Survived 15 Years of Flying Then a Rescue Helicopter Changed Everything | A Talk With Nick Neynes

Welcome back to another episode of Paragliding Atlas Podcast. I'm your host, Aninda Singh, and joining us today is none other than the man himself, Nick Nenes. Nick, what an absolute pleasure to have you on the show, man. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, it's been a while since I've been on a Perry clothing podcast but. Yeah, Nick, you know, I have been wanting to get you on the show since I started the show. And I've been like, you know, I've been aware. I've been admiring your lifestyle, the way you fly and everything. But most importantly, something that has made me very curious and intrigued about you is, is that your Instagram handle or

YouTube handle? I don't know. It's got a very cool name. It says share my joys. God damn, dude. What's the story behind that name? So I stole it. It was a book that I read from a mountaineering God that I never met, but like someone, I don't know, maybe in the 50s or sometimes before I was born. And, and that was the title of the book. So I just stole it. But yeah, they were just talking about all their their adventures in in the mountains and that kind of thing in in New Zealand as well. Yeah. Like for for the perspective of our listeners, you know, the the

show is 2 years old and I think you you're the most active years of you in in paragliding were a little bit earlier than that. So for the pilots who have just practised the out of flight not that long ago, a little introduction about you if you can. Yeah, so I learnt to fly in 2007 and I learnt in the southeast corner of Queensland, like the eastern part of Australia. And the first thing I did was like, I read about how light the wings were on the Internet and I thought you could take these into the mountains and, and fly by yourself. And then I talked to the

instructor in Kanungra where I learnt and I said, can can you really like, what's the story? And he said, first you've got to learn how to fly. I learnt in May 2007 and by the end of the year I was doing my first flights in New Zealand, literally jumping over the fence at the back of Mum's place and knocking up the hill. That's such a cool training ground, I would say, because the excitement and the rush that you have as a new beginner pilot, like somebody who has just got in the sport is like you can't get your you can't get enough of it right. So if you have something that I

set up like that in your backyard, I think that must have contributed to your better initial progression comparatively to others. Yeah, so, so for me, the the main reason I got into flying was not really from aviation side or a love of flight or just wanting to fly no matter what or whatever. It was more that I just wanted to explore places and that was a tool to do it. But it was it was really hot. I can fly. That was really interesting to me. And since then when I started learning flying, I realized that you can actually take off and go up as well. And, and you can not just climb up something and fly down South.

Yeah. Then then I learned a lot more about the air itself and. And that was also an interesting part of it. But the start of it was just exploring country that I already knew. Like I'd spend a lot of time looking at maps. I'd done a lot of trips just on foot, like we call it tramping in New Zealand, visiting a lot of these places. And there was one time I always tell a story where I, I climbed up from the valley and I got almost up to this Alpine lake, but the Bush got really thick. And it was so thick that I had to take off my pack and drag it after me and to go 30 meters.

That was, you know, very steep. But it was very short distance, like 100 feet, Took me 30 meters, took me 30 minutes. So when you're used to that kind of travel time in your mountains, depending on what it's like, it's nice to be able to think that you can just fly straight over the top. So yeah, I spent a lot of time looking at maps and just dreaming about trips I could do. Like, I would say that for me, paragliding had three parts to it. One was thinking about flights you could do, and another one was doing the flights, and the other one was going back and

thinking about what you've done. And that's what I've spent a lot of time video editing. And that was an enjoyable part of it. Sometimes you feel like, oh, how am I going to get through all this footage? But usually when you get started it's quite fun reviewing what you you did and seeing if if the flight was actually like you thought it was when you landed, if it was maybe different to how you remembered. A a quick thought comes from my mind because you mentioned that, you know, the anxiety that comes with all the footage that we capture because it's it's so huge and editing is such a skill that yeah, you need to put in a

lot of work towards it. Like sometimes I, I think I've told this on the show before that editing a 62nd trailer for this show takes almost like 6-7 hours. So it, it takes a huge chunk out of your name. I was just kind of wondering like only if the hardware manufacturers could make, what do you say the software as well. So user friendly that because right now everybody is able to operate Gopro's because they're so easy to operate, but almost like 95% of them don't know what to do with the footage because it's so damn hard to edit the footage. And eventually like you buy the camera out of excitement because

it looks fancy. And all the adverts that you see are very professionally edited. But I have seen almost 95% of the pilots just letting their GoPro eat dust after like the first couple of weeks or something because they don't know what to do with it anymore afterwards. So. I agree. I've got two things to say about that. One is that like the fact that I edited a lot of my footage gave me feedback to not take as much footage and just to do short clips. So when I made the video about my accident, a lot of people said how come you didn't include the accident and was like, well, I don't record all the time.

I just record, you know, it, one turn in a thermal or say a few words when I'm on the glide somewhere, and just do it when something interesting or different is happening. I don't like record the whole thing because it would be too much work to go through it all. Plus you've got to have the card space and the battery and all that. So you're having the feedback of having to edit means that I was a lot more deliberate and succinct when I was making the footage to make that part easier. Because I, yeah, I was thinking about making really nice videos. Like what? Like around the time of the

pandemic, I thought I'll get some decent cameras and I'll do a decent job because a lot of the time I was making videos just basically for my own memories. But, you know, Ben Callard and and Ben Jordan, they make videos which are really nice, but they spend an awful lot of time doing it. Or at least. Yeah. So there's a lot of, you know, having different cameras and, and not being as fast on the ground, like maybe missing a couple of flights because you spent too much time trying to set the cameras up or whatever. I don't know. So yeah, what was my second point that yeah, I was basically doing it as a story and not as

a, you know, amazing experience for the user. It's great if people get something out of watching the videos, but it's it's more for me just to remember it. And yeah, anyway, so I never got on to making those really good videos because I had the accident after the pandemic but before I got to get go back to New Zealand. But it's leave all that hard work up to those other guys. You know, I think you mentioned two people who have actually invested. They're like, you know, a lot of pilots, they invest their time, energy and effort into chasing distance of getting better and flying. But these are like 2 guys. I mean, I'm sure there are many

others, but these are two guys that stand out when it comes to the amount of effort they invest in bringing you along their adventures. In case any of the viewers are wondering who we are talking about. Yeah, just just look up for Benjamin in the index of this show and you will find both of them have been on Paragliding Atlas. So there are episodes with Benjamin Jordan and Benjamin Kellett where they spill all the secrets on how they bring this awesomeness to your screens. But Nick, I was going to come to your accident eventually because it is kind of, you know, how do I say a looming possibility that

kind of sticks around at any given point of time in life, in instance, in paragliding life is what I meant. After how many years of flying did that accident happen? And how has flying looked like for you afterwards?

OK, so I learnt in 2007 and I had my accident 15 years after that. I had actually been gliding since the pandemic, so I'd started doing that as well. But yeah, I had a lot of adventures in in 15 years. So that's three and a bit years ago. And yeah, after that I haven't really had an interest in paragliding. I think it is a great activity because I'm a paraplegic, so waist up is OK for a lot of paraplegic people. Paragliding might be a great activity, but it depends what you want to get out of it. And for me, the main things that were special about paragliding

were the independence that you could do everything on your own and that you could take off at land just about anywhere. So that's not really applicable if you're paraplegic. But if you just want to take off, fly a local site or fly coastal, it can be great. But gliding since I before the the year before the accident, I started gliding in a French club that already has gliders that are set up for disabled people because you use your feet for the rudders in a normal glider. But there is a modified ones. Yeah, luckily. Exactly. Sail playing gliders. Yep. So I could fly with those guys again after the accident at the same club, but evolved a lot

more paperwork and bureaucracy to get my medical and to get all that drama going. It took a lot of effort. So paragording is the other advantage of it is it's relatively straightforward in terms of aviation regulations and rules and stuff like that. Sometimes I was attracted towards base because of how unregulated it is, because I somehow feel that humans thrive evaluating risk best when they don't have anybody to fall back on. When they know that nobody's got their back. It's like, yeah, the buck stops with me because you are the ones who's going to reap the rewards and you are the ones who's going to pay the price if you do something out of the spectrum.

Regulations are always a bit of a hit and miss in my head as like yes, when it comes to masses, education is important because otherwise you won't guide them correctly. But when it comes to the niches, which is like selected few, I think chasing excellence can only come when you are managing the drive within you according to your own abilities. Rather than having paperwork put some kind of a structure definition around it which changes your perception of risk. It's like risk perception as a stand alone person versus risk perception being a part of the system. Yeah. Commercial aviation, it's probably justified that there is a lot of regulation if they've

got a lot of layers of catching mistakes so they don't turn into accidents. Paragliding, the weight of the aircraft is just a few kilos and your speed is one of the slowest aircrafts. So yeah, it makes sense that you don't regulate that as much. And gliding, I think it makes sense that it's in between those two extremes. Europe is quite highly regulated compared to other countries. Yeah. The thing is the the gliding clubs aren't really the ones helping you to get through it all, but it's the association that's all over Europe. So it combines all the different countries together and to get anything changed as a real dramas.

It is what it is. In terms of gliding, I think Australia is a lot more straightforward. From what I hear, you can have an experimental category there for the glottis, which makes things there's a lot more flexibility. But New Zealand is probably somewhere in between Australia and Europe. OK, so regulating one example that comes to my mind which of a flawed regulation is let's say the EN standard. Time and again we have seen the whole crowd going about how ineffective this is and how it gives you a false perception and people are making decisions based on this standard, whereas it is only supposed to educate you on very specific parameters

because they are the only ones we are able to measure in a controlled environment. Any other parameter is not measurable. So I feel like there's a pseudo safety that comes in people's mind with a certain bit of regulation. Even though a lot of manufacturers and top test pilots say that certification is not supposed to be taken as something to choose the wing. But because that regulation exists and the audience below it who is looking up to that regulation is like, let's say a new pilot, he's going to go to his instructor and the instructor is going to see how the industry standard is. So even the instructor are saying that yes, it's AE and a

glider. That's why you should buy it. That depends on how qualified the instructor is, how much his experience is because at the level of teaching instructors, the regulation is very different compared to the regulation controlling how the wings are produced. I feel that pseudo safety messes up with your risk management because right now the student has OK. My instructor has my 100% trust because he has been flying for a while and instructor thinks that the EN certification has 100% trust because it has been in place for a while. But the bottom line is that the instructor is not even close to answering the question that both the student and instructor are

seeking. So. Yeah. But did he talk with Luke Hamont about this? And he said you shouldn't look at the EN rating and you should look at what the manufacturer says about it because they're the ones pitching it to a certain market. So yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's interesting. But that's one thing that I was thinking about before. This is like when you go on a ride at a theme park, you're kind of like, well, it's safe. Like, it's been tested, Someone's done it before. But paragliding, it's not like that. Like, you never can guarantee. I mean, you can't guarantee that the theme park ride won't break, but it's different every single

time you fly. And accidents do happen quite a lot. So I think it's definitely a dangerous sport and some people like to tick boxes and say if I tick all these boxes then I won't have an accident. Like I found after my accident, I felt there was a psychological thing that a lot of people want to know what you did wrong because you must have done something wrong because something bad happened and it must have been something that you did. It's definitely more likely that you'll have an accident if you do something wrong, but it's also a dangerous sport. And sometimes things happen. And I think there's a psychological thing that people

want to say. An accident will only happen to me if I do something wrong. So as long as I don't do anything wrong, I'm safe. I don't think that's true. I think you're safer, but you're not safe. So I think that's a psychological thing that people say, oh, it won't happen to me. And when I had my accident, I realized that I've had accidents where I've been fine in the past. But yeah, this time I wake up in hospital, I'm like, OK, it didn't work out. But later I found out it's actually not as much my fault as you would assume because it was really the rescue helicopter

that blew me down the hill. I still think paragliding is dangerous. People die a lot from it. But in my case, I feel like I managed the risks OK. I just probably had a bit of bad luck, but I've also had a lot of good luck, So there you go. OK. Risk is it more or less as you mentioned life will happen as it is. There are people because this is what I want to talk a little bit about insurance as well. I learnt in India where insurances were nothing when I started, I had no clue about it. Maybe they were still in place, but I was just not interested or felt the inclination towards

finding 1. And I was like, buddy, you are going out and practicing something which is outside the normal norms of the society. So just own up your responsibility and deal with it like there's nothing, no rocket science to it. Nobody's coming to save your ass. You're out there by yourself. Insurances became a big thing when I moved here to Europe. It was like, yeah, you got to pay like €300 a month for this and two more for this and like in the end of the whole package goes up to 6700 and now you're freaking secure. Now you can go in any thermal circle the hell out of it and

you know, go in the lease highs because there is somebody looking out for you. Yet at the same time, your accident and Tim Leonetti, both of these are like, I'm just using these as an example. With all due respect to them, these were in the thick of the things where insurances work at a flick of a finger. These are the places where legislations have been doing things right and the systems are in place, yet the outcome was undesirable. So risk mitigation versus risk perception, how does risk look like for you when there is insurance and when there's no insurance? Because I feel that if you fly

without a reserve, you're going to fly a lot more responsibly, even though having a reserve is a lot more desirable. In my case, the reserve parachute would let. Me, I'm giving you an example of reserve because let's say if you take reserve as an insurance like if something goes wrong then reserve is going to save my ass. But if you do not have a reserve, then you're shit scared and you won't push the envelope that far where something could go wrong. So same goes for insurance. It's like if there is insurance, you can do whatever the hell you want. There is somebody looking out for you. But if there's no insurance, you

know you're out there by your own. So you got to save your own ass. You won't go that far. Yeah, yeah. So for me, there was 2 reasons to get insurance. One is to tick the box. So they let you compete in exhales because if you don't have it, they won't let you do it. And the other one is to help you pay for things if there's an accident. In my case, the insurance isn't any good for the accident. Financially. I'm worse off because of that. Financially help. They're not. They're not going to fix the spinal injuries. Yeah, you can get insurance to help you financially, but your life is not going to be much

different. Yeah, the financial thing is major, but it wasn't the main thing with the accident. I would like to re clarify what I meant is risk mitigation when it comes to having a safety net. That is what I meant. Yeah. So the safety net is not going to stop you having an accident. It's just going to help you financially in the accident. So you're saying that it might make you. That's the Tulex spike theory, that if you have bigger consequences, then you'll take less risk. And that's the same as in competitions. If they say that we're going to do things to make it safer, then pilots will take more risks to

get back to the same level of risk that they were comfortable with in both cases. So you compensate that way, but it doesn't stop the accident happening. It doesn't prevent the consequences of the accident. It may prevent some of the financial consequences and that's about it. So. Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that too much. And with reserve parachutes, I only only used it as an example, but I saw a video probably 1520 years ago someone saying that if you get into this much trouble and you have an accident, then throwing the reserve gets you into this much trouble. But if you accidentally deploy, you go from that much trouble

into this much trouble. Like it's still pretty serious situation if you're throwing the reserve. So in my case, so I thought a lot of the places I fly, if I threw the reserve, I don't know where I'd end up. Like on a glacier, on some Rocky Mountain or in a river. It might be better to just not have one. And if I'd not had one during the accident, I probably would be completely fine. I just would have had a concussion. So yeah, every, every time you do a risk management thing, you have to re evaluate the risk again. So you say, OK, there's a risk so I'll get insurance, but then you've got to re evaluate the

risk again, OK, I'll have insurance, but that'll only stop this and this. It won't stop that and that. It'll still be, there'll be a lot of serious consequences either way. But the other thing I say about risk, because if you're worried about going to hospital, you should probably go to 1 and have a look around and see all the people there. And if you walk down the aisles, there's a few people who are young males driving too fast, had a car accident, motorbike accident, but in reality it's mostly old people. So in the end, old age gets you in. Some people are luckier than others with genetics and inherited things.

They have their body getting old, but that's basically the biggest core of death or hospitalisation is old age. Yeah, in the end you've just got to. For me, when I learnt paragliding, my instructor was talking to his, but he's saying this guy, if he survives, he might end up being pretty good because he's motivated to do new things and do exciting things but also dangerous things. But my philosophy was I'm trying to have as much as fun as I can before I die. And if I die or if I become a tetraplegic after one year of paragoning, then there's not a lot of fun I can have in one year compared to 15 years.

So I'm going to try to manage the risk so I can stay alive, not have an accident, and then I can have more fun over a longer period of time rather than having too much fun in a short period of time because I did something too silly. What's Tetra you? You said the word tetraplexic. What's that pledic? I'm not sure what I say. OK, so paraplegic is the only word I thought you said Oh. Paraplegic. Yeah, tetraplegic. If you're paraplegic, it's more or less waist down and tetraplegic. You don't have full use of your arms. OK, that's a pretty sad state to be then. Yeah, some people like they need

help to feed themselves and need help to go to the toilet. They can't really do anything for themselves. Me, I can't go up and down steps or in and out of narrow gaps, and there's other things below your waist than the legs. But I can still be pretty independent. I'm paraplegic from the T12 level, which is the thoracic vertebrae, the very bottom one, so the L1 which is the first lumbar spine. It's basically waist level that broke and my spine is fused 2 above and two below. They call me complete or Asia A which is complete paraplegic so I've got nothing but that's just when they do all the tests.

I do have some feeling in certain places my left leg is better than my right. My feet themselves, I don't have any feeling, but I've got quite a bit of feeling on my legs, like skin touch and heat and cold in certain areas. So yeah, it's a bit hit and miss. But if you've got a high break, if you're like a tetraplegic, then there's organs below the brake which don't work properly. So for me it's sexual function, bladder, bowels and legs. But higher up it could be problems regulating your body temperature. Damn. Also the spinal cord when the doctor taps you on your knee and you kick. Your leg, Yeah, the reflex.

That's yeah. So a reflex is when you the signal that your legs been kicked goes to your spine and then your spine replies straight away to tell you to kick your butt. Normally the signal goes to the brain but if it goes to the spine it's faster but the brain can still override it. Like you can concentrate on not kicking your leg and then you'll stop it from kicking. But the reflex reaction is your spinal cord replying. So if you've got a higher brake then the lower part of your spinal cord will do reflex and that can cause people to have spasms. And because of my brake, it's at

the bottom of the spine. So I don't have any signals that never, the signals never get to the spine at all. So I don't have any spasms. They're called. So some people, their legs will start shaking around. For me, it's just everything's passive and nothing like that happens. Yeah. I'm a bit curious about test testester on Nick, because please don't confuse this with libido by any means. Just the usual, let's say the things that make you angry, passionate, whatever. Whatever is the function of Testester on does that, Do you still have those same kind of drive for everything or did that take a hit? Yeah, I don't think the feelings or emotions or that that kind of

thing has really changed that much. I was just lucky generally that because I'm older people who have spinal accidents, some people that have bad luck with some kind of disease or whatever, or some kind of accident that's not really from taking risks. People can trip over a fence or something and get a spinal injury and maybe they're not so fit. I could take a lot of falls and not get much damage because I'm more fit and used to taking falls. But yeah, so generally the people who will have accidents from doing silly things are young males, right? And for them, it's a part of their life where they're wanting

to do lots of things. But for me, I'm older. I've already taken years off work just to travel around the world. I've done a lot of things. And so I'm pretty happy with all the things that I've done. And it's not like I've, there's been times in my life where I've been thinking I've got to go out and I've got to do these things, but then I've gone and done them. So I'm happy that way. I'm a bit older, so I don't have the like young guys driving fast cars. I'm just happy cruising around. But I don't think it's because I had a spinal injury that I'm happy cruising around relatively

slowly on the country roads instead of driving real fast. I don't think that's because of my spinal injury. I think it's just because I'm a bit more older and chilled out and managed to do all those things. And I've had 15 years of experiences paragliding, which is a pretty good run. As a friend said, yeah, I think that was answering your question. OK, like there's so many other topics that I want to move on to. But before we close on to this one, first thoughts, Nick, when you were by yourself, when the dust settled, let's say you're you're in the hospital, people have given you the preliminary report and everything.

And then when you finally have a moment by yourself, how did the thought process look like when you finally were able to comprehend what just happened? So the first week in hospital, I recorded a couple of videos. We're going to link it in the description. So anybody who's very curious, I would recommend go check out Nick's website channel. The amount of information there is nothing but a gold mine. Go on, please. Yeah. It was interesting that I seemed to get more viewership after the accident than all the pretty videos of me flying through the mountains for the first week. I made those videos and you can

see that I was more or less OK, but the same as if you're really tired because I've been through a lot. It was hard to sleep physically. I was really bashed around in the crash. It wasn't just a spinal injury. My teeth had gone through my tongue. I had stitches there. I had scratches all over my face. I had something that connects to the the heart nearly ripped out and I nearly died from that. I had other internal damage, heavy physical falls, but we only found out several days into it that they had me on all these painkillers. And I'm like, I've never said that I was in pain once. I've never complained about

being in pain once. What's happening? Like, and I had the messages that I was sending before the accident and it's like, I'm just talking normally. It doesn't sound like I'm in pain. What's the story? But I didn't realise the main accident was actually after the helicopter arrived. So yeah, my head was, it was hard to think straight and you get all funny kinds of dreams and you're not really sure what reality is when you're getting all these drugs. I got off the drug straight away as soon as I found out I was on them before. He's been trying to get off drugs quickly and I haven't been on drugs since I left the

hospital after the rehab. But yeah, so. But basically, after all the injuries, the internal injuries had calmed down and I'd been off the drugs and then I'd been able to sleep a bit better. Then I became a bit more back to normal. And there was never any really sudden psychological recovery or damage or anything like that. I always knew it was dangerous activity. I figured, Yep, OK, what could have happened finally happened. And yeah, And when I made the video, about probably 5 months, four or five months after the accident, I got everything that I knew, basically the messages I'd sent on my phone, the conversations I've had with other people, the video footage

that I had, the track logs. And I put everything I knew into the video. And it wasn't really an emotional thing for me. I was just thinking like, what was there some particular risk that applied the day? And I was like, yeah, it wasn't really anything in particular that was risky about that day. I've done a lot more sillier things than that. And it is what it is. I would say in general, when you're flying in the mountains, it often happens that you're close to terrain. And if something happens when you're close to terrain, you don't have much time to get the wing flying again. And that's just what happened to me.

Yeah. I never had any regrets, really, because I didn't know what to regret because I don't remember the actual accident. And yeah, psychologically there was not a big problem. But after that accident video, it got really popular. Someone contacted me through Instagram and they said the French shouldn't investigate this, so contact this person and they'll look into it. So I started emailing the BA, the investigation people in France, and they investigate it. And a few months later I said what's going on? And they didn't really want to tell me. And they said we'll have to have a meeting. And we finally organised to talk about what happened because they didn't just send me the PDF,

they wanted to do a video conference about it. Then I realized that the helicopter had blown me down the hill and my partner was there and she was kind of, yeah, obviously fairly emotionally affected by it. But I kind of felt, oh, well, at least it wasn't as much my fault as I thought. So I felt a little bit relieved of the responsibility for it. So yeah, basically you're talking about the psychological effects in, in, in terms of, yes. So the accident, it was always dangerous, always could have happened in terms of what can you do about it? My mum's really good with her way of thinking about that. She's a doctor and she came over

the first week of the accident. She was there. I'm not sure how many days it took her to get there, but she was basically just like in France. Yeah. And she was like, what can I do? How can we help things get a little bit better? There was no real emotion from her. It's just what can we practically do to make things a little bit better in the future rather than thinking about the past? Yeah.

I feel like this is a master class in anger management, the way you dealt with even after getting the reality of the fault of the pilot, which was unintentionally. I believe this is where there's a huge communication gap that rescue choppers are first of all, like double engine, massively heavy, insane amounts of downwash from the rotors. And then you come across a pilot who is lying motionless but still connected. The amount of damage that you can create by swatting around already injured pilot is insane. And this is what makes me angry, man. Like if somebody fucked up, like if that pilot fucked up, even if it was unintentional, like at least make it public so other

pilots don't. Because I do clearly remember I used to listen to Gavin a lot when I started. I mean he was one of the inspiration before starting the show. He mentioned very clearly that there was a girl, I don't know which episode but where had a crash called in the chopper, was unconscious, the chopper comes in, blows her further away and she passes away from that. The more we try to suppress such information, the more susceptible we make the future generations to be facing the same consequences without learning from it. Even if it makes owning up your fuck ups. That is the easiest way to describe it on an institutional

level. The easiest way is to just swallow the heart pill and do it for the sake of tomorrow and not for the sake of saving your ass today. Yeah. So the organization made those decisions for whatever reasons they made them for. That's why I made the YouTube video. And a few people commented on my YouTube video that we work with the rescue helicopters in this country and we just saw your video and we shared it with all our colleagues. And so that was one reason for making the video is exactly what you're talking about. Did you ever find it difficult or what was your coping mechanism with anger?

Anger management, because I think a lot of us loved dwelling in the past that fuck, I could have done this right? Like, you know, I could have fixed this or how I can fix future. But you, the way you're speaking about it seems like you, you just, yeah, did not bother you up to a point where you're life would be affected. So how did you regulate your emotions and anger? And what was your go to thing when you felt you were losing the plot at times? Quite a lot of times where I thought about things that I used to be able to do that I can't do

anymore. And it's pretty hard because it's not so easy to forget that you're paralysed. Like when you're moving around, you can't walk, you're in a wheelchair. So you're kind of reminded of that all the time, just through all your sensations basically, and pushing the wheelchair around and when you're asleep and it's hard to roll over, I've got to have all the plumbing hooked up for the peeing and all that kind of thing. So it's basically, it's in your face all the time. You can't really forget about it. One of the things where you can forget about it, I would say, is gliding because you're using the hand instead of the feet, But

basically you're flying through the air. You're not really using your feet much in the glider anyway. You're just sitting down and you're just using them for the rudder. And you do it a different way. But basically you can feel just like a glider pilot before, after the accident, but when you're going down the street, you're pushing the wheelchair. It's reminding you all the time that you're sitting down. But yeah, anger management, the things that make me angry are the practical things, like, yeah, I guess sometimes I'm sad. And all the other people taking risks, like people doing wing tip touches on the glacier in Pakistan, I'm just like that. I know these guys are good, but

the risks are completely different in Pakistan and Europe. You're at much higher altitude and there's no support. If you land, you don't have the same kind of facilities that you do in Europe. And why would you do that? What's the risk to benefit of that wing tip touch or whatever? So I see people doing these risky things and getting away with it. And I'm like, I wonder if, but everyone takes a chance and some people get lucky and some don't. And you just don't know how many lives you're going to have. Yeah. So some of the time I would get UPS, you know, or, or, you know,

miss not being able to do the things that I used to do. But the other two major things were practical things. Like the main problem for me is leaking urine because yeah, I can do a transfer, like move myself from one place to another, but it'll push everything out of my bladder. So I try to keep my bladder empty all the time, but there's always a little bit in there that'll leak out. So having to deal with that can be quite annoying. The most annoying thing is when you get out of the shower and then you just leak a little bit and you're like, I just had a

shower or I've had a before. With the bowels it's even worse, but luckily much rarer. But yeah, if you get diarrhea, there's not much you can do, and it's pretty hard to clean yourself up when you can't stand up. The other annoying thing is the bureaucracy. So I had to wait for 9 or 10 months in Spain to get my medical license to fly gliders solo, and the club there was amazing. They helped me through it. Spain or France? Yeah, I was doing the flying in France, but I lived for a while in Spain and we decided to get it there and they had a really good club.

I've still been actually flying there yet, but it's normally quite a hassle to get you medical. You got to get all the tests done, but it's only a few hours. But when you disable, they make you do basically all you have to do is get in and out of a glider in front of some bureaucrat from Madrid. But the process of getting to that point takes nine months of jumping hoops and all this nonsense, bureaucratic nonsense. So that was annoying and at the same time I was trying to get my driving license. I gave up on Spain because the bureaucracy there is completely dysfunctional. I came back to Australia and did

it, but there was quite tricky. I had to find the right people, get it sorted. You can get a license, but that doesn't mean you can drive. You're supposed to pay several $1000 to get a car modified for the hang controls, even though you can buy something off eBay for a couple of 100 bucks to do the same thing. Yeah, you can get angry about all that bureaucracy or you can just ignore it and keep going on with your life. So yeah, I would say there was three things like missing what you can't do, dealing with all the practical problems and then dealing with the bureaucracy

dramas. The other problem I had when I came to Australia where I spent all my working life, I wanted to join the national disability like where you get funding and now I have 10s of thousands of dollars of funding but I spend less than 5% of what I can because I just don't need to buy useless things. But all I needed was a cushion and these are $1000 cushions to stop me getting skin damage on my bum. And I ended up having to spend a week lying on my belly in the bed just to try the skin to heal. This injury can keep coming back a lot easier than if I'd never damaged it in the first place.

And I'm using these questions all the time just in case. That's annoying that, that bureaucracy. I, I anticipated that it'll take a few months and I got ready ahead of time. But then they, they say, oh, we have to, we have to apply again because you, your Centrelink doesn't address doesn't match up with something else in mind. What's haven't you Centrelink in over a decade? What's, who cares anyway? It got sorted. But yeah, it that's a frustrating thing when something, if they can't fix your spinal injury, that's fine. Like medical, there's a limitation to what we can do physically. But if it's just a bureaucracy thing, then you can get upset. But since Palestine has been

going on for two years, I feel like I'm very lucky compared to some. And it's like that in the spinal ward as well. Other people who had worse luck than you, they didn't get 15 years of amazing adventures. So yeah, it's just the way it goes. Tell me a little bit about insurance, Nick, because I think a lot of pilots who fly there just click on the pay button and forget about it and leave or trust the federation or like other people who are getting paid to fix if it needs to be activated. But what happens with the insurance? What's the bureaucracy behind insurance? How does it work?

I'm not really an expert on this subject. It was a massive hassle trying to get insurance, especially for the X Alps. It's hard enough to ensure paragliding as it is. As soon as insurance companies find out about paragliding, they'll put it in there. We don't cover this category. And if you have a competition, then like anything that covers paragliding, it probably doesn't want to cover paragliding competitions as well. So it's even harder to find someone. Like they have to make money and it's expensive to take care of people when they have these accidents. Yeah, I would like to talk about New Zealand because, yeah, basically I've been working and living in Australia for most of

my adult life. We just expected we would go back there and I'd do the rehabilitation, but their spinal ward was basically full. I'd be waiting for months. And the guy said you've got a New Zealand passport, why don't you just go there? And just because they have the passport, even though I wasn't living there, they took me in and they gave me rehab, they gave me a wheelchair, they gave me everything. Yeah, thanks to the New Zealand taxpayer. I have to say I love the New Zealand system because instead of fighting with accountants and lawyers and insurance and bureaucracy, they just pay for doctors and nurses. Admittedly they don't pay as

much in Australia. Like there's heaps of nurses moving to AUS for better money. But yeah, they treat anyone that has an accident and you can be a visitor as well. And yeah, I don't have heaps of parallels coming to New Zealand and having accidents to maybe make New Zealand reconsider that. But yeah, it is great that you can not spend so much of your life worrying about this stuff in a country like this. And unfortunately not many other countries around the world do it like that. So yeah, it's something that probably the best way to solve it is as a group. I know Gavin Mcclurg's done a

bit of work trying to figure out the different options and yeah, I think basically talk with. Your paragarding buddies took with the association to try to figure out something as a group. Don't ask me because it's because I didn't have the best results. I was wondering the paperwork behind activating it or if there's any cash kickback from insurance. Like does insurance cover you with money as well? Do they give you a lump sum in such cases? Or is it more or less to ensure that you are able to eventually reach back home without worrying about money on the way? Oh, there's lots of different paths to insurance, so the main one is whether you're covered at

all, whether there's an exemption. It may or may not include bringing you to the hospital, it may or may not include the medical care, it may or may not include sending you home. There's all these different things to think about. But in my case, once I got home, I would be covered for free in Australia. It would have just taken a lot longer to get treated and New Zealand just took me in straight away and I'm very thankful for that. So yeah, just lucky to have that passport. Let's talk a little bit about flying. You're back to chasing it. Yeah, more fun matter. You can glide faster, you can

glide further, and you're not facing any cold wind on your face. What's the comparison feel like, man? From paragliding to sailplanes as a former paraglider pilot. The difference is, for me, paragliding is about independence, freedom and adventure, and gliding is about flying. Flying a glider is a much better way to fly because you've got much better performance, you can fly much further, you can explore a lot more places and do a lot more things, and you can get back. But the downside of gliding is that you can't land on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. You can't take off from a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

You can't take a glider and check it into your luggage and turn up in another country and go flying there. It's not so flexible that way. So. Yeah. But in terms of flying, yeah. For a start, you're in a canopy, so it's not windy, it's not cold, it's in the sun and out of the wind. And the dynamics like being able to pull up and put the nose down and go faster, the performances means you have so many more chances to find lift than you do with a paraglider where you can just cross a valley and then you've got to start again. And because you've got so many chances, you don't need to

dribble around and just survive and scratch around and weak lift just to stay in the air. You can just power on through and only stop for the best climbs. Or sometimes you can just not even turn at all if you're following. Like once I I got low about 80 kilometers from home and there was some big storm clouds developing. I thought maybe I shouldn't keep finishing this big triangle that I had planned then I'll just start going home now. So after I got my low, which I wasn't that worried about finding because there was a cloud shadow and I knew there'd be a climb there somewhere.

You can glide so far before you. Yeah, it was easy to find a climb. And once I got to cloud based, I flew about 80 KS back home, staying at cloud base and not turning because I was just following lifty lines along clouds. So yeah, it really is a lot better flying compared to yeah, you have to be a lot more candy and selective. If you look at all the paragliding flights in Europe, which is really the best place to fly in the world with the weather, the mountains and infrastructure, most of the flights that cross country pilots are doing are very carefully planned to follow the

easiest or the best terrain to get them to fly a big distance that day. There's some places where it's just too difficult across the valley or like they're following the sunny faces in the morning, that they've planned the whole thing to make it as easy as possible for them. And you kind of have to because otherwise you just can't do it. But with gliding, yeah, it's a different story. The thrill. I completely understand that you're different. Cockpits are like different sensations. But do you? Is it more or less the same, or is it different because you're sitting in a very protected structure? I don't know what the exact statistics are.

I think gliding has fewer accidents, but a higher percentage of the accidents are fatality. Because paragliding is slow speeds. You're probably just going to have a crash and walk away or not walk away. So because of the slowest speeds in paragliding, there's a lot of accidents where you don't die. They're both quite dangerous sports and a lot of it does come down to your attitude and the levels of risks that you take. But in terms of the sensation where you're not really thinking about risk, you're just thinking about how fun it is. I really love cranking it in a thermal in a glider. You really bank it over tight. And I've taken a paraglider and

she was surprised that how steeply you do turn and how tight you do turn, it's just a lot more that you can do with it. Like paraglider in the competitions, people are mashing full speed bar because you can go as fast as you like and it's still not that fast. But yeah, I hate pushing the bar. It's uncomfortable, it gets annoying, but in the glory you just lean on the stick and you would never go as up to V&E like the Max speed. You just go as fast as it makes sense to in those cross country conditions. I'd say it's a great feeling and a lot of the time I fly just

because of the beauty of what's around me and you get to see a lot of things gliding. So yeah, I guess with the gliders you don't hear the birds singing or the sound of the waterfalls when you fly past, but it's still a great feeling. I'd say before before the accident I would like doing both the independence and adventure for the paragliding, but the flying for gliding. So what I was going to say is that more or less your life has gifted you a more immersive or more rewarding form of aviation if you look at it that way. A lot of people in the gliding club that I fly with in France

also paraglide as well, but they'll tend to do hike and fly more than a nine hour cross country flight. If it's a big cross Country Day, they'll probably just go gliding. A lot of paragliders get too carried away with the distancing when you're flying the slowest aircraft. I have been like that myself. I love to do long flights and use the whole day. That's what I like about the X helps is you're trying to get the most that you can out of the day. And I didn't really like conventional competition so much because you're sitting on the hill and you're waiting for briefings and then you're flying a few hours, but there's so many

other hours you could fly that you don't so. Yeah, Nick, when a person like you who is so willing to share comes on the show, I often lose my plot because there are so many things we can talk about. But there is a time limit and I believe we are in a 12 hour time difference. It's 10:30 in the morning in Oslo, but I would suppose you would get drowsy soon enough if you don't call it a day. OK, before we wrap this up, I really want to talk about Corioid because that has been a bit of a pain point and I believe we as a community are failing to throw enough light or

even discuss it enough. Your harness, I mean exhalps or just that side of flying is more or less lightweight to me. I don't know how or when. OK, this is where I would like to tell our listeners, viewers, a bit of a story. When I was in my first like new beginners course, I had my instructor telling me to do a beeline install. I don't know if it was stupid, but that was the norm of that instructor to every single student to make them do beeline installs. Not crazy, not too deep, just feel how it feels to pull the beelines, which I think was kind of cool. And I was like, you know what, I

want to do a helico. I had no idea what a helico was. And this was like 5th or 6th flight. And I was like, that looks cool. And if you are pushing me to beeline, then I want to get pushed further. So tell me how to do a helico. And he was like fuck off, this is not happening. And I was like, why? Tell me, explain it to me that why can't I do helico when I'm comfortable doing wing overs on my 5th or 6th flight or I'm unable to do beeline on my 7th or 8th or whatever it is. And he said something later on which stuck with me, which was

like, what's the point of living a life by chasing excitement of wing overs but having a very real risk of just lying around in bed and being fed by tubes because you were stupid in one instance. And it was shocking to hear that because my psyche was that fuck, I'm going to do Helicos, I'm going to do wing overs. It's going to be crazy exciting. And then this guy is dude, that is one side of the reality if you do everything right and if life is kind enough to you. But the other reality is that you get fed by tubes. And it shook me so hard deep inside that every single time,

next time I went to make a decision which was going to have an impact on my safety, that thing like came back in my head and said that, hey, consider this before you decide that. So a lot of times when I've been considering chasing leaside thermals or pushing full or like pushing the comfort zone or even picking up equipment for that matter, it was like, buddy, the worst is that the best is this now based on how you want to decide? Same mentality came while choosing A harness because I was in GTOI. Started my career in GTO Lite. Yeah I only used chair hardness for the school time. Went to a pod straight up after

the 1st 10:15 flights and I deployed and ended up in a reserve under a tree. During that time when I was hanging, life was hard. The straps were digging into my thighs and they were cutting off the blood circulation. I quickly realized that if I don't stop this the blood is going to pump down and I might pass out or something worse happens if I'm stuck here for God knows how long. Did not have a cut knife or whatever but eventually I managed to fix it. But The thing is as soon as I was walking away I was like you are buying a XR7. I don't care how difficult it is to walk around with it, but

hands down it has the best protection. So at least fix things you can with money and then let your skills, life, destiny takes its own course. A month ago I did a very informational episode on how to pick up your harness with another pilot. It. It has been received very well where we are talking about how back protection is not even considered a big part of the ecosystem anymore, whereas the last generation of harness back protector was everything. So when it comes to be deciding or making decisions, is there a better way to make them because you have imagined the worst possible outcome around it? Or is ignorance is a bliss

because destiny will takes its own course any which ways?

Yeah, so I was taught there were two things that we could never do when we were learning. One is walk around with your harness without all the buckles done up because it's either completely on or completely off because people have fallen to the death because they forgot to do their harness buckles up. And the other one was that we always had to be upright out of the harness for a good time after we launched and a good time before we landed. So if you came back to the ground, you would be on your feet. That was the most important thing for me. Some back protectors are better than others, sure, or whatever.

But there's basically just two factors. One is the distance and the other one is the time. As long as you can use that full distance, then that's how much protection you have. If you have your legs, you have about a metre, A metre to slow it down. But if you have a back protector that's 30 centimetres, then you've got 30 centimetres instead of a metre. If you've got a small one, it doesn't matter what it's made of, the most it can do is slow things down in that distance. Now with keroid ones, maybe they weren't compressing the whole way, so they were only going a little way and they weren't

getting that resistance. So that's the physics of it, I think. And even the day before the accident in the footage, I was talking about my friend's landing. Good that he's got his feet out because that was always on my mind and that was the most important thing was your landing technique rather than protection. And I have flown with a harness that was just like a nappy harness before. And it's like we were talking about before with the telex bike and that if you don't have protection that you'll fly more safely. But when I wake up in hospital and I've broken my back, I'm like, OK, maybe I got that

wrong. I thought I would have been good at landing my feet, but here I am with spinal injury. But afterwards when I found out what happened, I'm like OK or even before I found out what happened, I assumed there must have been multiple falls, I must have hit the ground hard. But I would have landed on my feet the first time and then maybe I got knocked out and crashed on my leg, whatever. But I found out what actually happened. I'm not really sure if I'd be better off with different back protection because I think that if I landed on my feet at 1m and it compresses, and I say that, that's always going to be better

than half a meter of the best possible back protection in the world because you just got more distance to have the physical deceleration. But if I was blowing 50 meters down and I was hitting rocks on the way, then probably even if I had my feet out, I could still get the spinal damage right because you can only decelerate so much in 1m and then you're still going to be cracked further on. It could be that a better harness would have saved me, but I'm not sure how I survived anyway. So yeah, definitely. It's always good to have safer things if everything else is equal for me, yeah.

I don't know. Other people have studied it more than I have. It was definitely something that I don't really regret because I know that I had a good attitude towards always landing on my feet. And yeah, I think that's the most important thing. I think what else can help as well. What I wanted to highlight was in the harness episode my guest Eros Jolt. Super interesting guy. He mentions jerk rating and he says that Courier, as you mentioned, the smaller protection you have, the smaller area you have to travel. So the jerk rating in Courier is a lot lower than in any other form of protection.

Has it ever come to you that maybe Courier is dangerous or something or it shouldn't be a part of the system? Or is it like, Nah man, it is what it is, I think. There's a lot of factors in the accident. Maybe the wing I was flying, maybe I should have flown a bit bigger wing. I'd plan it for over a month and I was quite happy with it. But there could be a lot of different things that improve. But I think the main factor in my accident was just the accident which unfortunately helicopter staff didn't notice. The bright yellow parachute on the ground. There's always things you can

improve and probably the harness is a fairly significant one being most on my mind. I wanted to get your thoughts because I believe we are standing at the crossroads in the industry where serious decisions might be taken in this regard, especially in the pilots union group that has been formed. So yeah, every bit of opinion helps. But what do you mean that 5 pilot crew did not notice there was a parachute lying around? How is that possible when you're flying that close to the terrain in that big of a machine? Well, to start with, the flew past to see how it was going. Then they dropped off one

person. This is all in the video that I did about it. But yeah, the first person was holding my glider to make sure it didn't get blown by the chopper, but somehow they didn't see this parachute. There's a photo hikers took from half a kilometer away where you can see this big bright yellow dot in the middle of the grass. So yeah, I don't know how they didn't manage it. Apparently they didn't have radio communications properly, so maybe? If someone saw it, they wouldn't be able to tell the others, but yeah, that it was when they came back to get me that it happened. But anyway, watch the video for

that. But yeah, as I said, it's a mistake and it's one that's a bit surprising and maybe we should talk about or they should at least share it with the other rescue pilots and just make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen again. Because I did hear of someone else that crashed maybe through the reserve or something. Ended up on the top of a roof in pretty bad condition, but the helicopter came and blew them off the roof and finished them off kind of thing. And you said you'd heard of one as well, and I know there's been others. So yeah, it's like insurance. So you can't just get the rescue

helicopter and assume everything's going to be OK. Every time you add something to manage the risk, you've got to reassess the risks again from scratch because you could be introducing new risks. Yeah. OK, I want to close, but before this I want to share one thing because they came back to the risk topic. Back in India when I was flying, I was just about to upgrade my E and A to E&B and I did actually. I was my 90 hour pilot. I was flying the front Ridge, fairly turbulent and I had just come in for the season, upgraded my wing, super excited, had three or 45 flights to it. Did not have a reserve yet

because it was in transit, It was coming. So I was flying without a reserve in beer billing without telling anyone because I felt it was within my comfort zone. But of course I thought I was mitigating risk enough. Then I casually mentioned it to my mentor instructor and I was like I don't have a reserve and I was like are you fucking stupid? That is nothing but madness. So beg, borrow, steal, do whatever but don't take another flight without reserve. Anyways, asked a friend, got his reserve, went out chasing same distance and everything that I had. Man, believe it or not, two days later after borrowing, I deployed.

Thankfully, that is the only time I have deployed until now in my flying career. But it was like the first four. It could have been fluke, it could have been luck, I'm not going to lie. But the first four days my risk perception was very different from the risk perception that I had when I had a reserve in my harness. I think this is a dilemma everybody has to answer for themselves. Do they fare well with more support around them or do they perform better when they are by themselves? Because right now chopper rescues are giving me a bit of an anxiety man. It's like yeah if you're conscious and able to do

something then it is a lifeline but if not then it is almost like a sure shot risky thing because no chopper. Majority of the chopper pilots don't know how a paraglider works or are at least bothered in finding out. Fuck offs like these are going to remain covered up so the organization as a whole saves its face. So hush thing then. Maybe it's better to only activate it when the pilot is conscious. But anyways, I think people get the point. A lot of aviation is good like that with reporting accidents, but I guess paragliding it's less so in terms of reserve uses. Deployed twice. Once it was overwatered during SRV, and based on looking at the

timing and the height, I think if I hadn't deployed it would have been equivalent to jumping off something 11 meters high. So onto water. I probably would have been fine if I hadn't had the reserve because I ended up wrapped in the wing and it was going on this down after me. But yeah, it was good to have it then I guess. But I probably would have been fine without it because it was over water. And the other time I deployed it, I think if I didn't have the reserve with me, I had a big line over, I would have just gone to land with the line over

and I probably would have been OK. And the way it worked out, I was super lucky and it was a great experience. But yeah, in 15 years, they're the only times I used it. And apart from the third time where I just, it got me in more trouble. It depends what you're doing. It depends what you're saving yourself from. A lot of the reason you would use it is if you had a mid air. Yeah, paragliding. Your wing is collapsible and there's a chance that you'll throw it because you've got a wing collapse or whatever, or a Corvette. But if you have a Corvette, you can probably clear it if you're high.

And if you're not high, you might not have enough time to throw the reserve. So it's still marginal. Yeah, I mean, they are good, but I think it is debatable and it's probably something, I mean, I guess you could do a whole podcast just on that, but you probably better interview people other than me because I've only had a few experiences in my 15 years of flying. Oh, geez, Nick, that's so well summarized, man. Yeah, before I let you go, I often wonder about this question. A lot of times that if people knew, and this is like me included, if eventually life was unfolded in front of you before

you started to or before you started it and said that, hey, this is how things are going to plan out. This is what you're going to do at this stage in your life. If you knew that next 15 years of your flying career are going to be like this, looking back at it, would you go back and do it all over again or would you try to make any amends on the way?

Like in terms of did I get good value out of my accident with 15 years of flying? Yeah, I think it's pretty good. Like I, I could have had an accident without those that experience. I would have had been less likely to have an accident if I didn't do the 15 years of flying. But I'm thinking a good, good bang for buck if there's specific things I would do differently to reduce the amounts of risks. I would say that overall I'm pretty happy because we didn't really talk about actually I wrote a book after my accident. I thought I've got a lot less excuses to not write a book now.

I've got a lot of adventures that we didn't talk about in this podcast, travelling all over the world, flying through remote areas, which some places maybe no one has flown before. But that was super rewarding and it was definitely the best tool for the job in terms of what you can do with that. They can bring it with you on a plane and a bus, hitchhike, you can really get around. And yeah, I think I got pretty, pretty good bang for buck for what I did with it. And considering all the things I did, I think it was relatively low risk to be able to do that much stuff.

It it is a risky sport. But in terms of what I managed to do with it, I did OK. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning your book man. I I completely slipped my mind when we were doing it. But this allows me to restart one of my traditions on the show where I used to ask my guests to share their one best or one memory from their flying carrier. Could be best, could be worse, or. Whatever. There's not really a list of best experiences. There's a lot of different ones, but I'll just list the one that came to my mind. Right now. I'm in Randfly, where we've been

here since July. We've started a hostile here and it's in what I call rabbit country. It's away from the Southern Alps to the east, so it's dry and it's tussock and grass and you have sheep here and maybe a few cows, but mostly sheep. When I came to fly in New Zealand, I would normally stay away from this area. I would go. I would be as close to the main divide where all the glaciers and rainforests, Bush, beach, forest is, and I wouldn't come out this way very often. But one day it was quite windy and ended up doing a down window like the usual Australian style where you fly with the wind.

So I did the closest I've come to flatland flying for parts of it anyway, and I flew past this area and yeah, whenever I drive from here to the East Coast, we go past the place where I landed by the road and hitched back out. So, yeah, that was cool flight. It started in the mountains, going downwind, getting out of the mountains, but got a low save at the neck between lakes. And then after that it was just cruising along and I thought I might even have a chance of making the East Coast and probably one or two more thermals I would have. But of course the sea breeze got

me in the end. But that meant that I was flying over the tops of the clouds as they were pouring over the the Kakanois. Yeah. I mean, it's just nice to do something different. A lot of people in New Zealand, there's only a few pilots here, but they've been trying to break the 200 K triangle. And I was trying to do that myself. But one thing I really like about the way that I did it is I was always be trying a different triangle. I wouldn't be trying the same route over and over. And yeah, that's something special about paragliding. You don't have to land back at the airfield the whole time or

you don't start. It's not like gliding where you start and finish at the same place, but you can do different things every time. So yeah, that was just one that came to mind because it kind of ties in with where I am right now. What's the book all about and where can people get their hands on? It it's basically about 15 years of flying adventures. There's 15 chapters. It's not exactly year for year. Each chapter has a different theme and it's supposed to be written so it's not just for paragliding people but anyone who's interested in adventure stories. I'll try to stay away from the jargon and go through the

amazing experiences I've had over that 15 years. It's called lessons from the sky. I guess we can have a link. It's a tricky 1 to find, I've only seen one version of it. I think it's on Amazon somewhere. Nah, I think I'm going to look it up and bring it out to people. But yeah, man, I'm going to figure out a more structured show on meteorology and bring you back to people as well, because I think that is such an amazing knowledge. Did you have some history with meteorology or what was your background in that regard? It did a course in 2016, ten month course with the Australian government and forecasted for

them for several years. And yeah, I would say probably a lot of the stuff from the meteorology course I already knew, but maybe you saw it from a different angle or got a bit more maths behind it. There's a few new things that are thought of flying experiences that I've had in the past, and I understand what that was now, a few quirky things that I learned out of it. It's an amazing job to be able to look at the weather, look out the window, see all the satellite imagery and all the data that we have coming in, and then talk to people about what the weather features are and

what's happening. Aviation forecasting was more about the next six hours and the next several days. So it means you're doing a lot more observations rather than weather models. Yeah, a week out. Yeah. So I've done that for a few years. I could still go back and do it. I'd like to do it, but it mean I have to move back to Australia, which is nice. But yeah, it's good being in New Zealand too. I think hostel life is kind of cool man because I had a hostel back in New Delhi before I moved to. Oslo and OK down. It was so much fun meeting new people and exchanging new

stories. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty quiet out here, but it's just starting to be a bit busier now. Basically you're on Hostel World, booking like all of those segregators and then figuring. Out, yeah, mostly booking.com and we have Airbnb, I guess. I think we might be halfway through the hostel world process, I'm not sure. It's a pain in the ass now. I know hostel world is super slow compared to booking and onboarding. Yeah, jeez, we're bringing back most casualties from us. It can millionise that stuff from a user perspective and she's not really sure if the hostel were the ones with Raspberry. It's more. Money, my man, regardless of

whatever it is. Yeah, but I can probably find you if they want to, can't they? But. Yeah, I think checking out your hostel gives me a reason to come to that side of the world one day. So I'm going to stay tuned for that, and the viewers can stay tuned for the awesomeness that we have planned for them in the coming weeks, including your metrology episode, which we will get to discussing on the emails as soon as we stop recording. But for now, Nick, it has been an absolute honor, man, I kid you not. I have been wanting to get you on the show for more than a year.

Like that's how long I've procrastinated over it. Can you believe it? But finally glad to get it done and can't wait for the next time. Thanks very much for the interview.