Kinga Masztalerz: Building a Healthy Relationship with the Skies: How to Master Fear, Build Resilience & Find Joy Through Paragliding

Everybody agrees that paragliding is a mental game. You ask anyone? Oh yes, it's a mental game, everything is in your head, etcetera. But how many pilots do you really know that truly embrace this mental journey that truly trained their mind in the same way as we train ground handling or thermally? So everything that I pointed out and everything that I wanted to happen did happen. I went a few days Volvic in Bolivia without much plan. I didn't even download it all the maps for this Volvic because I'd never thought that I would go so far. So it was a real kind of real venturing, kind of like landed somewhere now to planet 4/6.

At some point I was like, I really don't know where I am. So there's no network, no maps. So it's just follow the montage I broke. I think the whole conversation can be summarized as like, be honest with yourself and truly honest how uncomfortable it may be and whatever comes out of it, just follow it and you can't go wrong. Totally get it. And and that's why I was so fascinated when when when we brought out the topic of honesty, because. This is one of the questions that I always ask my pilots. Where What's the ultimate goal? Where do you imagine yourself as a pilot in years?

What type of? Pilot, do you want to become? What truly triggers you for flying? If you can't fail and the sky is the limit, where would you like to take your flying? And it's always interesting because the answers before we were mostly comparing ourselves to to our village, our neighbours, our Co workers. This is why the choice of your job and work environment is so important, because it will define what you're focusing on naturally. You can't really avoid it, but now. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and everyone along with them. Welcome back to Paragliding Apples. It's that time of the week when we bring you more awesomeness

related to all things paragliding. And in case you're new here, I'm your host Aninder Singh. And in case you haven't done so already, do consider smashing that like and subscribe button or dropping in a rating wherever possible. These small acts of kindness helps us bring these unfiltered and honest conversations to many more pilots out there and ultimately making the skies a more safer and more enjoyable. Place to be. Now for today's episode, I'll just be honest, you know, because I found it super hard to put together an intro for this one, and I'll tell you the reason why. Firstly, because we live in a world where the way we interact

with our very own emotions is changing at a rapid pace. If you look at the past decade or so, we have gotten so used to feeding our brains with endless stimuli, spiking our dopamine levels to a point where that kind of way of thinking is becoming the new normal. And this very shift has led many of us to present a facade of invulnerability on the outside. But deep down, as humans with our primitive brains, we all struggle to keep up with the digital age and the ever shortening attention spans. I'm sure you can agree that we are often at odds with the very foundation of way humans

interact and connect with each other. And I completely understand that this might sound a bit too philosophical to begin with, but I cannot help but think about how relationships today, be it interpersonal, be it financial or otherwise, are simply becoming more challenging than ever. And many of us, me included, find it hard to strike the little balance between such aspects of life. Where we have emotions like self doubt and other areas of life along with them, such as unfiltered honesty is something that we all can strive to improve upon. So in today's episode, we are exploring a first of its kind of a topic, which is based on the

Wellness wheel section of this podcast. And that is how to build a healthy relationship with flying in your life. And I completely understand that it's a massively vast subject and there's no one way to cover all aspects of it in a single episode. But this is our small attempt here at Paragliding Atlas, featuring someone who has visualised their dreams, worked tirelessly to realise them, and found a way to strike a rewarding balance in this sport. So without further ado, if you're seeking inspiration, clarity or just a fresh perspective on how to make flying more fun, this one's coming to you straight from Paragliding Atlas Studios, featuring Kinga Mastalis, a one-of-a-kind pilot who truly

embodies the spirit of what we also stand for in here at Paragliding Atlas. And that is to dream, believe and achieve. So, TuneIn, and I hope you like it. Dingo Marsalis, thank you so much for joining us on Paragliding Atlas. It's an absolute honour to have you on the show. How is life treating you in New Zealand today? Oh amazing. New Zealand is always an amazing place to be in. Southern Alps is one of the most beautiful mountain playgrounds in the world. It's always nice to be here. We are in the middle of summer, long days, good flying so nothing to complain about. I can imagine I am on the complete opposite side of the

globe, 12 hours of time difference. But I'm just curious because when it comes to winter destinations we often hear about the cross country paradises in South America and other places. Why does New Zealand or Australia for that matter not become that popular? Is it just the geographical location or is it just the flying conditions like Scandinavia only appear once in a while and not that consistent over a period of time? So there's a few reasons that Colombia or Mexico have become very popular destinations because of the American population goes there and advertises it to the world. It's very close to them while and also and also the flying

there, it's a little bit more straightforward and consistent. In New Zealand we have two islands on the north who has rolling hills and beautiful coast. The South Island is basically Southern Alps going going across from more than 1000 kilometers. So it's a particular environment because we are on an island surrounded by a lot of water, Tasman Sea on one side and Pacific on the other. And because of this, flying here, it's a little bit more complex than many other places. Doesn't necessarily mean that it's less consistent than for example, flying in the Alps, but definitely requires a little bit more understanding and and thinking about what's happening with the weather.

Because of this proximity of the ocean to the weather contained pretty quickly. The wind systems are way more complex because we don't only have usual meteorological wind and valley winds coming through the valleys and terming days, but also we have two sea breezes coming from West from Tasman Sea and from the east from Pacific. And really depending on the day and depending what's happening in a bigger picture in the ocean, what's low, high systems develop and then on the Tasman Sea and anything, anything like this, we we may have very different conditions. This can be hard to grasp if you come here for a week or two as an intermediate pilot.

So definitely, for example, Columbia will be probably the safer choice for a 50 hour pilot who just wants as much airtime as possible within the week of their holidays. But at the same time, when it comes to adventure and the beauty of the mountains and the wilderness and very interesting, breathtaking flying. New Zealand is. Really hard to beat. So it's not better or worse, just very different. And of course New Zealand is far away from everything. The tickets are more expensive. It's quite a journey. If you come from Europe, you have 12 hours of time difference. It doesn't make much sense to come for a week.

You will just get over your jet lag and then it's time to come back. It is more committing when it comes to logistics, but it's not worth it. And there are reasons why I chose it from my home and why I keep coming back here every year for last decade. I, I just love the way you explained it. I was mesmerizing hearing you talk about the beauty of that housing kilometer mountain range. I was just checking out your Instagram and I was like wow, I thought those kind of landscapes were only existing in Scandinavia or in the Himalayas. But uh, housing kilometers of an endless playground if you know how to navigate seems like an

adventure. I can totally understand why you are choosing to be a part. Of it definitely is and so we can talk about it more later. But what I would add here is also that Southern Alps here in New Zealand have have no roads. Basically there's very few roads. So adventure flying Volbevac mode flying is a natural way of going through and I fly with my Volbevac kit here for the whole season, even if I don't necessarily plan to go BV. If I want to fly through Backcountry, it's a good day. I want to fly into the mountains. It makes sense to take some basic BB kit with you because

other if you land somewhere, sometimes the best decision is to to land high on the slope and spend the night and fly out on next day. Because the depending where you are, walking out through the valley can be very long and slow process. Some of the valleys don't even have a trails, not to mention roads. But the same time we basically have no trace. So if it's not a glacier or vertical rock, you can top plant virtual anywhere and everywhere. And this makes it a really fun playground when the like you, you just fly. This month is a little bit differently than let's say European Alps, where every time you land in the valley there is

a road, hotel, bus stop, railway, whatever. But this being said, you have to be very careful. We're landing because there was power lines and houses and limited. It's relatively easy to slow plant somewhere happily because there's plenty of space. You don't have to be precise in it, but then getting out maybe a whole other adventure. I love the anecdote that you had at the end. What I was curious is how's the wildlife scenario if you get stuck out in the wilderness for a couple of days? So how much danger do you have from wild animals that can catch you off guard in case you are by

yourself? In New Zealand, the birds stopped flying because they had no one to run away from. There's no dangerous animals. Yeah. Our national bird, Kiwi stopped flying and lays eggs on the ground until English came with their dogs, cats, rats and whistles. There were virtually no, no predators here. The the biggest threat you can encounter is Kia. Our native mountain parrot are incredibly smart and ticky. If they see you landing somewhere they will come and you see the skirt popping from behind the rock and then you have to be careful because they love to steal things. If you leave your I know socks to dry, they will just steal it and then bounce away few meters

and laugh at you and you're like give it back and like, no, I don't need your sock, but I will just enjoy the play. So it's a it's always a very special to encounter and have interactions with them because it's this type of wildlife that you don't really encounter anywhere else. That's very, very curious, very tricky, very smart bird that also has No Fear because they never learned, they never evolved to be afraid of anything or anyone. So all the encounters that you can have with the wildlife in New Zealand are very special and very beautiful and not dangerous at all. You don't have to be worried

about any predators or anything trying to eat you or hurt you. We just again, another reasons why all the venturing through the New Zealand Backcountry is so much fun. It's very safe. Also New Zealand itself is very safe, people are super friendly and it's very easy when you finally get to the road to hit back home or to your car and people are extremely helpful. There's a lot going for New Zealand, but if you're considering it maybe next northern winter, it may be a sign to to come to New Zealand or some flying kind of adventures. So for all our listeners wondering if you ever get tired

of the crowded daggers and the course lines in Colombia or Brazil, you know where to head, Uh, for all the pristine nature. But do carry an extra pair of socks because they might get stolen when we land somewhere. Exactly. Got it. Ginga, I was watching your YouTube channel and nine years ago you uploaded a video saying paragliding in China. And lately you were uploading some reels about paragliding in Peru. So from China to Peru, how has the journey been? If you can catch up our viewers, how many years have you been in the game and amount of hours if you're comfortable, because I think years only tell part of the story, but the hours is the

real thing. So if you can tell a little bit. So I started flying a little more than a decade ago when I discovered paragliding. It was immediate loss at first flight at Dolph Head First. All in, it was never truly a weekend hope before me. I never had the period when I would fly on the weekends. I was working for a marketing agency as a strategist for commercial campaigns. It was so good. But once I discovered paragliding within a couple of months, I quit it and I moved to Bassano del Grappa and for next year I was flying a living off savings that I basically didn't really have.

So living of a credit card and trying to figure out how to maybe start making money a bit at some point. That means that from the very first year I was flying in the first year of my flying when I still was learning to turmoil and basically bumping out in every field. When you stand in Basana on the take off Tapeti and you look in front on the flatlands, basically every field you can point out. I probably landed there. This is how I learned Italian, hitting back with locals and and trying to communicate with them. And so within my first year I I flew 300 hours just learning to thermal, which is quite

achievement during your first year because flights are short. So you have to really keep trying, keep pushing and fly every possibility. Since then I've been flying around 400, sometimes more than 400 hours per year. So it would come now to around 4000 hours. I assume as much as you said that years don't necessarily explain. Also at some point airtime stops really saying so much about your flying because at the beginning you can't check it. You need airtime, you need to spend time in the air, you need to feel comfortable, you need to develop muscle memory for thermalling, for for looking around, for observation and for handling your wing.

But also there's a moment when you can just get stuck in what they call stupid airtime. You just fly the same hill all the time on the same lines. There's nothing wrong about it, but it's a very different way of flying and progressing into paragliding that. If you on the other hand go to different places and try to fly from different take offs in various conditions and travel around and and are not afraid to try things and not only follow the gaggle or follow your friends, but also try to do things alone and not being afraid to bomb out and walk or hitchhike back or take a train

or whatever. But you can see that after a few 100 hours, this is what makes a massive difference and makes some pilots fly this interesting, inspiring lines that that we all like to see from the majority that will fly the same hill or the same soaring site forever. And again. There's nothing wrong about any of it. We all come to paragliding and look for various things. Sometimes it can be really pushing boundaries of the sport and doing things and flying blinds that no one has flown before. Sometimes it may be chilling after a day of work on the beautiful coast in Cancan laminar conditions. And there's nothing wrong with any of it.

It's just really being honest about what we are looking for in flying and what we want from it. So I've always wanted it, but it took me quite a few years to really define it. What is my reason for flying? But now for a few years, I know that there are basically two things that inspire me and make it worth for me. It's beauty and adventure. Once I realized this, I also realized that for me personally, blind chasing kilometers doesn't necessarily mean as much as going to beautiful places and fly some versaniculized and going deep in the mountains, because this usuality means both beauty and adventure. So if I have a choice to fly

some Milky Way for kilometers and we all know that's never played the outlines that just give on a given day, you go to particular place in the Alps and there will be 100 other pilots who want to fly 200 kilometer triangle on this day. And we all go for it like a goggle and almost feels like addition flying. And again, nothing wrong about it. This actually can be a really cool experience to fly with your friends, fly with others, stay very fast and very efficiently and can break your personal best. But this type of flying, after a few years, I realized that it's not really something that I

remember afterwards, the something that OK, I take off X amount of kilometers, but it wasn't really anything life changing. So yeah, probably around 4000 hours now, maybe more. And a lot of different places, a lot of different lines, a lot of different mountains all around the world. You ask about China. When I went to China, it was a little bit of spontaneous decision for various reasons. I was a very fresh pilot. I don't even think I was flying for two years, probably less. So it was an adventure and very interesting as a paragliding trip and cultural trip. China is a pretty intense place altogether. It's also it's huge.

So it also it feels like you're immersed in the, in the completely different universe and comparing it to, but it's really hard to, it's really hard to compare it to. For example, my this year's April, May in Peru in Bolivia, because when I went to Peru in Bolivia this year, I was a very different pilot. I was more self-sufficient and had a much more experience than than this years ago. And I flew various places alone and then later the couple of friends that I met there for weeks. I ventured with my gear through Peru, for example, basically pointing, oh, this volcano looks great, let's try to fly over.

I'm just making it happen. Everything that I pointed out and everything that I wanted to happen did happen. I went to a few days Volbevaki in Bolivia, Yeah, without much plan. I didn't even download it, all the maps for this Vol divide, because I'd never thought that I would go so far. So it was a real kind of real venturing, kind of like landed somewhere now to plan out for six. At some point I was like, I really don't know where I am. So there's no network, no maps. So it's just followed the Montes. I broke, I believe in this task record on this, on this

particular Vol divide. It was on the just above 100 kilometres. But the terrain is so wild and unexplored. Suddenly you do things that are truly new, not only new for you, which is always exciting. Doesn't matter if someone did it, if it's new for you, it's always exciting. But here you're flying virgin terrain that's very complicated, very committing, and just to make it happen. Of course, it felt natural and felt right. We can't come back to it because I really believe that what feels right. In paragliding, this doesn't feel right. It's a very important question that we should all ask ourselves all the time. But it felt right and it felt

relatively easy because I had this thousands of hours and dozens of places and lines flown in different places before. So yeah, very different trips to compare. I love the way you explain it. I can see the excitement you have with respect to the topic. And no wonder 4000 hours, that's like these kind of numbers are only heard in commercial aviation re flight and back to paragliders. I rarely come across people who do that. And the ones who do are the ones who are famous on Instagram and Facebook with all the Red Bull logos and everything around them. It's really hard paragliding. It's such a weather depending sport and it's dependent sport

and so difficult. If you have normal life and Monday, Friday 95 job and maybe family and other obligations, it's so hard to have so much air time. This is why I always admire pilots who keep chasing it. There's plenty of pilots who chase it hard. Having all this life on the ground and finding time for much organization and good relationships both at work and the family. It's always very inspiring. But yes, to fly year after year, hundreds of hours, you basically need to make your make it your life. It's very hard to do it otherwise. Yeah, I think only a handful of pilots, regardless of how

motivated they are, are ever able to get more than 100 hours in the first year of flying. That's true. That's pretty unique, but this is something that I'm probably I don't even know if I'm proud of it. It just shows how absolutely committed and in love I was with the sport when I started flying because it basically it's like nothing if you if. Does the the. The moments of madness in your life then can define it. So that was a moment of madness because I really didn't think it through very well. My heart ruled. The decision of moving to to Italy and flying to making this

first year fully focused on flying. It wasn't a very obvious decision, but it simplified everything dramatically because we all have this list of priorities in our life and somethings matter more, somethings matter less at this point. There was paragliding and then there was like long break and then there were other things. So anything and the decisions in my life for this first year were very simple because it's like, doesn't help my flying. Is it good for my flying? Yes. Let's do it. No. OK, so it's really interesting how it may not be the easiest thing to do, but in some ways it was very simple. It's simplified a lot of things

at this point and but of course, it's not sustainable. I don't believe that you can have only flying in your life and care only about this. You need other things in your life to balance everything. You can't wrap everything about your flying or any other passions for this matter. That's not only unhealthy for your life as a whole, but also sooner or later will burn you out. We all go through ups and downs in our flying. There's like it's never smooth journey. There are always moments when you are the king or queen of the world and then from here to 0 very quickly. Maybe you get scared, maybe you see someone get hurt, maybe one

of your friends have a bad incident or accident. There are always some setbacks and how we rebuild from them. It's, it's, it's, it's really dependent of of the quality of our life and the quality of our mental balance that we have also outside of flying or if we have good people in our life, if we have other things that flying doesn't define us as a whole, we are more than this, yeah. These these are deep talks. We could have a whole episode based on psychology of flying. I really believe we don't talk about it enough. Everybody agrees that paragliding is a mental game. You ask anyone, Oh yes, it's mental game, everything is in

your head, etcetera. But how many pilots do you really know that truly embrace this mental journey, that truly trained their mind in the same way as we train ground handling or thermaling? Sooner or later our limitation and flying won't be technical. It won't be a wing that we need to upgrade. It won't be a physical fitness to stay in the air for long enough. It will be our mindset. If we can be consistent, focused, centre to balance and push with safety and progression. If we can rebuild after setbacks, if we can manage our anxiety and fear that develops at some point. All these things are truly fully

mental. I had after first year of my flying, actually within my first year, because I was flying so much, everything was happening like in the speedy version of usual progression. Within my first spring I was already almost 200 hours because I was flying very intensively the whole autumn and winter, maybe 100, sixty, 170 hours at this point. At this point I believed that I was already very experienced pilot because I was flying in Basan a whole winter and autumn. For those of you who don't know, it's one of the very few places in Europe where you can fly in winter in thermic conditions. This is very particular

environment, which is like when the winter conditions are warmed up by a by the sea and the flatlands in front of it. You are in the mountains in Peda, Montana, in the at the edge of Italian out. But also it doesn't necessarily feel like mountains. There's no valley crossing. The wind is always coming from the flatlands. If it's coming from the back, you just don't fly. Especially in autumn and winter. It's very gentle and very scratchy, very, very low, very slow thermals. After flying for whole autumn and winter in this conditions, I became pretty efficient in them. I started believing that I'm such a good, but not already and only in this place, only in this

conditions. And then the spring came my my first April was very explosive. The conditions changed and I decided, oh, Bassana, I'm bored with it. I'm going to the Swiss Alps in April. So I crashed on a tree and there's a lot happening there. Within two weeks of April, I had quite a few incidents that I was very lucky that I walked away from. And I made a lot of bad decisions based on my hunger for flying, but basically no clue what I was truly doing. And so it was like a typical intermediate syndrome of steroids plus the spring conditions on top of it. And I got really scared. I realized that there's a lot of

things that I don't know. I developed this massive mistrust about my decisions. So for next I can't you note for next almost two years I was basically flying constantly questioning myself and asking OK, that all seems all right, but what if I'm doing something so stupid and something horrible will happen? It can be really exhausting to fly like this without any trust into your decisions and and. Digging. Myself out of it took by this is for psychologists and millions of books and and talks and meditations and you name it. So when I work with pilots and call them we mostly focus on flying and going to beautiful

places and flying their first 100 kilometres or particular month. I so going for BV into a beautiful place. But more often than not the most important things happen on the ground when we can talk things through and give them some framework to manage whatever they're dealing with. We all deal with something because I like to say that we fly the way we live. If we have any type of anxiety, very strong inner critic put a lot of pressure on ourself. If you are perfectionist, if you are over analysing things on daily basis, etcetera, etcetera. If we're if we're if we have very low self esteem or if you

are too cocky, too confident in the real life that that traits that we can hide or manage or blame others or pretend that they are not so important. But when we fly, they really come out and rule our flying and rule our safety or rule our performance. So in some ways we slide the way we live, but also in another way this flying can and, and managing it and looking honestly into our flying can also be a pretty, pretty interesting journey that can positively affect also our life on the ground and our relationships and our work ethics and discipline and anything else. So that's fascinating. I'm pretty passionate about it

because I think we still don't quite talk about it enough in paragliding. We focus too much on how to thermal the most precise way, which is of course very important and technical part of flying. It's super important, but also we shouldn't forget about this mental side of it. The reason I didn't stop you was because it was music to my ears. Listening somebody in our sport is like, hey, we have to talk about this because this is something that a lot of us think about, but people are in different stages of their life or they have different motivation to be open about it or a platform or something.

So if somebody of your stature is coming out and speaking like this, because I've always felt that usually when I go to, I've met instructors, a lot of them are like, yes, we can teach you how to pull the brake to the right pressure point or how to push the bar correctly. But nobody talks about the psychological aspect of things. And that is, I'm so glad I've reached out to you because this is exactly the topic that I wanted to speak about. And talking about priorities going, I know that I'm going to be breaking your thought process for a second, but I really want to backtrack because your

journey started here as, as I was checking about a section on your website where where you said that before aviation came into your life, you were a Master of Science and physics and pursuing APHD in solid-state spectroscopy. If I was saying it correctly, that seems like a tongue twister. How does a PhD candidate have the guts and the courage relieve discomfort of whatever money that is coming in and manifest something that is totally uncertain? I mean, I know the pull, I know the fascination that you have for aviation. But if, if you can talk to our listeners about the thought process that was strong enough to pull you out of the comfort

zone that you had of, of a career in physics and then chase this completely, you know something else which was super exciting and super rewarding. So I always wanted to become a physicist since I was 10. I always wanted to discover the mysteries of nature. Now I think I'd simply chose my specialization a little bit. Unfortunately, because the solid-state physics, as much as it's pretty interesting. It's basically about how the world, how the matter around us works on the very, very microscopic level, what's happening there on the electron level. I didn't quite I didn't quite appreciate that when I'll get into actual research on my PhD, I already knew it more or less

when I was doing mustache thesis that that because I chose spectroscopy, it means that basically you need the laboratory and this laboratory has to be pretty dark the way all the other types of radiation, including visible light. So in practice, what it means that you're spending your life in a dark basement. As much as the topic itself is interesting, this kind of lifestyle was never really my thing and in some point I just lost passion for it. I left my PHDI never finished it. I bought one way tickets to Asia. At this point I wasn't a pilot. I was a very keen rock climber, so all my life outside of

physics was wrapped around climbing. At some point you get into this diet and microcycles and microcycles and training and holiday plans and all your friends are basically connected to climbing. So it was a big part of my life. So but one ticket, one way ticket went to India and went Thailand for climbing. Then came back got a corporate job which was very well paid and I absolutely hated it. So I didn't last long. Then in a big business consulting company and started working for a for a marketing agency. And then and all this I knew that paragliding existed but I never and until now a lot of a lot of people who are not

connected to free flying surfing the same way about paragliding. Because once few years back I was in at Lago de Garda, the famous rock climbing spot and on the rest day I hiked Montebaldo. And again for those of you who don't know it's Lago de Garda and Montebaldo but it's a famous siv and acro place. Plenty of pilots come to train over water and, and that's what I saw, that's just saw all these pilots taking off and flying over the lake and then you just lose sight of them. So I guess it's nice. You don't have to hike down. You can just fly down. Maybe when I'm retired, when I

can't climb anymore, because obviously climbing is so much cooler than just flying off. Also seems really grumpy and true. Now, I know that they were probably stressed before the SIV. Yeah, but they all seemed really serious. And I was like, doesn't look like so much fun. They don't look like they're having too much fun. One day, I'll try. So that was my concept of paragliding for a few years. And then I was training pretty hard for my rock climbing, and I fell off the boulder in a weird way. I injured my elbow a little bit. Ripped. Yeah, not even totally, Just needed a few months of break without climbing.

I was devastated because my. Life is climbing what? Can I do so because my body was so used to training? I started running a lot and this is basically how I got into endurance sports. They progressed from running a few kilometers to 5 to 15 every morning. I was a little bit obsessive and when I get into something, I really get into it. It ended up with some ultra marathons and then red blue Subs in the end, but something was missing. I was very fit but very unhealthy, but physically and emotionally and mentally. But then a friend of mine just did the paragliding course and said we should try to do it. It's pretty fun.

And there was like long weekends or some Easter or whatever and I was like, I have nothing else to do. I can, I can't climb unfortunately. So I'll do my paragliding course. And from the very first moment you hike this little hill, training hill and go with a paraglider and then fly over this first slides are not even flies are like little hops. Yeah, yeah, a few meters above the ground. But for me, the concept that you can actually hike with the backpack and open this piece of cloth and fly with it. It just do my mind. It's something ticked that just like, OK, so you can actually do the things.

It gives you a freedom in it and then the rest is history. I moved to Basano, my first terminal in Basano. Finally, without falling out of it. I was alone in the terminal into the cloud base. I landed with tears in my eyes. It was some mystical experience for me. From this moment, I was completely hooked. I was like, Oh my God, that's the most beautiful thing ever. Finally was flying. I wasn't just slowly falling. I wasn't jumping like kite surfing, just up and down or whatever. I was actually climbing using force of nature to this invisible element of air to go up and and go somewhere with

that. It completely blew my mind and since then I've been chasing it pretty hard. I like to say that flying in some ways saved me because I was in a very dark place when I started flying and it really healed my soul. It proves to me that if there is so much beauty or so much magic that you can have, it feels almost unreasonable to be said if it makes sense, or it feels almost stupid not to chase it and not to try to get this feeling as much as possible. So in some ways it was addictive from this first thermal. I completely believe you that

that was the case with me. Although I cannot boast about having 300 hours in the first year, I think I had 60 or something. But one thing that comes to my mind, Kinga, is that you are a very honest person when it comes to sharing. And from what I see on your website, it's all written out very transparently where you don't hide your mistakes. The the hiccups that I've come across as you shared your Basano or the Switzerland adventure that you had Swiss Alps that you had in the April. So being honest is something that is super important in our lifestyles at various stages. And it helps being honest.

Let's say if you were training too much, you have to be honest and say that regardless of how much effort I'm putting, it has been counterproductive. And same honesty is very important when it comes to chasing airtime. But regardless of how much risk I am chasing, this is becoming too much to handle and I should pull back. Has there been something with you that has helped you stay honest with yourself and eventually, which I can see has reflected in shaping you, who you are of today? Because I see a lot of pilots, including me. It's very hard to admit your mistakes. It's very hard to say that yes, I messed up and I should not be

doing it again or I will not do that again. How have you navigated that aspect of life during all these years from the beginning to now? That's a very interesting question. No one actually asked me this question before I. Don't believe? That it's even possible to truly fly for years sustainably and not get burnt out, not lose the passion, just constantly find joy in it if you are not honest with yourself. Like we can lie as much as we want, but flying will just show us who we are and doesn't matter. All the narratives that we create in our daily life, all the masks that we wear to show maybe at work or maybe to

potential partners who we want to be doesn't matter. Because you fly and it it immediately shows you who you are. All your insecurities, all your false narratives, all your wannabe stories that will all come out. And we are very vulnerable out there. We are very exposed not only to elements but also to our to consequences of our decisions. So if we are not honest about it to ourselves, because it's not all we always thinks about being honest to others, but first of all, it's about being honest to ourselves, We really can't progress in the safe and sustainable manner. And I think we all have met these pilots who will always,

for example, find excuses. Oh, what happened? What did you land? Oh, it was really turbulent. And you're like, it wasn't. But I know that you're flying the Super hot wink. Maybe it's not the great wink for you at this point. But instead of addressing it, instead of addressing your anxiety or fear or whatever else, you are just finding excuses that the conditions weren't great or just it's a wink or it's a face of the moon or anything else. So it's, it's really without addressing our emotion, it's really hard to to go anywhere in my opinion. And again, it doesn't mean that we all need to dig in this and our mindset and emotions again

and again. We are all wired differently. So we process things in different ways. Some people need to talk things through and then they can truly think through them. Some people need to think them through, hide in The Cave and then they can express what's bothering them or what's important, what not. So we processing differently. I definitely process through talking and within this life of journeys, I talked about paragliding a lot and I'm very privileged to have a very good partner in life who truly understands what I do and what's important for me and lessons and always has a good input when I need it. So we like to think about

paragliding in this as this lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We all need other humans. If you have someone who cares about you or someone who understands. What all this journey is about, and it may be of course, is the easiest if you're talking to other paragliding pilot, but it may be also someone who knows you very well who doesn't have to be a pilot or someone who has a background in other sports like whitewater kayaking, rock climbing or mountaineering. If you're someone that you can honestly talk things through, for me, that's always very important and very helpful. And the first time you do it,

the first time you encounter some set back, it takes a lot to process it because you don't have tools yet to, to be vulnerable and honest and find this constructive solution to, to, to it. But every next time, and there will be next times, because every time we think, oh, now I have it all sorted. I went from my intermediate syndrome. Now it's all sorted. No, it's not. If you are keep growing with the sport and keep progressing and keep challenging yourself, you'll always encounter new new challenges and new setbacks and new issues that you will have to process. But every next time will be easier because because you

already developed tools and you know who you are and what you want from the sport and what the dynamics of the sport is. It's actually pretty, pretty interesting because I mentioned that my this my first sandbag, my intermediate syndrome was pretty brutal on me on various ways. And it took me basically two years of couple of years of struggle and constant feeling like maybe I should quit the spark because I wasn't flying as well. I wasn't committed. I was afraid. I was constantly questioning myself. It was exhausting. So maybe I just need a break so I won't fly for a few days, but then I was.

Staring in the sky. And thinking, oh, I should be flying it's it was exhausting. It took me a long time of constant processing and reading and learning and and meditating and talking about it to, to process it and, and to reconnect fully to, to flying. Not even reconnect, just connect in the new level to it. Because you never come back to the safety process something like this. You never come back to where you started. You, you. Jump to the next level. We like to think that's a linear progression. The more we fly, the more we put into it, the better we fly. But it never is. It's most like some crazy drunk

sinusoid. You take 2 steps forward and wants to back and then completely plateau for a while and there's a lot happening on the way. This being said now after all this years, a few weeks ago I had the really unexpected and very brutal collapse which was the the ugliest collapse I actually encounter within this 4000 hours. For years since flying 2 liners nothing like this happened to me. I was flying in the list side, which itself is no goal, I know, but also multi flying happens in the list side often. And the big art of multi flying is to understand which list sites are acceptable and which list sites are bad.

So this one was surprisingly strong, surprisingly ugly and very sharp and was getting out of it and on the edge. I got a bit collapsed. I was very close to the terrain it went in total rotation and my muscle memory, my reaction saved me from some bigger drama. However, I I did crash landed on the terrain. Yeah, it's not that I opened it and flew away. It's also not that I got hurt. I I walked away from it, but that was definitely way closer than anyone should come. If you touch the terrain when you didn't plan to, that's obviously a very close call. And it shook me in various ways, especially because I started

feeling more comfortable within the last years and because I didn't really expect it to happen with such a force. So the sport has a constant tendency of every time you feel too comfortable or too complacent or confident, it will just slap you in the face, like, hey, we'll show you your place. And this is something I needed to process a little bit to regain the trust to myself, to the wink, which of course was a wings fault. It was my fault. But reconnect to not to be too sketchy. But this took a few days, not few years. If something like this happened when I was a 50 hour pilot, I

would need way longer to get over it. So what I'm trying to say here is that the setbacks and better worse moments will keep happening. Everyone that who tells you that they have it all sorted, that never get scared, that never even like everything they they have it all sorted. Basically they either lie or they are just don't push themselves in various ways so they always fly deep within the comfort zone. Again, nothing wrong about it, but also there's not much learning or progression happening there at this point and or they are just waiting for their next mishap to happen. Every time we say I have it all sorted, nothing can touch me.

Every time we start feeling untouchable, this part will show us that we are very much touchable and very much mortal. That's nothing tragic about this, it's just a beauty of life going deep in the philosophical theme. But also, it's not something that should stop us from doing something that we love. Jeez, I'm but loss of words. I think I need to compile all of this and let the listeners do the same a little bit. It's most Marieties hearing a top level pilot being so honest. A lot of people in today's world don't share things as transparently as you do. And that was the whole point of bringing out paragliding at this

podcast, that we as community do not share or talk about difficult topics as much as we talk about fun or topics. So that was the whole point that we really need to start being open about this. And also it doesn't mean that it's all struggle and difficult choices and and meditation every morning. Of course there is like majority of flying is just pure joy that if you are in a good place in your flying, you may think what is she even talking about? I'm totally enjoying my flying without all this BS. But sooner or later most of us go through some darker parts and then we truly appreciate. Oh OK, so this is what happened.

This is moment when I had to take a step back, be honest, talk to someone I trust and the breath starts slowly. Maybe if I'm really scared, maybe fly only in the mornings, only in the evenings, only in the place. And maybe I need to downgrade my wing, come back to AB wing or a wing or whatever, just to refine this joy of flying. Because in the end, we all want to have fun out there and the sport is potentially dangerous or risky, especially if we do some dumb stuff. It's expensive, it's real time consuming, it can be stressful, it takes time from from your other obligations in life. So it's a very committing sport.

And if it's not fun, what's the point? What are we trying to prove here? The point is that sometimes to make it fun, we need to take a step back and go through some uncomfortable journeys. And we shouldn't be afraid of it and we shouldn't be ashamed of it in any way. That's all I think, yeah. Yeah, and I think with the reducing attention spans due to social media, I see them, Spotify Analytics where I host my podcast, a lot drop out in the 1st 10 minutes. So anybody who has stuck so far is definitely understanding what we are saying because first of all, they know what is the

essence of pushing. The comfort zone is where the smile really starts coming onto your face because comfort zone is exciting for the first few days, but after that it's the most boring place to be in life. On the air or on the ground, wherever you think so. In the way. We all search for flow, don't we? And the flow only this magical moment when we know that we are doing something exciting, feel fully focused and present, and it pushes us, but also it doesn't create this anxiety. So we're all looking for flow in life. And if you want to experience it, it's very addictive. But to experience it again and again, you can't chase it

recklessly because this is where we put ourselves in trouble. But also, you don't want to live without it if you experience it. And to experience it again, we need to constantly expand our comfort zone, try new things and do new things. So yeah, here is to to a lot of flow in 2025. This is so nice. I think we'll use this as a tagline of my show. A lot of flow in 2025. Yeah, I was going to save this topic for a little bit later in the show, but I think we have just reached a point where I feel super comfortable asking about this. Parallel lighting is something, as you said, it takes a lot, not

just from you, it takes a lot from your money, from your bank account, from your social life. It's an investment and it's equally rewarding. I'm, I'm not denying like 7 or 8 billion on the planet and a handful of them chase airtime in collapsible wings and a handful of them push their comfort zone. The lucky few of us who are blessed enough to chase airtime like this do find ourselves in situations where our support system does not understand what we're doing. Support systems like close friends and family. Finding our own tribe is a whole different struggle because obviously you have to move geographically to different societies, to different countries, to invest in visas

and monetary situations and everything. A lot of times it's very easy to say no matter what comes, I'm going to go back to my passion and let it fulfil my life. Now, the thing with that is, regardless of how rewarding it might sound, there are very easy ways to become a loner in the sport while chasing your passion at the highest level. Because you want to chase your hundred 200 hours, but you can't convince a friend who flies to give up his lifestyle and his support system. And then you're like, all right, then I might as well do it by myself. So when you're doing this by yourself because that is the

only option life has given you, it's either that or lowering your expectations or giving up, which of course is not a point if you're chasing it that hard. How does one navigate their challenges when chasing the pinnacle of their dream by themselves and not having anybody to talk to? Well, it's not a very. Interesting question that that no one has ever asked. That's a very good one actually.

So there's a few approaches to it because we're wired differently. Not everyone's looking for the same thing in life and then flying the people who are very heavily community driven and for them flying with you, you know that you're the type of person if the best flights you can think of were flights with your friends, flying as a little gag or as a team going somewhere and doing something together, this is pretty obvious. Your pilot. You are aware that flying is is in some way lonely sport because at the end, even if you're surrounded by friends, you are an aircraft in the air. So whatever is happening, it's

your decisions and your responsibility, but you are driven by sharing this experience with others. There are people driven by adventure or beauty in my case. There's a very distinctive type of pilots who are very competitive. If it's a World Cup or your local club on Sunday, if you out fly your friends in the friendly competition, you are the happiest camper out there. We all in some ways look for different things and it can drive the way you find your tribe. Few ways of. Approaching it on one hand, I believe that if you show who you are out there, if you do your thing, and in some ways it was my case that when I started

flying, I had people around me in Basana and there's a lot of pilots and I had a good weekend. Mentors that would suggest something when I was a beginner or give me some advice from their perspective. It's good to have people around you and bounce your experience of them, but in some ways I was really driven so much by flying that I wasn't looking for a community, if it makes sense. I was always a little bit of a loner. I was alone when I started flying. I was alone when I moved to move to France from Italy because I didn't want to find Basana anymore. I had enough of it.

But Swiss Alps in April was a little bit too much. I moved to France for summer. And sooner or later when you follow your passion, your tribe organically finds you if it makes sense. So it's not so much that you desperately find it trying to find your tribe, but your tribe will find you and like minded pilots will or like minded humans will naturally connect with who you are. It's a little bit like be yourself because otherwise the people who are looking for you won't be able to find you by being honest, vulnerable and and chasing whatever is important for you. I believe that we are just

naturally getting closer to other like minded people who are looking for similar things. Of course it's a little bit different when you are talking to her about already existing type of your family or friends who don't understand flying, who don't connect to it in any way and can't really understand why you justify the risk you take or all the time that you spent doing it if it's really worth it. Who are trying to maybe blame you in put you into kind of this guilt state for not spending enough time with them. And this is extremely tricky because it all depends. At the end it would be nice to say if they truly care about you

they will understand at least what you're saying. But in reality, we are coming from different backgrounds and have different types of tribes around us, so they may still truly not understand why you do what you do. This is very tricky because in some way life is really about compromise and priorities. If at this point your family's happiness is something that that you can't sort out or can't solve different way, then something has to give. Maybe flying has to give for this time period of time, or maybe the family has to be sat down and truly explained what it's all about. Maybe they need to understand how beautiful and special is what you are doing.

Maybe they need a little bit of connection to to to why you find it so special. Maybe you need to tone down the risk taking to keep them happy but still enjoy the flying. So it is a very complex topic. For me when I started flying it was all easy. I had no children, no husband, no partner, my mum. Has never, truly. Understood what I'm doing out there. Until she flew condom I think she never truly connected the few years later. Why would I again find another spot that takes you even higher? You can fall from even higher altitude. Why would you do something like this? Of course it's easier when you

have no obligations holding you back. You can just jump into it. From this perspective it's easy for me to say you will do what you want to do. And this is literally what I was doing for a first year. I was chasing it so hard, nothing else mattered. Of course, I met a lot of great people on the way, but if the flying was better somewhere else, if the season would, I would just leave it all behind. Flying had the priority. As we said at the beginning, that was flying and then anything else. And in some ways it sounds almost heartless, but the same time we all have to be very

honest what's in our top of our priority list at this point and what's in 2nd and 3rd place. So I didn't all the IT, it is sometimes the prices that you create some friendships and meet your people and then it all dissipates because you chase something else at this point or they chase something else at this point. But they really believe that if you show yourself out there and be vulnerable and and honest about your flying and about what you want from it, the more honest you are, the more your tribe will find you very organically. So again, I don't know if it really explains it because it's a very complex topic and it's

really heavily dependent on your situation. It's very different when you're coming from some very traditional and risk averse background and your family absolutely hates the concept of you flying paragliders. And it's very different when you are like 20 something and and no obligations, no really no family, no no job. Even better than you have to sort out how to pay for all this. But I didn't still have all the freedom to do as you wish and find your tribe organically. At this point I've been migrating for a few years with trips to different places like Peru and Bolivia that you mentioned, but I've been migrating between New Zealand,

Europe and Indian Himalayas for years now. Each of these places has tribe and my people, but India is very particular because we only go for a few weeks. We reconnect with dear friends that we deeply care about, honest beautiful friendships. We go flying together and have heaps of fun. Then we don't see each other for the rest of the year. So yeah, it all has its price and space, I think. This is a question that everybody has to find an answer for themselves, no matter. But also because we are all different and we have different situations and the different, different priorities. So in some ways to answer this question, everyone needs to ask

themselves what's truly important for me. And there's a bunch of very important questions that I answered multiple times. But also, sometimes I give my pilots their basic, very important questions. For example, who am I? What do I want and what am I afraid of? What's important? And these are questions that are so basic that when I ask you, oh, what's important for you and in there. You'll probably say but. What do you mean? What do you want in flying, private life or work? Because we create different narratives and want a lot of things when you give it true space. I like to do it in particular on solo missions.

So you spend a day, 2 days somewhere in the woods alone. I like to fast going into some more extreme ways of finding your growth and flow. Then you don't have any distractions. The point is to get away from all the distractions if you can for a day or two. My first solo was three days. That was pretty hardcore. Seven to two hours in the forest without food. It can be the few hours, it can be 15 minutes of yoga and then answering these questions, just giving your mind a bit of space and lack of distractions. Because we live our lives in such a you mentioned social media, we are constantly

distracted. We are constantly telling or listening to stories, talking, writing, scrolling, listening to things. We no one sits and drinks their coffee anymore without doing anything else. We have to read something, we have to watch something. So our brain is not didn't evolve to do this. So we are constantly overwhelmed and overloaded information and narratives to give yourself a few hours, maybe a day, without distractions. Give your mind space to wander, get bored, and then answer this very basic question. Suddenly it really jumps at you. Suddenly you know exactly what's important, You know exactly what you want. You don't create narratives, it just comes up at you.

There are very basic questions, too basic to answer them. For example, what do you want? And then, bam, here this because there's too much noise around us. But also once we honestly answer these questions, we can navigate things like the question you ask how to find a compromise between your passion for flying and the families that that doesn't understand and accept it. And it can be something pretty surprising. But the answer will be different to any for everyone because every situation and every human is different. Yeah. And I think the take away was just sitting with your own thoughts and cleaning out the distractions for some time.

That is the wonder drug, which I kid you not, will be sold in pharmacies in time to come in some way or the other. Because the amount, yeah. It's an incredible, powerful, powerful tool. There's no way I want to stop on this this topic, but we have to move on for the sake of the show. I quickly want to touch upon the topic of materialistic wealth, Kinga, because that is something all of us have to answer at some point in time. Gliders are getting more expensive than ever. But I think I was just speaking with a sailplane pilot and he was telling me the amount of money he spends per hour if he

chases airtime for about 60 to 100 hours was a bit cheaper than the amount of money I was spending as a paraglider pilot. It's the same amount of airtime. Yeah, I'm. I'm not, I kid you not, because they're renting the planes. They're not buying the planes. Yeah, but still you need to rent. So basically you pay per hour for toll for rental and cetera. Please do not quote. Me on on this to any of my listeners, but all I'm saying is the price point was. Expensive. The the spot is expensive. That's true. We all know it. Yeah. So let's say the beginning years for anyone. This is not just for you or me or for Kriegel Maurer or any of

the top line pilots. But anybody who's starting such an expensive sport is going to face the question of money at some point in time, either on the first year or second year or the 5th year before finally a Red Bull and all of these big companies started associating with you and there was a way forward. How were you managing the materialistic side of things when you were chasing solely your passion? Poorly. Jeez I love your honesty thing. You're a podcaster? Was believed to be honest. Poorly. Right. We all do. We all do. We just want to know how did you do it and still make it so that we we can follow your footsteps.

With being in depth seasonal work and and prioritizing pretty heavily. So we were for our first few years since I met my partner that was we met in Anasi. It was basically after my first year flying. He originally brought me to New Zealand. He's a New Zealander. He's Kiwi born and raised and in New Zealand fly as well. He does fly. So we were it's always a little bit easier. I would say that let's say double income or single income at times, or two, two half incomes and no more gadgets, no kids, no other aspects. You can live pretty cheaply. We've been living together or I've been living alone from van

for years. He's been travelling in the van and living on the van and wild camping somewhere in the bushes. This year I got an house in Italy. Now we'll have a base and so, so big house. So it will need a little bit of TLC tender loving care. The house is between Felter and Bassano basically. So there's plenty of beautiful places around that you can fly and just fly new places, new conditions with different types of pilots and learn more within the same time. So that's one of the concepts. But coming back to the not a big business just a little bit to make this life sustainable, but

also a big part of it. From my perspective, it's always isn't easy because I don't need much when sense of comfort. I don't mind all the discomfort that comes with one life for months and living very cheaply. I don't need fancy handbags, dresses and dinners out. So this itself can really make it way more sustainable. And I'm not the only one that maybe now it's not exactly they're bugging like it used to be. Since I coach quite a bit and work with pilots, that's evolved a little bit. But for years it was what we would call glamorous dirt, bugging and flying as much as possible and chasing the

conditions. It's not. Also. Awful because for example, van life in the Alps, it's amazing when you want to be mobile and chase the weather. So if you want to prioritize your flying, a couple of years of van life, definitely if you can do it with your life, it's definitely not the worst choice. But again, it's not something that anyone that can just spark their life in a van and do it. Some people have other obligations and other life out there that they have to compromise on. Yes. So how did you manage it? Poorly but the same time happily? I'll tell you something I find interesting after few years of of van life.

The more comfortable we are, the lazier we get in general, the more we focus. I experience it. Working for a big consulting company is an other side of the extreme because you work with the people who are very success driven. This work is their life and it translates into money. There's good money in it and at the end, time is ultimate value in life. Everything else we can buy our exchange. But time, once it happens, you can get it back. So we are basically selling our time for whatever else we are doing. This is what all the job relationships are. You are selling your time and

expertise for the money and then you buy all the things that other people around you have. Old car, you have to have a flash one or you can't live here, you have to live there, etcetera. So it creates this kind of vicious cycle of wanting more and having more. And again, if it works for you, that's fantastic, but usual it takes a lot of time and also it puts your focus into owning and not experiencing the simplifying things. Doesn't have to be extreme as living in a van for a whole summer and spring, but simplifying things, maybe downsizing, maybe getting rid of all this external expectations

and focusing on on experiencing things, on maybe travelling. If you see or think maybe your family or or friends relationships really switches the whole narrative. Suddenly you realize that you really don't need so much comfort. The discomfort that you experience, for example, when you live in the van, you get used to it and then when you go into the mountains or run out of food, it doesn't bother you so much because you are not used to being pampered daily. We naturally, as human beings evolve to gravitate toward comfort food, high sugar food, and safety. This is why we have to force ourselves to go to the gym, but we don't have to force ourselves

to eat another chocolate. This one comes easily the more we somehow and the more we in in some ways it's about going back to bases. The more we live the simpler life without this expectation that we need to own and gather more, the more it can affect our life and give us more time for things that bring us true joy, like flying and meaningful relationships. Again, everyone's different, the situation will always be different, but the more we free our life from this unnecessary ballast and this is again something that that everyone can can waste in their own mind. How much we want to sacrifice and how important flying is or

how important this new car or new fantasy TV is for us. As long as we are honest with ourselves. And it's, it's the only point that I think the whole conversation can be summarized as like, be honest with yourself and truly honest how uncomfortable it may be. And whatever comes out of it, just follow it and you can't go wrong. I'm checking this.

Totally get it. And and that that's why I was, I was so fascinated when when we brought out the topic of honesty because it is so hard to just live in your own bubble and make your own reality. But I think I have decoded a simpler way of putting it across to the audiences and that is if you can hold your horses while upgrading a new wing or if you can make better decisions while buying that harness that you don't need buying that radio just because everybody else is buying that two liner C, just because the whole paragliding population is exploding and saying we're going to buy those

two liner C. So if you can influence these decisions then the money is going to be much more sorted in your life. But coming back to this reality for a moment, I would say that from what I see in the community and and around me, there are two ways of successful. Again, there's always Alex Obey, who has very successful company and family. He flies 10 times per year and 200 it's 250 two 180 kilometres in the Alps, handpicking his very best days. He can do it because he's been flying for a long time and he's a very good pilot. When you start, you can't really cheat the airtime.

You need to spend time putting some groundwork in. But in general, there are there are two basic ways how a pilot successfully merge flying with earning a living. One is earning money through flying. So either becoming an instructor or tandem pilot or or if accuracy of thing maybe SAV instructor, maybe some ex coaching safaris. This is one way of being or becoming a professional athletes sponsored by big company. But another way of approaching it is to find a way to have the flexibility of your job that's completely not connected to flying. So either if you are in IT consulting your translator or anything else that you may be

doing that has some flexibility in it, or you might be landscaping, but have an agreement with your boss that if it's a really good day for flying, you can go and fly. So to having this flexibility in which I agree it's not as easy as finding a 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to Friday job. If you can have some flexibility or work three days out of a week or four days and have a longer weekend or flexible weekend etcetera. And it comes at the cost of maybe lower pay. This is usually what makes pilots the best possible because. Let's be honest, flying. Professional, either flying tandems or guiding or being an instructor is necessarily for

everyone. For some pilots, there's this very valid question, What if I make my passion my job and then I lose the passion because it's now it's my job and balancing it. It's, it's also another question. So it's not necessarily that everyone should become a tandem pilot from now on. Big part of it is just maybe trying to find a little bit of flexibility in your life and have a bit more time for flying. So not to be so frustrated. It's not very often. It's doesn't have to be necessarily even flexibility in the sense that you work less very often. It's just if it's possible to have some flexibility within the

time frame, because then you can have a weekend on Monday and Monday is usually for some reason the best day of the week. So. Yeah. I don't know if it's if it helps, but again, it's 1 of this really interesting but also really broad questions that will be that answer will be different for every pilot. Yes, every question we come up by saying you can find the answer within yourself after taking the cues from the. It is because. There's some real hard work for flying, like you need to learn to thermal efficiently, you need to learn weight shift, you need to learn you need to learn to

land in various conditions, to judge the winds, to understand the methodology. There's a lot of things that you just need to do to be able to fly safely and successfully, but it's not. The next step is just parallel journey where you take your flying and what truly will rule. So there's this basic groundwork that you have to do. You need to start flying away from your local heel and etcetera. But there's also this parallel journey that's you need to find your reasons why is it worth it? Why do you love it and where do you want to take it? This is one of the questions that I always ask my pilots

where, what's the ultimate goal? Where do you imagine yourself as a pilot in the years? What type of pilot do you want to become? What's truly triggers you for flying? If you can't fail and the Sky's the limit, where would you like to take your flying? And it's always interesting because the answers very heavily. So when I say that it really depends on the pilot, it's not that I'm trying to avoid answering. It truly is. And I say it again and again, when I work with my pilots, they come for so many various reasons and want to do so many different things with their flying. All these reasons are absolutely

valid. It's just finding your reason. Indeed, just listening to your inner voice and then making peace with it and being honest about that. At the. Bottom of it and also not being afraid to re evaluate because something that might have been super important at the beginning few years later may cause burnout and then you realise I love competing but now I don't want to compete anymore. Now I want to focus on my scenic flights or whatever. So flying tandem with my kids or anything else. And it's perfectly fine too. Not be afraid of changing it and not being too attached. To the identity that we, we all. Live through different

identities and wear this masks and then we create some persona that that is a successful business man or successful parent or successful competition pilot and present detaching from it and not being afraid to to re evaluate and reinvent yourself. That's a really powerful tool to have. There's quite a lot of courage and confidence, but also a lot of honesty. I think I'm I'm going to name the title of this show with something related to honesty because that is what it is. I I love the thought provoking discussion. I think awesome. I think I would like to give our listeners a change of topic because this is definitely a thought provocation for

everybody, including me. I'm like, as you're narrating this, I'm just like, my decision, is this podcast going to work? Can I try and make a living out of paragliding in Europe? Is this going to be the six years down the lane as well? I think to say yeah, but being honest is the simplest answer that I'll stick to. So everything is sorted and that end, that king, I want to touch up on the good side of the glorious. The glamour, the Exiles, the professional photographs, the Instagram reels, the crazy music that comes with it and all the amazing edits that make us want to be you.

Every time man I see see you through the 6-7 inch phone. Screen. Talk to us about the better side of being famous and rich. Does it make you rich or richer or like how does that slide? Oh, it definitely doesn't make you. Rich If you want to become rich, choose another. Don't make. Flying your profession definitely want to make you rich. If you can quickly touch upon how does lifestyle as a paraglider pilot change when something as big as red bullets Alps comes into you? How many free wings and reserves and everything else? Do you get? Oh, so definitely I'm very privileged to be sponsored and supported by some paragliding

companies, especially by fee paragliders, which gave me multiple wings very generously. And and I absolutely love the whole love the wings, but also the wholesomeness and and the focus on details and the philosophy of the company. Harnesses by Bogdan Soy, very cool lightweight harnesses in different colours. Again, another little manufacturer that really listens to the feedback. And every next product it's a better version of the. Previous one, which is really cool to see because a lot of big companies sometimes get settled in their groove and they get into this concept that they know everything the best. So it's really cool to collaborate with companies that listen to feedback and establish is the owner of fee and the head

designer. He's been designing wings longer than in my life, so he really knows what he's doing. But still he listens to feedbacks and he's always chorus and he's very passionate about it. So this is something super inspiring to be a part of. Generally, gear sponsorships are super helpful. I get the gear from intense outdoors little New Zealand company. I get my favorite fly like glasses from Fluga little various super lightweight, real precise various from Stoddeo. So this Libby. Beep or ultra beep or blue beep? Thinks this is what they make. So gear is absolutely obviously massive support, especially that I slide so much that I go through a lot of gear.

So of course it makes a massive difference and deserves all the gears that I would buy otherwise. So it's pretty this part is probably tricky if you want to get sponsored, how desperate you are about it, or if you troll this part, that you'll take anything. It doesn't matter what the company is or if you really have the comfort of working with the companies you would support otherwise. And now they're supporting you. That's a pretty special privilege. I need to work to sustain myself. It's not that anyone's paying me for flying. Even the best pilots in the world can't fully. Even. Kragen doesn't fully sustain himself from from sponsorships so it just shows you how even

some of the best and most accomplished pilots that we all look up to still need to in a flight tandems guide or do other things to sustain themselves. This needs to be said because it's not soccer, it's not rugby, it's not Sprint running. It's not an Olympic. Sport, it's a still a pretty niche sport if you if you imagine that I will try super hard and then I will qualify to Red Bull exhaust and from now on I will live off my flying and they will pay me for adventures. No, that's not usual how it works. So yeah, does it answer the question or? Partially. Because I wanted a honest

opinion, the real opinion about what the glamorous side look like. And I think you you answered it pretty. Well, so yeah, from my perspective, I absolutely love my life. I've never been happier. But it doesn't come from money, it comes from having more or less sustainable life again. Not really needing much. But for me the ultimate value is time. I don't want to spend my life in a cubicle now when I retired at 65 or 70. I can do other things because I won't be capable of doing the things I'm capable of doing now. I won't get this time back. For me, the glamour comes from this.

It's not the glamour of having more, the having of the newest gear and the fanciest, the fanciest entourage. Yeah, it's more about having the glamour or the real wealth for me is just having time for doing what I love and also sharing it with others because let's be honest, this work that I do with pilots incredibly satisfying because it's about sharing. After many years of flying and ties and virturing for some wild montice and going for some wild adventures, you can get used to it a little bit and you have to push pretty hard to. Actually to get this. Tickle of excitement in the same way, so it doesn't happen every day.

And if you work with pilots and see how much excitement the first Volbevac or the first flights through New Zealand Backcountry or some other mountains, how special it is for them and how much excitement creates. Yeah, for me, this is glamour because this is really I, I reconnect again and again how special it is and how privileged we are to be doing what we're doing and how grateful we should all be on daily basis for being capable of doing it. So this gratefulness or gratitude is something that I believe that if we connect to, we can be truly content. It's something that took me years of flying to connect to,

but I believe that it's a true wealth because we like to in a like modern society, we really like to measure everything with, with zeros in your bank account. But at the end, there's a lot of things that. It may be a little bit higher on your priority list or a lot of things that don't need this extra zeros to to make you happy. You know that there's a lot of research that indicates that there's particular level of wealth which is lower than you would expect. If you get wealthier, you get happier. Because if you're constantly concerned how you're going to feed your family, how you're

going to pay your rent, not to get evicted, not to get homeless, how you're going to survive until next month, of course it creates stress. You can't be happy if you constantly struggle with basics. But above this very modest level, there's no correlation anymore. So once your basic needs are fulfilled, food and and shelter basically, and you can feed your family anything above it, it's just indulging yourself in owning it doesn't make you happier. Maybe we're focused on the wrong thing. We want to be happier and we believe that this next model of car wing or instrument will do it for us. It will make us happier and more

fulfilled. No, it will just create the spike of endorphins and dopamine that will get it, and then we'll come back to being as miserable as we were before. Can can we please solely blame this on Doom? Scrolling on our phones. Yes, King, I think that is the only evil eye in this. Whole it's a massive part of it social media it's a massive part of it because comparing ourselves to others is very human. This came way before social media, however, Before we were mostly comparing ourselves to. With our village, our neighbours, our Co workers, this is where the choice of your job and work environment so important because it will define

what you're focusing on. Naturally, you can't really avoid it. But now with social media, we compare ourselves to the whole world. Not the lives they truly live, but the lives that they want us to believe that they live. All this influences that that we that we compare ourselves to believing. Yes, and there are these masks. Acro maneuvers over crystal clear blue waters and all of that. Absolutely, I said with Park Landing it's pretty wild because I see it a lot when I teach my pilots top landings. Top landings are one of the most crucial skills when you want to go beauty flying. However, top landings in the

mountains require a lot of patience. It's not only about your skills about flying your wing, but also about understanding that paramounts can trigger of the mountain and they come in cycles. So you may come perfectly into your top landing exactly how I did 5 minutes ago and you are doing exactly the same thing. But now you just got lifted by thermal and fighting it makes no sense. So just fly away and try again. And very often in the real big mountains, it can take an hour easily to top plant if it's still early in the day and it's completely fine. But very often, pilots come with

this image, the top landing. Should be what they saw. On the 10 second reel that you just come or perfectly on the speed bar into the slope and you land perfectly. Everything is just super smooth and super perfect. And they imagine that this is how it works. But real life doesn't work like this, even for the top pilots. They show on their reels the best moments of the best landings, let's say. So just something to to keep in mind what we see out there isn't real or it's a part of reality, the pinnacle, the very top of reality. And This is why also sharing a little mishaps and various other

aspects. It's so important. But again, it doesn't sell so well within within 10 seconds real. So it doesn't get as many views, doesn't create as much frenzy. So maybe even if someone wants to share it, maybe you won't even see it. So just. Something to remember and it's. Yeah, that's just cliche, but something to remember that social media, it's not reality, it's just a tiny best of the best moments of reality. Yeah, I think as a creator, this is a paradox that everybody fights. Do I go in for views or do I go in for creating unfiltered value with my audience? But the point is this can

totally resonate to any business, which is do I go in for community or do I go in for just profiteering. And I think doing your own part is, is this is the answer here that all I of course have to sustain myself in a capitalist society, which there are some rules that I have to stick by. But at least I'm doing my own part in trying to keep it as clean or as real or as honest as possible. And then like, let the algorithms do whatever, let the universe do whatever it takes, but at least your own conscience is is allowing you to go ahead and sleep with a peaceful mind

because you put out reality rather than just a 10 second. Oh absolutely, you totally can create value and still get views. I'm not such a social media Titan to be honest. It's not main focus on my of my life. But of course I appreciate that. I went for the school adventure and this beautiful footage. Why not share it with the world? It's a little. Different if you try to be a full time creator and your livelihood is dependent on views. So I guess it's really again depends what do you want. From it, I just always wanted to share a bit of what all this flying is about and how pretty it is.

Sometimes when I like to record my flying, especially when you do something intense, you're so focused on not to putting yourself in some blue side on the gorge and bombing out in the middle of nowhere, but that you don't really, you don't really look around as much as you could. Then you look at the footage and you're like, wow, that's absolutely gorgeous what we do out there. Sometimes you have all the time, you're nice and high and you have all the time to admire the views, but sometimes it gets pretty intense and then you look at this, look at this glacier, look at this place. One reason to record it for me

is to be able to come back to it not only now, but also when I'm old and crippled and I can't fly anymore. I lived a good life like this, Beautiful places, but then also being able to share it with people. Collecting bragging rights for life with all the GoPro and Insta 360 footages that you're making. Collecting. Memories. To come back to yeah. But I think for any aspiring creator listening this, let me just point out that your fellow Kiwi pilot Benjamin Carrott was kind enough to come on the show as well a couple of episodes before, and he happened to share a reserve through in the most raw manner possible.

I was just amazed by the honesty that he had. He was like, all right, 365 days, my life looks like that. But then here is one day which I'm not going to hide. And people did respond very well to it and they were pretty happy with whatever. Yes. Yes, Ben is a pilot who is not only a very good pilot, has been chasing, it's pretty hard and has a massive passion for flying, but also he found this beautiful niche of truly talking and and talking things through. When he flies, most of his followers are not even pilots. They're just people on the Internet who find it fascinating that he can fly from mountain to

mountain. And you may think a lot of us do it. Yeah, but not a lot of us show it to the world in such a unique way and perspective. So it's pretty cool to see. And I think he's following us and and his success on the social media platforms, I know how much work and time he puts into it. So it's totally deserved. It's amazing to see that it's happening for him. Yeah. There's one saying that we have a paragliding Atlas. So stay tuned, stay excited because the magic is just getting started. So I think that applies here. Kinga, before we close anyone flight that you feel like

sharing that has stayed with you in past 4000 hours, let me repeat that to my audience 4000. Hours of airtime and. That is fascinating to hear, but if there's anyone flight that you can share the experience, we'll be very thankful. As you can imagine, I have dozens of flies that emotionally touched me or feel unforgettable and they were very special. But there were also milestones that you remember after years that changed something. My first terminal obviously was something deeply emotional that killed my heart and and changed life. My first first time I did took the Mont Blanc was a very special flight because I went to

Shamani again my still my first year of flying, still dealing with a lot of anxiety and decision making, questioning myself all the time. I went to Shamani. It was a very good day, very heat wave and and there was a lot of pilots who wanted to try, but then it was still possible to top land on Mont Blanc. So I wanted to fly in the massive. I didn't even think about it because I thought it's beyond my capacity at this point. So I wanted to fly a triangle to Aniseed that someone showed me once and I wanted to do it. But then I met a friend of mine.

Oliver, by the way. Came here just this month to New Zealand to fly and I this time showed him around my playground, which was pretty special after 10 years for the special closing circle. He's been flying there for many years and Shamani and, and he asked me what they want to do. I want to say to. ANSI. I was like. That's the day to go into the masses go into the mountains. So off I went and I went toward the masses. To make Long story short, I did told them all blank in the anti clockwise direction. No one does it like this. When I landed back in the valet,

I was just like I didn't even know what happened and they never asked me what did you do? I was like, I think I did told them all blank but to the left I was like impossible. No one doesn't. Think this. I was like, I guess I did. And in particular, because I did it this way, there's on the way, there's called MIAs, which which is pretty high Alpine pass that takes you to the Italian side. If you do it in a normal way, like every other reasonable pilot, you're not on the follow the sun and it's more kind of natural flow. But also you get to the MIAs

glacier and and the called MIAs. So the very high Alpine committing terrain in the afternoon when days already well developed and you understand the quality of the day, you only commit if it's truly great. I did the other way around so I just sneaked over the colon miast and. Using just a little bit. Of convergence, just waving like crazy people sitting on the past. There's a refugee there. And then I just slide it into the other side and then saw the glacier that you're not crossing like in some other situation, but you're going along it. And I look back, the path was already above me because I sank

a little bit. I was like, now let's put the sit in the upward position. The jokes are over. Now we're getting serious. Very carefully with the full focus. I flew around the whole massive and it was the first time that I flew over the terrain that could be potentially dangerous terrain. And the first time they connected to the fact that it's not only that we can fly along the valleys and the green pastures below, but also we can fly this piece of cloth over terrain that would be impossible or very difficult to access otherwise. And flying above glaciers until now, it's one of them my biggest joys and and biggest privileges

in in flying. This is one of the. Things that that. Cloud surfing and flying above glaciers. So it's basically two things that I absolutely love about flying. So that real open expanded my horizontal about flying and opened my eyes to what this piece of cloth can do, that you can actually fly so much more interesting terrain that I thought until this point. And there was also another flight that that changed something dramatically in May when I came to New Zealand. I only flew in Europe at this point, and China and Australia. But this is basically flatland flying over dusty paddocks. Sorry for all the Aussies listening but because there's no real montage there.

It's not exactly. My type of flying. I know that there's amazing distance potentials flying in the in desert and some really cool coastal sewing. I'm gravitating naturally toward the montage. This is my environment and the higher the better, the Wilder the better. I really didn't have an experience at this point when I came first to New Zealand with the wild montage. When I went for my first flight in New Zealand, I saw this vast montage in front of me without any roads, houses, cows, power, lies, anything. No, no civilization, size. It really scared me in a weird way, but also triggered something deep in my heart.

From the very first moment I thought it would be so amazing to get to the point when I can travel through this mountains alone, self-sufficient and without fear. And it was 10 years ago. Times have changed, the sport here really developed, but back then no one was really doing it. No one was really flying the country, everybody were more or less following the road. There was some 2 pilots, Brian Moore and Nickname and none of them flies anymore. They both had serious accidents, which is the dark side of our sport, but then no one really did it, so it really felt even. More remote, more. Wild and more committing and it

took me two years, but yeah, two years later I went for my first big Vol divac estimation. I went solo through the mountains for 16 days, but just about two weeks. That was one of those deeply life changing experiences because anything that I I had to process, anything that I had to hear from my inner voice, I had enough time to hear it. I felt very vulnerable out there because it still scared me actually on the third day, because on the first day I got lost. On the second day I flew some heroic 20 kilometers, put myself on the list side and got completely freaked out. But on the third day, after a

lot of processing and crying and an emotional journey, I flew a stunning 180 kilometer line deep through the sudden Alps. And it was something that I dreamt about. I looked at this line and I thought about it, but I never really thought seriously that it would happen. And I put myself out there deep until now. It makes emotional actually, because I remember who I was when I was planning this journey, when I was going for this adventure, and also remember what it made me and who I was when I came out and what as a result I am right now. And how I fly this small place now, how I treat it as my

playground. And I feel like I'm not coming back for dinner tonight and I just on purpose put myself somewhere deep and then spend the next day or two getting out. I have a completely different approach to flying and to mountains in general. But of course, this is again thousands hours later. Back then it was the flight, the central 83 kilometres, the second overall longest flight after Knicks national record in New Zealand. I didn't see Seoul. No one was fine. But contrary to this extent, it took everything I had, everything I was as a pilot, all the skills, all the mindset, all the focus, all the commitment that I had.

And after those 16 days in the month is when I finally got out. I lost almost 5 kilograms and was pretty exhausted altogether. But I came out as a completely different human. Not only different pilot, different human. So in various ways, yeah, it was life changing. And until now it's one of my most cherished flights and most special and it's absolutely stunning. So there's a YouTube video that's called A Girl Gone Wild, which is basically a vlog of this journey and some of the images also from this flight and the whole aspect of being in the Montes alone for so long. So it was. Quite a promotional journey, this one and particular.

This flight will always stay with me. So it always tells me that at the end, kilometres are just numbers and what truly stays with you are all the emotions. And when you push and dream about something big and make it happen and grasp it and commit to it and don't hold back, and then truly find your flow and fly to the maximum of your capacity and touch who you are and what you're capable of. So this is what flying can do to us. And so when it happens, it's always your magic. Golden words, king, are golden words. It's just music listening to you speak your heart.

Out It's about who you are, what you are, where you come from, what's maybe holding your back, and what drives you. I think we. All should give ourselves this privilege of being alone with our mind. And doesn't have to be the weeks. Not everyone has this luxury or commitment to do it. But a few hours a day, weekend and some time to reset. Not by scrolling, not even by reading and relaxing. Just reset with your mind and really check on ourselves what's what do we want and what's important. Who we are and where we are going. But usually the most interesting things happen on the edge of our

comfort and where we are uncomfortable. Especially this one aspect of it about safety. If the conditions make us uncomfortable and it's really turbulent, windy, or whatever, that's one thing of looking at it. This is not a safety aspect. If it's an aspect of commitment or discomfort, it's not that I don't want to go there because it's dangerous and it's the universe. It really sounds Kisha and I'm not the first person saying it. It's just some deep truth in it. And this is also why this particular flight was so important and this particular journey was so important because it pushed me so far outside of my comfort zone.

Since then I've been the flying way more, committing flights were deeper with it with in worse conditions. I've been alone in some wild mountains and I never cried again, He said he should make sense. It never taps to me to this point. Once I came about on the other end of this journey, something just ticked and it was very emotional but also very empowering. Sometimes the flights are not about kilometers or winning and the shrink or not even necessarily about the best conditions. Sometimes are the flights that that are the ones that that push us the most and make us go for journeys. No. Indeed, and I think the only bad

thing about this podcast is that it has to come to an end at some point. You're going to post it way past. I think you will need to cut it. You'll have to cut it out or make it into two episodes because we are almost getting to 2 1/2 hours when I start talking about flying. It's hard to stop. Whatever hasn't been said, we can always do it again sometime in the future and talk about some other aspects we didn't address this time. Indeed. And and there's no way 1-2 podcast podcast episodes can do justice to the amount of wealth of knowledge that you have and

the willingness to share that you have. Most importantly. Let me point that out. And on that note, I would also like to say that as somebody who's seeking guidance, we might go out and chase instructors who have a lot of experience, but we often forget about chasing instructors who will have the willingness to share. So from what I see that you have one of the most willing personalities out there to share your knowledge with others. So for anybody out there who's looking to level up their flying, head out to Kinga's website, the link to will which be in the show notes below. And all the awesomeness that you

heard here in the show will be there live and exclusive in person for you if you wanted in your life. Thank you. Thank you. For this promotion, I mean, that's very kind. Just trying to bring out the brutal honesty and make the community a better place for everyone, not just for. Us at the end. As much as it's a solitary sport and I'm a bit of a. Loner when it comes to. Flying. I like to fly alone. There's particular magic about sharing knowledge and what you learned on the way because. I learned so much. From other pilots on the way, it's only his rights to, if you

have something to give back, to give it back to the community to keep us all safer and happier. It's in our own interest to have happy and healthy and big community of pilots who share the same passion. Paragliding is still such a young and niche sport and the thing that we can do to make it safer and more satisfying for pilots, we should do it, I think. It's our moral. Duty to do it. I'm so glad I'm doing my own bit with the show and you are. Absolutely. And you are doing, you're doing amazing job also sharing this talk about flying and talking about all the suspects of flying

with various experienced pilots. So yeah, we all do a little bit, yeah. On that note, Kinga, it's been an absolute blessing and an honored view. And until next time, cannot wait. Thank you so much for having and having me. Thank you so much for having me and in there and fly high. Stay safe everybody. Yeah.