58m 30s): Go into his psyche to you.
Speaker 2 (58m 32s): You actually make the determination whether or not his mind is as wild as mine is just faces is more stoic and his voice is a lot calmer and he's an introvert. So I'm not really sure what it is. And I don't necessarily think that I would encourage people to be calm because I am the f*****g last thing from calm, like people and told me to calm down my whole life. I f*****g hate that. So I definitely would never tell people to calm down. I think that's why you and I get along. This is definitely not a calm.
This is not a calm, safe space down then. This is a Viking. We are definitely not fueled by daisies in butterflies of on a little bit of powerful, but a little bit more powerful you will around here. So I don't know what it is. And I think I don't know what it is, but I think the interesting question that arises for me there is like, what are the requisite virtues have a good paraglide pilot knot, the requisite behaviors. One of the requisite virtues, right?
This is a big difference. Behaviors are manifested by virtue. Virtues are the underlying structure that exudes a behavior that the behaviors emerged from. So what other requisite virtues have a good paraglide pilot? I think a good paraglider pilot. And I'd love to jam on this with you. I think a good paraglider pilot is prudent, right? Prudence is, is one of the Cardinal virtues, right? The four Cardinal virtues prudence is foresight and caution.
Then there's temperance. These are just the, let's just talk about the four Cardinal virtues. And maybe we can see if they fit paragliding. The four Cardinal virtues are temperance, which is to be of sound mindedness in modernity. We thought of temperance as sobriety that you're not f****d up all the time. That's a pretty good place to start for paragliding. Cause man, there's a lot of beer and paragliding and the next one is prudence. Prudence is, is foresight and caution. Then there's courage, obviously courage. You, you don't launch paraglider without some courage, but also courage is the ability to do things that are difficult.
And I think that, you know, we've touched on a couple of those, you know, speaking up when you should, but also having the right tact. And in the fourth one is justice. Justice is knowing what is fair and what is right. And I think, I think that this is a really good place to start. These, this is the four Cardinal virtues. This is like more than 2000 years old. Right? So I think that if we started with like, okay, if personhood is a state of being, if a man who doesn't achieve state of being then pilot hood, isn't achieve state of being and pilot who's is an achieve state of being then what are the requisite virtues that we need pilots to embody not talk about?
Not pretend, not virtue signal embody, what are the things that we need pilots to embody to be a good paragliding pilot? I don't know if I have the answers, but I think that those four, it's a nice starting point. And I think that the process of thinking about who you want to be and what principles you want to write down in your mind that will guide you towards those ends, right?
Like what metrics do you want to have in your life to judge yourself by is a really, really good place to start. And I think its like the beginning, it's like the, it's like the beginning of the path right before the show I gave you the, the matrix, the matrix reference where Neo goes and he sees the Oracle and the Oracle tells him, no, you're not the one. And Neo goes back to morphine, is this, I don't know, man. She said, I'm not the one Murphy says Neo. There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
And so I don't think we need to try to know the path. We just need to walk the path
Speaker 3 (1h 2m 45s): In your experience, run with, you know, some pretty high level athletes and a lot of different realms. Why is it that very few of them take to aviation? Does that mean here in sun Valley? I run with some pretty bad ass skiers and bikers and they have no interest in flying nun.
Speaker 2 (1h 3m 11s): Yeah. That's funny. Sage Losa is a good friend of mine and perfect. I'm like Sage I'll teach it a pair of glide for free anytime he's like no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm like, well you jump off the jumps so far. You love the Hawkins, the cliffs. What is it? I don't know, man. It's like a, you just, I don't know. Is it a screw loose when I talk to you? I just wonder if just like we all just have screws loose, just like Gavin Josh is make us do this s**t.
I'm not sure, but I also think, I also think it's funny because I think we're just in the infancy of this sport, especially in America, man. It's like, we're just in the infancy and I think that certain things have to be normalized for them to really take hold. And I think we're just in the frame
Speaker 3 (1h 4m 0s): And it might be as simple as that. It might be just that you don't, when you go to the Alps, you can't go to the Alps and not see paragliding everywhere. I mean, it might just be as simple as that, it might just be your visibility and gondolas and access and grass covered mountains. And that, that it could be as simple as that. And you know, maybe it's not as complicated as a, well, I keep hearing about the accidents and the, you know, but yeah, I've, I've always been surprised by that. Well I I took us away from your, you know, the Cardinal virtues.
So the it's interesting because Kriegel recently there was an article or maybe there was a video where actually this is in the book that will be published here shortly. But he talks about, you know, that people who are pretty interested in safety, so passive safety, not taking too much risk, they're not very good pilots. They don't get very good. They're not going to be very good.
You know, the, he talks about, you know, the, the people that become good at flying drive fast, they risk themselves. They, they're not so concerned with safety as a whole. I mean, they're, I don't think they're like necessarily adrenaline junkies, which is a term that gets thrown around too much. But you know, they're not that they have a death wish or something, but
Speaker 2 (1h 5m 29s): You, cause you're you're one to, one of the virtues was, you know, Free
Speaker 3 (1h 5m 33s): Or site and prudence was, you know, foresight and kind of yes. And I think some of that needs to be thrown to the win a little bit to get good. You know, some of that and it has to be, you have to you're you're walking a Highline to an extent I'm not a highlighter, but you're walking a line in there a little bit aren't you? And this has always been something that's really tricky to pull apart and packaged together, especially for new pilots, because it's hard too.
On the one hand to try to tell somebody that's new. Like, Hey, here's that, here's what you got to do to save your life. But at the same time, we don't learn without making mistakes. We don't get better without screwing up.
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 20s): Yeah. So what comes up for me there? That was very interesting point. And I think what comes up for me there is like, I don't think that when we talk about prudence, when we talk about foresight and caution, I don't think that there's an objective measure of what we're trying to protect. Right. I think that if we made the objective measure to protect ourselves from sickness and injury and death, then we would say, well, the people who aren't prudent get good at paragliding, but I don't think that's actually, it it's more like there's kind of this sliding scale and there's this sliding scale.
And it's also circumstantial every single time. Every, every different scenario manifests a different risk. That being prudent to the risk might look different. Every single roll of the dice, you know, there's a part of me hear that just wants to contextualize virtue and let it stand aside from behavior but not disconnected from, because I think that what might be prudent for a 19 year old is probably not prudent for a 43 year old father of four.
What is prudent for one person might not be prudent for another, what might be within. And this is like a comes down to risk tolerance and all this stuff, but it's very difficult to derive an art. Like how do you fly your paraglider? Like, it's very difficult to do that. This is more like building up a framework in yourself so that you can try to tell yourself, you know, I think it's hard for, to tell you it's really hard for you to tell me, but it's like if we can support each other in building up each other structures of like our sense-making and our risk assessment and our prudence, like that's really like at the, like, that's really at the heart of what we're trying to do here.
It's not so much like telling each other how much risk you can take. It's not like no, no twisted infinities like an outward barring the trick from paragliding. No one can do twist infinity is the more it's like, I mean, in general, I think that we have such a ass backwards relationship with death. So I think there's a something in that that makes us kind of averse to risk in a way that we, you know, that in France, it doesn't seem like they are, you know, it's like, there's no amount of paragliding deaths that we will close down the tram from.
Paragliders although we did see that with wing suiters a couple of years ago, shutting down wing suiting for a week for something, you know, and they're like, alright, you can get back at it. You guys, and well, we know that you love that. You get back out there. All right. I guess debt hasn't the worst thing go, limp wise, go live your life. But yeah, I dunno, a man, this is like, the question is before answers thing and obviously the questions have to start inside yourself and what is prudent and why am I doing this?
And what am I trying to get out of it? And can I temper my results? How can I, can I get that from myself? Whether or not I bomb out or not? You know,
Speaker 3 (1h 9m 52s): Let me ask you some Why. So, you know, in my business was kite surfing still is. And in a, in a sense it's totally shut down with COVID, but, you know, I spent a good portion of my life, way more than I ever planned sailing around the world and, you know, doing kite surfing expeditions and a half to intaking people, kite surfing. And you know, when I got into kite surfing, it was like, yeah, this is kinda neat. And this is cool. And using the wind, which I had done a lot in sailing and, you know, so I picked it up pretty quickly and, but honestly got bored of it pretty quickly, you know, there's your not going to die, kite surfing or a very, it'd be very unusual.
I mean, I, and I did it back in the day in the days when the kites were quite a bit more dangerous, you know, now it'd be really hard to die. Kite surfing, you know, you've got a splat of yourself on a cliff or ledge or something, but you got to really screw up. So having that lack of intensity, I think is one, you know, it was basically, I love kiting waves cause in terms a pretty crappy surf day, which I I've always just liked surf more. Cause it's more simple. It's just, it's more pure. And, but Keiser can, can turn in a pretty lousy day of surfing, you know, when it's on shore something into a really fun day.
So I'm not, I'm not saying that, you know, well, some of my best days have been while cutting in and especially cutting waves, but it has none of the, that paragliding does. And I think that's just risk. And I think that's just aviation, you know, it's gravity, you mean you're playing in a realm that you mean you're playing with gravity and Keiser and that kind of thing too, but your coming down on a water and anyway, I just wonder what the, what you think is, I don't know.
I mean high lining, obviously, you know,
Speaker 2 (1h 11m 40s): You love risk. That's what I learned.
Speaker 3 (1h 11m 42s): Well, yeah. Well and I guess let me refine my question. I'm just going on and on. But the question is why are some people more attracted to that kind of risk, that specific kind of risk? So not golf.
Speaker 2 (1h 11m 58s): I think that my I'll just speak for myself here. I think that my affinity for risk is to appear like I'm strong. Like I can temper myself. Like I can control my emotions that I can do things that other people are just too f*****g afraid to do. Hmm. I think that that's most of my relationship with risk also it's it's not just external write that. So what I just explained is how I want to be perceived by other people, but there's a big internal part of it to that. I'm trying to prove to myself my own strength, my own ability to regulate my emotions, to overcome yada yada, right?
Because all of these things that we're talking about, like you want to show off outside, but you're also trying to show off inside. We were also trying to prove to yourself that you have achieved this level of personhood. Okay. I think that's so f*****g important to remember here because when we talk about all these different reasons why we paraglide, it's so important to remember that I'm paragliding to tell myself that I'm doing it right. That I am f*****g worth it. I'm good enough. I'm worth it. I'm capable. I'm competent. I'm brave. I'm f*****g out here risking my life.
I'm brave. Right? Come on. Right? Like the chance that if you f*****g were in accounting in your whole life, that you didn't just totally feel like a miserable piece of s**t at this point is like pretty good. It's pretty low, man. Like you've proven to yourself that you are the person that you are like, you've made yourself by trying and by banging your head up against some of the stupidest ideas like paragliding and across the Alaska range. So, you know, and it's like at the end of the day, you go to sleep with the feeling that you tried and your identity is secure in the way that you've shaped it.
And we shape our identities both internally and externally and risk is a big part of that. And we also want to speak to the reason why paragliding is so much better than kite surfing.
Speaker 3 (1h 13m 56s): Yes, let's have it.
Speaker 2 (1h 13m 57s): And then the reason that it's the reason, it's the same reason that, and this is I'm speculating and I'm also, this is my own anecdote. I ski raced for one season as a freshman in high school, I was pretty good at it. That was a great skier. They tried to disqualify me for doing a backflip off the corners of my bib on that,
Speaker 5 (1h 14m 17s): Which I was like, yeah, whatever. Like you just go off on me. And I also blew out my binding by a guy.
Speaker 2 (1h 14m 23s): Do you want a one 80 and ski and switch on my race skis, which then
Speaker 5 (1h 14m 27s): Caught the tail and blew the heel piece out
Speaker 2 (1h 14m 29s): Ski racing. Like you've got to slip the course, right? You got to ski down the core sideways and take all of the snow off of it. And what you do did that course is you make it two dimensional. The course might undulate, but it's two dimensional. You can't go into the course, but man, if you've ever skied a three foot powder day now, now you've introduced a third dimension. You have introduced a third dimension and the experience is now exponentially richer.
It is exponentially richer. And when you kite, sir,
Speaker 5 (1h 15m 11s): What I imagined I have, kiteboard it a couple of times
Speaker 2 (1h 15m 15s): You were kinda like, you can catch some pretty good Air for the most part. It's like your on the surface of the water. If you could kite surf and then like to plunge down a submarine in hold your breath and then come popping up like a dolphin, get a lot more exciting for your Gavin. Okay.
Speaker 5 (1h 15m 32s): You get a lot more
Speaker 2 (1h 15m 33s): And exciting for you. Cause there's this dimensionality, there's this dimensionality and this is this week. We're coming full circle here because when we unlock another dimension, we allow ourselves to grow on an exponential plane. And this is with in relationship, the dimension is depth because you could have a relationship and that's the existence plane, and then the duration plane. But now you introduce the plane of depth and it kind of reinvents the thing, Oh God, how deep are we going to go?
How deep into me with my, let you write that into my psyche, into my heart, into my mind, into my life. So I had never experienced anything like paragliding. When I, when I started paragliding, I started getting the sled rides. I was like, yeah, cool. This is another thrill. The first time I made a full continuous turn in a thermal that was taking me up and I saw the parallax effect of the place where I launched off of go below me.
Speaker 5 (1h 16m 37s): That was it. That was it.
Speaker 2 (1h 16m 39s): And honestly, still to this day, I think my favorite part of paragliding is climbs. My favorite part of paragliding is climbs because it's just an exercise in the dementia, the dimentionality of the sport. It just shows you the, you can just f*****g go from 150 feet off the deck to being in a six meter, a second climb to totally speck the f**k out in no time. Right. And there's this dimensionality to it.
And I think that that's what I'm kind of like getting addicted to right now. And I think that there's a part of me that needs to, paraglide less because I'm diving into the depth of myself and into the depth of my relationships with other people. And I feel like I'm being called to encourage other people to do that. And then I'm not, I would never tell anyone to not paraglide, but I'm like, okay, there's like a depth that you can bring into your paragliding that will fulfill you in ways that you might have never imagined before. Just in the same way that paragliding exhilarates you in ways that you would never felt before.
Speaker 3 (1h 17m 46s): I think I like your two dimensional versus three dimensional analogy because the, where my mind went when you were describing that is, you know, yesterday I went over to King mountain. Hadn't been there in a couple years, cause our road washed out in a couple of years ago and it's now back. And anyway, King's just like the pucker factor. It King is the sky is a lemon over there. I mean, it is, it always kicks our ass no matter what, even on the mellow days, it's just, it's big, it's big air.
And you know, I had a little flight, three Air and bombed out early. It was pretty windy, but my, my mind went there because it wouldn't matter how many times I flew King could be thousands and thousands and thousands. And know I will never repeat the same experience there ever in this sport. You know, the launch that I used in training right down a Hill here at sun peak is, ah, I have been up that thing way more times than I can count. I have no idea how many times I've been up that mountain and I've never had the same experience twice.
And kite surfing is like, you know, you can tweak your board and get a little better fancy footwork and you can do, you know, all kinds of little stuff, but basically your riding back and forth, basically you're just in the same plain going back and forth. So I like that. I think that's, that's pretty compelling, airy. Let's let's end on the big one. I was just out with a bunch of people looking for Kiwi and the desert and one day, very beautiful Knight.
You know, I kind of look at this like Kiwi brought us on his last big adventure. And, but you know, the, the initial kind of search crew bunch of us from sun Valley went down and I had this really beautiful night with Belcourt with bill up on a Ridge where we were kind of exploring different ideas to maybe where he could have gotten to. And we started talking about the next album and we started talking about some of the big days he's had, he's been chasing it really hard this year and had some beautiful flights.
And then we were talking about ascetics in lines and all this. And, and at one point I just said, you know, Why bill, why do we do this? And his answer was the easiest in this most simple I have ever heard, cause this is something I think many us get challenged with because you said, you know, we ha we have all these ways to justify the risks, but we also have, we have to have the answer. Like we will set, we have to have the answer to this question. And it's an important one. And Bill's answer was that we need to, we need to do this.
And if you feel that need to do it, then you have to do it. And if you don't, then that's when you have to stop. I kind of liked that because it, it was simple and I haven't felt that need, and there have been times where I haven't felt that need. And so I think those are the times where you kind gotta be really wary of stepping off the Hill when you don't have that need.
Speaker 2 (1h 20m 47s): Yeah. I think that I would start by just commending you in all of the people that went out there looking for QA is like such a, that's an honorable thing. And it really just shows what the paragliding community is capable of. And when we talk about how we can change the world through paragliding, this is exactly what we mean. This is like, this is one of the virtues. This is like, you don't f*****g leave your friends out there. This is like loyalty and courage. These are like, these are some of the virtues that we're talking about, you know?
So thanks for going out there to look for them. I know that, you know, like Irish Mike and one of my friends from band here, he went to, he drove to Nevada immediately and I was like, f*****g good on you, Mike. I know you'd come looking for me.
Speaker 3 (1h 21m 31s): Yeah. Just briefly that the, that the community response was a child. It's amazing. Like you said, we've got the engineers in the doctor's and the teachers, and you know, we've got people from all over the world that are full on this, you know, and they're just pulling in with the resources we have in our community are, are absolutely astounding. And, you know, people came from Hawaii and I mean all over the world, but also just all the people at home doing really, really integral and important and very needed work on helping and it's.
Yeah, it was, it was awesome to see it there's of course the tragedy side of it, but there's also all the learning and the crazy adventure that he brought us on. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 22m 16s): And love that perspective that he had brought you on that adventure and that he had brought so many people together. You met new people and you really like everybody like embodied their highest selves and the more selfless and working and collaborative and cooperative. And I think that if anything, I would love to just iterate as this perspective, that that event, this undertaking is exactly the kind of incredible impact that the paragliding community you can have on the world.
And this is just one small thing, but man, that's like, we expand that out onto what we could do everyday of our lives. And that's a pretty profound potential that we have together. Yeah. But what Belcourt said that we have to, when I used to ski, like I did, I don't know. I still would go off a big jump and do tricks, but not a 150 days a year. I used to, I used to say that I thought that the world would be a better place if people allowed themselves to be burdened by the things that they really knew they wanted to do.
And that they knew they could do. There was like this there's this weird thing. And it's like, you know, I would do one trick and there's some variation of it. That's scary and scarier and you want to do it. If, you know, you can do one back flip, but can you do two backflips? Do you know? You can do, you know, it's possible, you're inspired. You want it so bad at that point, you should let yourself be burdened by that desire. Like the fact that you're being called to the sky, you're being called to fly these certain lines.
You think it's possible. You really believe. And you know, you can do it g*****n, man, let yourself be burdened by that. Let that be like a driving force for you. It's crazy right now because we're in the midst of like bringing like a public health into your awareness in a way that is kind of ridiculous amongst all the GMOs and herbicides and all the ways that we have never given a s**t about public health. And now all of a sudden we pretend to, but the idea that the things that you really want to do that you know, are possible that you could actually be giving a very beautiful gift to the world by chasing like, man, if you don't, if you don't genuinely believe that, then what does that do for like Kiwis disappearance?
What does that, how does that contextualize one of us losing our lives? Like if it's only responsible for us to like, stay home, save lives and not go paragliding, then what does it mean when one of us dies, right? Like if we can't give a beautiful gift to the world by risking our lives paragliding, then man, like that's a f****d up worldview that I don't even know how to like contend with. But I genuinely think that what Belcourt is saying there, that we have to is like from a meta perspective, from like a perspective of humanity.
Yes. Like you are that guy. You're that guy, man. Like, no, one's going to go bushwhack through the Alaska range. Like it's something that you want to do that you're being called to do its on your path. You have to walk the path. I love that f*****g Belcourt Yoda man is always got those. These got a good one line. I think that we can, it's good to be analytical. And it's good to think about all this and it's good.
Like, well GAD said to us, we each have to have a reason for this. And what I love about bill is he
Speaker 1 (1h 26m 4s): Makes it all very simple. I mean that guy's analytical. He's figuring it out. He's given a lot of thought to all of this, you know, he's not blindly doing anything, but at the same time, he's just like, why do you have to go paragliding? Because you have to go paragliding, you know, like, let's keep it simple to stop f*****g overthinking this. You know, you love it and you're good at it. And we're having a really good time doing it. Go do it all the time in humanity where we had to trade our physical labor to control the outside world is over.
We did it. Yeah. We mastered the environment. Now we need to like, people need to like embody their bliss. Like we need to live in our joy and we need to be better do each other in mature and grow up and learn how to talk to each other and support each other's development and, and f*****g raise our kids in a peaceful and nutritious, wholesome way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're awesome, man. I appreciate it. A what a blast so much as always, I really dig talking to you.
You make me think sometimes too much, which is good. And
Speaker 6 (1h 27m 15s): In writing me that actually I might, you can tell they're like dude, with a paraglider the other day I was online, you couldn't stop thinking what the f**k?
Speaker 1 (1h 27m 23s): You know what? I'm sorry. No, but that's good. But I appreciate it. Appreciate your perspective and a you're concerned for us in the world and what we're doing to it and we need more voices like that. So thanks man. I appreciate it. And I hope you have a good flight this afternoon. There's still some time for you to get out there and enjoy it. Thanks. Gavin talk soon Brown. See you. Bye. Cheers.
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