Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 131 - Jeff Shapiro

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

Jeff Shapiro is a professional climber and pilot who has dedicated his life to the mountains. What began as a passion for rock and alpine climbing slowly evolved into a love of flight. Jeff has spent years as a professional hang glider pilot and racer, paraglider, skydiver and BASE jumper, and most recently a bush plane pilot. If that were not enough, Jeff is an avid falconer as well. When he is not traveling the world on epic expeditions, he is home in the great state of Montana with his wife and daughter. Rarely have I met a man this capable and experienced. Enjoy!

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And I cannot tell you how happy I am that myself and Jeff Shapiro finally sat down to have one hell of a conversation. I loved getting to know him. I'm so glad that we live in such a close proximity to each other, even though we've lived in this proximity for a few years now and have not connected the dots. but let me give you the wavetops of some of the things that this man is into. Rock climber, ice climber, hang glider, paraglider, skydiver, bass jumper, falconer, pilot, hunter, and on and on and on. This guy, damn, he's the best. Jeff is a Renaissance man if there's ever been a Renaissance man.

I love the way that he thinks. and I've heard nothing but amazing things about him from all of our mutual friends. Cannot tell you all happy a.m. that we were able to sit down and have a conversation. And I'm going to shut up and let you guys and gals enjoy the conversation for yourself. Clear it Hot, episode 131 with Jeff Shapiro. Enjoy. To the smoke.

I'm looking at danger close now. What would you like to talk about, Jeff? You know what's great. I was thinking about this when you were on your way up here. The number of people that we know in common, but yet we had to talk about, not actually cross paths over the number of years we've known those people in common was kind of shocking yeah i find that to be true uh with a lot of people but us in particular yeah like i mean i had conversations with you as a subject matter for what did it like five six seven years at least and

yeah here we are finally in montana yeah we were separated by i don't know a good hundred miles for the last that's all right it's not for lack of trying you know it wasn't for lack of trying for sure there's absent the world burning down literally and figuratively right now, there was some cool, or I should say maybe positive aspects of the COVID era. And I actually can't believe that that's a thing now, the COVID era. Yeah, current still. Current. But it allowed me to do things like connect the dots on stuff like this. For sure. I had some more time off. I mean, there were some negatives for sure. And I know some people's lives have been drastically impacted. But at the same time, you know, hopefully families are tighter. I'm glad that we could connect.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The number of hobbies that we share in common is also relatively insane. Yeah. You're a little deeper than I am in the hobby hole, which is, well, I've been accused of worse, I guess. But yeah, you know, it is interesting the, you know, the necessity to be socially responsible and sort of, you know, the quarantine era that we've been dealing with for the last several months, really. if anything, it's shown me what's important and what isn't. And I think so much of what we enjoy doing is about that, you know. So being able to have some quiet time, I know, and I'm sure you're probably similar, going hard for a lot of years, I sort of have found myself craving quiet time with the family and some downtime and time to sort of process and think about things. And if anything good was to come from dealing with the pandemic. It's been, you know, being able to stay a little closer to home. Certainly, as my daughter gets older, I've been finding more and more value in making

sure that I can play a role in her life that has influence. And I mean, obviously, as a parent, you always are going to have influence on how your children see the world or whatever. But not always positively. For sure, for sure. And, you know, for us. For us. us, it's been really important to instill a few, you know, values in her and the way she sees the world relative to things like respect and integrity. And, you know, she's always had a voice in our house, even from the time she was little and never said, oh, yeah, good girl, Naya, it was always, that was a good choice, you know, because words are important and she needs to understand that that choices have consequence and it's important to respect yourself. And, um,

you know, respecting yourself allows you to have the empathy to respect others. And, uh, I think giving her a voice now as a teenager, you know, she just turns 16. A lot of people say, oh, my God, man, you're on the sharp end. Honestly, you know, she's such a good person. Um, and I think that a lot of that comes from a respecting herself and, and B, because she's gotten a lot of respect from her mother and I that, you know, in turn, lo and behold, she respects us back. And, um, you know, seeing her sort of graduate from an adolescent into a really free-thinking young woman has been super rewarding. And being home for that is something that I'm really grateful for, you know, during this, this kind of strange time in the world.

I don't know if you can overemphasize enough the value of teaching or having respect for yourself. For sure. Because if you don't, I don't think if you have that anchor in the ground, you're just a ship adrift. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's been, it's always been an important concept in my own life. you know, how can you expect anybody to respect you if you don't respect them back, you know? And obviously respect is earned in the same way the character and integrity is earned.

But I think that it's really important to remember that point. Like I've told her, I don't care who it is. You don't have to respect anybody that doesn't respect you back because, you know, your thoughts and your character and your integrity and who you are and what you say and how you behave, those are the things you can control. And those are important enough that it's okay to stand up for them, you know. And I think in turn, if she feels respected and she respects herself, then she feels more secure. She feels safe.

She feels comfortable. She believes in herself. She's willing to go out and try new things. And, you know, most importantly, she's going to stand up for people who are, you know, unable to stand up for themselves and certainly it's cool to see her as a young teenager, you know, thinking critically about things like gender equality and racial equality and a lot of these issues that, like you said, are kind of creating this fucking dumpster fire that's happening right now.

And they're not easy to unpack. I've had people reaching out to me for the last week. Like, when are you going to get involved? What are you going to say something? And I'm at a loss as to what to say. because I feel like the issues are so nuanced and complex that I don't have, for one, I don't have the experience in everything that is happening to unpack it properly. I just don't feel like, like we were saying before we started recording, I've determined, and this term came from when Mike Glover, a SF dude, was sitting right there and we were talking about experts versus enthusiasts. And I don't feel comfortable on any one time.

topic to speak in definitive terms. I don't feel like I have a mastery of any one thing. Out of all the things that I've done in my life, even my old job, and even things inside of that job, I'm not a good enough person behind a rifle to speak definitively about the only way to train or the only way to do something. But I'm an enthusiast about it, but because I recognize, I mean, I might have an opinion based on experience, but I just don't think it's broad enough that I have anything of an impactful nature to offer. I'm baffled. by a lot of what I see going on. Well, two things I would say to that is, is one, the reason why, you know, I see and know you

to be a skilled individual at many things is because you do have that mindset. I think it's super important to have a beginner's mind and to always think of the world from that standpoint, from someone who has lots to learn. Because if you feel otherwise, then... You're on an egg timer. That's it. Yeah. Okay, so that's the first thing.

And then the second thing is that it's really difficult to look at the world from a perspective other than your own because you know we as human beings see the world do the filters of our egos and it's really hard to not see the world through our own eyes you know to see it through someone else's eyes to feel like a smaller part of something much bigger and to feel insignificant or to realize our insignificance is not easy to do when everything relates to you know our mortality and the way we interact with the world around us right so just you know what you were saying about not knowing what to say well you know on what platform social media is such a it's such a limited i mean how are you going to explain or how would i explain a complex issue and the

way i feel about it emotionally and logically in a fucking fortune cookie paragraph next to a photo that was on my i i mean it's just stupid right it's a stupid platform it's almost a futile attempt to begin with right right and yet you know when you try um it is nice like i i made a post yesterday um because because I felt like, you know, if there was a statement to make and there was anybody listening, that it was, you know, maybe a fairly generalized, but pretty personal thing to feel and I wanted to say. I had a comment from a woman who pointed out some of its shortcomings,

and, you know, I think it's important to have the mirror held up, and I think that it's important to look at things from other perspectives and to realize what I'm saying with good intention isn't necessarily the way it's taken from people who are, you know, neck deep in it. And, you know, in other words, I think in my post, I said, you know, like, I don't care what color hair, what color eyes, what color skin. I see everybody the same as me. And it's a very logical concept for me to want to treat people the way I want to be treated, you know. It's very, it seems like a very sort of profound or foundational moral statement to say. say, I'm going to treat someone else the way that I would hope to be treated. And, you know,

I think she came back and said, you know, it's important to remember the difference so that we can understand the way we interact with the world and the way a minority or, you know, person of color interacts with the world. And, you know, my comment back was, well, you know, to feel equal on every level inherently and yet to acknowledge the inequalities. inherently can be can be done you know that that's possible but it's like you know this is a conversation between two people about a very complex issue and how do you have it in a on instagram it's just impossible right but but i think that it is healthy to see that you know sometimes it takes dumps a dumpster fire to to recognize how many people care you know yeah so i mean

we'll see yeah and that's where i get lost like i i've spent a lot of time thinking about it and uh and you people can think or say what they want about my unwillingness so far to make a statement. It's not due to not having something to say. Like it's due to not, it's not knowing what to say. And I look at, there's a lot of things that I understand and then it starts to lose me a little bit as it gets to the fringes, as most things do. I land in the middle on most things. And I can understand an anger to the point where you're going to lash out at what you, whatever you through your optics see is a system that is pressing against you. totally understand that.

When it gets to the point where pictures now of people are essentially shopping, you know, it becomes protest, like I'll sit there and do, I'd give my life to allow somebody the right to protest, hands down. And I don't care what the issue is. But when it comes to,

it changes to let's burn this down because I want it to be burned down. And then the aspect of we're just going to, you know, I don't understand the equity exchange of, I'm going to take something a physical item because I'm angry. I don't understand the equity exchange that goes from somebody who feels like they've been oppressed. Is there a relief of that?

You know what I mean? Like I get lost in that form of thought. And I think, and again, it's at the fringes because I am a true believer of not allowing the anomaly to paint the norm. And I don't think that most people have any interest in looting. They have an interest in changing the system. And you know what?

I support them 100%. But it. It's so goddamn hard to make a statement that encompasses all of that. It is. I mean, I see, okay, so, you know, you have a significant portion of our country feeling like there is unpredictable potential for violence when they leave their homes. And that is being shown by this level of protest that is unpredictable and violent. But I think that you're right. I think people are, you know, I always say kind of a person is a smart, informed individual

and people tend to be, you know, dumb, stupid animals when they get together. It's like a mob of people who are. The mob mentality is a true thing. And, you know, when someone is feeling, and I don't mean that to, you know, sort of point my finger at anybody or to think that I'm any different. It's just that I think when someone feels, you know, slyded or impoverished or,

uh, they feel desperate, then they tend to be opportunistic. And, and, um, and I know I've, you know,

on a superficial level, have felt that and, and, um, so, you know, justified in, in the act of going into a store and, and,

you know, stealing from someone. I don't know another way to just, it's not. There is no other way to describe it. I mean, I think, I think when you were to,

if you were to take somebody who had, um, this issue at their core and they were, you know, uh, willing to die for that issue, um, but with, you know, perfect moral standard, then they would burn the town down, but, but blocked the door from anybody stealing from someone else, you know, and I, and I, and I think that there are a lot of people who are just seeing this happen and, and, you know, they're just opportunity, opportunity, you know, and I, and I, and there are people out there who just want to see the shit burn to the ground. I mean, that's as, as crazy it is for me to say those words and recognize that, that even in this, you know, I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunities that we have. And there are people out there who are like, fuck this. Right. Let's burn this

ship to the ground. And I can, and again, I understand being pressed into the corner and feeling like you have no other action than to try to burn it to the ground. But I hope that those people are there for the build it back up phase because burning it down isn't actually solving the problem. Oh, it's not solving anything. Yeah, it might open the door to a potential solution. I mean, I'm sure there's a way that you could line out those breadcrumbs that would terminate it in it being better, but there's so many steps along the way other than striking a match. And if those people aren't as dedicated to those steps, I have a really hard time getting behind them. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think light and a fire might light the way, but it doesn't build the way, you know? Yeah. And I think, I mean, I have a,

like you, a high level of empathy and certainly an understanding for what's happening. Do I agree with the way it's happening? No, I don't think, I think, I think anger is often an emotion that brings out irrationality in people. I've seen it in myself plenty of times. Me too. And, and yeah, so that statement is from experience. And, I mean, I think right now, I think people should just think about, you know, we,

use the word solidarity so loosely, you know, but, yeah, but I think, I think that, um, really we do need to understand that we all want the same things, you know, we all want dignity and respect and prosperity and happiness and, um, you know, love and a good dog, you know. Yeah. And so I, I mean, I think, I think, um, people like a cat. Yeah. Right. Right. Let's be honest. Fuck those. Just kidding. Cat owners. Yeah. Yeah. Just that you're weird. Okay. Except for Sheldon. I know a cat named Sheldon. He's not weird at all. He's amazing. Yeah, well, we have cats and dogs and some of our cats think they were dogs and some of our dogs think they're cats. But I do think that it's just important to, you know, be kind to other

people and right now to understand that, you know, the greater good is is as important as as the statement. And, you know, to be able to live with that statement at the end of the day. is something that I hope everybody thinks about, you know, because nobody wants to hurt someone else or wreck their business or their livelihood. Even if it does make a statement, I think it's important to remember that we all want the same thing, you know?

Yeah, and, you know, I worry too about, you know, change is hard. I look at change in myself as an individual. I've got plenty of bad habits and stuff that I'm working on every single day. I've yet to be able to change a behavior overnight. as relatively simple as I think it is. And people are going to die in police custody many more times before,

even if we, you know, that path to rebuilding, if we take every appropriate step along the way, it's going to take time. And we're talking about human beings, so therefore by definition, it's imperfect and flawed. The mistakes are going to be made. And I've been thinking, you know,

because people keep asking me about what, what should I recommend or what would I recommend in the culture of law enforcement? enforcement to change, which I've never been a law enforcement officer, so it's tough. But I have a little bit of an understanding of that type of close-knit community. And what actually, the only way that you can describe what happened is, in fact, a murder. And the coroner's reports from both sides of the house I saw in the paper today, they agree upon that. And some people are arguing about what was in his system and what wasn't.

And it's irrelevant. And some people will say, well, what happened before the video, and which is also irrelevant. because, you know, law enforcement, and I was like you were mentioning with Greg, the conversation I had with Greg, which I found to be fascinating, they have limits to their ability to restrain people, to use restraints once somebody is in handcuffs. And one of the most disturbing aspects about what happened to me is that there were four police officers there, and none of them had the wherewithal to recognize that it had gone too far. And it's interesting because they were an incredibly diverse set of officers. They were four different ethnicities sitting there. So I'm sure that there could have been, or maybe there was in that department or in law enforcement in general.

Maybe there is systemic racism. I don't think so based off of the experience that I have. And I know many law enforcement officers. And I don't know a single one of them that has expressed anything other than discussed for what happened. But yet those four officers were right there. and they didn't they allowed it to happen and that is an issue that only law enforcement is going to be able to fix. You hear a lot of people talking about, hey, we need to police law enforcement.

And this is where it ties back into being in the SEAL community because there's bad apples in the SEAL community. There's bad apples in every community because no filtering process is complete. And for a fact, a uniform doesn't speak anything about character or integrity. A lot of the times I find them to be parallel, but often they're divergent. And if I were to line up the entire SEAL community, and we were all in our dress blues, and I just would say to somebody, pick out the bad apples. They can't.

But inside of the SEAL community, reputation is huge. And let me tell you, when it starts to go south, people fucking know your name for the wrong reasons. But the only people that can fix those bad apples are the people that know of the issues. And in the policing world, I'm sure that they're bad apples.

But they're the ones who are going to have to bear the burden of policing those problems because they are the ones who have the insight into what is actually causing those things. Yeah. And it's easier said than done because, you know, what I'd love to say is if you don't step up every time and do the right thing and stop that from happening, then you're a bitch. But you know what? But you know what, I've been a bitch in my life too. You know, what's hard, though, man, is in that community, I think,

and this is no excuse for anything that's happened or is happening because, You know, like you, I know some cops, and they're great people, and they have very, very, very sound intentions. The question that I have, okay, so as someone who lives in a place that I'm typically surrounded by people who mean well and aren't criminals, right? And so when someone enters our, you know, my space, I'm judging behavior based on my perception. of where I'm at in the moment, right? What I try and remember is that in, especially in cities, a lot of law enforcement ends up in the deep, dark corners of those places, and they are in fear of their lives,

and they do have to deal with some pretty bad people, and they do put themselves voluntarily in danger situations for the greater good. And so we know as base jumpers, right, and I'm sure you as an operator, when you're with a community of people and you're voluntarily or involuntarily put into position where your life is on the line. And even more importantly, sometimes the people standing next to you, their lives are in danger. It makes for a higher level of connection. You know, some people call it a fast friendship or whatever, but it's not that. It's deeper than that. The word friend falls short on so many points. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you're connected in a way that,

I would assume, you know, I've heard this, I'm not a career military, so I, but I've heard that, you know, in wartime, and you can speak to this, people fight not, I mean, obviously, things like the values and their countries, right, make a huge, you know, impact on, on what they do and how hard they're fighting for their freedoms, but what they're really doing is fighting for the guy standing next to them. And so I think that, you know, when I go base jump with someone, and we go through this experience together, and sometimes that experience can be quite intense, that person I'm connected to in a way

that I'm not connected to other people. And I think in law enforcement, if they're doing that and they're connected in a way that is represented by the uniform but speaks at a deeper level than a lot of us can understand, when someone does something, they might be less apt to grab them by the collar,

even though you think that that would make sense to sort of protect the institution, I think that there's this inherent desire to protect people that are like me, you know? And I think that that's a root source of the issue because you know, you have, like you said, the large majority of law enforcement are exceptional people that are really trying to make a positive difference. And yet there are these bad apples and those bad apples are at a, you know, a percentage that's unacceptable because people are, like George Floyd are getting killed for being unarmed. And who cares if he was drunk?

Who cares if he used a counterfeit bill or whatever it was that caused that issue? Yeah. The fact of the matter is, is that there were several officers and they held him down, you know, with their knee on his neck until the guy died. And so, you know, in that situation, it's like, man, if you can't be accountable within your own home, then who are you going to be accountable for, you know? or if you can't stand up and say, hey, man, enough's enough. Yeah.

Like this is, and a lot of, a lot of cops around the country are doing that, right? But it's interesting to see the human nature and dynamic. You have some areas where cops are, you know, dropping their gear and marching with protesters. And in those situations, whether it changes or not, in those moments, the protests are peaceful and their solidarity. And people are sort of on the same stage, you know, and in places where they're dressed in riot gear. and shield checking people or mason them for standing with a fist raised, there's violence and fires, you know? Yeah, the outcome is the polar opposite.

Yeah, it's really, man, it's a bit disturbing. Well, you brought up a point that is, it's valid. You know, the, I wish I could say I have a perfect record for always standing up and doing the right thing. And, you know, if you have a, or work in a community. community that people look at from the outside with either a view of inspirational or aspirational or exclusivity, there is an essence in the back of your mind is that you don't want to do something or create an issue that would tarnish that. And so there is that aspect for sure. I mean,

law enforcement is under and has been under a very high level of scrutiny, which I completely support and agree with. They should be. And I guarantee you, well, I can't guarantee anything, But I bet that they have those same struggles of not wanting to step up or create an issue. Because the fear is by raising an issue and addressing it head on, what's it going to do to our reputation? The long term is it actually would probably make it much, much better. And the gap of trust would decrease instead of increase in your integrity would rise. Fuck, it's hard. Yeah, yeah.

Because you see yourself in that same uniform. But people are striving for it right now. I mean, they are, they are on their knees pleading for honesty and for integrity and for leadership. And, um, you know, I think for the vast majority of the time that is present, but we can do better. Yeah. You know, I, I refuse to reduce human life down into binary numbers because I'll see people who are like, hey, let's just talk about the pure stats of how many people. And it's like, I understand that and it makes a point, but I just, I don't want to reduce the value of human life to that from a statistical perspective.

you know, the vast, vast majority of officers or people in uniform or in those positions, probably wherever they are in the world and the position they hold are doing well. But that doesn't mean that you cannot continuously strive to do better. For sure. And that goes on the other side as well, you know. I think the pleads for protests to remain civil and, you know, to show respect for everybody, including law enforcement, I think that that's really important. too. I think that everybody's making has the ability to make a statement right now. Yeah. And, you know, things are getting out of hand on both sides. And, you know, some people might agree that they get out of hand is what is being required because, you know, there has been such a blind eye and a deaf ear for so long. And there are certain things that are completely unacceptable, especially, you know, in a country that's built on a constitution that is, you know, its foundations are very very, very.

and and respect for the people, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, in the long run, like I said before, people just want to be left alone to try and live their lives in a positive way. And, you know, I hope that some of these struggles that are happening in the world right now are going to lead or light up a path that will allow some of those changes to be made as opposed to, you know, I wouldn't. say turning a blind eye to it or because it's obviously been something that people have been

screaming at the top of their lungs for or about for for a lot of years but but i think now i see people who maybe would be would have been silent 10 years ago standing up and saying nah enough's enough you know like it's time to make some changes and i just hope there is equally committed is to the rebuilding absolutely and if they are i have nothing but support yeah for that yeah we can do better for sure for sure and that and the route to doing better and you know people like oh what should do i'm like come on man like fuck put put your right foot in front of your other you know yeah that's the deal right in anything it's it's like to look at the if i looked at the entire mountain i'd go home before leaving the parking lot right you just got to put your right foot in front of the other and

solve these well and there's issues of there's issues of training for sure experience leadership like all of it like it's and and every one of those we should strive to do better and by doing that you know right foot in front of the other like you're saying to move the needle in the correct direction and not allowed to go in the other direction. Right. And I don't, I mean, yeah, encompass the last 20-some minutes we've been talking about this in an Instagram post. Yeah.

Good luck. Right, right, right. But, you know, like you said, what it does boil down to is, you know, like what my old man always says, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Yeah. And I just think people just need to keep their eyes on a positive horizon and take one step at a time and remember to treat other people the way they want to be treated, you know. I think there might be in essence, too.

I think there might have been some pressure in the bottle that added to the situation with George Floyd with the COVID restrictions. For sure. I think that the tender box was pre-primed with some pressure because even, you know, I don't know how it was down in Missoula, but people up here were kind of like, hey, you can take your quarantine and go fuck yourself. For sure. No, I think you're right.

I think a lot of this is about civil liberties. For sure. And so people had been pressed. And then now it's like, nope, that's it. That was the camel or the camel, the straw that broke the camels back because the camel would obviously break a piece of straw. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think people have, you know, and I think in some ways the last, whatever, eight years have been sort of a struggle relative to constitutional rights, civil liberties. And I think, you know, Greg's conversation with you was a really interesting conversation to listen to because of that.

And, you know, when you have restrictions placed on a society based on the pandemic and then you have, you know, you can see it as a result from curfews. You know, here we have rioting. We have something has to be done. Okay, well, everybody needs to stay inside after 8 p.m. And if you're found outside, you'll be arrested and find an exorbitant amount of money. People are like, fuck you. Especially after nine weeks of that. Of nine weeks of, you know, no gathering in public spaces.

We're social creatures, but we don't want you to be social. You can't do this. You can't do that. And I'm not saying that those requests or that that guidance was, I would like to believe that they were made with the best of intentions. For sure. But it started to pressure people into a corner where I think that they're really taking a look at what it is they're willing to stand for.

Yeah. People are like, wait, well, where do I live? I mean, like, you know, and I mean, I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime. And I think, you know, older generations have seen transitionary periods where people had this sort of struggle, certainly. And, you know, the time of, you know, the fight for civil rights. And but in our, I mean, how old are you? 42. 42.

Let's be clear. That's what it says on my driver's license. That's not the age that I act. Right. I always say to my wife, if I, if I, if my body feels. feels like I'm 60 and my brain feels like I'm 16. That makes me just about 45. Yeah. But yeah, in our lifetimes, I haven't, I don't remember a time where people's freedoms were as pressed and people were as fed up as they are and as divided as they are. It's pretty interesting, you know.

It's been a slow trickle, I believe, on the freedom aspect. You know, 9-11 was interesting for a variety of reasons, but it also, you know, if you look back at the small and English, you know, incremental freedoms, which is exactly what they are, that we have willingly surrendered and that we will never get back. And a lot of it, I would say, comes into the space of just privacy, which should still be a freedom as well. But, you know, in our reliance upon electronic devices or abilities for organizations to see you, to track you, to listen to you, it's, uh, we've been on an interesting trajectory since that time. Yeah. Yeah. It's startling to look back. And, you know, it's an interesting conversation to have that, you know, freedom versus security.

And I can't remember the exact quote, but it's, you know, it's basically somebody who was willing to give up some of their freedom for the appearance of security deserves neither. You know, what's interesting is security to me is like is a word like perfect, you know, it doesn't really exist. I think we'd like it to exist. But, but I do think that, you know, our freedoms and our liberties are extremely important. important and certainly worth fighting for and generations have fought for it and died for it. And I think it's important to respect that. And, uh, you know, for me, it's extremely important. But I also, um, man, I also see, uh, bits and pieces of it stripped in like you said, in increments that are so small, they're barely noticeable. But if you know,

ounces become pounds up quickly. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's funny. I was joke with my daughter that, you know, We're older than Google, you know. And shit, we are older than Google. She's like, what does that even mean? Just exactly that. You mean phones had cords? What do you mean you didn't have a phone on you and access to the Library of Congress at all times? Yeah.

What's an encyclopedia? What is that? Remember when they would deliver the new ones every year? Yeah. Yeah. For many a book report. I hope they were recycled because otherwise there's landfill somewhere full of previous year's encyclopedias.

You know what else, too? You know how much a typewriter sucks? Have you ever used a typewriter? I mean, I remember obviously typing a lot of stuff as a kid is, you know, like this sophisticated way of writing a paper. And, man, you get on a typewriter now and it's just like, whatever. You almost have to be, you almost have to be attempting to like find your Renaissance man roots to go back to a binary typewriter.

However, I look back at high school and I think to myself, probably the two most valuable classes that I took would be English in typing. Yeah. Because I type all the time. Right. Not on a typewriter, of course. Even though I can see the allure of getting one of those and just, you know, going back to the analog days. But yeah, it's, uh. Yeah. Yeah, pretty interesting. Pretty interesting that our world today and, and just the connectivity of, um, everything, you know, the ability to pick up a phone and, and face to face talk to somebody in Australia real time. I mean, You know, we used to joke about Star Trek communicators as kids. But we have now is way better.

Right. Those were like flip phones, you know. Right. That was like the Motorola Razor 1. And, well, I mean, if we could get the beam me up, Scotty portion, which I feel like Elon Musk is probably working on that at some point. Yeah, that's probably close. I mean, I know we're going to be okay. It's, I mean, I know we're going to get out of it.

I just hope that there's not too much more destruction and hurt. along that path. And I truly do hope that people realize it's going to be a sign wave. Like there will be some improvements. I'm sure after this, but standby because it's, you know, it's not going to be a perfect road. And you got to be on for the left and the right turns in my opinion as well. Yep. I think, honestly, I'm not seeing any need to have any hope for anything less than drama well beyond November. Yeah, this year might be a ride off. Yeah.

2019 and 2020 have been pretty tumultuous years, you know. But let's be honest, the meme game has been varsity. I've seen some shit where I literally had to put my phone down and like, oh, my God. What Joe posted one the other day? It's this lady bent over, something along lines of just looking out the window to see which portion of revelations we're playing out today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's funny because I have friends, you know, all over the world that send me shit all the time, you know, because they see what's going on here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's both hilarious and, you know, a bit embarrassing, but. Sometimes you need a little bit of both. Yeah. You know, I'm not, I'm not against the U.S. taking one on the chin. You know, there's a lot of growth that can come from that. It's, it's, I've been pretty embarrassed in some points in my life.

And I came back from those stronger because I didn't want to repeat them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was just about to say that. I mean, I think the largest growth spurts I've ever taken were, um, related to getting my ass handed to me. Yeah. You know, and that's just, I mean, like a friend used to say, you know, depth comes from darkness. It's sometimes that it just is required.

I got asked on, so I started doing Friday episodes because I get unloaded on with people who ask questions and I love it. So it's like, okay, I'm going to give myself five minutes, which I suck at, by the way, because I want to talk for longer. But one of them was three things that I think all males should do. And the very first one was fail. The second one was fight. and you need to fight and lose in a control. I'm like, don't go and get in a street fight. You can do this in a controlled environment

with a winning participant. But if you get your ass handed to you, it's a humbling experience and you can grow from that. Same as failure. If you fall in your face, you learn how to pick yourself up. And you have to have those mechanisms, in my opinion,

if you're going to continue your journey as a human being. For sure. If you get to that arrival state where it's like, I got this, it's like, I don't want to be around you. Yeah,

yeah, no way. I mean, how many times have you seen that in the base, jumble world where the guys is just so laissez-faire, because it's just like, I've done this so many times. I'm like, I am going over here. Because I don't need to hear you Morris Coe down this fucking cliff face.

Yeah, yeah, 100% man. Yeah. And yeah, that type of energy I've gotten to a place in my life where I can't even, I choose to not be around it. And it's one of those deals. It's like it started out as being so sort of so affected that I would emotionally divest, you know, a bit and only be with people that I really. trusted. And then it became an intolerance. And now it's just almost a bit of reactive protection

just based on the fact that after a long, a long time of dealing with it, I start to, I don't know about you, but I start to feel like, you know, a train that hit a wall and I got 50 cars behind me that are coming, coming at speed, you know. Yeah, with mass. Yeah, yeah. So just, you know, the necessity to have some quiet time and be on my own and do things for my reasons and not be influenced by others, especially if the influence is that. It's super important for me. And a lot of times, you know, if I feel something different, I'll either, you know, go somewhere else or walk down and... You'll socially distance. Yeah, exactly. It's, I found as I get older, my circle of people that I really want to spend time with has gotten smaller and smaller.

for sure it's probably you know it might be an inch wide but it's a mile deep and I would prefer that over a mile wide and an inch deep for sure yeah that's a good way you put in it and I've come to the place where it's the same thing I you verbalize it I think better than I could but just that recognition of that type of attitude I can't I can't be around it mostly because I don't want to deal with I know what the aftermath is likely going to be and I just don't want to deal with that well you know what I what I sort of realized was that um you know let's let's use flying of various types, just because it's been probably that and climbing have been two of the most dominant features in my life. So after 30 years of flying or close to it, I've seen enough accidents and had enough close calls myself or even potential accidents where I recognize patterns, right? We as humans recognize patterns in nature. And now, after, you know, this many years, I can see a pattern and smell it from a mile away. And so when I see someone behaving a particular way, even if they're good people and they have good intentions, I'm, you know, if there's someone I care about, and even if they're not, I'll sometimes

I'll very carefully and constructively, you know, poke them with a stick a little bit. Say, like, hey, man, one time, this is what I did and this was the outcome and this is what I learned from it and, you know, take it or leave it, right? Yeah. And then, you know, I see people doing something that is, or continuing that same path or they're doing it in a louder way. And you just, even though they've been worn probably by a variety of people.

Totally. And you want to grab them by the collar and just be like, hey, dipshit, you're going to fucking die if you keep doing this. Isn't it amazing though how you can't? They won't listen. Yeah. I mean,

you want to say you're no better. Like people that are better than you and better than me were doing that. One die there. There's where it's, and it doesn't stop them. It almost drives them in the other direction. And then you get to a place where you're just like, you smell it.

And you're just like, I'm going this way. Fuck it. You know? It's time for a cappuccino and a strenle. And it's hard because, you know, I do get really, you know, interesting, cool people that will reach out and say, hey, you know, I'm going to be here or there. You want to go do this together. And my nature is, yeah, that would be great because some of the best aspects of what I, the path I've chosen are the things that I get to do is to connect with people.

and to gain perspective because of it, you know. And some of the deepest friendships I've ever made have come from those activities. So I always look at it as a lucky thing. But then there's also a part of me now that is, you know, a bit sort of gun-shy and wants to say, man, I'd really love to do that. But I actually don't know you. And I don't trust people that I don't know. And I really don't want to see you die in front of me.

And I don't want to have to make our first interaction in the middle of the pressure cylinder. Exactly. I mean, maybe we could just, I'm in the same way. Like a friend would say, hey, let's go, let's go do a route in the Himalayas. And I'm like, hey, man, why don't you just come over and we'll go clips and bolts in the backyard, you know? Yeah, or maybe we'll go for a hike first. Yeah, exactly. Like, let's, let's have a coffee, you know? How about that? Yeah, the time to find the depth of somebody's soul and character is not when both of your lives are riding on the line. Right. Because it's my theory that if I go somewhere with somebody, I'm responsible for also getting that person out. I'm in for the journey. Of course.

course. Not, but there's, there's a lot of people who are not like that. Yeah, well. And that comes from my old job, though, too. It's like,

listen, um, everybody comes back, like period. And if things go to shit, then guess what? We're all going to get covered in shit, but we're all coming back together.

And I take the same theory. I'm very selective of who I will specifically base jump with. I mean, I haven't based jumped in a while, actually. Um, my thought process on that whole thing is, is shifted.

I still have the exact same desire to do it. I just need to find the right place to do it for me. No, for sure. But I do think that that that general sense of self-reliance and responsibility for the decisions that we make, especially voluntarily, I think that that's a cornerstone of the decision to do it in a responsible way. And so, you know, like you, if I go to the Himalayas, do a new route with a partner and we're, you know, up on some peak, seven, ten days from any help, it's obvious. the only person that's going to help my partner is me, and the only person that's going to help me is my partner,

and we have to behave that way. We have to change our methods of making decisions with that responsibly in mind, you know? And when it comes to that sense of responsibility, nobody's left behind, you know, sometimes we end up in situations where we just have to step up and do what's necessary. And when you've been there,

you start being pretty careful about about what positions you start putting yourself into voluntarily, you know? And I think that's where that bond comes from. It almost feels like a, not that it's possible, but like a DNA merging with the people that you're willing to, you know,

because it's more than trust. It's deeper than friendship, for sure. There's a, I don't know how to describe the connection, but. Yeah, you know, like here's a, it's a bit of a story. Fireway. We can still have 40 hours left. I might just barely fit it in. No, it's funny. It's not really a story I've ever told, but several people were there and know about it, but it's very relative to what we're talking about. So I was about to, I got asked from a buddy to jump on his sailboat, never had any sailing experience, but to sail from Cape Town to northern Brazil. So it was going to be... I already enjoy this story. Yeah, this is going to be a pretty... Do you know how to swim? I do know how to swim. Yeah, but I didn't want to swim. You know, let's make that clear.

Nobody does when they're on a boat. But some people would start that story with. So I don't know how to swim, but I did a journey on a vessel. Yeah. So, you know, it ended up being 33 days at sea, but that's the sub-story. So I was literally about to leave on a trip with no guaranteed ending. You know, it was one of those trips where I bought a one-way ticket to South Africa and told my family that I'd be back when I was because I wasn't sure how long this was going to take.

and five days before that trip, you know, we've been sort of building up to it. I get a call from a friend of ours. And he, one of his best friends in life, a guy that he base jumped with a lot, had gotten out of a helicopter and didn't make a corner and ended up impacting high on a, on a tower. This was in Arizona, wasn't it? In Arizona. Yeah, no, you're talking about.

And he pinballed and got his, remain stuck in a crack high off the ground. It was probably 750 or 800 feet off the ground and 400 feet from the top of the tower. And the tower, the top of the tower, wasn't much bigger than the top of this table. So because the rock was garbage, I mean, you could carve your initials in the rock

with your thumbnail. The search and rescue guys, you know, rightfully so, decided that they wouldn't risk the five or six guys that it would take to pull off, getting his body back. Might have been past their capabilities as well, which is a smart call for them to recognize. For sure. And the amount of people that it would have taken would have put in terms of objective hazard, it was unacceptable. In any organization, it was the weather also a little shady too.

It was actually okay. The weather was okay, but it was cold and it was winter. So there was quite a bit of snow on this tower, you know, which is not normal for the desert. Yep. So, you know, my friend calls me up five days before the sailing trip and says, you know, hey man. you know, our buddy Matt's up there and his mom needs to have him home, you know, needs to get him back. And search and rescue won't go get him and we don't know what to do. Can you come down, you know? And I remember thinking, man, if I'm going to go up there, I don't want anybody with me except for maybe one or two people. And who comes to mind is Ammon because Ammon McNeely happens to be a complete wild man. He's, you know, loose as fuck, but he's a good climber.

And he's really experienced walling, big walling in particular, you know. So I said, you know, I'd go up there, but if Ammon was involved. And he said, ah, that's funny because I just called Ammon. Ammon's on board. And he said he would do it if you came, you know. So. That's how you know you have the correct crew. Yeah.

Well, so I talked to my wife and she said, you know, I really don't want you to go, but you need to go. You know, you should go do this. So I fly down to Salt Lake. Ammon picks me up. We drive down there. We arrive at 5 p.m. five minutes later, we're in a 44. hovering over the tower and looking down and seeing where he's at, you know, what we're into.

And, you know, next morning before light, our pilot hot loads us one at the time. I get dropped off on top first. And I remember, you know, he's got one skid on the top of the tower hovering and he's like, you know, concentrating to keep it, keep it on the point. And he's like, okay, I got to get out. And I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, yeah, get out now. You know, I'm like, Don't take too long. Don't dally. So I hop out of the, hop out of the door and lay down,

you know, and he peels off. And I kind of solo down, um, maybe eight feet or something onto this ledge and build an anchor. And, uh, you know, tie an aide on a bite and throw it up on top for him. And he comes up with the gear and gets hot loaded next. And, uh, you know,

I led the repels and, you know, it was like old school, man. The rock was so bad. You couldn't drill bolt. So we, I was drilling holes and pounding. baby angles, you know, making war hogs.

Wow. To get us down this thing because the rock was just garbage. Trying to peel off big, you know, blocks and make sure that we were both safe on the way down. Yeah. How many pitches did you guys have to repel down? So four to get to his body. Fuck. And then, you know, I wrapped down there and finally get to him.

And, yeah, Ammon comes down. We sat for maybe 45 minutes and talked about life as you do, you know. Yeah. He'd been up there for seven days. and neither one of us were ready at that point to deal with the work. What you're about to literally walk into, you know. And, you know, at some point, you just have to like, all right, it's time to sack up and get this done, you know. Yeah.

And, you know, it's terrible. But we put them, you know, untwisted and put them in a body bag, got him out of the crack, had to work at a couple of different ways to get them actually into a hall bag. And then built a five to one and haul. hauled them, I don't know, maybe 40 feet. And then I let out this like ledge system for 250 feet or something. We built a drum tight, Tyrolian. And I hauled them across with a 6 to 1 and Amman kind of walked them across to make sure we weren't knocking too much shit down. And then we wrapped another must have been eight or 10 pitches, you know. And when we're repelling, you know, the 44 is hovering

like 100 feet off the wall and his mom and his girlfriend are in there and there's balling. And, you know, this is like a pretty intense feeling to be hanging on anchors with, you know, his 200-pound body and all of our, yeah, he was a big boy. Yeah, a whole wall rack and then the two of us on, you know,

shitty ward hogs and backed up with like stoppers and in loose flakes, you know, and, um, I might have advised them to, you know, have the girlfriend and mom maybe not. We,

we had nothing to say about it at that point. I mean, even as the pilot, like, you know, let us, let us bring your son back to you. Well,

and so, So, yeah, and so, you know, after some scary moments, and, you know, like I said, I was, I was leading the repel, so I was, like, pulling off big blocks. And we had four guys on the ground that were there kind of as emotional and physical support. Once we got them to the ground, it was last light, and the sarah guys were in there with a long line and a big cargo net. And I walk over to the cargo net, and this guy behind the helmet and goggles is like, Jeff, we got to stop meeting this way. And it's the same dude that was on the helicopter crew, the Grand Canyon crew, that got Stanley's body out of Zion when I was there. there, you know. Yeah. And so we put the hall bag in the long line and, um, you know, 10 minutes later, they're yanking him and the, um, the rescue worker out of the canyon and,

uh, it's two dark to fly. Well, you know, our chopper pilots down in the canyon saying, hey, you guys hurry up if you want to ride out. And Hammond and I were, you know, we're pretty exhausted. So we're like, oh, fuck it. We'll walk out, you know. You've had a physical and emotional day. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's not been an ideal day. Yeah. And yet, I'll finish with it, but we, we walked out and it was, I don't know, maybe eight or 10 miles and there was, you know, 13 or 14 creek crossings. And, you know, we just taking our time and, you know, looking at Am and, hey, he looking

at me, you know, we had a different level of connection, right? Yeah. At that point. And we get out and we get back to the hotel room and, you know, it's 3.30 or 4 in the morning and a lot of friends and family had gathered. it felt really good to tell his mom, you know, like, it's okay to say goodbye to him. You know, like I've seen him. It's okay. You can, you know, you should. Yeah. And, you know, in the end, it was this terrible experience that was also one of the most beautiful experiences in my life

and something that I wouldn't trade for anything. And it has to do with what brought this story out. It's this, this sense of responsibility to, you know, relative to the decisions that I make, when I make a decision to go base jump, I'm, I'm recognizing what I, well, and a lot of people don't because they haven't had that experience, but I recognize the position I'm potentially putting other people into before I make that decision. And if I make it, it's, it's definitely taking that into consideration, you know, and because I do that, it was really important to me, almost at a cellular level, to be involved in that and to help if I could, you know? And so in, in a large sense, it was a statement about, you know, almost a justification for the decisions that I've made in my life and how it, how those decisions affect me positively. They fulfill me as a human being and make me a better person to my daughter and to my wife and to my friends and to see the world with, you know, a greater level of empathy, but also to understand, to truly and on a visceral level understand the consequences of my,

decisions, you know? They have gravity. And sometimes you have to shoulder that. Yeah. And, and, you know, also bringing a friend home to his, to his folks and, and, uh, allowing closure. I can't imagine how powerful that was for them or how terrible it must have been before you were able to do that, wondering whether or not, you know, you, you know, it's. So for that, I feel really lucky, you know, super lucky. I can't think of anything more powerful you could have done for them, you know, other than him, obviously being alive, that's, you know, probably the most next powerful thing you could do is at least give them closure and return his body to those that love them the most. Yeah, and the people that were involved in that episode or that

experience will be, I'll be connected to them forever. And a lot of those people, I honestly, at an intimate level, don't know at all. Yeah. But I sure feel a huge sense of being connected to them in a pretty profound way, you know. So yeah, I mean, I think self-responsibility and, and and also self-reliance can be connected to community. I guess that's, you know, potentially one of the reasons why it's, it's an attractive thing to do, you know, or these communities that we belong to affect us in a way that I think has value. I agree.

I had a great, I only jumped with Matt one time and had a great experience with him. It was in Switzerland, my second trip there in the most animated, energetic human being. known to man, we both know to be Miles Dasher, who, by the way, needs fucking zero ounces of Red Bull and is sponsored by Red Bull. And if you're ever with Miles,

please throttle his intake because... But it's not just energy. It's positive energy. It is, and it's uncontrollable as it is. He doesn't need a sugary energy drink to go on top of that. Love the guy.

I have to have him on as a guest at some point. I mean, he taught me to base jump. He's shepherded me through. He's an amazing human being. Yeah, it's just a matter of time to link up, but we were there. And, uh, you know, we had been, it was really cool with Miles because he taught me on the bridge. And then he took me to Italy for my first job off of Monte Brento, which I like to call

a skydive Monte Brento because you're so high up there you're like, this isn't that bad. Yeah. Like this is ridiculously overhanging. I might actually mess this up and still be okay. Yeah, you can like fall off that thing. Oh, my God. You could probably fall off that thing partially zipped up in your suit, which is not what I'm recommending, anybody do, but you might be okay.

And so went from there and then took me into the valley. I remember the first time just seeing that opening of the law to Brunton Valley. I'm like, are you... It's like Rivendale there. I mean, it's like being, I would imagine a diabetic in a candy store. It's just like, oh, all of these are available. So we started off on the Yellow Ocean for the first jumps. Yeah.

And then to the low moose, Le Mousse, which I believe is Spanish for the moose. But... Imagine that. I do believe. an total idiot people. I understand that it means the moss in French, correct? Because I think somebody slipped on that moss

and tumbled to their death. Yeah. Which is not a good look or probably a very fun experience. But then, you know, we went over to the Via Ferrada and he slowly just kind of... Took you through the paces.

On my first trip, we went back. And the same guy who called you was actually there on this particular jump. And they were going to show us the high moose, which, you know, I can't speak to how it is, It's treated in the modern day because I've been over there in a few years. But the exit is a little spicier.

It's shorter. Highlamoose is real. Highloose is real for sure. And I guess we'd have to unpack a little bit what we mean by this start. So Monte Brento is massively overhung. I think that's fair to say. So if you were to drop a rock straight off the edge of it, it would actually, you know, the mountain is, the cliff face is going away from it. So if you were tumbling or unstable, your likelihood of encountering what you just jumped off of for at least a little bit is lower.

Then you have yellow ocean, which is sheer. So you don't want to go anywhere back into the rock. You have everything in front of you, but you do not want to be going in the wrong direction. And then you have jumps that have a short vertical or maybe even, I would say, a very slight positive. And then the terrain kicks up. And it's man. The jump, this is the way I describe base jumping. The jump is always optional.

The performance of everything you do afterwards. mandatory. So on the starts, and I don't even remember anymore, what would be considered probably a over eight second rom-draud. But if you start creeping it into, you know, six seconds or five seconds or four seconds, you're looking down on the edge and it's visually different for sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember standing on the high moose the first time and it's, of course, this rickety rope. And you're like slightly halfway zipped up in your straight jacket and getting to this tree. And then the next person is stacked behind you and behind you. and it was it was scotty miles me matt and that's a good crew it was a great crew it was my first time

there and i was like i will not be going first i was like scotty you're pretty good at this how about you demonstrate the proper exit right and flight path so he went and then miles went and so i get up and i get all my stuff on and matt's just sitting there smiling his ass off and the sun was uh it was later in the afternoon and we had, you know, limited amount of light. We were in no risk of being out of light. Never tried to rush me at all. It was just like, hey, man, you know, you got this, laugh and high five. And just the last memory I have of him is this shit eating grin. And I turned around and I tried to give him like my zipped up wing high five, bombed off, had a good egg. It made the right hand turn, landed in the field, went over to the Horner and we had beers.

And it was my last experience with him. And I'm glad that I had it. Yeah, yeah. Because I had heard about what happened and who he was with and I know the impact that it had. My last experience was Matt was there, was that, was in Arizona. Oh, really? Yeah, we had done a bunch of jumps. You know, our friend has a helicopter that would drop us off at the base and we would are at the cliff rim and we would jump back in and basically free rides to the top. The lift is always better than the hike.

Especially there. Like I enjoy splitboarding, but also enjoy. getting on the chairlift, you know, which is essentially what we're talking about. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of higher value than a buddy with a helicopter. Oh, God. But we, I was actually jumping a new suit and wasn't super comfortable flying, you know, hard lines with it. And so I was doing, I was being a little more conservative. And there was a bit of talk of some guys doing a flyby and maybe getting some footage of it. So I volunteered to go and stand on a point down low and get some footage and Matt was just like, I'm going with you, you know.

And, you know, obviously he was flying pretty well and. And hard. I mean, he was pushing it. And pushing her hard. But he came just to share time, you know, and we had some really good conversation over the couple of hours and camped out there for a few days. But that was kind of, you know, I mean, I had known him and traveled in the same circles, but that was kind of when we sort of solidified a friendship was there.

And, you know, to have that experience later. there, you know, the, I wouldn't call it irony, but, you know, it was interesting. Ironic for sure. Yeah. Yeah. To be there. You know, it didn't, I was going to say the irony didn't, didn't pass over me, you know. Yeah. But, you know, I think we all have to, we all have to go through it and none of us are making it out of this live. And Matt lived his life in a way that was really true to himself. Yeah.

And he brought a lot of joy to a lot of people, you know. And I always say that, like, the reason why it stinks so bad when we lose our homies is because they made such a positive impact on our lives. I was so influenced by that person that it stings pretty bad when they lose the game, you know? Yeah. And, you know, getting to that place sooner than later, I think is a good recipe to, to remember them in the way that I'm sure would honor their the impact they made more than being, you know,

being in a bad place for a long time about it, you know, even though, even though I would give anything to have it not have happened or whatever. They wouldn't want you to be in a bad place either. No, no, of course not. Yeah. So. How did you get into base jumping? I mean, I assume skydiving was first. Yeah, but skydiving was a means to an end. I was never attracted to skydiving. I am, I got into base jumping. Well, so I was racing hang gliders. I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, I, Yeah, we should go back because scativing and base jump are one of your many hobbies. Yeah, well, and later hobbies, actually. So I learned how to climb and got really passionate about climbing in the mountains when I was young.

14. Where did you grow up? In north of Seattle. Okay. And I would like, you know, my buddy and I would like hitch rides or try and, you know, talk people's older brothers into bringing us up to this local climbing area called Mount Index. Was it something from your family that got you that? No. No.

man, I think I've always been kind of attracted to these environments that require work and suffering. You know, like I remember sort of romanticizing Himalayan expeditions and seeing pictures in National Geographic of, you know, people in Tibet and just like thinking, God, you know, it's kind of like that explorer, you know, in our lifetimes, exploration isn't the same as it was in the past. I mean, I guess it is just in a different form, right? We still have explorers. I'd say they're exploring in a different way. Right.

Yeah, exactly. But those environments that require a skill set, it requires work to earn the right to be there and to be in these very wild places that included, I mean, I'd be lying if I said, you know, that I wasn't attracted to the risk. Yeah. And to the simplicity of a situation where, you know, you either do or you either do or you do not. You know, there isn't like, it's like base jumping.

You either do, you know, people say, oh, I want to try base jumping. He's like, no, you don't try base jumping. You either base jump or you don't base jump, you know. Yeah. And so I think those kinds of things were always attracted. But I got attracted to climbing, rock climbing in particular because it was something that none of my friends did, you know, it was this unique thing that, um, that wasn't soccer or football or any of these other things.

Well, traditional. Right. Right. Sports. And, and I, I really did enjoy. being humbled being scared you know i liked being in a situation that was extremely uncomfortable um i i like that feeling of vulnerability and um the more pointed the way i feel afterwards you know like after i either do it or don't do it you know yep and um so i got into rock climbing at at a young age and then

that developed into um just a love for the mountains and um and the desire to want to use that as a vehicle to see the world. And when I was testing some gear or, you know, trying out some gear, a friend of mine was designing portal ledges and harnesses and packs. And I went to go pick up a portal ledge at his shop and saw a bunch of photos of him around his shop flying hang gliders. And I was just like, holy shit, I want to run off a mountain with a fucking set of wings. Are you kidding me? Like as a stupid 17-year-old kid, I was like, yeah, sign me the fuck up. I am, you know, and he was like, yeah, whatever, kid, you know, like, you know, this is not, this is not, you don't even know, right, right. But he was, he was a, he was a cool dude, you know, and he, he, he did end up after he knew I was really serious about it and committed to it, he fucking drove me up the mountains every day for, you know, 90 days in a row, like all summer long, every day we went not just to one site, but sometimes three sites. And I was flying this shit show glider, this, you know, It was like an old beach trainer.

And I think it was a flight designs, 205 was built in 1978, had duct tape on the fucking sidewires. I mean, this thing was a horror show now. Now I know this. But at the time, it was like my first set of wings, you know? Yeah. So anyways.

How does one learn how to hang glide? Well, you start off on a hill and you... Like a shallow grade? Yeah. So since I've taught a lot of people how to fly, right? And the way I teach people how to fly and the way I learned how to fly are two different sports. Well, we have to hear both, of course. So my, okay, well, let's put it this way.

My instructor, my first day on the training hill, we walk, you know, this, normally you would start in the flat ground and you would learn how to set it up and run it, you know, run the glider and control the angle of attack and understand what twist sweep and reflex do and how to control in a weight shift environment. All of this makes sense. Or a weight shift vehicle. Yeah, how to control the wing to make sure that it's going to fly off the hill at an airspeed that enables the pilot to control the vehicle.

right? As opposed to a stall where the vehicle is controlling the pilot. So my first lesson, my instructor who wasn't really an instructor, but a really rad dude and taught me a lot about life too. He took me to this hill. We walked halfway up the hill together, it's a 150 foot hill. And he sits down and starts rolling a doobie. And he's like, all right, this is what he said, literally.

All right, kid, let's see what you can do with that thing. So I walk up to the top of the hill and, you know, immediately like, you know, I read the book, right? I've seen the pictures. How hard could it be? How hard could it be? So I run off the hill, immediately go into flight. I go prone, you know, which is like not what you do and fly it to the bottom and realize that I, you know, I had the launch part. Yeah.

But, you know, landing was the next step, right? And as you know, when things are new and they're going fast, sometimes there's a bit of sensory. overload where the part of your brain that's generating memories doesn't work, right? So I immediately hit the ground, still prone, broke both down tubes, and he comes down, kind of laughing, and he's like, all right, now we can start, you know? So we go back to his shop, we replace the down tubes. We go back to the training hill. I proceed to do six or seven more launches. And he says, all right, come back first thing in the morning. So I come back. We do another five or six, maybe until 10.30 in the morning,

one of which I ended up stalling the glider and diving into a thicket of blackberry bushes right in the fucking middle of it. So now I'm pulling my glider out trying to not rip the sail and I'm covered in thorns and scratched all over. And then, you know, 10.30 comes along and it's starting to get active, you know, sunny.

And he says, all right, man, I think you're ready. Oh, God. So we drive to the hill. I love this story, by the way. You know, and I'm like, I'm like, this is great. I'm 17. I can do anything, right? So he drives me to this mountain.

Blanchard overlooks Chuckinette drives a very beautiful site, and it's, you know, 1,200 feet off the ground. And I'm flying a, you know, 1970s technology with a knee hanger harness and no parachute and a bike helmet. And he's like, yeah, you got it, you know? Full send or no sun, son, just. Yeah, well, apparently.

I don't remember any of it, except I do remember when I landed, this dude runs over and he gives me a beer. And he's like, that was obviously, obviously your first flight. So here you go. And that was kind of the beginning of that story. And it, man, it answered a question that, that, that I'd been, you know, wondering about

my whole life. So I didn't want to do anything other than that. I was still climbing, but I was just like completely over the top, fascinated by this new thing called hang gliding. And it must have been in 2000, it was 2006. I pulled a tendon climb and decided that because I was so passionate about flying and obviously things had evolved quite a bit, I would try competing. And so I was racing to hang gliders and found enough success in that that I was supported to race the glider around the world. And it became this really amazing vehicle to see the world.

I would go to my first trip to the south of France. You know, I would be in the pre-worlds, which is a big international competition, 150 people from all over. over the world show up. We race our hang gliders 100 mile box through the Hode Alps. And if you don't make goal, you land in some Alpine village and you're brought into the house of folks that you don't speak the same language and you have dinner with them.

And those experiences you don't have if you don't see. It's a really interesting way to see a country for the first time, right? And so I was racing hang gliders and I was a factory pilot for a company called Will's Wing. They're like the largest hang gliding manufacturer in the world. They happen to be in California and test flying gliders.

and just loving that life and still climbing quite a bit. But I became friends with Dean Potter. Yeah. And we were at a trade show. Through climbing, I'm assuming, because he wasn't a hang glider. No, through climbing. And we were at a trade show, which we both loathe. Yeah.

And he was with Whispy, you know. And I saw him and, hey, what's up, man? We go over to the side and sit down in a dark corner and just on the floor and just start talking about. We're just talking shit, right? Every once in a while, a group would come over and, you know, ask Dean to stand up and take a picture with him or whatever, and then we get back to talking about whatever.

Standard trade show fair. I do the exact same thing at the shot show. Right, right. And so he said, because he was fascinated by hang gliding. He wanted to learn how to hang gliding. He wanted to fly. He just had that in his soul. You know, he just wanted to fly.

Was he jumping at this point? Yeah, he was wing suit base jumping. And he said, man, you know, you should think about this. And I was like, ah, you know, I'm never like, I'm into flying, man. I'm not really into falling, you know. And he's like, no, no, no, you know, I think you would enjoy it being a climber. It's pretty fun to run off stuff like L cap, you know.

Yeah. Which is totally legal, by the way. Yeah. Well, first lie, last lie in the middle of the night. Yeah. But not giving any advice. Right, right. Yeah.

It may or may not have been the most significant thing I've ever done in my life. But he sort of knew that I would really be into this, you know. Yeah. And I sort of dismissed it. And with as much respect as I have, have for him. Yeah. I just didn't feel like it was for me. And then I never forget it, man.

I was in the living room with my wife. And we watched that documentary about he went and climbed a new route on Mount Butte in Canada. And they built this fucking totally contrived. plank that was off the top of this thing because he got up he did this really beautiful route yeah but it was too positive jump he couldn't find an exit so they build this this massive ramp and the footage it's like cineflex footage you know you can tell syneflex is like pretty wild uh footage he jumps off this thing in a big suit and um i saw him fly it wasn't he like had like a three and a half minute flight you know and um you know like we were talking about before when you have

a profound experience and you're living in a in a in a in a the present in such a profound way that time doesn't even exist. Three and a half minutes might sound to your audience like a short amount of time. It's a fucking lifetime, right? Like three and a half minutes in a wingsuit feels like a 10 hour cross-country flight and a hang ladder. And you can't even describe the number of things that go through your mind. Right.

Every second you are present for, you know? And so, yeah. And by the way, three and a half minutes from a base jump is ridiculous. That's like Iger type shit right there. That's it. And it's a big jump. I think it's a big jump. thousand foot jump or something. Yeah, that'll do it. Um, so, or I could be wrong about that, but it seemed like a long

time. I got the memory of a goldfish, but it seemed like a long time, right? And, um, so I saw that footage and I, I just picked up the phone, called him. And I was like, all right, man, I get it. All right. Like, you got me, you know? And he was like, he, I remember him saying like, dude, okay, um, if you're serious about this, I'll help you in every way, but you have to do what I say. And if you don't, I don't want any part of it because I don't, you know, I really don't want to have another friend that goes in, you know, basically. And I was like, you know, like, man, I started to say, man, you know, you know, you don't know me that well, but I'm telling you. And he was like, no, no, no, I get it. I know you're not. I just had, I have to say that, you know. Yeah.

And, and I appreciated that. So I, I ended up learning how to skydive. Um, same guy that taught Dean. I went down to Lodi, I went through, uh, fucking Lodi, Lodai, AFF with Ed Polowski, who was, who was awesome. know, his AFF was great. And, you know, like he put Alex Honnold through AFF. There's a bunch of people that went through Ed and, you know, Ed is Ed. But I was really grateful for that level of instruction. And it was a great experience. And then, you know, as Lodi goes, it's like the loosest place on the planet. Load number eight or nine, you know, which like fresh AFF, not even A license. I'm getting out of the plane on with like a 20 way without any clothes on, you know. It was like one of the ones. It was like one of the

those things, right? Yeah, I'm familiar with some drop zone operations that are like that. They're like, you're good, right? On paper? Yeah. Get on the plane. So it was a, it was a really fast and good education, spent four months just, you know, jumping. Yeah, I did 250 jumps or something in three and a half months. And then, which is actually for people listening, they're like, oh, that's not many. That's most people in one to two years. Yeah, it's jumping seven to ten times a day, every day for, you know, two to three week trips at a time and was loving it, but also it was this education that I needed to get to the point where I wanted to be, which was in the end to fly in the mountains. You know, that was what that's, that was what fascinated me. It wasn't getting out of a plane or, or anything like that.

It was hiking or climbing into the mountains and jumping off a cliff and flying with my arms. Yeah. Yeah. And the way that I always dreamed that flight would be. I'd have to imagine the canopy stuff was relatively straightforward for you with your unders i mean a wing is a wing as a super broad thing to say but no no it's true terminology and characteristic wise i mean they share some similarities certainly certainly and yeah so that's how i got into it and uh and then you know in montana um well where'd you learn to base jump so uh a friend of mine jordan kilgore who's also a ninja you know he's like a he's kind of i mean i don't know if i should say this and legally but he's kind of a building guy

you know, but he's, he's aerials and buildings and, nobody owns the air, man. Right. Sometimes it might be trespassing to get to the exit point, but nobody owns the air if you get caught. But he, he, he had an interesting background,

and we became pretty fast friends, and he taught me the ins and outs of how to base jump safely. Took me to the bridge, did a bunch of bridge lines. The prine? Okay, because I've heard some people who learned up in, what is it, Auburn? Auburn, yeah.

And I also became part of that crew, you know, the asylum guys, Marty is like a brother. You know, he's, I really love that dude a lot. But yeah, I learned at the prine, did, you know, whatever, a bunch of jumps there. And then came back to Montana. And my first cliff was this, you know, it was a new exit. No one had jumped. It was this big cliff in Montana with a landing zone that leaves a lot to be desired.

You know, it's about the size of your living room surrounded by trees and rocks and creek. And, you know, you had the stick it. And I remember, you know, even after all, the climate. climbing and all the flying. My mind was saying, yeah, you're, you know, you've trained to do this. You've triple-checked your gear. Everything's going to work. And my body was like, no, no, no, don't do that.

You don't want to fucking run and jump off that cliff. That's like death on a stick, you know? And I remember that struggle. And Jordan looked at me and smiled and he's like, remember this. You only get the first time once, you know? And that was kind of like, I mean, the bridge is cool, but it's not, to me, it didn't feel like that was my first base jump. You know, real base jump. And, um, that.

And yeah, I did quite a few base jumps in the backcountry in Montana, and the landing zones are... It's not a drop, which is not a DZ. Man, we don't have a lack of things to jump off of, but the landing zones are all real, you know, and it's not the place to learn. Crazy when you see that, too, you're like, oh, my God, I would love to jump that, but there's no feasible place to put your feet down.

And when you're motivated, you do anyways, and you squeeze it between branches and you stick it in between rocks, and you're like, that was awesome, you know? until you get a gust to win and that it's not. And then it's not, right. Trying to figure out how to get out of the backcountry with a compound femur. Well, and so, and so, you know, I went to, I went to, I got to the point where I was ready to do my first wingsuit jump. I'd done a bunch of wingsuit skydives, quite a few.

Actually, I did another 250 skydives and then went to Eloy over a winter and jumped a block of 50 off plus another 10 or something and did some balloon loads. And this is like purposeful a week before my first trip to Switzerland. And I went to Lauter Brunnen. and, you know, we waded through thigh-deep snow to get to the exits. But I went there. I was going to go with Dean. Dean got really sick. So I ended up going with some other friends, Marshall and a guy named Rami.

Yeah. We're talking Marshall Miller? Yeah. I love Marshall. Marshall's awesome. And what's crazy is when Dean got sick, he had to pull out of the trip like five days before I was leaving. And I just happened to be talking to Marshall about some Cavoo stuff.

And he was like, you know, he's like, you are not going by yourself, you know. And so he contacted Rami who said, yeah, no, I'll jump with him. And then he's like, I'll call you back in five minutes. And five minutes later he calls me and he's like, all right, I'm going with you. I bought a ticket. And, you know, like a brother, he was there for me. And we went and we did my first wingsuit jumps and jumped her asses off and had a great time. And then I came home and I jumped my ass off.

Like I was jumping wingsuits in Montana by myself, five, you know, three to seven times a week. and going out there, you know, it's hard to describe, as you know, because I know you've experienced it, when you wake up before light by yourself and you grab a cup of coffee and you drive an hour to a parking lot and you turn the radio and the heat of the car off and you get out and you shoulder your base rig and your wing suit and it's dark and it's quiet and you're by yourself and there's no motivation other than your own and there's no excuses and there's no reasons other than your own. And you hike up into Lion Country for sometimes I'd ride a mountain bike for four months, miles and then hike another two and a half hours up to an exit that only I'd ever been to.

The one above the lake. Yeah. Well, now, several people have jumped it with me, but that was the new one, right? I'll tell you, I'd love to go there. I'll go. I'm in. And then, you know, you're on the exit by yourself and there's no one saying whether you should or shouldn't.

And there's no reason other than the one that you come up with yourself. And then, you know, you jump this, this thing and you have this really amazing experience. And then you, you know, you land and you feel like such. you feel so insignificant. It's like such a small part of something so much bigger. You know, I've said this before. It's like the wind and the grass and the creek

and all that shit would be exactly the way it is, whether you were alive or dead there or not, you know, which is a cool experience to have. It's really, and then you jump in, you know, you run,

trail run back out and eat berries. And, you know, it's like this amazing thing. Everything's greener. Everything is brighter. Everything, you know. It's so hard to describe that,

the vividness of the post. Visceral, right? And then you get in your car and you drive back and you, stop for gas and you walk in and you know the person behind the counter is like hey honey how's your morning going and you're like fucking better than yours and you know they don't know and you just had this amazing thing and that um that those years are really special for me you know i don't jump like that uh anymore and haven't for a while but those you know five or six years when i was going hard and by

myself um were like really really special it is so different being by yourself too um really good buddy of mine, Alex, who passed away a few years ago, Wing Sue Baye-Shamping. We had shared a ton of experiences. Which Alex? Sonnenberg. Oh, okay.

He, uh, it was in France. The whole story is just, it's... I was there with Alex Duncan. Yeah. So I just, I didn't know. Yeah. Um, but it, we had worked together peripherally,

so we knew each other in the military, and he'd gotten out and gone to like the Wharton School of Business. It's crazy trajectory. And he'd just started a new job as a CEO of an oil and gas company. was over in France for his new wife's sister's wedding, snuck off to get a jump in. So that story ended just tragedy. But so many awesome experiences and we would just hike. Like one of the jumps we would do almost every morning, we'd get up early and we'd go hike to the low young frow. Oh yeah, yeah. Because, you know, Miles showed us where it was. And that fucking hike sucks.

It does, but it's awesome too. It is awesome, right? You know, you start in the woods and then you hit the grass and then you make that left and you come all the way around underneath the face. going to jump and you can see the field of joy as you go up to the chains. And so we would hike that. And then I stayed on that trip a few days after he had left. And I stayed on the same routine though. And I would do that hike in the morning. And it was such a different experience hiking by myself because my phone alarm would go off.

Yeah. You know, I got to get the train down the hill to get to the bus to get to the edge of the trailhead. Nobody's telling me to do that. Hiking was different. And then it, it's easy. In my opinion, it's easier to jump when there's other people around, obviously. There's kind of the herd mentality and the conversations you have are different. It's like, well, fuck it.

He's going to go to. So, all right, I feel better. I'm not the only idiot up here making this choice. So how wrong can we all be? Right. Sometimes the answer is we're all wrong. Yeah, oftentimes. But just so different.

And even just the joccup, you know, how we would banter back and forth or just being there quietly and sitting there and just kind of absorbing everything that was going on. And then, you know, step into the edge. And when I would do those jumps, there's like, leave the GoPro's at the hotel. You know, just to be there for why do I actually want to do this? Am I doing this for the right reasons or am I trying to be some YouTube sensation?

Most of my jumps by myself, I didn't bring cameras. And do you know Blake Milford? Yes. So he was the DZO at Scott, I've seen. Yeah, he's yelled at me one or two times about very dumb things I've done. Classic. I love Blake.

I do too. Blake and Nick, you're awesome. And Blake, I remember him telling me early in my, base jumping related life he said man if if the two most important cameras that we have aren't enough for you then you shouldn't be jumping how many times have you seen people who are more concerned with making sure their GoPro is on than their gear is on correctly ridiculous i've watched somebody turn on i think the maximum number was seven go seven fucking gopros and a asian a wing suit right we're talking wrist mount we're talking multiple

head mount rear front front ankle and i'm just like And all I can hear is, you know, the little jingle of the GoPro. And it's like, it's like, hey man, can you make sure

all my lights are on? I'm just like, fuck, dude, I'm out of here. I don't want to be a part of this. I remember having a narwhal mount and having a line slap, break it off and just being like,

good riddns. You know, like that solves that. Yeah, exactly. It was great. You know, it's great.

But that experience, you know, going up there and, you know, standing on the edge, it was really cool because on that particular trip, we did the low,

the middle and the high young frau because we had a local dude the thor who's out of his fucking mind and he would just in his like icelandic it's a little hike and i'll just be like oh fuck yeah because a little hike for you right for him it's just he's just just this like Nordic pace so he could have just plowed through way steep snow at like 30 miles an hour yeah so we did the low the middle and the high all the i did all those with Alex and uh i think the closest i've ever come to going in was off the high the high young frau it was visually intense i had that thought on my head where i was like oh no yeah and then just flew out of it good and yeah and it was and i couldn't tell it was really hard for me to judge because all of the rock had a very similar color gradient

and you know and thor had helped us pick where we're going to go and then he he's just like have a good jump and pshh off he goes yeah so Alex and i are sitting up there like are we in the right spot like How's the look over there? He's like, ah, it looks good. Mind you, this is two idiots who are still trying to figure out their way through the sport. It's just comparing the lack of knowledge. We both go, we both get to the ground. We're like, hey, that was really spicy.

I'm never going to jump that again. But I'm glad we did. I'm glad we did. It was a great experience because it changed my thought process. But having those conversations and then being there by yourself, quiet. You got my visor up on that traditional, you know, jump, just looking out at the beauty. and realizing that I was doing it for the right reasons. I had a wife, three young kids, the risk, the gravity of the responsibility,

because the impact is much beyond me if I go in. I mean, for me, it's actually pretty instantaneous, I would assume, or hope. Not so much for the people that you have left behind, but it was such a rich and powerful experience to stand there by yourself. Yeah, and I think a lot of people, that slips by them. that people that don't have those types of experiences or aren't attracted to those types of things they forget and they think it's just this completely this utterly selfish thing and and i think that it does self-serve there's no doubt about it oh for sure but but i also think that

um i wouldn't have the perspective that i have without those experiences so when uh i'm listening to my daughter i'm listening with in with intention and what might have been sort of trivial had I not, you know, really realized my own mortality. In other words, these experiences, the intensity of the experience, and what they teach me, has allowed me to hopefully give a better part of myself to the people that deserve it, you know?

And I think if I can do anything in this world, in terms of purpose, it's to be the best person that I can, by example, by behavior so that I can have some positive influence on other people in the same way that I appreciate the positive influence that people better than I have had on me, you know, and I think, you know, base jumping and climbing, and yeah, they are self-serving, but they do allow for that. And I think it allows you to view the world from a different perspective as well, which allows you to then describe it or when you're talking to your daughter, like you said, you can view something

from slowly different angles. And so you can give different feedback or take a different approach. You know, I'd rather be a multi-tool than, you know, I'd rather be a Swiss Army knife than a Phillips-Head screwdriver. Yeah. Because I can, you know,

Phillips-Head is really good at one thing, but I think, you know, I'm not going to be great at anything, but I think the diversity, the experience, it helps in a lot of other aspects. For me, it also points out that the purpose of it isn't the result, you know. And, I mean, that might sound super cliche,

but it's true. It's like at one time, you know, ego and ambition were driving these things. And ironically, once I did them, I learned that ego and ambition were stupid reasons to do those things, you know. But what's cool about it as a result is, is, you know, like I did this race in a paraglider called the X-Pier. It's like the X-Alps, you know, is this where you, it's a combined air ground? Yeah. So you, I've watched this. It looks awesome, except for the ground part. Fuck the ground part. It's true. There's, there is some suffering involved. Yeah. The premise of the ex-peer was to race from the Bay of Biscay, which is on the Atlantic side of the Pyrenees, and to try and make it to the Mediterranean across the entirety of the range by foot and paraglider. And we had a support crew and we could travel from, I want to say my memory's bad, but 6.30 to 9.30 or 10 at night. And then there was a flying window that you could fly in, you know. So a day would often look like waking up early,

running with a pack on. Because your paraglutters in the pack, right? You have to carry your own shit. Yeah. So you'd run up into the mountains to a launch. When the thermal start cracking,

you launch and you try and fly across country as far as you can. If you can land high, it's obviously best because if you land low, then you've got to hike back up. But if you land high, then you can try and run a ridge line, for instance, to another launch

and then get back in the air and try and obviously, the more distance you can make via air is going to be more efficient. You know, walk a week. or fly an hour, right? And then at the end of the day, fly, you know, out of the mountains or two-year support vehicle for a decent meal and some rest. And I remember getting really caught up in that race. And I made a mistake on day three that pretty much cost me being competitive,

you know, but I had, you know, like, I was super caught up in this competition. I was like, God damn it. You know, I landed at the bottom. I was fucking pissed and my support guys helped me get I ran like seven miles to this mountain and hiked up as fast as I fucking could. And it was nuclear hot. And I pulled the paraglater out and launched straight up to the like the black base of a cloud and started connecting the dots and flying back into the mountains towards this turn point deep in the fucking Pyrenees. Thinking to myself, what the fuck are you doing right now? Because it was like, you know, it was black back there and overdeveloped and the clouds were lower than the peak tops. And I had to fly over there, but I couldn't see through there, you know.

Like, well, fuck, I got to keep going. And luckily, I guess, there wasn't any energy. The clouds had shaded out everything. So there was zero convective energy. And I was found, like, scratching for bits and pieces of lift trying to make it. And I, like, landed in this high coal and grabbed my wing and ran 100 yards up and then pulled the wing back up and hooked it through this little path through a bunch of rotor. And it was just like I was super caught up and trying to make it to this turn point, you know? Yeah.

Which one of this arbitrary turn point. Totally. that meant nothing, right? And finally, at the end of the day, I find myself back in this trapped basin with, you know, 3,000 meters a mountain between me and the turn point and no time because the cutoff time for flying

had two hours or something, you know, there's no way I was even going to make it to the bridgeline. And I remember thinking, well, I'm fucked. And then I looked around and I was like, you know, you are fucking losing the plot. Because I'm in this like beautiful green basin and with waterfalls pouring down this creek and like this alpine refugio way up in the end.

It's just like, man, it's like a fucking postcard. And I'm up here by myself after flying, you know, whatever, however many miles that day and running. Yeah. And worried about some stupid fucking competition and or the way it presents on social media. And here I am like having the adventure of a lifetime in one of the most amazing places on the fucking planet.

And I remember that was a, that was a big, big step forward. You know, it was like, okay, so all of those things that I'd learn from base jumping and from getting my ass handed to me over the years, they actually, they actually did make an impression, you know, because now I could give a fuck about this competition. I'm stoked to be here now. Yeah. And it was a good experience because the rest of that adventure, that X peer, man, I ended up,

you know, like battling weather every day. I'd like run up to a launch and fly until everything closed in, storms, lightning, and I remember landing one day going backwards with high tension power lines behind me and lightning. And as soon as I got my wing in the bag, it's raining and hail. And I run for 40Ks in the rain with a pack on. And at the end of the day,

I was like, this is fucking awesome, you know? And it's because of that. It's because of this like the humility of, of understanding that this is a get to. Man, the only thing is I have, the only things I have is time and the only thing I have to do is die. Everything else I get to.

And I've chose to, I chose to be there. Yeah. So like, look at it. from the right angle, man. Be a fucking stoic. Because if you look at things from the right angle, nothing's bad. If they lead to personal growth, everything

is good. Yeah. And oftentimes you can't choose what happens to you, but you can always choose how you receive it. For sure. The only thing I can control is my mind and my behavior. Yeah. And if I was a spoiled little child throwing a tantrum because I wasn't competitive in a race

that was a fucking vacation for most people, then I'd be a fool. And I, I don't want to live like that, you know. So. Paragliding come into, because we talked about base jumping and skydiving. And obviously you started with hang gliding. Where did paragliding come into that?

Well, you know, paragliding and hang gliding are 85% exactly the same. They are? Yeah. I mean, the vehicles are different, right? Yeah. One is prone and involves a flex wing. And the other is a bag wing and you're sitting, you know, you're seated. Do they have similar flight characteristics and abilities?

They're not weight. They're both sort of weight. shift aircraft but no they're the access of control is different but the performance levels are similar enough and the decisions relative to where to be and where not to be how to use um wind and convection to travel um the the skybound and sort of groundbound clues as to how to navigate your way from point a to an undetermined point B that game is exactly the same so you know you're using the same strategy in a paraglider that you are a hang glider it's just a different vehicle. And once you learn how to fly and manage the vehicle and the limitations of that vehicle,

then you can apply all of your experience. Playing on the same chessboard, just different pieces. For sure, for sure. The only benefit of a paraglider, one of the main benefits, not the only, but one of the main ones is that when you land, you can put the thing on your back and walk. So if you're, you know, you land like in a hang glider, you're making, or I was making decisions with a level of responsibility that took into account that if I landed in the middle of nowhere, I was either going to have to hire a helicopter to get it or I was going to have to leave my glider. And no flight is worth that. So it made sense to land close to roads and to be responsible relative to the decisions about how

I was going to get home. And in a paraglider, it matters, fuck all. You can land in the middle of nowhere. And walk yourself out. And if you're fit and you have a device to be able to tell the people who care about you that you're okay, you can be out there for days. Which pro tip, you should have that device. For sure.

Yeah. there's no excuse not to have some type of well everybody's got a cell phone but attach some type of satellite communication relates to it the garment in reach is like the way to go yeah it really is like two-week communication being able to to tell your friends and family that that you're okay um makes me less stressed and able to focus on the task at hand which is either to hike to another launch so i can fly myself out or to run or hike out you know and um to be able to do these these multi-day expeditions. Like last year, a friend of mine and I hiked and flew our way across a large portion of the ANWR, you know, across the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That's crazy.

And there's no infrastructure. There's no roads. There's no trails. It's just wilderness forever out there. And so, you know, who cares about landing in the middle of nowhere? The point was to land in the middle of nowhere. You're seeking the middle of nowhere. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, how far we made it, numbers on a red line on a map for some magazine It meant nothing to us. It was just being there, being present, and enjoying that adventure. And so a paraglider, in relation to a hang glider, or in comparison to a hang glider, allows you to be able to do that.

Can you carry more stuff with a paraglider, too? You can. In a hang glider, you know, the glider weighs 70 pounds. The harness with a parachute weighs another 30 to 40 pounds. So with a kit, you're already talking over 100 pounds, right? And, you know, when I did that expedition in the Brooks range, you know, we had 65 pound packs. And my paraglider and my harness and all that stuff was only like, you know, seven or eight kgues of that. Yeah.

So it was all, it's all food and fuel. So much more manageable. Right. So, you know, I have 80 liters of storage and my, my vol biv paragliding harness. Vol biv translates in French to fly camp, you know. Okay. So 80 liters of storage is a lot of room. That's quite a bit, actually.

Yeah, you can put, you know, like I said, we were carrying 10 to 11 days of food and fuel, plus our bivvy gear and a sidearm and our paragliding kit because we were completely self-sufficient, although we were out there for 21 days, so we needed to be supported by a buddy of mine who's a Bush pilot. He dropped another 10 days of food and fuel to us via Super Cub midway on that trip via in-reach. You know, I just sent him a message and said, here we are. you know, and he... Here's a grid coordinate. And that's what led to me flying bush planes.

That, that, this exact moment, actually. So you didn't ask, but I'm going to tell you anyways. Don't worry, I was going to. Yeah, well, I know this is your new passion. Trevor was like, dude, his plane's awesome. Dude. Well, you know, yeah. So, um, I'd never been really that attracted to motorized flight.

I had a little bit of stick and rudder time over the years, chasing kangaroos in Australia and an ultralight or whatever, you know. Yeah. But flying from airport to airport never really interesting. me. So I get to Alaska and I meet up with this guy who's going to help us. And Johnny Olson is like the quintessential Alaskan cowboy bush pilot. And he, the guy, you could do, you, you've got to have him on the show. I mean, he's, he's the kind of, he's got a IQ of 155 and no internet. He's one of those dudes. Just a wall, like, he flew himself in his Super Cub from Alaska to some Midwest state in

the U.S. because a library was going to get demolished or burnt down. and he wanted the aerodynamic papers and books that were in the library. I like this guy already. He's got a, he's one of the only guys in the world that can weld titanium in a tank of Argon. He's got security clearance. He's a really interesting dude. Dude.

You might have to swap contact him. He's really, and he's been a sheep and moose guide for 45 years, you know. Wow. The stories this guy tells, I mean, I could tell you one or two of them that would just literally blow your fucking mind. And I asked myself, is this guy for real? And then he'd show me pictures. Yeah.

Like, you know, cutting a DC3 up with a solzal that he made with a 30-foot bar, you know. It's just like, it's crazy. So he, he, I get there to, you know, eight hours before my partner because his flight got delayed. And we get back to his place in Fairbanks. And Johnny's like, hey, man, you want to go flying? And I like, I've never met this guy, you know? And I'm like, well, yeah. Yeah.

So he says, all right, jump in the front seat, you know, of his cub, 35s. And in two hours, you know, I'm laughing out loud. We're landing on riverbanks. We're landing on grass strips. And he's just... It's ridiculous for those things. The capabilities. Totally.

And he knows that I know from, you know, we're having this like banter about aerodynamics. A wing is a wing, broadly. And so he's like, yeah, and you know when this happens and then you do this and you do that? And we're just like slipping it down mountain faces and dropping it in over tree lines. And I got back and I was like, man, the hook was in the mouth, right? And then I go on this expedition and, you know, there was no point in that trip that I wanted to be somewhere else. But my mind was on bushplanes. I'm like in the tent thinking like, man, how am I going to pull this off?

Flying a paraglider, like, God, this would be awesome. Yeah, because I'm a fucking dirtbag. I don't got any money. And, you know, aviation is not inexpensive, right? There is no portion of aviation. And I've seen this now from, you know, somebody who was recreationally doing it and then somebody who did like part 135 charter flying. Right. There is zero portion of aviation that is not ridiculously expensive.

Right, right. And so, yeah, how do you make that happen? Anyways, I'm thinking materialize, materialized, manifest, you know? And so I'm in the tent, watching it rain, thinking about bush planes. And we get 10 days into this trip, and now we have no food. And, you know, we had allotted for 1,500 calories a day. We're spending 6,000 to 7,000. Yeah.

So, you know, I went in purposely heavy. Like, I, you know, I think I weighed like 107,000. 93 pounds or something when I went in. I came out at 158 or 156. I was losing weight. So was Cody. But we were in such a good headspace that, you know, 10 days, we're hungry as fuck. But we're like, ah, we're going to be fine.

This is great. Plus, it was planned. And I've often found that if you can plan for that type of stuff, it becomes infinitely more manageable. For sure. If you had to do that and you didn't realize that that was going to happen, it probably would have sucked a lot more. And we weren't feeling weak.

We were feeling fit, you know? Yeah. So everything was fine. But it was stormy. And we're, I'll never forget this, man. So we're camped at, um, on the side of this river, sort of at the tailwaters of the Iveshack. It's just like one of the main arteries.

And, um, clouds are 250 feet off the ground. It's raining sideways blowing like 40. No exaggeration. The tents are barely staying up. And, um, and there's lightning. And Johnny's sending me messages saying he can't get over Carter Pass, which is a gnarly spot, you know. It's like, I've tried three times.

I can't get over Carter Pass. Can you guys hold tight? And we're like, I'm like, bro, do not risk anything. Like, we are fine. Don't sweat it, you know, wait it out. So 10.45 at night, I'm kind of just starting to drift off. It's bright. It's bright daylight out, right?

Yeah. But the clouds are super low. And it's nuke and I hear the telltale drone of a super cup. And I said, Cody, do you hear that? And he was like, he kind of woke up and he's like, is that? And I was like, that's a fucking super cup. So I get out of the, I put on rain pan. and Gortex and hoods up and get out of the tent and walk to the edge and sure is shit.

Here comes Johnny in his Super Cub. He's 10 feet off the deck over this river. Carving between rocks. I mean, this is like full on IMC conditions. And he's got a six-pack in that thing. He's got no, no ILS gear at all. He doesn't have GPS. It's okay because there's no ILS out there anyway.

So it doesn't matter. Right. But he's got a paper map in his lap. You know it, right? and well actually it's more in his mind and so he's carving you know 10 feet off the creek in in the super cup with 35s buzzes the tents at 100 miles an hour throws an impossible turn it goes up into the clouds i hear him cut the power to idle chops it comes down drops three notches of flaps swings the ass into the plane around puts it down as soft as can be on this 100 foot patch of gravel stops

drives across the river i mean he's got water all the way to the top of his 35s water's water's driving through the prop over the windshield and he pulls up next to camp and gets out in a t-shirt and calmly walks over to us and he's like hey you boys hungry with a like a platform of strawberries in the back and it was to this day it was the most impressive piece of aviation i've ever seen and it's from what you describe it combined so many ridiculously technical aspects i don't know how he even got in there and now the hook is not in my mouth it is driven all the way through my cheek and i'm like man I have to do that. Like I,

it was like the coolest, you know, and it was, I literally I was like, man, in, in terms of aviators, you are a bad motherfucker. I,

like I literally, the, he's a gunslinger of aviators. Exactly. Like the amount of respect. And he was so, you know, his,

he would tell you he's a coward. Like, there was no, no machismo or bravado about it. He was just like, ah, man, I tried this and I tried that and it didn't work.

And, and at the end of the, day, you just have to ask yourself one question. Does it work or doesn't it? And when I got through, I knew I was going to get to you boys, you know? And his level of care for us, you know, I think he was attracted to trying to see if he could do it. But for sure, there's an aspect of that. But it was, it was cool. And he stayed there for a couple of days. And, and, um, and that single experience, like, was, it solidified my, my desire to, to take that path and to try and realize that. But what you're describing to is so different.

I think that most people's perception of general aviation, because general aviation is not what you described. And I can tell you because I went through the process myself. It's when you first learn how to fly, you are living in a linear environment of a runway environment. Right. You learn to, well, first you get to,

well, first you get to check list and then you learn at a taxi, and then you do the worst, most horrendous takeoff, which is only followed by a worse, more horrendous landing. Sure. With an instructor putting a lot more input into the airplane than you actually think they are. For sure.

for sure. You're like, I totally had that. And he was like, yeah, you did. As they're over there dripping and sweat with like a death grip on the actual steering controls. But then, you know, it's all patterns, left hand or right hand pattern. It's very linear. And, you know, you practice the engine out stuff, but on a linear environment. Then you'll do a cross country.

And it wasn't, even when I was doing the, so I have just over 3,000 hours of flight time. And I've been very fortunate. I was able to fly. But it was always generally from an airport to pick someone. else up at an airport. I've landed off of a runway environment exactly zero times. So even my aviation experience is the exact opposite of what you're describing. Sure. Yeah. And I got a buddy who was, he actually works in the film industry's names Tim Rigby, skydiver, stuntman, and he is, I remember he was learning to fly. And he was, he had his instrument rating before I even started. But he would seek out,

like, mountain flying courses. And he had his own sassan. Like, that's the kind of stuff that he's into as well. And that is the type of aviation that I think would just grab people. But to get exposed to that, I mean, here, we're super fortunate here. We could get exposed to that. But where I lived in San Diego, I don't even know, I don't even know where you'd seek that out. No, it's a massive trip just to be exposed to it more or less. Yeah. I can do it with any regularity.

You might be able to find the plane, but to actually be able to do any of the land anywhere other than that environment. I don't even know. Yeah, the airspace is really complex. down there too. Yeah. So, you know, here in Montana, um, we're very close to one of the mecas of backcountry flying in the lower 48, which is in the Frank church. When the wilderness was designated, they grandfathered in just like 44 strips back there or something. Some are gnarlier than others, you know, um, some are golf courses and some are, you know, are the actual golf courses? Because that'd be amazing. They probably could be. Yeah, like, oh, my bad. I was landed on the green sucks.

Yeah, yeah. What you could do. but but uh but i wanted to fly an airplane like i flew a hang glider like i fly a paraglider and um and that meant in the mountains not flying over the mountains but in them and through them yeah and um you know being able to uh you know if you're getting your ass kicked and the rotor up high dive down and fly like a salmon swimming upstream from rock to rock and fly in the lee and understand what it all the complexity of what you're doing to try and make it safely to navigate through mountain environment in an airplane and and to have the right tool for the job and certainly the access to be able to get to places and do the things that we love to do.

And once again, in a way that only that type of vehicle can get you there. You know, it's like when you're kayaking whitewater down a river that's got walls on both sides, you realize very instantly that you can only be there in a kayak, right? And in an airplane, it's the same way. Like you go back to these backcountry strips and you'd have to walk. two weeks to get there unless you were flying the airplane. And that probably took you two hours.

Right. And so, you know, when I learned, I, uh, I just kind of like put my head down and went for it and ended up getting a bush plane. Um, I got the plane from a guy in Ontario and, um, didn't have my license yet. Uh, a guy that I used to race hang gliders with is a CFI and an airline captain. He met me over there, just for the fun of it, sat in the backseat and we've spent 28 hours dodging weather, um, for five days from eastern Canada all the way back to Montana. Awesome. Yeah, flew down into, all the way into, you know, Colorado before heading back up into Montana just because the whole northern part of the states was painting.

And, um, was it summertime? Yep. Yeah, you were dealing with all that late summer. Yeah. And, and thunderstorm time. Oh, man, we, I landed in Yuma, Colorado one night. And, um, we took off because we couldn't get fuel there. We took off to do a little 15 minute hop to another air strip to get fuel and immediately

saw this gust front coming. The sky turned green and was dark and I saw this gust front coming. I was like, Alex, my spidey sense is the same. We should turn around. So I turned around, landed again at Yuma. And by the time I had the tail tied down, it was no exaggeration. It was blowing 30 to 40 gust into 60. And the tornado sirens started going off in town. And then lightning every three seconds, there's a bolt to lightning and this massive funnel cloud formed to the ground north of town moving north. So we were okay. But it was just a wild experience as a new pilot. And imagine being in the air for that. Jesus, huh?

I mean, you probably wouldn't be in the air for long. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be a hell of a ride down. Yeah, yeah. But it was a cool trip. And then since then have been learning specifically and for the sole purpose of learning how to fly on the deep side of the power curve to fly stole and just learn how to land and take off in the shortest environments.

My plane has 31s and shocks and I can land on bowling balls and that thing. and it takes off and lands and I can land the thing in less than 100 feet and no wind. And it's a really capable airplane. Yeah, so that's been really cool. And now I'm just finally getting to the point where my skill set, I feel like I'm, you know, like you and I could throw base gear or whatever gear in the back of the plane and then go have one, you know. Yeah. And that's kind of what I got it for was their toys and their tools.

Yeah. So to be able to go bow hunting and get yourself out of the mountains with an animal or strap a kayak or a mountain bike to the outside of the airplane or, you know, throw the base gear or the paraglider in the back or a surfboard and go land on the beach, an airplane, if it's used correctly, can deliver. It unlocks a lot of things. It's like it's a master key. Yeah. And they're fun as fucking. Yes, they are. Carving down a river like 10 feet off the water below tree top level and passing bald eagles looking down on you is pretty fun.

I'm like laughing out loud. Yeah, it's like a little kid, you know. God, again, it's how hard to describe those experiences unless you've actually experienced it, though. Yeah. The verbal description is often tough, I think, to live up to the reality of watching that through camera one, camera two. For sure.

Yeah. And, you know, just the fascination with flight over the years through falconry or through all of the sports that I've enjoyed, they've all, you know, like my dad used to say, everything we do in life perfectly prepares us for what's next, even if we don't know what's coming. And I feel like, you know, learning how to fly this bush plane is kind of,

it's in a lot of ways, it's, you know, I don't know, it's a bit of a culmination of, of a lot of interest, fascination, and, and experimentation over the years, you know. Well,

your cumulative experience through your diverse passions is going to help with that too, because you can take a lot of those chunks and directly apply it. I mean, it's not, bad country is not new to you. Being in the air is not new to you. Understanding weather patterns,

not new. It's again, you're on the same chessboard, but you get a different tool. For sure. Yeah. And there's nothing better in life than to be a beginner. Like learning something new, I, like, I don't, I said this before too, I don't give a shit about being the best of anything anymore. I love learning new things. Yeah. And like this, man, it's such a turn on to have your learning curve like this, steep, you know, and to experience new stuff and in new ways and be introduced to new people and see new things. Man, I, I, I would struggle to find anything that's better than that. I often find, too, the people that are incredibly good at one thing often suck at many

other. Yeah. I mean, they find that sweet. And I'm not saying you shouldn't pursue that, but I personally, I'd rather be a generalist than a specialist. Yeah. I think it would reward the choices that I want to continue to make in my life more than just being great at any one thing.

Yeah. And I think just, I'm sure you're the same way. I know you are. Anything we decide to do, you know, whether we're good at it or not, in comparison to someone else doesn't matter, right? Because, you know, comparison is the killer of all joy. Like, you know, there's always someone that's stronger. There's always someone that's better, right?

And it's dangerous to do that over the long term because it'll turn you off to stuff. For sure. And it changes the reason. Yeah. But doing something the very best that I can do it and continuing to strive to improve is something that I try and do with everything I do. So whether I'm good compared to somebody else doesn't matter. I just want to be better than I was yesterday at everything I do, you know?

And that's not just for ego or self-satisfaction. It's for longevity. It's for intellectual and professional stimulus. You know, stimulus. It's for a whole variety of reasons. And I think it all boils down to wanting to be the best version of myself that I can be, not just for my own reasons, but to be able to share it with other people too. and I always appreciate meeting people that do that

because they end up giving the best part of themselves to me, you know, which is cool and I'm grateful for it. And if you frame it like that, the journey never ends. Right. If it's framed as in a comparison or a competition to somebody else, what do you do if you exceed that person? Right. You're like, oh, well, I guess I'm done.

No, man, yeah, I want to be an old fucker and saying like, man, remember that, remember when we did that shit? Yep. And, man, that whole fortune cookie thing of like, I'd rather die with a lot of memories than dreams. That is true. Like I, I haven't heard that one, but I like that.

I'd rather die with a lot of memories than dreams. Hell, yes. Yeah, because, you know, it has to start with a dream. But man, the only person that's going to do it is us. For sure. Like, we got to go do it. And then, you know, obviously, if you're lucky enough to have the opportunities, then it would almost be a travesty to not,

it would like be taking it for granted. If you didn't take advantage of those opportunities and do it to the fullest value, you know, and then those opportunities that you can share and give to other people, then you should because they were given to us. And in that way, that circle continues, you know. I couldn't agree more. How did you get into falconry? Let's not just blow over the fact that you just mentioned you're a falconer as well.

Man, falconry is fucking cool. And a lot of people think I'm a total dork, and I get it. I know, I get that. I know one falconer now. Well, you know, it's funny. What's funny to me is I remember there was a Joe Rogan, speaking of Joe, because I know you guys are friends. Chris Ryan, Dr. Chris Ryan, Christopher Ryan.

Okay. He came to the house. I'd never met this guy. He was really, really good dude. Came to the house and he just called me out of the blue and said, hey, man, you want to do a podcast together? Absolutely, yeah, that would be fun. We had a conversation.

He did a podcast with Joe later. And he mentioned, I think he mentioned me in some sort of tangent. And he mentioned that as a falconer. And Joe was like, oh, he's a falconer. He's like, I was just starting to like that guy. Joe doesn't know shit about that. No, no. So I totally get it, though.

I think it's funny. But for me, hunting, you know, if we're going to be meat eaters, you got to do that shit with respect and responsibility. You can't go and turn your conscience off and eat some miserable animal. You got to feel the feelings that, you know, I don't like killing shit. But I need to feel that to appreciate what I'm putting into my body, you know?

I always advise people to not outsource their murder. Right. Because just because you get it at a grocery store doesn't remove the things that occur to get it into the grocery store. And even in a worse way, right? Yeah. So anyways, it's tangent. But hunting is a privilege. And in Montana, it's...

We won the fucking lottery. We won the fucking lottery. I mean, there's no other way to describe it. And so I was hunting pheasants with a buddy. We were walking with shotguns and dogs. And one of the dogs found a short-eared owl that somebody had shot. shorter owls are coming out of the grass all the time. I'm sure it was a mistake.

Yeah. But here's this little owl and he's like wings open looking at me, you know? And I thought to myself, man, do I, do I let nature take its course and this thing get eaten by a coyote? Or do I pick this thing up and take it to a like a vet or it was a Raptor? Nature reserve or something. Yeah. You know, now I've learned. Yeah.

There's this specialized group of people who are rehabbers of rafters. Because you're fucking falconer. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, fucking funny. So I take this owl home and I have it in this box and a little bit, it doesn't meet because, of course, that's what they, you know, I'm thinking to myself, like, I know everything, right?

I know shit. And I put this owl in this box with a towel over this, and I turn the light off and I close the door and my wife comes home. This is like before my daughter was born. I'm like, Kara, you got to come see this is a fucking owl. She's like, what? There's what? I opened the door and this owl has jumped.

out of the box, it's on the bed and it's like, who, like, you know, looks at her. I was like, holy shit. I run in there with a sheet and we turn the light off and I kind of draped the sheet over and pick it up, but because I didn't want it. Its wing was badly broke. Yeah. So I take it to a raptor rehabber. Turns out she was a falconer. She loaned me some books. She gave me this, you know, hood. Meaning the little thing that goes over the falcons eyes. Exactly. You know, and was, I was just fascinated by it. I didn't know people did that, you know. It's like, it's this ancient art i knew about it but i didn't know that people still that there was a contemporary following at all you know and um so i've it happens to be the most regulated hunting sport in the country you need to

find a sponsor who's a a general or a master falconer who will sign their name to your paperwork to take you under their wing for the first two years as an apprentice you have to pass a 120 question test with fwp they come they you go to fwp headquarters and you take this test that involves identification and medications and, you know, history and all kinds of stuff. And then once you pass your test and you have your signature, they come to your house and inspect your falconry furniture, you know, the gear that you need, like the, they don't want some jackass to, to trap or train a raptor or have one as a pet, right? They're not pets. They're- This seems reasonable. Totally reasonable. So they come, once you pass your inspection, you're now an apprentice falconer

for two years and you can hunt with a redtail or orchestral passage birds trapped from the wild. And after gaining that experience, if your sponsor writes a letter of recommendation, then you can apply for your general permit. And you have to be a general for another seven years before, and three more letters of recommendation before you can get your master permit. What the fuck, man? So it's a pretty involved scenario, but the magic is in the journey, right? Like everything.

So I decided to commit to this and had a, you know, trapped a female redtail and hunted with her hard for the first. year. I pulled a redtail from a nest for the second year, which was a mistake. You know, you learned that red tails, certain types of birds are better pulled as iases or chicks, you know, and others are better trapped as subadults. And others are better parent raised and others are better captive raised or imprinted. I mean, it depends on the species. And how did you trap your first one? With, um, so you can, there's a lot of different methods. it's for obtaining a bird in the wild.

You can use a trap called a ball chatry, which is like a cage where you put a rodent running around in the cage, and the whole cage is covered with monofilament slip nooses, and the bird sees it, lands on the cage and gets noosed, right? Yep. Another one is a version of that on a pigeon harness, a harness that protects a pigeon. You have a pigeon connected to an eight-foot piece of lime

with a weight on the end. It can't get away. It's flapping all over the place. It's covered by cowhide harness with slip-nooses all over it. the hawk or the falcon hits that thing, gets noosed. You go over and you get the bird and the pigeon is released, normally completely unharmed. Yeah.

And when you get the hawk, you know, the hawk or the falcon thinks you're going to eat it. So it's just in this like shock state. And you slip a hood over its head, put blinders on it essentially, carefully fold its wings, put the thigh section of a woman stocking over the bird, and then you take it back to the car and you inspect it for health. fit it for Almeri bracelets and the jesses and a bell if you're going to use one and you take it home and you put it in a cool dark room for 24 hours and then you begin the manning process and the manning manning yeah and so when you when you begin this process what you're essentially doing is

taking a wild animal that thinks of you as a predator and removing fear and convincing it that you're an advantage in its life and raptors are exceptionally smart relative to adaptation so it doesn't take long for them to get to that point. And when you see a wild raptor that is, you know, they're not social. You can't discipline a raptor. They just know fight or flight. Yeah. If you do something negative to a raptor, it's either going to grab you or it's going to fly away. That's all they know. So when you take a raptor who thinks that you're going to kill it and after a week of consistency and positive reinforcement, it walks unleashed across the perch and reaches for food to your glove and can't get it and jumps to your glove and then eats and exposes the back of its neck

to you to that raptor there's no difference in that six inches and three miles and so the same whistle the same presentation will call a bird from two miles away on a pole that it took for to top six inches off the perch to your glove and that process from that point happens quite rapidly until the bird says oh well not only is this this thing not going to kill and eat me but it's It's actually going to provide the three things that I need most. The third being a safe place to roost at night. The second being the opportunity to eat every day because the raptor will starve to death in three days in the wild.

No shit. Oh, yeah. I did not know that. And especially in the winter. And the most important is the opportunity to chase, catch, and kill shit because that's what they'd love to do, right? And yeah, like the smaller the bird, the more consequential. But, you know, say a gossack will lose.

up to 100 grams a night. So when it's cold, even maybe a little bit more. So if a gossack in the wild doesn't eat today, it's going to be really hungry. And susceptible to diseases like a spurgillosis and all kinds of stuff. If it doesn't eat the second day, now it's weak, and it might not be successful hunting. On the third day, it falls over, dies.

And so, you know, the falconer is providing this environment or this advantage in this raptor's life that it recognizes on a genetic level. and it will cooperatively hunt with you. And at the end of the season, by feeding it more, because a lot of the art of falconry is relative to weight control,

you know, how much a bird waves or how much food they have in them is directly proportional to their behavior. That makes sense. When they're fat and happy, they sit on a pole.

Why would they come to you? They don't want to come to you. You're stuck there for six hours waiting for this dumb fucking bird to fly down to your fist, right? Well, they're not dumb. They're very smart. Why would I fly to that guy?

I don't need him. Right, exactly. But when they're too light and too hungry, then they're weak and they can't hunt very well, and now they're susceptible to all these things in the air. So you're trying to play this game, and at the end of the season, you feed the bird more than it needs.

You make sure that it's super healthy. You've already presented opportunities for it to kill prey that are larger and more lucrative than it normally would in the wild. So now it's more capable. And then you take and you cut off all the jesses and the leather, and you take it set off and you let it fly away, and it doesn't come back. And now it's back into the wild.

And that's this process. that I would go through year after year until recently I got a bird from a friend of mine who was a breeder, he's a half-year, half-paragrin falcon, and imprinted him from the time he was an IAS. Before he could even walk, he was kind of a family member, you know, and it's much different level of interaction, you know, when he was still a brancher, which is like too young to fly, but could run around. He would, like, be on the couch and, like, jump off the couch on my dogs back and ride him around the house like a fucking rodeo. You know, it's hilarious.

But, um, but he's still a slayer in the field. You know, he's a, he's a fucking bird. Like, you know, he is a falcon. There's a tearsel, but, you know, it's the falconiform. So, um, now, uh, and the way you train him is quite slightly different. But now I go out into the field, you know, when I had, when my dog was alive, we'd go out and the dog would point the pheasant. I take the hood off the bird. As soon as you release the, um, you know, take off his jess as he's on his own.

You're no longer in control. He's in control. takes off and he starts doing circles and he'll gain 500 feet above me and follow me through the field and just be looking down and he'll stay on the wing above me 500 feet doing circles and he's kind of just watching you yep or everything around you too and the dog and he knows the dog because of the training and so he's looking around obviously if an eagle comes into the you know he's I can hear him right away when he makes a certain call I know there's an eagle in the area you know but um which I'm assuming that's bad bad yeah because the eagle will for sure okay yeah um he's he's

you know, he's like the cheetah and sees the male lion kind of, right? And so they know, you know. But then if I'm lucky, the dog will go on point. The bird sees that, starts doing circles overhead, takes the set, you know, just like opens his wings and stops flapping. And I know he's ready. And I'll run in and the dog and I will flush the pheasant. And as soon as the pheasant comes out of the grass, that sound, I look up and my bird's name is Cirrus, you know.

he will, Cirrus will fold up, roll over upside down, fold up in a bullet, and it doesn't even look fucking real. He comes out of the sky. It's like he is tearing a hole in the atmosphere, man. It is literally like, it sounds like an egg sizzling in a pan. And he comes out of the sky at 150 plus miles an hour and smacks that bird and generally that thing hits the ground like a basketball dead of his doorknob. And sometimes he doesn't, he just knocks it down and then he'll do a big wing over and land on it and kill it on the ground. And I get the sense that he does that just because he wants to, you know? Yeah. But then, you know, through the training, he'll stand on it and he'll pluck all its feathers because that's what they do naturally.

And wait for me. And I walk up with the dog and the dog lays down. I give him a treat. I kneel down next to the bird. He jumps up onto the fist and eats the quail that I brought for him. Yeah. And I put the pheasant in the best and take it home and weed it, you know? Holy shit, man.

It's pretty fucking cool. And it's fun to be a part of it. And then the history of it is a whole other conversation. Like, I got to go to a Mongol. Goli a last year, two years ago to fly paraglider and I spent some time with an eagle hunter and his family. And to see that, to see his eagles and to interact with him and, and, um, talk to him as a contemporary falconer and as a guy who's hunting with the eagle the same way that it's been done for 10,000 years was a cool experience too. So that whole world has brought a lot of, um,

a lot of flavor and texture to life too, you know, and you know, my daughter, it's so funny, man. she came home from, it must have been second grade or first grader. She's like, dad, I thought everybody had a peregrine in the house. I'm like, sugar, no. That's actually not true. Very few do. I can't believe that you, before the peregrine, you would release the bird every year. I had no idea that it was a revolving exchange.

Well, and a lot of people would say, well, how do, you know, how have you done all this other shit? And that was the deal, was falconery the way it was kind of a shoulder season thing for me. You know, when the ice climbing wasn't good and the flying was kind of bad and the rock climbing was too wet, I would trap a hawk or a falcon and train it and hunt with it for two or three months and then release it and be released of the responsibility and then be able to do all these trips and travel because, you know, now I can travel and my partner takes care of the bird or if we're together, I'll take it up to another falconer's place because he's so easy and well-behaved and easy to deal with. I had this like goss hawk that was a fucking dinosaur.

I mean, this thing was like, man, you had to, like, if I drop something, I would like hold him way out here because he reached out and grabbed me in the face, you know? And that bird, I wouldn't, I wouldn't let Kara or Naya even near because, you know, a big powerful hawk can hurt you. Yeah, some risk involved in that for sure. I mean, not, you know, not like real risk, but risk in a way that I wouldn't want them to have a bad experience and or, you know, what do you do? It's like one time this peregrine grabbed me.

It was a bird that came to my chamber from a breeding project and hadn't been handled at all and was kind of wild and I was just like working with it. And I made a mistake. And she grabbed me and man, one talent buried all the way through the meat of my thumb all the way through the meat of this thing. And the other one was buried in my hand. And what do you do? You can't, if you pull away or you grab it or do something, it will never forget or forgive ever. Yeah, they just have that. So I got to figure out how to solve a problem and promote a behavior with positive reinforcement.

How fuck do you do that? While experiencing excruciating pain. So as my eyes are watering, you know, I take a piece of meat out and I hold it under its beak. And it took a while because it's just looking at me, you know, with its talons buried in my hand. Finally, it sees the meat and it goes down to get it. And when it bites it, I don't let it tear. I just go with it. Every time it tries to pull, I just go with it.

finally at that point when it needed to tear off which required its talent and put its hand on the meat on this hand and was they stepped on to this hand now he's on this hand and he's let go of this hand and i just carefully put him back on the perch give him the meat and walk out go and clean the fucking wounds walk back in and finish the session and that bird would never never even remembered that moment yeah but if i would have done something it would have never been trainable ever right so solving problems with positive reinforcement is one of those weird falconry things that seems to cross over and to regular life too you know it's kind of funny what's your falcon doing right now is just like chilling watching netflix yeah pretty much he's watching discovery channel no uh it we're in the

we're in the off season yeah they can i can hunt with them september 1 to march 31st so he's molting in the spring they lose all their feathers and they grow new ones um most falconers keep their birds fat and happy they can't legally hunt them anyways so man i just keep him overweight um i interact with him you know several times a day uh i have a perch in the house i put him up on this perch and he just like watches the world go by and man he he knows no different yeah so like in a wild bird i would release because uh you know he deserves to make his own living and you know have that freedom but uh this bird man he would he's perfectly happy doing what he's done for the last five seasons in a row knowing that when the season starts, he's going to be flying every day, you know?

That's so crazy. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Pretty fun. You'll have to come down and check it out. Or I'll actually meet you because I actually hunt pheasants up here. I was thinking I need to become a falconer. I was thinking that too. So I have someone else that I can say, well, Andy does it.

When Trevor was leaving your house, he was like, man, what do you think about paragliding? I was like, Trevor, I need another hobby like I need another fucking hole in my head. I found a speed wing I had the other day. I'm like, oh, I forgot I had this. I don't have the time to stay current on that either. It's like, son of a bitch. Yeah. No, it sounds incredibly intriguing.

It's a cool way to travel. It's a cool way to fly. It's really unique because it's minimal. And what's interesting, I think, is, you know, I'm lucky enough to guide paraguador pilots in the winter in Columbia. It's a nice break from the Montana winter. And a lot of our clients are these amazing dudes. They're like fighter pilots, you know, F-18 pilots.

got a couple of harrier pilots. I don't know shit. Yeah. That actually doesn't surprise me. No, no, me neither. But it's interesting because from coming from motored flight to gliding flight is more difficult than from gliding flight to motor flight. Like engine outs, you know, that practice is like, well, oh, thank God, I'm finally in a hang glider, right?

Like, there's no such thing as a go around in a hang ladder. This is true. But it is interesting to see these amazing pilots, like incredibly well-trained military pilots, fly paragliders and find so much joy in it that at the end of the day they're just like nine-year-old kids their eyes are sparkling they're like holy shit why was that cloud base and this bird came and flew with me it was amazing i mean you'd probably love it man it's see i'm sure that i would you know and i don't have much experience around i did a backseat ride in an f18 for a couple hours and just an understanding at a general level it's so electronic heavy you know they're managing a lot of systems and managing the airplane i think a lot of the time

instead of flying it, whereas I imagine paragliding is a much more tactile in the moment. I'd still be lying if I said I wouldn't want a barrel roll at a thousand miles an hour. That'd be pretty fucking bad. Listen, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. I think it's just a wildly different experience. I'm sure.

Yeah. I mean, even the Gulfstream that I was flying, it's your, it's checklist, it's system management. You're managing systems in an airplane. And the airplanes, it's had auto throttles, autopilot. Yep. You're managing a lot of stuff.

I mean, it'd be up there and, you know, weight shifting and moving around and having, like, there's no birds. Well, I guess there could be birds that flew with the Gulfstream, but it would be probably into the windscreen or the nacelle. Not ideal. Correct. But in a paraglider, you know, it is vulnerable.

Like you're, you can turn into a bag of chips and a snowstorm pretty quick if you're. I've seen some pretty horrendous YouTube videos. Yeah. Yeah. So. But you said there's a reserve parachute, right? So what could go wrong? There is or two.

What? Yeah, I have two in my comp. Oh, fuck. And, you know, it's because of the idea. that if you're pushing hard, you could end up with a reserve in your main and having a second, you know, backup to the backup is nice. But, um, but, um, but, you know, the, to combat any, uh, potential accident, the first step is to have good judgment. And, you know, paragliding, um, you know, the mistake is often made, right? So, and, and, and I have to admit, um,

even in paragliding, uh, and hang gliding in certain types of aviation, you know, it's not inherently dangerous. It's just unforgiving of human error. So you have like this chain of events that has to happen where if you were to remove any link in that chain, the accident probably wouldn't happen, right? And in a, you know, in a base jump, that's that

chain is one link generally. So there is room for error in paragliding and in aviation, general aviation, even bush flying, which is certainly a step maybe closer to, well, I should say,

I don't know if I would say that. I was going to say that a mistake might be more expensive in the mountain environment and general aviation than it would be in an airport environment. But I'm not sure I agree with that. I think a mistake is a mistake and they can be expensive in both environments. Yeah, I'd agree with you. You just probably have different options in each environment. Yeah, and I do know, like, coming options is a good,

that's a good way to state it because there are several strips, some that I just landed in last week that, you know, once you're past a certain point, you're in close-out terrain. and you are going to land. One way or another, like there's no go around. It's very similar to some base jumping lines, where if you choose to, you know, you can go left right or center off the exit.

And if you go left, you get a clear mandatory performance object, but once you do that, you're riding the line for what the line is. Yeah, you might be in a no pull zone for a while, and that's something that you accept when you make that decision. And hopefully you know that you're actually in a no pole zone.

Yeah. I've watched people, again, on exit points talking about what they're going to do, and I'm just like, I need to get the fuck out of, here. Like, hey, do you mind if I jump first? Exactly. That's so funny that you'd say that because I've used that one.

Like, hey, man, I, you know, I might just go if that's okay with you. Yeah. I got to meet somebody for a thing. Right. I just don't want to hear any more of this. I got to bomb out. Right. Has your perspective on base jumping changed it all? Has you gotten older or had a family or had kids? For sure. I mean, I wouldn't say because of being a dad, I was, when I learned how to base gem, I was 14 months old, you know? I had kids as well. And people always say like, man like how could you do that as a fun and i was like man i didn't want to die before i had a kid like i you know i don't see that much of a difference other than the impact that you would have by you know checking out but both literal and metaphorical yeah but um but um it has evolved

but it's evolved based on uh my experiences as you would expect not not because of um I mean, you tell me if you agree with this, because I have a strong suspicion that you will. Okay. I don't, I don't, I don't, uh, wake up and get out of bed like I used to. You know, my, I don't feel the same level of recovery, a level of, um, I shouldn't say level of motivation, but a reason for motivation, you know, I'm as motivated as ever, but I'm motivated by different things. Yep. And I can't not be affected by some of these experiences. You know, when you hear that sound, someone hit in a ledge or you...

It's unmistakable and you'll never forget it. Never forget it. And when you've seen the consequences, you know, I try and make decisions based on logic and never emotion, but we're out there essentially seeking an emotional response, doing the things that we'd love to do. When I think of the consequences, that is not the same. It's not even the same fucking sport. as experiencing the consequence. So, you know, my feelings of base jumping have changed dramatically based on a close call,

based on seeing the results and hearing, getting the phone calls and dealing with the aftermath. Does that affect, does it, does it, is it fear driven that I'm not jumping the same way or as much as I used to? No, it's, it's just not as important as it was, you know? Yeah. And really priority and what's important in life and what isn't. It's such a personal thing, man.

It's like risk. Risk is so personal. Some days it's worth it. Some days it's not. You know, jumping is worth it. Is one jump ever worth it? No, it's never, one jump is never worth it. But that's for each of us to make as a choice when we're at the exit or when we're

getting in the car to go to the exit. And I, you know, I was so driven at one point that a lot of that was just, secondary and now it's very primary so i mean you know yeah things have changed but not because i'm a dad or because i'm older or because i'm decrepit and sore all the time uh but because um it's it's either important enough to do or it's not and um and that changes is it you know as it as it should i agree i think i have the same level of fire but it's from different fuel sources yeah and you know we live and we're so lucky to live here, but I had better access to currency as well where I used to live.

And I try to, I have to take that into account as well because for me to ignore the currency, regardless of the amount of experience I had in the past, I've seen firsthand what happens when people try to take a bunch of time off and they go, okay, where was I before? Totally. Let's just go ahead and go right back to that point. And like,

I would be a moron to ignore that in myself. So I'm, I still have the, desire, but it's for different reasons, too. Yeah, it's funny. I was listening to Greg's podcast with you. He said something that really made a lot of sense to me. There was a time in life where I used to play a lot of jitzy, you know,

I was into judo and jujitsu. You were? Of course you were. You were fucking living example of a Renaissance man. Do you do pottery as well? My wife does. She's an amazing potter. What else?

Water color? No. God damn it. Yeah. Do you write like long novels in cursive? I'll send you one tonight. No, no. But I did.

There was a time where, I mean, it's funny, it was a time where I'd never felt tougher. You know, I was like a dumb kid in my 20s, and I was working construction, building homes and commercial construction during the day, rolling at the dojo until 10, 30 or 11 a night, doing that, you know, five days a week and then ice climbing in the winter.

And, you know, it's like one of those deals. Climbing a steep pillar doesn't sound so bad when you've been carrying three-quarter inch, OSB in the wind in, you know, double insulated overalls all day in the snow, you know, in Montana. So a few people will get that reference, but growing up to construction site, I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, I remember being sore one night playing, playing like Roland Randori because I gotten blown off a ladder, you know? It's like one of those times in life. And of course, at 20, you know, you got rubber bones, right? Yeah. But I remember him saying that when he moved to a, you know,

a school, a jiu-jitsu school where the instructors just, like, beat the brakes off of them. Yeah. He wanted to just say, look, I'm, I was a brown, I was a brown belt. I wanted to start over. So, you know, once again at this stage, if I was to, as an example, to currency, if I was to go back to Jiu-Jitsu, which I've actually thought about recently, I would, I would just want to start over, just fucking start over because there's so much value in, in revisiting all of those.

Well, it goes right back to the mindset of. being a beginner. Yeah. There's a great gym, an SBG gym, actually in Missoula. Really? Yeah,

I'm good friends with, so there's three here in the flathead. There's white fish, big pork in Calispell, and then there's SBG, Missoula. I actually was physically there for the first time,

not too long ago, just passing through, but I will warn you that the head coach is eight feet tall. Yeah. God damn it. If he gets a hold of you, it's over.

It's just really not awesome. Yeah, yeah. Well, I remember the dojo I was at it. It's like, you know, you puke on my mat, you're going to bleed on my mat, you know. It's been, you know, I've loved, that's one of the fires, like I said.

I still have the exact same level of motivation, but it just burns from different places. And for me, jiu-jitsu has been an awesome one. And I think it was, I found it at a time where it allowed me to get a better context of why I was jumping. Alex's death impacted me pretty deeply because of the experience that we had shared. And I had been there through, I mean, fuck, I have. I've got, I was there for his first jump in Monte Brento. And I was, I was fucking dying laughing because he was shaking physically so hard. So of course, I'm just talking shit.

I'm like, what's wrong with you, dude? Can you control your leg? He's just like, shut. Like, that's the funniest video. And then we were the same size. So I'd give him my old wing suits. And it was his death. And I was actually there when he had a few close calls.

And I wish I had chewed his ass harder. There's some regret involved in that as well, too. but I got so much out of base jumping at a personal level. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, moving these up or down or it's just, you know, living in the moment strips away. I fucking thought about what to post on Instagram as I'm getting ready to huck it off the young frowlike. Like, keep the fuck out of here. That's right.

And finding jiu-jitsu, which I was resistant to at first because people just wouldn't shut up about it. I'm like, if you're this vocal about it, it must suck. Yeah, right. the one at 180 degrees incorrect philosophy apparently and uh found it in it was directly into the the learning curve the learning pool that you're talking about surrounded by people who are better at it doesn't even make sense how they're able to do some of the things that they can do and then you start to learn and you realize for me it's more of a it's a mental chess match more than a physical chess match and i just i feel like i've always responded and it it's kept my motivation at such a

high level. And I really do think it gave me that buffer from jumping to realize that I still want to do it. And there's a part of me that probably needs it. But it's going to be at a different level. Yeah. And I think that it's really unique. And like I said, I haven't trained in a long time. And, you know, I was never at the level that you are or whatever. You know, I've just started. I mean, I've been at it for under two years. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I trained hard for for several years and achieved a particular level. But like I said, I would choose to start over. But either way, I remember the way it applies to life is very similar in some sort of minute ways that base jumping does. And another thing that was said on that podcast that I listened to recently with you and Greg was this idea of being exposed to something to a point at which you become more aware and tactical.

And it's such a thinking game as opposed to this idea that it's a physical match between two people. And, you know, you realize that if you end up with an adrenaline and a cortisol dump, you're combat ineffective in like 60 seconds, right? And you can't even lift your arms off the map. But once you've been exposed to it, you can roll for 15, 20, 30 minutes with someone. And it's a thinking game. And you're trying to always see the openings and utilize weight shift in a way that allows for advantage. And you're not fighting someone.

You're actually trying to outthink. them in a way that is, you know, it's essential and in a very primitive way important that you do. And what you realize the value of that and you actually start training, it changes your, like, it changes your perspective of altercations with other people. For sure. You know, it's because it's not, if you have two people who it's like, well, I guess I went to the gym more than you, like the gym gym, gym, gymnasium, it's like, uh, let's see who's lucky. Right.

Right. Well, you know, that's it. Yeah. I have no doubt you're tough, but you better be fucking fit. Yeah. It's like you're relying on other things, whereas, you know, then you engage your mind. And it's, it's a completely different. But applicable, because then you have a conversation with someone where your opinions might differ. And instead of getting all worked up about it, you can very calmly put your ego side and say, hey, I totally hear what you're saying. And I, you know, I, we don't agree on that. Which is fine. But I'm not, but I'm not devalidating your opinion. And, you know, you can not just disarm someone, but you can have really positive and constructive discourse and dialogue with someone. And now you're getting somewhere. And that comes from this same skill set, the same skill set that it takes to hold your mud on an exit, the same skill set that it takes to think a problem through when shit's going real fast and consequences are high. And the same skill set that it takes when you're rolling with someone that's much better than you and your goal is to learn and to,

to experience and to improve as a, as not just a player, but as a human being, you know. To me, I think there's a lot of value in that, you know, as certainly, as cliche as it sounds, it certainly helps me interact with my kid, you know, to diffuse certain things and just to realize that some battles, they're just, they don't even need to be battles. It's just stupid, you know, what's really important to her and super trivial for me, it's still important to me because it's important to her and she's important to me. You know what I mean? I do.

One of my favorite, I don't know if it'd be a quote or philosophy, and I forget exactly who I heard it from, but ties right into jujitsu is, you know, don't try to move somebody else, move yourself. You're going to fail if you try to, if you're sitting there just constantly trying to shove somebody, it's almost a futile effort. What you need to do is get a set of frames

and then maneuver yourself. Like, oh, yeah. Well, shit. That applies to just about everything in life. Yeah, how can you control someone else when you can't even control yourself, you know? It's like I used to climb trying to climb harder grades. And every time I'd get to a crux, I would hold my breath.

And I never forget my buddy who's a fucking monkey, you know. He would just say, dude, how can you, how do you ever expect to climb 514 if you can't, if you don't even know how to breathe? Yeah. A little bit of car before the horse on. Yeah. Good point. So we talked about so much stuff that we do in Montana.

I forgot to ask you, how did you end up back here? Or how did you end up here in the first place? because you obviously, you know, near Seattle. Yep, my wife was born and raised in Billings. Okay. Her family moved to the same general vicinity in Washington that I lived when she was 14 or something. We met in high school. And kind of the classic high school sweetheart story, some people grow apart.

We grew together. It was great. Kind of didn't even know who we would turn into, but very fortunately, we, managed to keep our paths parallel. I've been married a long time. And when I think it must have been a year after I graduated from college or somewhere a couple years after I graduated from college, I had been driving the 520 twice a day in Seattle

and spending three hours a day in my car in traffic was... Contemplating suicide. ...was exactly a fucking gun in the mouth. So I was over it. And, you know, I wasn't liking who I was becoming, right? It's like road rage. I just everybody, fuck you, you know? I didn't want to be in there.

So we had the opportunity when her family moved back to Missoula to come. And I had this opportunity to design and build an indoor climbing gym. I graduated from college the first time with a degree in industrial design. So as a climber, I had been working with some modular companies building modular climbing walls and making molds for climbing holds. And so I came to Montana to sort of be the foreman of a job in which the task was to design and build a large indoor climbing gym. And we just fell in love with the place and wanted to stay.

And we've been here ever since. That was 97. So we've been here for 23 years. And, you know, traveling all over the world, man, there's no place I'd rather come home to than Western Montana. This place is amazing. Shh, don't tell anybody. People get pissed in me.

I know. I know, dude, I'm telling you. It's like, hey, just so you know, buddy, everybody knew about your fishing hole long before I showed up here. Well, so much so that I almost puked in my mouth when I just said that out loud. It's like Montana's cool. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. But, um, but, but, you know, we, we, uh, I, I discovered that everything that I'm interested in is here. And, um, you know, people, uh, that live here,

the economy, you know, economically, it's not the most, um, you know, prosperous place to be. So, yeah. So, so, so, so really the people who live here full time are here because of, um, you know, happiness and, and, uh, recreation, uh, you know, like outdoor recidate, the convenience of outdoor recreation. So, you know, I love it here and don't see myself moving anywhere anytime soon. I don't think I could. I actually went to Lewis and Clark Elementary for a couple years. Oh, no way. Yeah, I very vaguely remember it. So my dad and mom. Yeah, where did you grow up? Santa Cruz, California. Oh, wow. And then my dad moved, well, my dad and mom moved us to Missoula. I remember throwing snowballs at cars coming down the road

and then going to Lewis and Clark. And we would have, what's that damn game on the monkey bars where you try to basically ferociously shake each other off? King of the cage, whatever it was. But we would do it when it was like a foot of slush, you know, right at those transitional seasons where there was severe consequences to hogging. If you're going to get hurt, you might as well get wet.

So, yeah, it was just basically you're going to go home if you failed in that one. So, but from Santa Cruz to there. And it was, from my understanding, you know, my dad served in Vietnam, and he sought out some pretty intensive counseling here in the area. But he played for the Missoula maggots, the rugby team. He still got a bunch of friends. I remember walking over watching those fucking savages play.

Still. They're ridiculously, unacceptably short shorts. I don't know why rugby requires that level of upper leg to be exposed. Yeah, because if you're that tough, you can wear it the fuck you want. He's just wear a jockstrap then. It's about the same cubic square inches of material. Right. Yeah, but we, um, and then move back to northern California very briefly to a town called

Sebastopol. And that's when the earthquake hit and my dad dove back into, uh, masonry because, you know, San Andreas fault runs right through Santa Cruz and that, I mean, fuck. I, you know, I worked for him probably from I was 11 until I joined the military, but there was still earthquake damage those years later. I mean, the earthquake was in 89, and I, you know, left high school in 96. And like, yeah, we'll get to your fireplace. Yeah, yeah.

So mostly, mostly West Coast. And then came up and visited a few times. And it's just, it's so different, the pace of life, the feel of life. I remember when we moved up here. And one of the things that I've enjoyed in the, you know, the COVID areas, the lack of travel. Because I travel a ton for work. I actually don't do anything for a living here in Montana. I mean,

I'd love to get it to a point where I could sit down and have people come in and do podcasts and have awesome conversations. But whether or not that happens, I don't know. I'm going to pursue it. So otherwise I have to travel. But being able to be here and to appreciate what we have, we're lucky for sure. Yeah,

I'm finding myself more and more wanting to stay put. And my favorite flights are the ones that land back at Glacier International. For sure. For sure. I know, man. And I, the last several years, I've been traveling, you know, some, some years, almost every single month. And this has been an interesting sort of rekindle. You know, I, I've rediscovered the value of just being quiet and being home.

I didn't realize the impact that the travel had on me. It constantly feel, I guess it would describe it as, I would feel like I had a guillotine over my neck. I'd get back from a trip and it's like, three days, slam it all in. Well, and you should tell me this. Okay, so, and I sort of equate this, you know, long after the industrial design, I went back to school and became a respiratory care practitioner, respiratory therapist and worked in an ICU for, I don't know, eight years or something. And I worked nights for the first half of that.

And I remember when I switched from night shift to day shift, like I was never aware of how fucking tired I was all the time, right? And so it was kind of like waking up from a five-year nap. And, you know, I think, when I was living that lifestyle where we you know guys like us would travel and we go do these things and you know a thing would be racing a hang glider every day for three weeks in Australia where every single day you know you're showing up entering a task in your computer with an 150 other dudes is very intense the weather is growing and you're kind of like uh what you know anticipation of the

day you know race to the wall every single day sometimes people get hurt sometimes people die. Yeah. And, you know, you end the day after 150 miles at some goal field, drink a beer, head back, uh, and go to sleep because you're dead tired after downloading your instrument until 1130 at night. And then you start and you do it again the next day. You do that for three weeks.

You fly home. Man, it's like, uh, the world is in slow motion. And, um, you know, I, it's almost like you're, it's lonely, right? Like, like, I don't, um, I'm not operating in the same headspace as everybody else. And I, and my wife would be like, what the fuck is wrong. with you. Why are you so grumpy? You've been, you've been on vacation for three weeks. And I'd be like, I don't know. And you know what it came to is a realization that it was a bit of a chemical imbalance. Like I would have this chemical dump every single day for three weeks and then I'd come home

and that wouldn't be there. And it's almost like a like a drug induced bipolar or something, you know? And obviously that's, I don't mean to be insensitive or to say that it's that level. it's not but i would definitely feel different and um almost like uh i had ear ear plugs in and and um everything was in slow motion for a few days until i kind of normalized and um i find that the more i'm home and um like recharge at home and go on these adventures i i feel like i did when i stopped working at the hospital that i'm kind of waking up and yeah and more aware and more grateful and you know, sort of more in tune with the in-between. It's not routine life anymore with intensity in-between.

It's all exactly as it is, and there's a lot more balance. And I see the value in a quiet morning on the deck, drinking coffee, and watching the sun come up over the mountains, every bit as much value in that as I do, you know, landing in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia under a paraglider. It's the same. if you, if you, if, if I recognize that there's value in both places and, um, and, um, and take the time to be present enough to experience the value instead of always thinking about

what's coming next or, and isn't it so relative to time? Yeah, that's, I think what would get me is that it's the next. What is next? And, you know, I can tie it all the way back to my military career. It's such a task oriented job. It's, but if you knock one down, guess what? Bing, another one comes up. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you just have your, foot on the gas and your foot on the gas what's the next what's the next what's the next and what's the next and what's the now what's the now and i always now right yeah i think i'm gonna i really don't want my life to go back to what it was with that level of travel i'm just going to craft and figure out a way and fucking force it if i have to i'll shove my plans down the world's throat yeah no this this

austrian climber friend of mine um who's a complete or i'm sorry not austria he would kill me Slovenian. I was hoping you were going to say Australian because we could have got a dumb and a number reference. Put another shrimp on the buff. No, Slovenian, he would kill me if he heard me to call him Austrian. He, uh, you know, he's somebody that I respect almost as much, if not more than anybody else on the planet.

He's just, um, he's an amazing human being and his head's in the right place and and he would call himself a complete beginner and everything and he's like the most capable human I know. Um, but, uh, and we like shared base camp for a little while in India and he was in the same place in Tibet that I was. we share a lot in common, but he made a statement recently that I thought was really, you know, once again, sometimes these things, when you repeat them, they sound a bit like a fortune cookie, but pretty, pretty interesting. He said, the faster I live, the less I remember. And what I find is that my level of presence connected to time is totally relative. In other words, when life

is going by really fast, it's because I'm constantly thinking about what's coming. Yeah. What's happening two weeks from now? That's what I'm looking forward to. Two weeks from now, I'm going to get to do this, and then two weeks goes by like this. But if I'm in a camp in the Himalayas and all as I have to do today is acclimatized, read a book, walk around, look at the river, and today lasts a lifetime. It's a, you know, a day feels like forever. Yeah. And I think if the more I can stay present, the longer my life will seem and the more I will remember. And I think that that's somehow inherently, I think that that's important. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think that's,

it's really hard to do. I feel like most people, myself included, will get caught in the trap of what's the next. Of course. Either activity or thing, right? You just put the... Well, because we're the type of individual I want to be, the happiest I am is when I'm inspired.

And when I'm inspired, I'm motivated. And when I'm motivated, I wake up excited, right? I'm excited to work towards that goal or to, I'm excited about the goal or whatever. And so, you know, the hard part becomes be inspired, be motivated, work towards that goal, but enjoy putting the right foot in front of the other

on your way to it because, man, the best things in my life have been, I'm walking this direction and I don't even get there because all these other things start happening on the sides and I wouldn't even have the opportunity to go this completely different direction if I hadn't started walking that way in the first place. but if I if I pay attention to here and now then those those side doors

and those avenues and those opportunities remain in in division you know yeah but if I'm so focused on this thing then I'm going to miss out on a lot of shit you know easier said than done fucking it is no it is so yeah god damn it's got so much value too we need to actually start participating in some of these awesome things that we we've spent nearly three hours talking about, which didn't feel like three hours at all. Yeah.

So we should link up again. Let's do. And, man, yeah, all kinds of adventures in Montana in the bush plane. I think, you know, between the skill sets, we're going to be okay. We got all kinds of trouble to get into. We're going to be just fine.

Thanks for making the drive up. Man, I really appreciate you having me. Yeah, thanks. We'll do it again for sure. Yeah, it was a real honor. Man, I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you again to do.

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I don't know. I do. And that's it. Thank you, everybody, for listening. if you haven't yet, do me a favor, rate the podcast on Apple or whatever device that you consume the media through, or I should say platform, not the device. And that's it. See you next week.