I’ve had my friend and mentor Bill Belcourt on my mind a lot lately. He managed to handily win the US XContest this season with a series of impressive, committing, deep flights in the Intermountain west while juggling two professional jobs and being a father and husband; and he won a task at the XRedRocks hike and fly race last month and nearly took 1st place overall, proving there is no need for a masters category even when races are extremely physical. For this show we went back to the archives to bring you the very first show that kicked off the Cloudbase Mayhem way back in 2014. Myles has worked his magic on the sound and this is one of those shows that is packed with wisdom we all need to hear more than once. Enjoy.
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Speaker 1 (0s): Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. This is actually an oldie, but goodie Episode. We haven't done this. I think we've only done this once. I've gone back to the archives and posted up a show, but bill Belcourt has been on my mind a lot lately. He was down at the X red rocks one day to have that I can fly race. We had a three-day stay trace down there that I was the race director for very different position than something I've done in the past. And it was a blast.
We had awesome weather. It was an amazing inaugural event. And our friend, Matt datum won the $5,000 prize for first place in the pro division. And everybody's already talking about in starting to plan next year's event. So if you missed it this year and you're into hike and fly, pay attention to the X red rocks.com website, and we'll be opening applications up there soon and changing a bunch of things to make it even better. And it was blast and it was pretty amazing.
It completely wore me out. And I came back to a very furious, final build here, knack and in sun valley, Idaho to get my family moved in and out of the trailer that we've been in since before the X outs. And so I'm in burning the midnight oil for the last few weeks, big time. And I have not been able to record a show. Haven't been able to get anybody lined up in the last couple of weeks. So we thought we'd go to the archives and go to the very first one, the show that inspired all this Mayhem and all this madness was with bill Belcourt.
And we were, we went through, he was the head of R and D at that time for black diamond down in salt lake. And we were shooting 500 miles to nowhere and went in and had a chat with him with the red cameras, rolling and everything. And you know, in you and a chat and the opportunity to sit down with Belcourt it's a bit mind-blowing. And so we used, you know, we, it was a seven minute film in the end 500 miles to nowhere, and we got a couple of really good lines from him as we knew we would, but there was an hour of footage in this interview I did with him.
Then this was 2014 that sat on a hard drive for quite a while, 24, 20, maybe 2013. Anyway, it sat on this hard drive for quite a long time. And I just thought, God, when we do with this, I didn't know anything about podcasting. And those of you who have bought the book advanced paragliding know this story because it's the opener. It's how this all got going. But anyway, somebody mentioned at one point, think it was Nick grease actually mentioned at one point, Hey, you should put this in a podcast and Podcast how's that work and that's how the ma'am happened.
But what he said back then is still totally relevant if not more so, as it is today, and it's still gold. We had some weird problems with the sound during the interview at the red cameras. They know these are these incredibly expensive, really high end cameras, but they have a lot of overheating issues and the fan kept coming on, but the audio is still plenty. Good enough. And Myles will of course do his magic.
And I think you'll enjoy it. I am sitting down tomorrow with Eduardo Garcia, so we will get caught back up as we always do. I'm sorry for we're at least a week late right now, but we will get caught back up, back on a regularly scheduled programming of putting out a show every couple of weeks, US working on some bonus stuff in the background, which we'll have out shortly as well and keep an eye out for our newsletter. We're going to have a pretty nice discount in that at the Etsy, shop the exit with ECC mag to take there and, and buy books.
If you want. You know, we've got Ricard Martins, latest, updated thermal flying, which who I had on the show recently, or advanced pair lighting or beginner paired paragliding or whatever. If you're missing some books from your library, you can go and use that code. And that will be in our next newsletter for 15% off, this has happened. I've went out to Turkey for the world cup and that went pretty well. That was a lot of fun since I've talked to you all and yeah, and ran this ex red rocks thing, which was truly a blast.
It was really cool. See, we had 50 people in the sing, the adventure in pro class and people, and really hard for three days. It was very impressive and really excited for the next one. So yeah, again, keep an eye out for that. And in the meantime, enjoy this very first show that we did with bill Belcourt cheers. Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the inaugural episode.
The very first episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast. I've been threatening to do this for an awful long time. And I finally gotten my act together and we'll see how this goes. This first show is really amazing, but first, what is this all about? What is the Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast? Basically it was born out of hope to kind of disperse knowledge about all things, Free flight. So acro cross country, whatever you fly. I think this will be very valuable to you.
The reason this kind of sparked my interest in doing and doing it to begin with was my, my first world cup that I ever flew in was here in my hometown of sun in 2012. And after the comp I was the first time I'd ever flown on a comp waiting. It was first time. I never really raced with, with guys and gals who were, were incredibly talented pilots. And after the race, we had an open distance competition here and had really bad weather, couldn't fly much at all. And instead of just wasting the time and going biking every day, a lot of the real legends in our sport got up and gave some really amazing talks about how to eat and how to hydrate and how to think big and, and basically how to fly big distances.
And, you know, we heard from Matt Beecher and Nate scales and NIC Greece and Russ Augden and bill Belcourt, and it was just incredible. And we have resources like cross-country magazine and hang gliding and paragliding and other resources. But I, it was just so much information condensed into a really small timeframe. And I think everybody that was there that was lucky enough to be there. It was just blown away. And I thought, God, wouldn't this be amazing to disperse this to the wider flying audience, whether you're expert or novice.
Like I was, I just found that I got so much out of it. One of the podcasts I listen to all the time is the Tim Ferriss podcast. And he kind of tries to dissect excellence and provide it to blame it. And that's what this podcast is all about. And I'm going to try to interview the, really the really exceptional pilots, whether they be hang gliders. Paragliders what have you in our little fringe sport and try to disperse that knowledge. The first guests I have with us is bill Belcourt.
He actually, wasn't a guest for the podcast, but he's given me the okay to put this out live. When we were filming 500 miles to know her, we stopped by black diamond. He's the director of research and development there, black diamond. And, and if you've seen the film, you know, that there's a couple lines in that film that are just phenomenal. Of course, they came from Bill our little Yoda of the sport. And, but what many of you probably don't know is that we sat down with him for over an hour and a half. And I asked him all kinds of things about throwing a reserve and what the concept of bringing it means, and how do we, how do you fly big aesthetic lines and risk and reward and safety and gear and equipment, and where paragliding came from and where it's going and two liners and the list just goes on and on and on.
It was just this insane course in, in, in Free flight that we Blockly recorded it. We had the red, camera's going, I'll have to apologize for some of the sound. There's a lot of, kind of a fan sound coming off one of the cameras, but I've, I've kind of put this together and edited a bit and I hope you enjoy. So without further ado here is bill Belcourt the legend
Speaker 2 (8m 53s): I'm bill Belcourt, and I've been flying since 1989.
Speaker 1 (8m 58s): And why paragliding? I know you've got a background in rock climbing and Alpine climbing, but why paragliding would attract you to that sport?
Speaker 2 (9m 8s): It seemed like a great descent tool for Alpine climbing, instead of carrying a bunch of ropes and equipment to get down off of something, you could just carry a, a small pair of water and fly off the top. That at least was the mentality in the late eighties.
Speaker 1 (9m 27s): And there's a paraglider and myself. We all kind of see you as kind of the legend is the one that really paved the way in cross country paragliding. How did you make the transition from using it as descent tool to using it as a traveling tool?
Speaker 2 (9m 44s): It became obvious almost instantly that the Perry water had way more potential in it than just a descent tool. And I wasn't the first one to realize that people are, I was flying with also had put that together sooner. My, my mentors like John Bouchard being one of them, Todd Bibbler being another one. They had realized the potential of paragliders to fly distance.
And the glider design at the time was evolving towards that. And in a way from, from being used as a scent tool. And if, I think back John Mittendorf, who was, was one of the bad-ass big wall climbers, and one of the early users of paragliders has a descent tool. He noticed that the speed increase of the new pair of water designs made them that much more difficult to launch in precarious places and use as a descent tool.
So, so it was moving away from that to flying a machine that was just more capable of, of flying, not just getting down off things,
Speaker 1 (11m 10s): Our aircraft and in the, in the year 2014.
Speaker 2 (11m 17s): Well, what I think of a paraglider now is I'm constantly amazed by the technology's ability to continue to evolve. And that's a credit to the companies making paragliders. I remember thinking in the nineties, all of these things are as good as they're going to get. And, and even as much as five or six years ago, that they're as good as they're going to get. And now we're just going to see incremental gain, and then there's another breakthrough, like the two liner and, and they just get better.
So I've been proven wrong enough to know that they'll just continue to get better. And the amazing thing about it is it's still basically a Dacron or nylon fabric and string, and, and they just can fold up and fit into a pack and still do incredible things, more incredible things than ever before.
Speaker 1 (12m 25s): Bill, just in the last couple of seasons, it seems like a handful of pilots here in the west have been flying these really big lines. You know, you and dad, and flew to Moab this year, all these records went down last year and this year, what do you attribute that to what's going on? Is it just wing design
Speaker 2 (12m 49s): Days that you can go far is just the realization of, of, of years of planning and waiting. And you have some ideas in mind as to what you want to do with a particular day based on the conditions of that day, whether it be lift, whether it be wind speed direction, and if you can work out your schedule to have that day to go flying.
And if you have a plan in mind that you've been thinking about for a long time, then you're just much more likely to be able to execute on the plan instead of just randomly coming up with something while you were in the air and trying to think big and trying to see the day coming, have a, a plan in place for the day, which is always subject to change, but it means you're just more likely to pull it off.
And there's been plenty of days in the past where I haven't thought big enough. I've only thought about a flight up to a certain point only to arrive at that point with a little bit a day left with no idea what to do next. And now I just try to look out as far as possible on those, on those potential flights, knowing that they can go better than expected and they can go worse than expected and you should be mentally prepared for both.
And that is just have a plan.
Speaker 1 (14m 37s): Are you able to identify those days in advance or is this something that you're seeing in the air and, and how do you have a plan for the difference, or how do you adjust to difference?
Speaker 2 (14m 53s): You can identify only so much in advance and you have a plan and a couple of contingencies, and then based on the day that you get, you can can adjust. And if you've thought about a big flight and a variety of different ways, then, then you always have a contingency. You always have an idea of what else you can do with a day besides what you thought might, might be what you were doing, if that makes any sense.
And you just have to, you have to have look at a lot of maps and you have to have given a lot of thought, talked it over with your flying buddies at times. And then when, when the conditions present themselves, even when they're in the air, the solutions are obvious
Speaker 1 (15m 52s): Last year at the world cup, you talked about the concept of bringing it. Can you speak for a moment about risk? What, you know, what that meant to me was that if you're, if you're thinking about flying big, you can't be thinking about landing and being tired or being dehydrated, you know, bringing it meant, willing to put yourself in, in compromised places and having the skills and having the mental acuity to, to deal with it.
Can you talk about that a bit?
Speaker 2 (16m 28s): Yeah. What I meant on, you know, bringing in, which is basically bringing a, a mental attitude, a mental focus, a degree of commitment to the flight and, and staying on the offensive. And it's another way of putting it is you can fly, you know, offensively, or you can fly defensively. And a defensive position in flying is ha has to happen at times, but, but if you can keep mentally on the offensive, you can, you can be pushing it.
It could be going for what's next. And knowing that you'll have to ultimately switch at times between flying off offensive and flying defensively based on the conditions that present themselves. But you always have to be thinking about the goal, which is to fly a significant flight and to do it within a reasonable degree of, of, of safety. But these are not safe sports, and there's no guarantee of a, of a safe outcome.
So, so you have to use your skills and what you know, to, to protect yourself, but at the same time to, to be pushing it. And it's, it's a fine line at times. And you learn where that line is via experience. And if you're not out there, if you're not out there training all the time, which is trying to fly these flights, then you're not going to have the experience.
And you're not going to have a good sense of the line. So, so you have to, you have to go a lot, you have to test your theories. All, you have to have that attitude of, of bringing it one, you're going for it. And you have to know when to, when to switch from offense to defense
Speaker 1 (18m 46s): Last summer we had, and kind of sort short succession, a series of just remarkable flight. It started off with Matt Beecher's flight at 193 miles from sun valley. And then shortly after that, Nate scales went 199 miles. And then shortly after that, Nick crease went 204 miles from Jackson. What's going on? What's again, what's what's changed here.
Speaker 2 (19m 14s): Well, I think the reason those big flights were happening was there's a few reasons. One being we're fairly tight group of friends. We talk all the time about trying to do something big. I was talking to farmer about 200 miles with a two liner, you know, two for two is what I was calling it. And, and how that was an exciting thing for me to try to, to try to get to as a goal.
And if we could all try to get there, it'd be, be hilarious. If a bunch of us were focusing on the same thing. So that was happening. We were talking about it. And then the competition scene had dramatically changed with the banning of open class gliders and, and most every competition in the world. And the fact that that to me, was a signal that there was, there was a bit of an end to the amount of freedom that we had when we were flying competitions.
And in order to experience something similar, we were just going to have to switch gears no longer focus as much on race to goal competitions and start to focus on a big mountain Free flight. And, and I saw evidence of that in other sports, for instance, for years in skiing, in this type of skiing that we're into, which is back country, it's gone away from, it's gone, it's gone away from safer lines and trees.
It's gone away for years now from ski racing, which when I started skiing, it seemed like that was everybody's focus. And now you S you see more people just riding big lines in the mountains. And I, I took a little from that and my shift in focus from flying competitions to just trying to fly big lines in the mountains. Cause as an alpinists, you're, you're looking for cool lines to climb.
They don't have to be the biggest or the longest. And you're just looking for an aesthetic aspect, a commitment, a something that's just inspiring to you personally. And, and you try to find something that reflects those qualities when you're out looking for something new to climb and with flying, I see it much the same way. It's not the longest line.
It's not the, it's not the records. Really. It's trying to find an aesthetic line to fly that is personally inspiring. So you just focus on that.
Speaker 1 (22m 30s): Do you think these big lines, is there a maximum, is it just going to keep going?
Speaker 2 (22m 38s): Is there a maximum, it depends on what the definition of maximum is. If the only metric you use in as kilometers then yeah, sure. There's, there's probably a maximum, but if, if the metric that you're using to judge the quality of the flight is something other than just ultimate kilometers, then there is none, you know, there's, there's cooler lines to fly. There's just deeper lines, more spectacular positions to be in.
And that in my mind is, is the number one quality I'm looking for. I'm not necessarily looking for just measuring it, the quality of flight by the distance of the flight.
Speaker 1 (23m 27s): We touched the surface, you know, I know in the Alps, most of not all the lines have been done, but it have, we touched the surface here in the, in the inner mountain west
Speaker 2 (23m 38s): Scratching the surface, as far as big lines go in the states. I use a climbing analogy to describe this. When people ask me about paragliding and what I'm doing with a paraglider. And I say, I feel like George Lowe and the Canadian Rockies in the seventies. And that is, if you look at the significant sense done in the Rockies in the seventies, George Lowe is usually the demand to have done them with various partners.
And it's a really great place to be if you realize that you're there. And I think we're here and that's why we're having such good success, because a lot of this hasn't been done before and to be there, to do it and to figure it out is a very special time. Have you ever been hurt, have ever been hurt paragliding? I tell people I only broke my neck once, so yes, I haven't heard paragliding and I did break my neck crash and a pair of water and a competition.
And did you throw your reserve now? It's too low to throw the reserve. I just had one reflexive shot at recovering the glider and did so for the most part, but didn't have the, the glide away from the hill as the Guata was recovering and ended up tumbling across the terrain. And at the time I had one of those Ferring, mildly Ferrand helmets, like a time-travel helmet, and it was what all the cool guys were wearing.
So, so we had them as well. And as I tumbled across the ground, which I didn't impact very hard, the, the helmet managed to catch the ground in the crash and twist my head around and break my neck. But other than that, I didn't have a scratch on me. Have you ever thrown your reserve? I've thrown. My reserve wants and it didn't help. No, you really want the story.
You can have it on the record. So was a PWC in the mid nineties near the, what was it called? It was the one there, the town of Lego and Italy lake Como. There's a PWC that happens there quite often. And it was, I don't know, maybe the second or the third task.
And there were some signs of vertical development earlier in the day, but then it just grayed over. So anything we saw had become embedded. And while we were seeing the vertical and other valleys, when a grade over, we didn't notice the vertical in the valley that we were in and I was flying with Dave bridges. Who's a, an old buddy and a two time national champion who was killed with Alex Lowe on shisha panga in 99.
And Dave and I were maybe five K from goal with three quarters of the field over the town of Waco when the cumula Nimbus of Baba embedded in the gray dropped out. So we had one quick turn point to hit before we could glide over the goal line. And suddenly I was going down at about, on an old 24, 2500 feet a minute.
And I was thinking, man, this is some big sink. So I pointed to glider towards the last sun patch figure. And I just fly over there and, and wait this one out. And all I could do is point the glider in a different direction, but because of the sink, I couldn't glide anywhere. And sh and then, you know, I could feel the air get cold. And I knew that it was a cell and it was dropping. It was a very first stage of a dropping and it was going to be trouble.
So the dropping air turned to wind. And I, at that point creeped out to the first soccer field. I saw another glider just landing in, and before I could get into that soccer field to win, started to pick up and, and blow me past it. So then the glider, I was flying a Firebird cult at the time, which was one of the hotter gliders ever made and was very susceptible to some dramatic frontals.
So the glider would just disappear, so gladder disappears. But at this point I was kind of used to that with the squatter and I just get it back. And, and then I arrived at the next field I could land in, and then I got blown past that one, cluttered disappear, I'd get it back. And now it's coming up on the town of Waco. And I said to myself, the glider blows up one more time. I'm just going to toss it. So at this point, maybe a few hundred feet, the glider blows up one more time.
I just instantly tossed a reserve as the glider recovers in a steep spiral within asymmetric and the reserve, the reserve weather veins behind me, but doesn't come out of the envelope. So it's, it's not, I can't reach the bridle because it's just right behind me as I'm has I'm in the spiral from the glider. So I just go back to the recliner and I recover the glider into the wind at rooftop level.
And at this point, it's, it's raining lightning Hale and, and for a moment, everything stops. And I just see this rooftop to my right, glad it comes into the wind, everything stops. And then the reserve opens. So the reserve just opens like a gunshot and starts dragging me at a high rate of speed through the neighborhood, and I'm still off the ground.
So, so in a moment later, I get, I get pasted against this chain link fence, which was good. It was like, cause it had a lot of flex to it. So I just hit the fence, it flexes and I grab onto it. And the reserve is on the other side of the fence. And it's just pulsing with the wind. And the wind is blowing at like 40 miles an hour. So this reserves pulsing what the winds, and I've got my hands through the chain link like this, and I've warmed my toes underneath the bottom of the fence.
And so, and I was climbing a lot at the time and I was really strong. It do one arm pull up with either hand. And so I'm thinking nothing's getting me off this fence. You know, I don't care how hard it blows. And so the winds just pulsing and the posts for the fence are in asphalt. And then I'm looking, I'm looking at the post cause the fence flexing a lot and the concrete cylinders are starting to crack the asphalt and come out of the ground on either side of me.
So they just splintering and I'm seeing the cylinders just kind of start rising on the two posts and I'm going no, no. And, and the, so I'm thinking, okay, now I gotta get out of my harness somehow. And so it had three quick release buckles, and I just needed to be able to let go with one hand to be able to undo them, but it was really hard. So I, so I eventually got centered over, over, over one hands and, and then managed to unclip the buckles and then just raise my arms really quickly until the harness just got sucked off me and, and the reserve blue, a couple yards, a couple houses away and just got caught in some tree.
So I was, I was out, I was standing in the hail and the lightning and the rain on in somebody's driveway, you know? And there I was. So I gathered up my stuff and while I was doing so old, Italian ladies were coming out of the house is going, oh, Madonna, oh, Madonna, whatever that means. So my God, I guess so, so one of them brought me like a double whiskey and, and I just drained it and I could really have used another one, but my Italian wasn't that good.
And then she opened a garage for me to stand in while, while the, until the rain stopped. So I'm standing in this open garage, I've gathered up all my kids, stuffed it into the bag and cops show up. So it's some Italian cop with a VW GTI. And he just motions me to throw my stuff in the car. And, and I, I do, and I get in the front seat and he doesn't say a word and he just drives down the wrong side of the street, runs people off the road with his lights on and he drives to meet headquarters.
And he doesn't say a word to me, just pulls up on the curb in front of me headquarters and just gets out of the car and just walks in. So I just kind of gathered my stuff and I'm walking in like 50 feet behind him and he finds the meat organizer and he just starts laying into him in Italian. And there's a lot of hand-waving going on and a lot of yelling. And then the cop just leaves and there I am. And I just check in and, and that was it. But the reserve didn't help me that day and I haven't thrown it since.
So that's my one reserve
Speaker 1 (34m 13s): Bill. Can you compare the flying here and the American west to other places in the world? I know you've flown comps all over the world and you found in Europe a lot. What's the, what are the major differences between the flights that we do here versus other places that you float
Speaker 2 (34m 30s): Flying in the us versus Europe? Us it's, burlier, there's more wins. I think the thermals are, are rougher being on the speed bar for any length of time, requires a lot more glider management. I've just been amazed at times in Europe, where I could be well into the speed bar in a really calm piece of error. And just being shocked by how calm it was between thermals.
And obviously there's, there's no place, very remote in Europe. You're going to find roads and cell service virtually everywhere and in the states has as indicated by guy Anderson's sun valley experience. There's a lot of places that you can be where there's no cell coverage and there's going to be, you're going to be difficult to find if something should go wrong and you're out of communication.
So, so when you're flying in the west, you're largely on your own. And, and there's, there's also there's mountain lions. There's bears, there's rattlesnakes, there's usually more wind. So, so there's, there's a lot that can, can present additional challenges when you fly in the west versus Europe.
Speaker 1 (36m 14s): Do those changes that you just talked about? Does that impact your kit? Tell me a little bit about what you carry when you do say big flights on the Uintas or in the Wasatch or other places that you've flown in the American west. Do you, do you carry a different things in your, in your harness than you do in other parts of the world here?
Speaker 2 (36m 37s): Perfectly honest, not really besides bringing some food, certainly if you're flying it out to, to do you have plenty of clothes with you, you've got your glider. I'm not, I'm not bringing much in addition to, I'm not bringing camping gear, if you will. Because as a, as an alpinists the amount of stuff that we have with us just to go flying is more than an alpinists would have, and where you could potentially be sleeping is going to be less harsh.
Anyway, it's not like you're high on some north facing ice climb on some tiny legs, shaking, shaking all night, because that's really what the high end of albinism can involve. If you're landing out in the middle of nowhere, you're, you're not as high. You've got this big paraglider you can sleep in. And if you've got a GPS, you can find some trail systems or whatnot and, and just walk out.
It's just like, it's like a long approach for going climbing just in reverse. So it's, I don't really think you need to have a lot of stuff with you besides the basics, food, water, and your gliders, your shelter.
Speaker 1 (38m 7s): What about oxygen? We're really the kind of only group of pilots in the world that have tanks in our houses and stuff. What do you think about oxygen?
Speaker 2 (38m 16s): It's a necessity out here. You're getting to the legal limit, which is about 5,500 meters and or 18,000 feet. And your cognitive abilities are much less, less sharp if you're not flying with . And even if you're flying with oh two, you're still, you're still a bit compromised because the systems aren't a hundred percent efficient and the tanks don't last the entire day, especially if it's a day where you're staying high For, for a good chunk of time, you're using up that OTU.
And in order to make good decisions in order to stay warm and to have some visual acuity to, to pick out either climbing birds or good places to land or, or power lines or whatnot, you need that oh, to, to, to stay sharp enough, to stack the deck in your favor, as far as making good decisions and staying out of trouble,
Speaker 1 (39m 23s): You've inspired a huge number of people over the years who inspires you
Speaker 2 (39m 31s): Well, who inspires me? And I've said this before, and that's anyone pushing hard for nothing. And that's what paragliding to me is, is been about. And that is, here's an obscure sport, just like climbing used to be an obscure sport. And you're trying to realize your own potential and in a place where no one sees and no one cares, and there's a purity in that.
And there's a, there's a lack of distraction that goes with it. And it's, it's just you and the elements. And, and that's it, you know, so it's a real personal experience. So, so an Altunas before me, like some of the names I've mentioned earlier, whether it be Bouchard George Lowe, or Todd Bibbler, George never got into flying paragliders, but Bouchard and, and Bibbler did.
And, and they came from, from albinism. And that was a sport, which the basic premise was doing the most with the least. And I see a paraglider as the ultimate flying machine, because it is really the least. So you're doing the most with the least with a paraglider and you're doing it, you're doing it in a very similar way to, to albinism.
And it's in your far from the public eye when you're doing it. And there's no, there's no corruption from that. And you're just doing your craft for you. And when you have some friends you can do with, it makes it all that much more special, but, but anything I've done relative to inspiring anybody else is also doing is passing the Baton as it was passed to me.
And, and it's the obligation to pass the Baton next to whoever gets it. And that's, you know, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1 (42m 3s): Well, that is it for the inaugural and Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast. I hope you enjoyed all that. And I certainly did. And next up, well, I don't know who I'm going to be interviewing next. We've got quite a few candidates, a couple of things in the hole. Maybe we'll talk to Nick Greece, who is our us champion, and just returned from the world down in Columbia recently. But anyway, stay tuned and hope you enjoyed it. And this is over and out from Gavin McClurg cures. If you find the Cloudbase Mayhem valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways.
You can give us a rating on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you get your podcasts that goes a long ways and help spread the word. You can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media. You can talk about it on the way up to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And of course you can support us financially. This show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing, lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes costs. So if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck, a show, and you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal, or you can set up a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out.
We put a new show out every two weeks. So for example, if you did a buck, a show, and every two weeks, it'd be about $25 a year. So way cheaper than a magazine subscription. And it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but I, for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like to having that stuff at the front of the show, and also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people. And these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars.
I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So I hope you dig that you can support us. If you go to Cloudbase, Mayhem dot com, you can find the places to have support. You can do it through patrion.com/ Cloudbase Mayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We've tried to make it really easy, and that will give you access to all the bonus material, a little video cast that we do and extra little nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show, but we feel like you should here. We don't put any of that behind a paywall.
If you can't afford to support us, then just let me know. And I'll set you up with an account. Of course, there'll be lifetime. And hopefully in your being in a position someday, to be able to support us, but you'll find all that on the website. All of you who have supported us, or even joined our newsletter or bought Cloudbase, Mayhem, merchandise t-shirts, or hats or anything, you should be all set up. You should have an account and you should be able to access all that bonus material. Now, thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support and we'll see on the next show.