We're living in a time where safety's become the goal of everything, yet the
sense of real adventures disappearing.
Those are the words of today's guest, A man who set the world altitude record
for the highest electric para motor flight who's flown hundreds of miles
in a vintage open cockpit biplane.
And who describes himself as an old soul living in a modern world.
Welcome to the Silvercore Podcast, Nathan James.
How's it going, everybody?
So, should I refer to you as Mr. Drift O or Sir Drift o
You know, I, everybody, uh, recognized me as Sir Drift o and that name,
I guess, kind of rings a bell, so I shake my head on that one.
But it works.
I. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have links in the description here.
Yeah.
And people can check out your social media feed and what you're up to.
But honestly, out of all the people on social media that I follow, if
you aren't in the top place for the coolest Instagram account, you're
definitely up there in the top five.
It's, thank you.
Insane.
The adventures that you're on, the cool vehicles, the planes, the motorcycles.
I mean, y you're living what most people would aspire to or dream of as
kids looking in these old magazines saying, man, one day I'd love to
fly this plane or drive that car.
Thank you.
How'd you get into all
that?
I appreciate those words.
I, um, life is short.
That's the biggest thing I can take away from anything is just
you gotta keep on pursuing those.
Those ideas that always resonate in your head.
And for me, I guess that's worked all, all these years and prevented
a lot of hospital visits somehow.
And I don't know how,
were you close to hospital visits at times?
Surely with your adventures?
There's been a couple of hospital visits.
There's been, uh, my fair share.
But you know, when you think about the, I call it the risk to reward ratio.
I, I, it's words that I live by in every single thing I do that usually at
some point in my twenties, the risk to reward ratio became inverse, where the
risk was much higher than the reward.
And because of that, a couple incidents I had hospital visit and, and you
know, the, the times that were behind it, I'm like, this wasn't a good idea.
I, you know, but I, over the course of the last few decades, I I, it's
shockingly that there hasn't been more.
You know, one of the things that, uh, we do Silvercore, we've got a club.
Yeah.
We've got a private podcast that comes out every week and no members,
they ask questions and stuff.
And I had a question that came up just, uh, last week and there was an
individual moved to a new province.
He's getting into hunting, but he's concerned about bears and he's concerned
about, like, he says, I know this is stupid when I write it down, but
I've got this fear of like, when I'm hiking I yell out, Hey bear, hey bear.
But when I'm hunting I gotta be stealthy and quiet.
Yes.
And so we talked about that relationship, like when you're
young risk, it falls on you.
If I mess up, it's on me.
When you get older, you start got relationships and families and that
risk falls on everybody else around you.
And there's a different balancing act that kind of happens.
How do you look at risk and balance it?
So early on I, it was kind of like, I'm just going for this and seeing
what the results would happen.
And that was a really big, uh, I'd say an outlook or I guess turn of
events in my twenties, and I would either reanalyze after the fact.
Like great example is there was so many incidents when I was flying a
paramo, which is a power paraglider.
Early on, this would've been early 2010, 2011, there was so many moments in that
po timeframe where I would be flying and I'd see the weather, and I clearly knew
the weather was like very questionable.
Like, this is either gonna put you in the ground or this is gonna put
you in the stratosphere, right?
I had either one yet, I would still fre, like launch myself into the sky
knowing that these conditions exist.
Fast forward now, I'm like, I'm gonna analyze this weather.
It's clearly not flyable, so I'm therefore not gonna fly.
Unlike in my twenties.
I'm like, just gonna go for it and hope for the best.
It doesn't work always.
And I think the older you get, you realize that I really analyze is reward that much
better than the risk involved in this.
And you know, that could be a tall tale sign of getting older, even though I
still do questionable things at this age.
But in my twenties there was like no analyzing.
I would just go for it because I was solely focused on the reward.
At least what I thought was the grass is greener on the other side.
It was.
Did the idea of the No.
Did the idea of the risk ever enter your mind?
Because I know when I was younger growing up, my parents didn't think
I'd live past 10 and they said, well maybe 17, that's gonna be the number.
You're not gonna live past there.
'cause I would, I wouldn't think about consequence and I'd just
do things and somehow everything would just kind of turn out.
Um, yeah.
Does uh, when you were younger, was that similar or did you actually
have an idea of what the risk could be and you'd just do it anyways?
When I was younger, you know, a great example is I, I was in a dirt bikes
when I was younger and at that point, this was when two strokes, a two
stroke motorcycle was still the new hot commodity before four strokes took over.
And I had a, Yamaha Wise Z 80, I was 10 years old, 11 years old.
It was an absolute rocket ship.
There was a berm.
And I, and I looked at that berm and I knew that there, I didn't
know what the options were on the other side of that berm.
And I remember this still stays with me.
You know, 30 years later I'm like, I analyzed that I have carried too much
speed off this berm, midpoint in the air.
I realized that age eight, this is gonna hurt.
And I literally had a timeframe of like where I waited for the impact
and it was the first time I had brought my parents out to watch me hit
this particular area of this track.
And I'm like, the consequences were high for that one.
I was on crutches for weeks and weeks and that still sticks with me to this day.
In fact, I'd say that's a big.
Ang Angular point of is this gonna work or am I gonna regret this?
And it's all because of that first berm that I hit.
And Mach two, you know,
as one does,
as one does
at eight on a two stroke.
Yeah.
And, and like
fully in the power band, throwing it.
Uh, and I mean, like for you, what, did you have an early realization as in
your youth, that like, this is going to have consequences behind the my action?
Uh, no.
You know, I, I kinda, I guess.
I just believed your parents.
Right?
I, I guess I'm gonna be dead by the time I'm 10.
I guess I'm gonna be dead by the time I'm 17.
So I don't know.
Like, just, just live life, like, I guess I've got an uncle who I never met.
He was blown up by a grenade and he was Royal 22nd regiment
in, over in, in Quebec.
And he, I guess it was a training drill and oh, later I've learned that they have,
they actually did have faulty grenades.
Um, there was speculation whether he just held it out to
the side count, 1, 2, 3, throw.
Right.
As opposed to what they're supposed to do, just pull, pin throw.
Yeah.
Anyways, I guess he lived for a couple of days with his side,
blown out and then passed.
Never met him, but, uh, I guess that probably stood in my, in my parents'
mind 'cause it was my dad's best friend and my, my mom's brother.
And, um, I, uh, I just figured, well, you know, he lived at 22.
I guess that's about a good age he can live to, so no, I never, I, I just assumed
that that's the course of things stupidly.
It never really entered.
And as you start getting older, it was when I had a family, had
kids of my own, I start thinking like, okay, hold on a second.
Like, I know I can do these things, but it's usually from my
experience, like running across train tracks and uh, trains coming.
I know I make it, but there's one time when Buddy who was trying to keep
up with me, he almost got clipped.
And uh, it's uh, it's usually the people around you that.
Don't have that narrow focus of winning that end up.
Maybe they have the losing in their head and they end up falling and
tripping and, and having an incident.
So that entered my head that my actions have consequence for the people around me.
I like that perception of things.
I, you know, I think I, there was, it was heavily involved in my twenties where I
questioned like, okay, you made it to 21.
That's a benchmark.
25 was a benchmark when I hit 30.
Yeah.
I'm like, this is weird.
I should not be here.
Like, there's just so many, there's so many situations that I was in
that I was like, I shouldn't be here, and yet I'm still going.
And then at 35 I'm like, oh man, am I actually gonna make it to my older age?
This isn't a good side.
You know?
And then it, it was, I wasn't trying to be morbid about it,
but I was just, I was laughing.
I'm like, there's no freaking way.
I'm still here.
And yet it just, the clock keeps on ticking.
So I just, I've enjoyed the journey of life and I, and I would say the
biggest thing that I would always look back at is regret is the worst
feeling, especially in a man's life.
I'm not saying it's not in a woman's life, but particularly for men, if
there's certain aspects of regret, those, those feelings never faked.
And especially with the, when the regret is positioned in a way of past
avenues that you could have taken in life or events, or actually it's
just simple things that you wish you had done because you hear about it.
People on their deathbed, do you have any regrets?
And they list out those things and those are things that have stuck with them.
The older people that, uh, individuals that are like 80, 90, they're talking
about regrets that were in the twenties and that resonated with them a hundred
percent up until their end of lifetime.
And so, like, for me, that always resonates.
And I, and, and.
I always counted every birthday that hit me.
I'm like, I'm still here.
This is, this is weird.
I, I think it's one of those things that doesn't matter what path you choose,
there's always gonna be options, right?
If I go this path, I give up that thing over here, there's never gonna be this
situation where a person has everything.
Yes.
Um, and so, and so, I, I always look at regret as, as that balancing act too.
Like, I never wanna live to regret.
I never want to look back and say, man, I really wish I should have done that.
And you know, there are times I get into things and halfway through I want
to quit, but I'm like, I don't wanna look back at myself as a quitter.
I might succeed.
I do the thing and I never do it again.
Because it just, I realized halfway through it wasn't for me.
But I can't stop halfway.
I have to keep pushing through and then, I don't know, maybe it's an a DHD
thing, then I'm onto to the next thing.
Right?
Yeah.
But, uh, that, that idea of contemplating your own mortality, uh.
It, it does a couple things.
It allows you to measure your day in a way that you can
hopefully live without regrets.
But it also, I find that you never truly feel quite as alive as when
you're riding that knife's edge between one wrong decision could change
everything, and those are the core memories that tend to stick out to me.
Not, not the mundane of going through and safety.
It's where I pushed myself or that where there that threat was real or perceived.
Yes,
it was real in my mind and, and I pushed through anyways, I,
I like that.
That's, that's, it's the pushing through.
That's, that's what makes the.
Everlasting Mark on your life's memory.
You know, I, I watch young people and they do cold plunges and they, they will
create situations of contrived hardship so that they can push themselves.
'cause I think in innately deep down, we as a species need to push
ourselves and need to feel challenged.
And more and more we have all of these modern conveniences.
If we want food, we can have whatever flavor of food we want delivered to our
door within half an hour by DoorDash.
If we want a certain item, it's just a push of a button and Amazon's got
it next door, next day or next hour depending on what, where you live.
But I see these hardships that people are willingly putting themselves into.
You
remember from your experience?
Yeah, go on.
You remember like the perfect example is that remember that device that
you'd put on your stomach and it would zap your abs so you would do nothing.
Yes.
And they said get eight minute abs.
Like why not do the sit-ups, but then they would like have right
backpack taser systems, zapping them while they're working and then,
and I'm like, what direction are the doctor holding that with life?
If you're doing this for your abs, what are you doing for your general meals or
getting to like, I wanna like examine what is in the mindset of I'm gonna zap my abs.
So I get my workout so I don't actually have to work out.
I'm like,
what?
Well, you know, the whole mental health industry is booming and
it's, it's doing very, very well and it's only getting better.
And I think that, you know, some people realize it, but a lot of people don't.
They, they look at the, the end result as happiness.
They look at the end result of having something.
But there is, if people stop and think about it, like is the
happiness doesn't come from having, generally it comes from acquiring.
So, man, I'm excited.
I really want to get a new lens for my camera, blah, blah, blah.
I go on and you get this new lens and you're like, oh, that's nice lens.
I can use it.
But look at that lens over there, right?
And there's always this.
This perpetual cycle forward in the same way of zapping your abs?
Man, I'd be really happy if I had a six pack and I could walk down the beach.
Well, you know, the happiness I think comes from the pursuit of whatever it is.
That's where it's all found.
And I think that's why people are slowly starting to push themselves
to do these harder things.
And um, even if it's contrived, even if you got this expensive plastic tub
that you put in the backyard, that's marketed as making you a certain way.
Yes.
But I got, I gotta wonder, what, what sort of hardship do you think
every young man or young person should experience at least once?
Uh, absolute chaos involved with high stress and your optionality
to get outta that situation is very minimal in how you handle and
compose yourself under that pressure.
A lot of times, I think in modern times.
We have something that's the ease of a push of a button to make our life easier.
Oh, this is difficult.
I'm gonna have somebody else handle the situation.
And I think every young male, 18 or even 16 till they're 25 at one
point, needs to be put in a situation that either means life or death.
If I don't bust my butt in this situation and find an outcome to survive this,
like true survival, not, oh, Denny's is closed, I'm gonna go to ihop.
I mean like if you don't make the right decision making under
pressure and this could be it.
And, and even though that seems like, wow, this seems a little bit drastic.
When you're putting those in those type of situations, your minds and
how you perceive every situation you're in completely changes.
And what normally is a very high stress situation, it gets repeated again,
becomes less stress and less stress.
And before you know it, you have stuff that normally would send
people over the edge and you're like.
This is a walk in the park.
It's no big deal.
It's minute.
It's literally, I wish I was put in more stressful situations in my youth.
Not so much to involve PTSD, but just to really conform how I
handle and strategically dissolve this situation and make it work.
I, I think that's a dying art.
You think about in the World War II, 18 year olds, people that weren't,
kids that weren't even 18, they're, they're forging their name that they
were 18, were eager to go fight.
And, and they're put in these situations and you look at the
byproduct of those ones that did survive is the greatest generation.
They work hard, they figure out solutions.
They literally make a situation that would deem unfathomable work, and
they survived and they grew and, and built these lives that, I don't know.
They're, they're gobys.
I commonly hang out with a good friend of mine.
He's, he's 102 now.
In fact, uh, not too long ago, we flew in my plane down south.
He was a World War II fighter pilot, flew P 30 eights, Papa New
Guinea, the most legendary guy.
And, and I've known some amazing individuals, but he's 102.
He still flies to Cessna two 10 at 102, still has a current license.
And I'm like, what has driven you to not only make it to this benchmark that
is unfathomable, but you're with such, his mental clarity, everything is there.
He survived in a war that if you, honestly, if I was flying to P
38 and Papua New Guinea and I, and I got shot down, that's it.
I mean, your survivability even to be remotely located, but papa new,
any, and, and yet you had all these layers of stress throughout your life.
You make it to 102, you're still going, that's, that's like a
staple go by book of what every.
Young adults should have in modern day.
And it's dying.
I mean, it it,
mm-hmm.
It is.
We're, we're becoming, and I hate saying this, and some, this might offend some
people, but you remember the movie Wally, where everybody's on that mm-hmm.
Floating cruise ship, going through space, and they can barely move
because everything is handed to them.
That is literally the direction we're going.
And some people might think, oh, that's crazy.
That's not, that's not the direction.
But the world is becoming easier and making our lives easier,
which is not necessarily a bad thing, but how we're pursuing it.
Like kids are relying on AI to write their entire school paperwork.
I, I never had that in my youth.
I struggled.
And yet one button, like make my paragraph sound good.
'cause that's changing the, how we produce results in a short
amount of time and so many factors.
And this, we need struggle.
Youth need struggle.
Mm-hmm.
And they, they need.
That's my biggest conveying factor if I had a kid, is I'm not gonna
make your life necessarily easier.
I'm gonna make it where you understand how to get outta a situation.
You learn, you adapt, you overcome.
How would you do that for a child
to make them hop on that dirt bike?
You go over that berm, send it and I'm not gonna come running to you and rub your
head saying, oh, let's, we're done riding.
Like, you're gonna get back on that bike.
You're gonna ride some more.
Mm. It's, it's the helicopter parents and once again, I have no room to say I'm a, a
parent right now 'cause I'm not a parent.
But my, my parents did a valuable lesson in my youth and
that was to be outside to go.
Try to jump that creek at whether I make it or not, to go climb up
in that tree house and frankly fall outta that tree house.
It, it's, it's those small steps of where there was risk, there was danger, and you
learned how to mitigate that in some ways.
In other ways you didn't, but it literally built this tunnel
of resilience to your adulthood.
And today you get handed an iPad, you get handed a cell phone, everything
is doing this, and then when you get put in an emergency situation,
that's the survivability goes down.
If you've grabbed an 18-year-old out of 1944, stuck him in the forest,
said, I need you to survive for five days, there's a pretty high
probability that they would survive.
If you stuck an 18-year-old today in the same situation, I would
say that probability is very low.
I, you know, I, I tend to agree with you and I, and I think it has less to do than
with the actual knowledge or skillset of surviving in the wild than it does with
self-confidence and mental resilience.
Yes.
Because you start gi, start giving up hope in the wild, and
you'll just, you sink pretty fast.
Your survivability rate goes right down the tube and you go back a
number of years where risk was a part of the everyday life and you start
realizing that to quote, fight club.
You're not made outta glass, you're carved outta wood, whatever it
is, you, you can actually, um.
You can do some things with yourself and, and make it through.
And I, and I noticed, like in our society, I noticed, I think people are
clueing into this because this whole bubble wrapped, um, system that we have,
I'm looking at play areas for youths being constructed specifically with the
idea of introducing controllable risk.
They're gonna have heights and they're gonna be falling and they might
hurt themselves and they're gonna have things that they can climb up.
They're not all in enshrouded.
And I, I think from a, uh, a larger level, people are realizing
that the, uh, resilience of our youth has taken a massive blow.
I, I think that, uh, your, your solution to putting 'em on a dirt bike
or doing something with some level of controlled risk is, is the solution.
And you've got helicopter parents who'll fly over top and try
and take care of everything.
They got lawnmower parents who will like, mow down all the
problems they head to their kids.
So the kids got this nice path to work down and I've never seen a more
depressed generation Yes, than these kids who've never felt like they've
actually earned it on their own.
Like their, their decision mattered that their, uh, consequences of
their actions, uh, were something that they could feel the relief for
the failure from and learn from.
The biggest issue too is that, you know, with the ad advancement of
technology, there's a lot of things that are wonderful because of that.
I'm not dissing on technology, but everything is instant.
People get instant replies, instant on social media.
You're, everything is then therefore.
Develop the youth into everything is instant.
So when that instant process doesn't come, such as working out and getting in
really good shape, or finding ways that instead of actually doing it the natural
way, they're going to all these other methods of, you know, I like fitness
and I'm based off fitness, but I don't have anything to show for fitness as far
as, I don't need to do all these types of medical concoctions that a lot of
these 18 year olds are doing just to be instantly in this great shape rather than
simply working out over a period of time.
The, the whole realm of modern day in instant gratification
is I think at an all time high.
Everything has to be done faster, everything has to be instant.
And that's not a, that's instant is not good necessarily.
It helps in some ways, I think it hurts in other ways.
You look at like the actual cultivation of a friendship, a relationship,
any of those prospects back then.
Done in a way that was genuine.
The swipe right, swipe left aspects is absolutely killing.
The dynamic of human interaction is absolutely killing actual progressive
friendships that last decades.
And for me, what if it's that bad now?
What are we gonna do 20 years from now, 30 years from now?
What is it gonna be?
Is this the whole interaction of humans gonna transverse from
actual human to human interaction?
And people are gonna simply be talking to a robot that's programmed to show empathy?
It's weird.
And for me, I'm not looking forward to that.
Hence why I'm gonna hop on my 50-year-old motorcycle and go ride to a cars and
coffee to actually talk to someone.
I see that being the commodity of the future.
I can see I'm so past podcast.
Yes.
John Sonai, he's a futurist, and I saw something pop up recently in
his social feed and he's talking about how people aren't falling in
love in the way that they used to.
And uh, his reasonable behind that is that their dopamine system's been
hijacked and they're looking for that instantaneous, quick, quick, here you go.
Next thing.
And they're so overloaded that they don't allow themselves the ability to, let's
say, fall in love like people used to.
Um, and you, you talk about talking to an AI system.
I remember reading an article, I think it was a year, maybe it was two years ago.
Yeah.
And this is when AI is kind of coming up and they said, uh, you know, this dating
app, I don't know which one it was, but you can create your own AI avatar
and then you let it go out and your AI avatar, you program it with your likes,
your wants, your dislikes, whatever.
Right.
We'll go and date other AI avatars and then it'll find a match for you
based on those, the AI things dating.
And then you can, if you wish, now talk with that person behind a screen.
Or maybe meet 'em up person.
I unplugged the
computer that, that the computer's.
Holy crow.
No kidding.
Yeah.
It's, but I, I do see this, um, the face-to-face, the social interaction.
'cause even like, this technology is great.
You're where, you're in Colorado right now?
Yeah.
I go between Colorado and Florida.
Okay.
And I'm in British Columbia and we're able to have this conversation
like we're in the same room.
More or less we're, we're gonna be missing out on some of the
nuances and the actual connection.
But, you know, it, it helps proxy that for a fairway.
Uh, like that's fantastic.
Our, the younger generation, I find they don't really want to do that.
They're, if they have a video going out, it'll be a one way feed.
It'll be them talking about what's going on.
Most of it's gonna be texting and of the texting, it's gonna be little
emoticons and slang and whatever else.
That level of connection has drastically changed.
Um,
I, I think, you know, I, I do believe you're right that,
uh, having these real world.
Interactions is going to be something that's gonna be the
hot commodity of the future.
Um, I, I don't see that pendulum swinging completely before it starts coming back.
Something's gonna happen and it's, it's gonna take people with real traditional
skills like yourself, who know how to turn a wrench, who can understand how
an engine works, who understands their relationship with fear, so that they
can do things that might otherwise be scary and, and, and get through it.
Um, I, I think that sort of, um, I, I think that sort of archetype
is gonna be coming back into favor.
The idea of toxic masculinity, I think is well on its way out.
And the idea of, you know, toxic people is, is better understood.
I, I gotta wonder though, so you talk about, you talk about being put in a
situation where everything's absolutely outta your control and you just have
to start reasoning and figuring your way through it and gritting down.
When was the first time that happened for you?
Well, I mean, very first time I've photoshopped my report card in, you know,
the sixth grade and we had parent teacher conferences and I knew my D-Day time was
coming up because I normally didn't get B's and A's, and I didn't correlate that.
The parent-teacher conference was the same week that I had
photoshopped that report card.
So that was a stressful situation.
And that was my first time, I'd say.
Yeah,
as far as, yeah, that
that'll be a good one.
Adulthood.
Well, let's see.
You know one situation that always sticks with me, and that's actually hilarious.
I had bought an early seventies jet boat.
Typical Craigslist purchase looks fast.
This is a really dumb idea.
But the looks fast part is the most important aspect out of this ordeal.
Mm-hmm.
Buy this jet boat.
Mm-hmm.
First day out on the lake.
It's got a, uh, 4 55 big lock board to, I think it was like
a 5 0 2 or something like that.
A beautiful jetboat.
I got it for an absolute steal.
We're out in the water and I was like, this thing, this thing's fast.
I mean, it's real fast.
And I'm sitting out on the lake and I'm like, but the angle is concerning.
Why is my angle like this?
Keep in mind I am completely new to boating.
Never have done it before, but I go buy the, you know, the dumbest thing you
could buy in a boat, didn't start in a canoe, just went straight to the jet boat.
Well, apparently at some point there is the most important thing that is the plug.
And I sat there and I walked, and why is the angle of this boat increasingly?
And I initially thought I had bought a bad boat.
This thing is sinking.
Well, normally you would just abandon ship.
At that point I was analyzing, okay, the risk is high here, there's the
situation is emergency and dire.
I'm gonna lose this boat.
It's gonna be at the bottom any minute.
And the water temp isn't that great.
Well, I decided that it's still running.
I had decided to go wide open throttle, and it planned out, it removed the water
even though it was gonna still sink.
Mm-hmm.
And I beached it.
That situation, after I beached it, I essentially saved the boat.
I realized that my stupidity was still strong because I forgot the plug.
But it was a situation that could have been much worse.
And I realized that by just, instead of giving up, analyze the situation,
figure out a solution, make it happen.
And it doesn't always work.
But
in
this case, early on in my teens, that that method worked
at that age, you're like, what the hell?
I don't know what's going on.
I got nothing.
I don't know about the tram.
I don't know that.
I guess you learned by putting throttle on, you'd start draining the boat.
That was, uh, more than once I've been out on a boat without a plug in it.
It's like, okay, just gotta let this thing go
every time.
Uh, so I would say that's probably the, the, the real truly dire, like,
you better do something quick and act fast and think strategically,
or this is gonna be Titanic.
Episode two.
Well, tell me about this world record electric paramo
altitude that, that you set.
How did that come about?
Man?
So for like the last, when I first started flying para motors,
I was always, um, fascinated.
You know, I, uh, the record aspect of pushing the envelope when most
people would say that's crazy.
And honestly the sport of para motoring when you actually break
it down and if the audience doesn't know what a para motor is, it's.
A powered paraglider, you essentially have a paraglider, which is fabric and string.
You have a frame that you strap yourself into with gasoline under your buttocks.
And an engine spinning a carbon fiber blade at a high rate of speed sounds
absolutely disastrous, but it's like the most pure form of flying that I
think I've ever done in my entire life.
So I was doing this sport, uh, for a good amount of time.
Uh, it was a long time I, I was flying.
And since beginning to the point of the actual record, I've always wanted to
set a record, whether I was distance, any type of feasible record that was
sanctioned with the FAI, which is the federal, uh, ati, um, association.
So they, they essentially is this massive aeronautic association
that's global and they, they've been around since the early 19 hundreds.
Every record known to man.
Armstrong's Moonwalk Armstrong's X 15 flight, Chuck Jagers, the Wright Brothers.
Every record that has ever been attained is in this book.
It's in this record book.
Hmm.
Well, my objective at the time was to always get a record established
and to be in that book and not only to break a record, but to set one
that has never been set before.
Well, that's difficult in the sport Paramo because a lot of the
Europeans have set all these records.
I mean, they're the king of setting records, especially the Dane French.
They, uh, they're just good.
So many friends over there, paramo friends out of France, and I'm just
like, you guys make croissants.
Why can't you just focus on those and let us set some of these records?
And you know, my buddy Pascal said, well, you gotta figure something out.
So inevitably my fiance right now at now what my girlfriend at the time.
She wanted to be part of this.
So our goal was to set the tandem, uh, trike altitude record.
That was the objective 'cause that was held by the country of Hungary.
Well then it came into the process of that when we were talking with the, the
sanctioned, the federal a association.
They said, Hey, there are some avenues that haven't been approached yet,
and that is in the electric realm.
And then this like light bulb turned on.
And I'm like, what do you mean?
I'm like, it's brand new.
We don't have anything down yet.
And we got wind that the British were originally gonna try to set this.
So, uh, thanks to the amazing, this isn't just a one man sort
of thing, it's a whole team.
I have friends that are just, I owe forever gratitude to, because they,
they literally made this happen.
It would never happen without them.
We obtained an electric para motor that was to spec and to their regulation.
It is brand new.
I mean, it's, it's still very new and, and the development behind it.
We chose a location that was gonna work.
And you know, the biggest thing is that one small mistake on this
record, it completely invalidates it.
You have to, there's so many rules.
A rule book is like this thick, and I think a lot of people
attempt these records, but when one thing is off, that's it.
And then the process and everything was just, it was shockingly.
It's not like you can just go up, do the record and hey, I'm done.
That's it.
There's a lot of pre-planning and that was the biggest wake up call for me.
But somehow in all that context, we got the perfect weather window,
which I was shocked at because at the timeframe where we took off and flew
from is notorious for horrific winds.
It was up in Leadville, Colorado.
I mean, it's smack dab in the middle of the continental divide between these
mountain ranges that westerly flowing winds come in and they just, it turns into
a very rough cup of soup for any pilot.
So the perfect conditions happened.
We got everybody gathered, we got all our sealed altimeters, which record all
this data and I can't touch any of 'em.
You have to have an FAI specialist there.
They have to monitor everything you're doing.
They put the altimeters on you and then you have to go and do
your record and come back and they remove those and if there's any,
mm-hmm.
I mean any discrepancies in between that process.
That's it.
The record is invalid and I only had one shot at this, so we got up there,
the winds were behaving at the time.
The biggest issue that for me was temperature had this US Air Force flight
suit that was, you know, insulated to the degree that I looked like the
Michelin man and had a heated gloves and a full mass set up with oxygen.
And um, I look back at that and I'm like, temperature was a huge factor because
on my initial climb I had wash, just kept watching that thermometer fall.
And you know, when we talk about this risk to reward that we were talking about
earlier on, that was always analyzing through my head because I'd watched that
temperature just drop and drop and drop.
And there's multitude of reasons why that's concerning.
Battery life diminishes with temperature.
Am I gonna actually get to the altitude that I had wanted to objectively reach?
The winds picked up, the turbulence got worse.
You had all these factors, but what made the most impact was that everything in
the end worked as we hoped, even though we had all these avenues of struggle to
get to that point, somehow it worked.
And that's, I guess what I perceived as Don't stop, don't
give up, keep pushing on.
So this record happened, and in between this record, you know,
the first fiasco that happened was that I got sent up, temperature was
almost minus 11 with the windshield.
Everything was freezing up.
The winds picked up.
I got blown off course, and I'm panicking trying to get back.
'cause you have to get back to your original spot.
You cannot land anywhere else.
It has to be from where you took off to where you landed.
Well, I somehow glided back pretty close, but I didn't fully make it.
That would've made that record invalid if I just said, oh, we're good.
So I had my buddy Jeremy put the batteries back on full charge.
Get, uh, any power that we can get because I'm gonna try one more attempt just to
make sure that this record is invalid.
Hmm.
He did an emergency charge.
I warmed up everything that I had.
My hands were frozen.
My, um, get set up again.
I take back off.
Winds are picking up.
This is midday, middle of winter.
I get up to my trajectory altitude.
Originally I was hoping for 18,000 feet because, uh, that was just our objective.
Regardless, it was gonna be a benchmark set.
But biggest mistake I made in that was my, uh, first altimeter that I was reading.
My personal one shut down.
That made me concerned that the other ones were shutting down.
So I take my glove off and then, and I'm at four 14,000 feet, almost
15,000 feet wing is collapsing.
I'm getting frontals.
I'm all over the place, and I'm still focusing on my lz,
which is just this tiny dot.
I can just see these little dots where the whole flight pre down at
the airport and I take my glove off and I'm trying to reset my alti.
Well, the mistake made is I had to hold my brake toggles, which control the wing.
I have my throttle set at a certain percent.
I can't get my glove back on.
I'm sitting there struggling, and then all of a sudden my hand starts burning
up because with any temperature drop in the below zero range, you have this
weird feeling where your hand gets really cold and it starts burning up.
Frostbites gangrene is like the first thing that comes through my mind.
I'm like, this is not good.
I'm gonna be a pirate, and I somehow get my glove back on,
get the heated system back on.
I continue to climb out until I get total battery shut down.
So the entire unit just powers down and it did it, it had reached its core, uh,
percentage where it just powers down.
The temperature was a big factor.
And then I had used up my battery.
Both altimeters are running.
We're good now.
The problem is, is I have to get back to the exact spot I was and
I am a lawn dart at this point.
I am, have no more forward power.
It's just glide.
So all these years of flying, I somehow remember the glide method and get back to
my actual LZ land perfectly on that dot.
I remember my, my hands were just hurting.
I was just freezing.
And the first thing I asked him like, can I get something to warm up my hands?
And the FAI guys removing the altimeters.
And we're sitting there.
We're sitting there and he's like, Hey, I don't think this recorded the data.
These are both showing blank.
They're just showing numbers.
Oh, no,
my heart just sank.
Like, you gotta be kidding me.
I just,
oh, no.
Turned into the Coca-Cola, polar Bear Popsicle, and nothing recorded.
Well, it actually turns out it did.
We, we double verified, and I remember I was like, I'm done with
cold weather for a little while, and we finally got all the numbers back
and everybody's gathered around.
They said, Hey, we're good.
The data's good.
And that was like the biggest weight off my shoulders when I was sitting
on that tarmac trying to warm up.
And, uh,
no kidding.
That was fun.
I, I, would I do it again?
I mean, probably yes, but the amount of work and paperwork and timing and
the stress level, and once again, the risk to reward ratio, you have to ask
yourself, was this worth it in the end?
And it, and to me, putting an American flag on the record books as a first was
a big objective because, sorry, French, I just had to boot one of the flags on,
put a first, and it was a really good feeling because it's like, all right.
We got something over here and because of my crew and everybody
that was there helping lending a hand, it happened because of them.
It wasn't me.
What, what was the height you made it to?
Uh, just under 15,000.
It was, uh, 14, so I think it was, uh, 9 63 is what the year
of the actual attained altitude.
Would you, uh, would you do it again?
Oh, a hundred percent.
In fact, we had a lot of variables that worked against us that day.
Re theoretically I should have got up to about 22, 20 3000, but
the winds were so bad that day.
And we have these things called, um, winds of loft.
And, you know, you're traditional when you're on the ground,
you're getting hit with winds.
The higher you go based on where the jet stream is, the
winds could go up considerably.
To that day, they were pretty high.
Uh, in fact, they were alarmingly high.
And if the original wing that I was gonna fly was significantly bigger, because the
bigger the wing, the more lift you get.
If I had flown that wing right, I, I would've been in Timbuk two.
I mean, I would've been a one-way ticket to Cabo, right?
For, so I had to fly a much smaller wing.
And in fact, the wing that I flew was like a pylon racing wing.
It was an 18 meter, uh, superiorly stable, uh, really good in high
winds, but it yields half the lift that I could have had.
Hmm.
So for us to get to that altitude with that such a tiny wing, that
was still a benchmark that I was actually kinda shocked at.
I didn't think I'd even get that high just given the temperature, the battery
life, the size of the wind with the winds.
And yet somehow it, it worked.
Why did you do it in the wintertime and not like in warmer weather?
Well, because the variables with weather, anytime you have heating of the surface
of the earth causes air instability.
Springtime is a super volatile time of year.
You got questionable weather.
Warming of the surface creates these conditions that are super
volatile and dangerous for a pilot.
The conditions that I was already flying in were somewhat unstable
when it came to turbulence, but as far as rising air, what we call
thermals, uh, wasn't near as violent.
And you know, the traditional paraglider thrives off violent air in the thermals.
My biggest concern was that if I was to get caught in a thermal with unstable
air, mix it with JetStream air or laminar flowing off the mountains, that would've,
and
you're up blown me off course to my original point.
And once again, rule book says where you take off, you have to land on as a return.
So winter was my choice, but.
Every choice has a consequence.
And, well, you know, I'm still not a pirate yet, but I was pretty
close to being old Captain Hook.
There's also an interesting story about you flying hundreds of miles
in that open cockpit biplane.
I think, uh, I was the, uh, AC Ducey, the P 70.
I think you corrected me on that one earlier when we were chatting.
Yeah.
Uh, but you did that, you did that with your father, right?
I did.
That's interesting.
Did you learn a thing, thing or two about the old man on that trip?
I, uh, my father's one of my best friends, and not for the reason
that, you know, they don't buy you fancy stuff or any of that.
He's my best friend because anytime I invite him on something, he never says no.
And he dang well knew that this particular trip, the risk was very high and very
little reward for him in his case.
Hmm.
So I had had the bright idea to buy an airplane and not just a
traditional, Hey, this is Cessna 1 72.
This is gonna get you anywhere you want.
No, I bought one that is based off 1930s technology and it's design profile was
literally based off 1930s and decided to buy it, not locally, but halfway
across the United States, sight unseen, and then have the bright idea to fly
it home and, and the idea that it's gonna make it back to my destination.
So that whole idea somehow stemmed and it happened, and my father joined
me on this, which I was shocked at.
My favorite moment is when we arrived to where this plane was,
which was in the middle of, right on the Arkansas, like Midwest or
Southern points, um, what we call the.
With the Bible belt, and sure.
You open up that hanger and there's like this big air tractor
and he's like, oh, this is nice.
And we're walking around this shiny air tractor to the back and there's this
airplane that's just covered in dust.
And I watched my dad go from happy, excited to like a total of ghosts.
And I, and at that moment I like could read his mind.
He's like, I'm not making it home.
I'm not making it home.
Mm-hmm.
And not once did he say no, but I'll never forget I was filming and I
caught his face and he just was, he's just like, you know, like this is it.
This, this, this is the play this and mm-hmm.
Somehow he still didn't say no.
And I tell you what, you know, there's a book that if you love aviation,
this was a book that resonated with me through childhood into my adulthood.
It's called The Flight of Passage.
And it's about these two boys who essentially build this piper
Cub, rebuild it, and they fly it across the United States on this.
Adventure that you dream of as, uh, some of us, as a, a kid, I
felt like I completely relived that book on this journey.
And I mean, we dealt with some of the worst wins.
I mean, Kansas, holy cow, I love the people of Kansas,
but you can keep that wind.
I've never been code brown so many times trying to get that
Dane plane to set up and land.
And yet, every single time we made it to our, our checkpoints.
And not only that, but at, at one point we were just utterly
shocked how good the plane flew.
I, I mean, it always started, it ran like a sewing machine.
And I think my dad, at our last leg, he's like, you know, when this
journey started, I couldn't wait to get home 'cause I didn't wanna die.
But it came to a point where he is like, I'm actually sad
that we're on our last leg.
We like, we were both looking at each other, well, not looking
at each 'cause he is sitting in front of me, but we just like.
We read each other, we're like, we don't want this adventure to end.
This is quite possibly the greatest adventure that a father and son
could ever do in their lifetime.
That is cool.
And didn't, didn't you have like a, uh, a malfunction with
the fuel gauge on that flight?
Oh yeah.
It, uh, the day one, we, we actually, before I even left the
fuel gauge was just, I was like, oh, we just gotta add some gas.
So we checked the tanks.
I'm like, there is gas.
We added some more gas.
It's still empty.
And I'm like, well, this is just great.
And we're in the middle of nowhere.
We had realized that there are methods, so when we talk about earlier, it's find
a solution to, uh, um, predicaments.
The predicament was my fuel gauge was in fact broken.
The level was not reading anymore, and it, the timeframe to fix it
would've burned up our entire timeframe to get this plane home before the
big weather started moving in.
Well, early Piper Cubs.
They didn't have a traditional fuel gauge like what you and I have in our car.
Theirs was a rod with a cork.
And based on where the tank is fuel level wise, it would give you where
you'd say, oh, I'm full half empty.
Somehow we found a cork and somehow we found a perfectly straight
rod that we could bend and we drilled a hole in the existing cap
and realized this is gonna work.
And hilariously fast forward, you know, five years later, four years later,
I still have that same fuel gauge.
I still utilize that same gauge.
I, I, um,
that's a good idea.
It
worked.
So are you able to like look out, so on a piper cub, you
fill up on the wing, do you?
This one, uh, the tank is you have your engine.
Oh,
sorry.
Prop.
Okay.
And then behind the engine is the actual tank.
And it is like the smallest tank for an airplane ever.
It's 14 gallons, like on our speed bird.
I hold, uh, 92 gallons on the fast plane.
This one, it's 14 gallons, so you have to be really, really mindful of your
legs because you get an hour and a half tops before you have to fill up.
And so you would look out at the fuel cap and you'd see a rod that's either sticking
out all the way halfway or not at all.
Is that, am I
understanding that right?
Yeah.
I'd be like, you know, 'cause I fly, the pilot flies from right here, smart.
And my dad.
Mm-hmm.
Passenger flies from the front where the co-pilot flies from the front.
So I'm, I'm like flying.
I'm like, all right.
It's like the gas gauge is like there, I'm like, all right.
I got like 15 minutes before it's there and I'm like sitting there.
And then, you know, the route that we took, we tried to find the least
windiest route because honestly it's the slowest plane ever.
I do 70 knots, whether I'm full power or I do 70 knots.
If I'm a quarter power.
It's got this huge wing, it's a, you know, it's.
It was never built for speed.
And at one point coming through, I'm gonna say this wrong, Olge, Olge, Oklahoma.
Okay,
sorry.
I totally butchered that.
But the headwinds were like 58 knots.
I had a ground speed of like 16 knots, and I'm like, this is wow, bad.
I have to make it to this airport.
And it's showing that my fuel burn is 45 minutes till I'm empty, and it's,
the duration is 54 minutes to get there.
Mm-hmm.
So you have all these things, variables that are like coming into play that
you're like, is this gonna work?
Are we gonna be in a cornfield, like digging our way out?
Have
you had those landings
and every, I have had those landings before and, and to me,
yeah.
This journey in itself, I, I, uh, I look almost daily.
I visit that whole journey and I just smile because it's one of those checks
off the box of experiences that.
You cannot buy, uh, you, you just, you literally cannot put yourself
in that situation by booking it through like a, an all inclusive.
You have to literally go out and put yourself in that situation and God
hands you this book and says, you're gonna deal with these situations
and you either survive or you don't.
And that trip filled with all these amazing memories also tested my patience,
my stress level, and in a way that I learned a lot and forever base a lot
of things off in life because of that.
I'm a big fan of those kind of trips.
It's, uh, so many people, they try and contrive their life
an adventure in it somehow.
And they'll get online, they'll find a booking agent and they're like,
look at this adventure that I'm doing.
Somebody else is going to, I'm gonna strap to somebody else and
we're gonna jump out of an airplane.
Someone else is gonna fly me around.
Somebody else is gonna drive me to this place.
And.
Uh, that's good.
Like, I, I get it.
That's a good step for people to go out, but I don't think they're truly
experiencing life or getting the same sort of, uh, rewards that you
get when you do it yourself, when you put the time in to learn or you
just try and figure it out as you go.
Yes.
So you've got another cool trip coming up.
I think it's, uh, September.
Is it?
Are we allowed to talk about this one?
Yeah.
We, we absolutely can to do with Camel.
All right.
Let's, uh, fill me in on this because, uh, so I've, I've got a, uh, a couple
friends and past podcast guests.
Uh, they're taking a trip, I think it's from the UK over to.
Oh, I'm not sure.
I should, I think it's over to Sydney, Australia.
And they're taking a, uh, a def, it's called Defender X or
the Defender X, uh, challenge.
Megan Heinz over there with, uh, Doug Patterson, X-C-A-A-C-I-A fellow.
And it looks like a pretty cool little, little trip that they're on.
They got these big rubber pontoons they put on, uh, that they have on the top,
and they put it underneath and inflate them, and they're taking it down the Tames
River and across the English Channel.
And like, like, it's pretty cool, but it sounds like you're doing
something pretty fricking cool.
That's along the same lines.
It's these, uh, what I always say, you're handed a deck of cards in life,
and this is one of those cards that I never expected or ever, ever anticipated
I'd even get the opportunity to.
But if you're ever bored or you got some time to kill and you wanna
watch something that, and some of you might have, the audience might
have heard of this, it's called the Camel Trophy back in the eighties.
Through the nineties, they put on this event where they had to go through
these crazy routes through the most remote areas, Siberia, the Amazon,
Africa, Tanzania, like all these places that man rarely survives or does
well in these type of environments.
And they take these Land Rovers and it was like the Olympics,
but in off-roading and adventure.
This whole series lasted from the early eighties and I believe the last one was
in 96, and then it just, it stopped.
The nineties were a super special era because you, you had this, you danger
in these events, Paris to Car rally, the Camel Trophy, like all these events
that were going on where safety was a second thought and that really, really
projected adventure in a way that I don't think we'll ever see in our lifetime
again, because I mean, he watched some of these series, like we just watched
the one where they were going through South America and I mean these guys are.
Through this river crossing and the rover is clearly underwater.
And you see the guy, he is like poking his head out, like you
should probably exit the vehicle.
But he didn't.
And, and he, and all of a sudden he is pulling through the water
and you see him, he's like, like sucking the air out of the headliner.
And, and then he is like coming through with the winch system and pulling him out.
And I'm like, what the heck?
And I watched this series, like as a kid, I, it was just, it was my
dream and I thought it would never actually ever come back again.
Well go figure.
A year and a half ago, a friend of mine sends me this link.
He is like, Hey, they're bringing the, the Defender Trophy, which is
the predecessor to the Camel Trophy back this year for the first time.
And I'm like, wait, what?
Land Rover had just released a defender a few years back and they somehow the
media team said, we're gonna bring back something just like the Camel Trophy.
And I'm like, there's no way.
So they had an application process and thousands of people applied to this.
And I applied, I did the video interview and all this, and I'm like, Hey, I tried.
This would be amazing, but what are the probability of this actually
getting me getting selected?
It's just, it's, it's slim, but you always have to try.
Well, fast forward again, email at the beginning of this year and, and
I'm about like, fell outta my chair and it's like, Hey, we've selected
you to be part of the Defender Trophy.
And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
Like what?
So I have no idea what to expect.
Uh, from what I've read is based off the original to some degree and a lot
of the tasks at hand with navigation, building these bridges to cross certain
rivers and, and all these things that truly took a situation where we talked
about being put in stressful situations and finding an outcome that works.
That's essentially what this is all based upon is handling stress,
teamwork, leadership, and all this stuff encompass into an adventurer.
You're covered in a lot of mud and questionable directions of
routes, and it's gonna happen.
So in April, we're going up to Canada, uh, for the first, I guess
what they call the part of this.
And I literally have no, I, the amount of waivers that I had to sign, I was like,
they, they're pretty serious about this.
Uh, and I'm really excited.
I, I, I hope that it's every bit or at least close to what the original was, so I
can at least live that moment in reality.
That is so cool.
So you're starting off in British Columbia, you
I am, yeah.
And they have a whole task of things to do.
I, as far as, uh, you know, they just sent the go by sheet of navigational.
Expectations and how, and the type of knots that I need to know
and the type of how to utilize the winch on the new defender.
And they sent me the go by sheet of the systems on the defender.
So I need to get up to snuff because I don't have a new defender
and I need to get access to one.
Uh, and it's just, it's truly what I'm excited about is to meet all
these other people that are, if they apply to this, they have to have
the same mentality of adventure.
And I think it's gonna totally refreshing to meet other individuals that are like,
uh, maybe they're just as enthusiastic if not more about this type of adventure.
And I'm like, I need to meet more people like this 'cause I thrive off this stuff.
I agree.
And so this will be a televised thing, will it?
Or they'll have a, a show behind it.
I, I believe they're, that's what they're working on.
I have not been told of how it is gonna be captured cinematically,
because we got, Japan just did theirs, uh, not too long ago.
And I saw part of the video to that and it was incredibly well shot.
And, uh, I'm looking forward to what to expect.
I'm kind of hoping that.
At least I get to possibly roll a defender.
'cause they roll to the, the discoveries in the nineties, half
the time they're upside down.
You just like, there's Yeah,
yeah,
they're great.
And I'm like, I wanna be in that scenario.
I want to re roll one of these and have no repercussions because it's not mine.
Uh, life goals, I tell you.
Yeah.
That, that would be a, that'd be a show I could definitely get behind.
You know, I was, um, my wife and I were asked to, to help and consult on
a show that was filmed up here a year ago, I think it was, um, uh, Stallone's
Company, and it was called Extracted.
And they whoa, get these contestants and they have to go out into the wild and
they have a home base with family members.
And the family members will vote on what food they get or what they don't get.
And you know, like a lot of these shows, it's, it's just, it's highly contrived.
And we go through, we met all the different contestants and
had to provide some training for them and, and testing and.
And you get a good sense of these people.
They're like, oh, this, this person here, this gal here, and this guy over
here, they're gonna do really well.
Yeah.
But when the show actually runs, there's all these, uh, internal politics and
maneuvering that happens, and it's got, it's got very little to do with
who's capable and who's got the right mindset and who's who can do something.
And it comes down to more of this production value of, um, it's
like survivor part two type thing.
Whereas a show like this, I don't think they're gonna have any of those
sort of games involved with all of it.
And it's, uh, it, it's a good test.
Old school man and machine and ingenuity, that is something
I can definitely get behind.
And, and that's for me is when we originally got the wind of this,
I'm like, okay, this, this could be a good thing because there's,
I don't like safety and I get it.
Their PR team is probably focused on safety, but at some point in
this adventure, there is gonna be something unsafe because the
amount of waivers, like I said.
They, there's something in this route that is, has something
of questionable activities and I'm really excited about that.
You know, I was always raised in a safety third environment and
yeah,
it's, it's done okay for me.
It's, uh, led some pretty interesting stories.
You know, you make mistakes along the way.
You kinda learn from them and you have, you course correct, but, um, that's life.
You don't go through life without picking up a few bumps and scrapes along the way.
Exactly.
That's, that's the whole, the whole journey.
What was that quote?
It's, uh, you don't wanna arrive perfectly preserved.
You wanna be withered and, and completely wrecked and say, wow, what a ride.
That's,
that's how I, so, have there ever been any times in your life when you maybe, uh,
went in a direction a little too far that later hindsight would, uh, provide you?
The insight that hindsight tends to do and say, well, maybe that
wasn't the best idea at the time.
I should have gone, gone in a different direction,
uh, early on.
Yeah.
I um, I had a great idea to try to fly under a bridge on my para motor.
What?
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, I got these great photos.
We, uh, and it wasn't a bridge with a lot of clearance.
The clearance was, the margins were, and somehow in my conscious,
I was like, this is gonna work.
So I set up, well, you
don't do it 'cause you think it won't work.
There was like very, like, if the, the thought process was 95%, this is
gonna work 5%, you're not gonna fit.
The 5% never became a factor.
And so I took off on the para motor, had a whole bunch of friends on the
ground filming and videoing and.
I, uh, I flew through the first bridge, which was a little bit higher
cleared that everything was good.
And I'm approached on the second bridge and there's a river below and with some
rocks come through the second bridge.
And I remember I was looking, I was like, Ooh, this is gonna be tight.
And you're at the point where I can't abort either.
I just go straight in or I try to get under.
Well, it, I made it under, but the top half of my wing
completely snagged the bridge.
And I remember flying, and I remember this like, felt like an ejection seat.
And I'm like, uhoh.
And I had swung up and I could see my wing stuck up on the bridge there.
And then I swung back down and then the wing became detached and I
came crashing down into the ground.
And I got this iconic shot where they were, you see these cement
pillars and you see me first shot, I'm here, everything's good.
The second shot, you see me up here and my wing is like
stuck on the top of the bridge.
I'm like, mid swing.
Oh man
is the best shot.
Oh man.
I was like,
what was going through your mind then?
I should have stayed home.
And were you at least wearing a life jacket if you're going over water?
I had a granola bar and my water bottle and um, I remember laying
on the ground with this, like practically disintegrated para motor.
I was completely fine, but, uh, it was, it was costly.
It was one of those things.
I look back, I'm like, why'd I do that?
This company had just sent me this new wing, this was prototype one, and
I was like, that's five hours on it.
It was brand new and I just completely shredded it.
It looked like a confetti party, and I'm like, you did not think this through.
Like, what, what, what, at what point did you, was the reward to get through
this bridge gonna grant you nothing?
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Well, did they give you a new wing after that?
No.
I, in fact, I lost that sponsor.
They did because I forwarded, I sent them photos.
I like, Hey, any chance we could get a replacement?
And they're like, we needed you to send us back for evaluation.
I'm like.
I can send it back.
And that was it of that one.
So, um, I, one of those scenarios, you know, just like I look back, oh,
they're missing the mark on that one.
Hey, I'll
send you that
photo sometime.
You'll crack up.
You see me like midway?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
I wanna see that one.
Um, I read something about a helicopter and a laser pointer in your youth.
Is that something that, uh, you know, I've done a lot of silly things,
which I never thought about, uh, consequences when I was, uh, younger.
I still kind of do some silly things, but, um, it looked like
the, uh, the state tried to make an example out of you on this one.
Yeah.
That one was, that was a, a era of youth where once again you're like,
I didn't think this one through.
So, Indian buddy of mine, remarkably smart software developer, he is working
on a flur system, which is a heat sensitive type of digital imagery.
And these laser system that was, we were using HVAC units on the
top of buildings as a range.
It's a fairly powerful laser.
Somehow the mix of that system and tracking sources of heat with this
laser system and having it on a follow setup that would follow the highest
points of heat in the program that he had mixed with a few shots of
tequila and hanging out on a rooftop
as result, yes, as one does.
We talk about code Brown is one of those scenarios.
Uh, turns out the heat source of the exhaust of a Belgian ranger is
significantly hotter than the exhaust of an HVAC unit on a building.
And I'll vividly remember, I was like, why is the beam following that way?
On that moving target versus the HVAC unit.
And I remember he had pulled the, the, like, it wasn't like this power pack
plug set up and the system was big.
It was just on this, I got a photo of the system.
It was, it was remarkable what he is doing.
He was trying to sell this system to, to a company that would, he was hope in
hopes to make a lot of money off of it.
Mm-hmm.
It didn't go as plants and nothing actually came of it originally, you
know what, it happened, it tracked onto it and we're like, that wasn't
good because remember we like illuminated the it, the aircraft.
And I was like, we, we thought about it a little bit and then we didn't
and we're like, okay, that was it.
There's only a few seconds.
Well fast forward we get a knock.
And I'll never forget I got that knock on the door and I was like, these three
guys, and they weren't even in like suits.
They were just in regular civilian clothes.
And I opened the door and they, and, and they show their ID and it's
the FBI and I'm like, what is this?
I, I know I paid that parking ticket.
I was like, absolutely confused.
And this is not like next week or the week after.
We're talking a y almost a year.
And he says, okay, do any of these images.
And he, he is like, can we sit down and talk with you?
And I'm like, sure.
Okay.
And he pulls out this, this stack of paper and you see this beam
from the top of this building.
And, and at first it's, you see a beam and then it's just this total whiteout.
And he's like, does this look familiar to you?
And at the time it didn't register me.
I'm like, I'm, I'm still confused, but okay.
He is like, this came from your residence and we need to talk.
And so at the time I talked with him and I gave him all the details and
I showed him the part of the system.
'cause the other he had at, at time, that time my friend had
already left, he was on a visa and.
He was back into his, his country and, and working on another project.
'cause this was a year and something later and I explained the whole situation
and, and at the time it didn't rest or the severity of it and, and I was in
aviation and just don't think about that.
And the severity was very high.
Let's just put it that way because it followed through with like, Hey,
we're gonna make an example outta you.
And, and I'm like, guys, I, I'm not like, uh, like this.
I fly air shows and this was, this was a mistake.
But they don't see it that way.
They want to nail and, and portray it as like to others,
which I completely understand.
Don't do this.
We'll make an example out of you by some.
That's, that's the impression I got.
This was that it was a new law in the books and
they were trying
to make an example,
cleanest record.
I, I have like a few speeding tickets and that was it.
And, and they were gonna, the, the outcome of this.
Comparative to like other crimes.
You could, you could essentially rob a bank and get off with less.
That's how simple they're taking this and everything, every avenue that
we were trying to portray, I'm like, look, there was alcohol involved.
I will say that that was, that was
my first mistake.
Number two is we didn't think this through.
We didn't think this through with the system.
That was number mistake, number two.
Number three is my buddy was not there with me.
It was all on me.
And because it happened.
So there, there's a lot of variables like, why didn't we do this in, in a part?
Why didn't we do this at your place, not mine.
Right, right.
Well, for sure.
We, I, by the grace of God, they, they finally came to their senses and
realized, why, why are we gonna ruin?
At the time I was pretty young, this kid's life, there's no malicious
intent.
No.
Yeah, like that.
It was a truly an honest mistake.
And I, I was like, I am never touching something like this ever again.
Ever.
I, I won't even, like, I I, that was like a month and a half of
Code Brown every day is what
I, but wasn't that the, wasn't that the first time in that state
that they actually followed through with trying to do something?
So I, and if so, wouldn't that be another record that you hold?
Well, it, it wasn't even what the state it was.
It was actually, it went like, it was federal,
federally Federal,
of course.
Yeah.
The F fbi.
Yeah.
I'm like, this is, this is not good.
So by the week of God, and I don't know how it, what happened or what unfolded,
uh, what changed the perception.
They dropped the initial, um, what they wanted to pursue,
the charge they wanna pursue.
Mm. And then on top of that, I got fined.
20 bucks, which I still don't understand.
Of all the, I mean, when you talk about the severity and
the actual percussions of Okay.
And the timeframe that would've set me back, I, I don't know what happened
in that realm because the outcome should have not happened that way.
Even though I didn't mean to, it was a mistake.
It still happened, and they still had the full authority mm-hmm.
To pursue this and they didn't
mm-hmm.
Freaks me out to this day, I, I look back at it and I'm like, maybe there was
another reason why this went the way it did, because it's like maybe you have
a, a, a, a journey ahead of you that.
It needs to be pursued.
I'm a very strong believer of that, not, not only that.
Maybe there's a journey ahead of you that needs to be pursued, but also
in that journey, something's gonna come up and you're gonna remember
this moment and you're going to make maybe a little bit different decision
as to how you proceed forward.
And it comes down.
I've always been told even before this happened, you'll have a moment in your
life that completely reshapes how you perceive everything, how you pursue
everything, how you formulate your life in the direction that you want it to go.
Those were one of those moments where I'm like, okay, you need
to really analyze you actions.
You need to really analyze the environment that you're putting yourself in.
Alcohol rarely mixes well with this type of equipment.
Alcohol rarely mixes well with this type of pursuant.
Kind of like you have a gun in your hand and you're doing shots.
Is that a smart idea to play widely?
Coyote And no, same thing with this.
And it really made me analyze like.
Risk to reward.
There is zero reward for this, but the risk is ridiculously high.
I found it interesting that it took a year for them to kind of come back
and figure this out and I, you know, I gotta wonder if the risk adverse youth
that we have nowadays might also be a byproduct of the technology we have.
'cause everyone's got a phone, everyone can film this.
There's cameras on most street corners it seems, in major cities.
Yes.
Uh, AI.
Holy crow, they're, they're already looking
recogni If they, if
they haven't done it all,
kidding me, that freaks me out.
Like, and I worry that there's gonna be errors in that system where like, one
guy's face matches up to the guy that, you know, did the heist at the bank, but
he was at the King Soupers grocery store.
You, you, you know,
they don't even really need facial recognition anymore.
I mean, if with digital wallets and digital IDs, it's like, oh, this
person's been buying a lot of fertilizer from stores and think maybe they're
gonna be doing something with that.
Or
Yes,
they have, uh, ai, large learning model, um, programs for pre-crime
prediction, kinda like minority report.
Well, you know, they're looking at a lot of this kind of stuff on social
media and they think their politics are leaning to this side and they're in
this sort of a, uh, geopolitical area and this sort of, uh, environment and
freaks me out it to some degree.
I know it's good for other things, but like the flock camera.
System that they talk about where it takes a photo of your face and your car, and
it's like, why were you at this corner?
And it sends all that data out to these other companies that acquire that data.
I'm like, do you know?
So now they like, they know if you wipe with your right hand or your
left hand with your butt, you know?
Mm-hmm.
That freaks me out.
Like
yeah,
it's,
yeah.
I mean, because maybe it's not being built with malicious intent, but those with
ill intent will use it for their gain.
Yeah.
And whether that's, I can market to you better, I can specifically have
something tailored right to you that I know you're gonna want to buy.
Because I know exactly what your, what your habits and hobbies are
Yes.
To the idea of predictive, um, crimes.
That's, and it's, yeah, it's scary.
Oh, we're just gonna come by your house because we have a
high likelihood that you're gonna be doing something silly here.
You said something to somebody and
Yeah, there was a movie, I don't know, I don't, don't know what it was called or
who was in it, but it would had a software system or anything that predicted.
A crime before it actually happened.
And
Minority Report with
Tom
Cruise.
Thank, uh, I should know that.
Yeah.
Uh, I always say movies as ridiculous as some of them are,
are usually a common tall tale of what the future's gonna be like.
And one of those would be as Terminator mark my words.
Mm. We'll have this conversation.
This podcast will be put in the vault, you know, 50 years, a hundred years from now.
It's gonna be a real thing.
And Boston Dynamics, you look them up, which seems to be, seems to begin
with as a harmless, noisy walking for legged dog now has a 50 cal and
small rocket pods mounted to it.
Hello.
But it'll, my my opinion, have you ever had the conversation with AI
about what that'll actually look like?
I'm just there to find out.
We we're way easier than that.
They don't need to be coming at us with guns.
They don't need to be coming at us with flame throwers and the T 1000, they
can just psychologically manipulate people into being a bunch of sheep into
fighting each other into like, right.
Scares
me.
I mean, it, it, yeah, it can control traffic flows and dams and water sources.
And I mean, if you play that scenario out with ai, there's a much, uh,
more probable and a much easier way forward if technology wanted
to do what happened in Terminator than fighting each other with guns.
And thing is most people wouldn't even know what's happening.
I, uh, if there's one aspect that I wish I had, would that be a time machine?
'cause I would, the technology part scares me and the simplicity of life
in some aspects back in the day.
I think really made the quality of life and the predictability.
You know, we, I think we're, we're ge starting to guarantee
predictability of certain aspects of how we conduct our lives.
And that's, that's terrifying.
Mm-hmm.
To me.
I don't like that.
Do do you have any favorite books?
Your favorite movies?
Yes.
Favorite movies?
Uh, probably one of my, uh, I love the Great Waldo Pepper, if you ever seen that.
It's with Robert Redford.
It's shot, it's, no, it's placed in the twenties.
Phenomenal.
It's, uh, it's about a guy that is given a lot of things thrown in his
lap from a pilot perspective, and they don't go the way that he hoped.
Hmm.
And he comes to a point in his life where he's hit his pinnacle and
it, it just resonated on a lot of ways of trials and tribulations.
I think that's, those are, that's a movie that I, I really appreciate.
Uh.
Obviously PLO 13 is childhood for me, but my fiance gets so mad 'cause we'll
be, you know, watching a movie and she'll go make dinner, I'll be starting
to play PLO 13 and she'll be like, you just watched this two days ago.
You know, all the words,
everything.
Uh, I think that was a movie that really resonated with me because it in a time
of where your outlook is, looks very grim when it comes to survivability.
Somehow you make things work and it's not just once, but multiple avenues
of desperation and things thrown against you and yet you make it work.
Well, I'm gonna have to watch the, you call it the Great Waldo Pepper,
great Waldo Pepper.
It's phenomenal.
I, uh,
okay, I'm gonna watch
it.
I like weird movies, you know, and I'm not, I don't have any new
movies that I'm really nuts about.
Um, you know, one, it's old and people probably find this
as cheesy and it's boring.
It's called Strategic Air Command.
Uh, it's with Jimmy Stewart who was shot in 1955.
Some of the best flying scenes of this particular aircraft that
it's called the B 36 Peacemaker.
And it's this giant airplane.
Absolutely.
Like a time when engineers were given something in their coffee
and it wasn't coffee, and they came out with these aircraft that
just completely blew the mind.
And it was really well shot.
It was dynamic behind the actual script.
Resonate resonated with me because it's a guy that has his life figured out.
He's a pro ball player and was formerly Air Force, and he gets
pulled back in to the Air Force and has flying all these admission, all
these missions that nearly killed him.
And he is just having, like, he just got married and he just had a baby.
And where he thinks it's his dreams are falling apart soon.
Actually, I'm not gonna give the movie away, but
Okay.
Watches sometime it's, it's, uh.
I think it's well shot.
Like I said, it's it's fifties type monologue or criteria,
so it could be cheesy to some people, but if you actually,
Hey,
invest into it, it's a good,
I'm all for that.
What about you?
I don't know.
I've always liked the Man Who Would Be King.
I like the old Kipling book and then, uh, the movie with Michael Kane and,
and Sean Connery and yeah, because they're just a couple guys out in
an adventure doing their thing.
They want to be Kings of Kastan.
Oh,
love that.
That's that.
Yeah.
You, oh, so you've, you've read it or you seen that one?
Have you
I have not seen that.
I've heard the name and I kind of have an idea if I saw a cover
that I would, I would recognize the one that you're talking about.
It's kind of cheesy by today's standards, but you know, they just, they figured
that, uh, they're in India and India's too, there are a couple of British
officers, and India's too small for big men of their character, and they're
just off to the next adventure there.
Heading over to a fictitious place of kastan, I think it was.
And, um, they teach the different tribes how to, uh, to fight and
win over their enemies and, uh, um, end up becoming rulers of this,
uh, one large tribe over there.
So I just, the adventure of going off and doing something, I, I've
always liked that sort of thing.
Um, and as a kid, the book that I always liked was, um, uh, my Side of
the Mountain, just a kid who, uh, oh, my
side of the mountain.
That was, what was that part of the hatchet series?
I don't think it was, uh, but it was just similar along the same lines.
Right.
You know, Sam Gribble going off and, uh, running away from home
and living in the woods and then like that, always that spoke to me.
Yes.
My side of the mountain.
I read that as a kid.
Yeah, I actually, I ended up, uh, stealing that book from my
school 'cause I loved it so much.
And, uh, I got caught by my teacher in the process of stealing it.
And, uh, I, I thought it was grade four, I think it was, um, whatever it was.
Anyways, he and the teacher catches me and What are you doing?
Oh, this is my book.
This is your book.
I mean, like, this is the same class copy book that we all got here, right?
And, oh, no, no, no, this one's mine.
I'm just lying my face off.
And teacher looks it open, opens it up, and it said, uh,
the school's name in the front.
And so he rips that page off and it says, well, I guess it
is your book Hands it to me.
I'm like, oh, teacher's pretty cool.
But, uh, teacher realized I just, I really liked it and I, um,
um, ended up giving it to me.
So that was, uh, still have that one.
I'm kicking her out here somewhere.
That's amazing.
Is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should talk about?
You know, I think, uh, it's based on, you know, who your
audience is and, and whatnot.
I'd say the number one thing is, you know, we're often, we have
these great ideas that formulate in our heads and we actually get
to so far as like, you know what?
I think I can make this happen.
Whether it's a trip, whether it's that hike you wanted to do or the mountain you
wanted to climb, or for some, like, you've always wanted to get your pilot's license.
And I think a big factor that plays in a role for a lot of people
obviously is age is one factor.
Like, oh, I'm too old for that.
Mm-hmm.
I hear that so many times that a lot of the activities that we do, um, I,
that, that kind of saddens me because I think the capabilities of us as we
get older, they say, oh, you slow down.
And, and that, that is a mindset.
And I, and I think, you know, for anyone listening to this is like, if
that, if there is truly an adventure that you are, have always wanted
to do, lay out the reasons as to why you think you can't do that.
Really focus on those and ask yourself, are these actually realistic reasons
or is those reasons that I'm just telling myself so I don't do this?
Mm-hmm.
Because you'd be shocked.
Now, I don't know anybody's circumstances could be health or any of that,
but I, I would say majority of the individuals, they'd probably be
surprised that they are still capable and still that dream can happen and
that adventure still can be acquired.
And there's a lot of woo woo of like, you know, believe in your spirituality
and it'll come to you in due time.
That's not true.
Like the time is now.
You can't keep, we constantly put stuff off.
Procrastination is the worst habit of the human race, and I am myself.
I do that daily still, and I try to correct and catch myself.
But when it comes to true adventure and the removal of regret,
write down your bucket list.
This could be a, a date, a week, a month, a year, a decade bucket list,
and write down what you want to do that would make you happy and things
that you've always wanted to do, and find a way to make that bucket list
box checked off every single time.
Nathan, a I really enjoyed this conversation.
I really enjoyed that message at the end.
I'm sure we're gonna make a clip out of that one.
Thank you so much for being on the Silvercore Podcast.
Thanks for having me on here.
It was great talking with you and, uh, I, it was.
I love environments like this and just to meet other great creative
people that have that same mindset.
I just, we need more of it.
Likewise, brother, and I'm looking forward to seeing you and your fiance
when you're up here in bc. That's, uh, the next big adventure there.
I will be sure to call you.
Excellent.
Great talk with you.