Death And Skydiving (with Paul Anderson)

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[00:00:30] Meditieren, Yoga, Joggen, nichts entspannt mich. Echt? Mich entspannt meine Steuer total. Steuer? Wie Finanzamt? Die Steuererklärung? Ja, ich hab ganz locker über 1000 Euro zurückbekommen. Hast du geheime Connections? Nö, nur die Visu-Steuer-App. Wow, und das ist einfach? Klar, die macht fast alles automatisch. Plötzlich fühl ich mich so entspannt. Hol dir dein Geld zurück. Tiefenentspannt mit Visu-Steuer. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.

[00:01:00] And I just started to ask myself if I seem to like being in motion. Like, what is the best way to just get paid to do that? Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Death And. I am your host, Victor M. Sweeney, Undertaker.

[00:01:29] Today, we have an interesting show. You know, truth be told, sometimes we get guests on from all over the Internet. Sometimes they're in our own backyard, and sometimes they're just people that I've known for close on 20 years. Our guest today is one of my good friends, Paul Anderson. He's a pilot, skydiver. I mean, a guy, honestly, that just traveled the world and done a bunch of things,

[00:01:55] and now he is really pursuing a career and a life in the sky. Part of, you know, really what makes friendship is just being in touch with each other. I've talked to Paul on a very regular basis for all these years, even when we've lived halfway around the globe from each other. But you, dear listeners, have been sending in messages from all around the globe as well.

[00:02:22] So as we are wont to do, I want to answer some questions sent from you folks on the web and see what we have in the grab bag today to bring you into the show, too. Here we go. All right, here's a cool question from Tim. I understand that vampire folklore was largely based on people wasting away from consumption

[00:02:50] and sometimes mistakenly being pronounced dead because the life signs were weak. Have you ever mistakenly been called to take somebody away before they were actually dead or seen a body wasted away such that someone in the past might have believed the deceased was a vampire? Okay, Tim, to answer the first part first, I have never mistakenly removed someone who is dead. When I was in school, there was talk about checking the vital signs.

[00:03:20] Typically that nursing home and the nurses will do this if someone's passed away in the hospital. But to be very honest with you, recognizing a dead body is not hard to do. I think for me that first sign is that the eyes, instead of being glossy and wet, they go like matte. Like the spark that is in them. It's not just the lubrication and the tears.

[00:03:45] The spark that is in them is just gone and it is so readily apparent. I once had the situation where there was someone around town. The rumor was being spread that they had passed away. And so we'd heard week in, week out, so-and-so has passed away, so-and-so has passed away. And sure enough, we never got the call.

[00:04:07] When it came time that Evelyn did pass away, I called the minister early in the morning. And she called back and said, oh, no, no, no, Victor, that's just a rumor. Uh, they've been circulating around. She's, she's still alive. It's just a rumor. I was like, well, I gotta tell you, when the undertaker calls you, I know for sure. And she was, she was still just kind of fighting me on this.

[00:04:31] I said, pastor, if she wasn't dead before she got here, she definitely is now because I have drained all of her blood from her body. And that quieted her up real quick. Um, to the second question, have I seen bodies that have been so wasted away that someone might mistake them for something other than human? Uh, the answer is yes. And the thing is, it is not pretty. Um, it does, it does happen.

[00:05:00] Death does seem to rack our mortal remains. Um, and really part of what I do, if called upon to do it, is to try to return people not to a perfect appearance. That, that's not going to happen. Um, but at least represent them to their family in a way in which they look more like themselves. Uh, so really, you know, emaciation or maybe the opposite, advanced edema where someone is swollen up with water.

[00:05:28] These are things that I can help remove so that way someone looks like themselves again and they're identifiable. Thanks for the question. Here's a question from Sierra. How do you handle the smells? I'm a taxidermist and struggle with the day-to-day smells. Are animals similar to humans? Yes. In that respect. Uh, yes.

[00:05:53] So I guess, you know, as a taxidermist, uh, we are both dealing with, uh, preservatives to some extent. Uh, and those preservatives do not smell good. That kind of, uh, uh, acrid chemical smell is not very fun to deal with. Um, unlike tanning a hide, I am in the lucky case where all of my embalming fluids, my preservatives, work from the inside out.

[00:06:20] So generally, um, most of that, um, chemical effect, right? That would otherwise go into my eyes or my nose is contained within the body. Um, there are times where you're going to have a formaldehyde splash or a spray, right? Something is going to come out where it otherwise, uh, shouldn't. And, um, there are ways of dealing with that. Fun fact, and I don't know if this would help you, for any, anybody that uses formaldehyde,

[00:06:47] I mean, I don't know if there are very many of us, but ammonia actually neutralizes it. So I always have a spray bottle of ammonia to neutralize formaldehyde spills, uh, when they do on occasion occur. Now, as far as the smell of death, at least I would contend that the smell of decaying animal is wildly different from the smell of decaying human flesh and that, uh, we're hardwired to believe that the humans smell worse.

[00:07:16] Um, now I know what to expect when I get a badly decomposed dead body. I, I know the smell, but am I used to it? That's a different question. Uh, no, it is not great. I do not like it. Um, but it is a necessary part of the job from time to time. Good luck with your taxidermy and thanks for the question.

[00:07:44] Thank you everyone for the questions. I really appreciate them. It's, it's fun to hear how your minds work. Uh, I know how mine works, but it's fun to hear yours. If you have been following the show for a while, I hope you've shared it with someone. Um, at the very least, I hope it's done something good for you. Made you think, made you ruminate on life a little bit along the way. Um, we're getting more followers, more subscribers. That's good.

[00:08:11] Uh, the people that are helping me with the podcast tell me that's a good thing. Uh, so if you do me a favor, if you haven't liked and subscribed it, I don't want to beg you, but I do want to ask you, think about it. Help me out a little bit. Throw me a bone, if you will. Now today's episode, uh, I think you're going to enjoy it. You know, it talks about something that maybe isn't directly related to death. I mean, how does skydiving and death overlap outside of the obvious, uh, huge mistakes that happen?

[00:08:41] Um, but really what, what tickled my fancy along the way was the discussion about going into flow state. I hope you enjoy talking to my friend, Paul. He's been one of my buddies for coming up on 20 years and he hates when I remind him of that. But the fact is we're not young men anymore. We're halfway done according to our statistical lifespan. Uh, but his life has been super interesting, way more, uh, uh, wide ranging, uh, than mine.

[00:09:11] He's lived in North Dakota where we were raised, uh, taught English in Shanghai, lived in a van in New Zealand, backpack through Nepal, uh, did a very long tour of Thailand. Uh, he's been to India any number of times. He's living in Hawaii now. He flies, he surfs, he skimboards, he spear fishes, he skydives. All these things. I, I just, I've experienced almost none of it.

[00:09:38] I just lived the, uh, prosaic life of a small town undertaker. But the fact is we can still be friends because we share, I think in common. Uh, just an appreciation for life that you get when you, when you wrestle with the tough things. You know, maybe he's piloting a piece of metal through space at insane speeds.

[00:10:03] Uh, but in order to do that, I think you have to just embrace the fact that it's dangerous and it could happen to you someday. Same could be said when you're plummeting to the ground on a skydive. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the episode. Let's listen to our friend Paul. I hope he becomes your friend by the end as well.

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[00:11:03] Thank you for joining us here with our discussion with my friend Paul Anderson. Paul is a pilot in Hawaii. He works for Hawaii Life Flight, so an air ambulance service. And just full disclosure, Paul has been one of my best buddies since 2007. His life has wildly diverged from mine. We just live in totally different realms. I am in the frozen tundra of northern Minnesota. You are on the big island of Hawaii.

[00:11:33] My wife and I got the opportunity to visit you recently. We flew out. We took a vacation, which is rare. We left home for five days, which is not nearly long enough, by the way, to get acclimated to the severe time change. Yes. But we had a wonderful time. But we were sitting around one night smoking cigarettes in your yard, and we were talking about, honestly, what I like to think is just the philosophy of flight.

[00:12:02] And so, Paul, give us the rundown of what you've been up to since you and I left high school. Oh, okay. So, after high school, I mean, my parents made me go to a Catholic high school, and I had a lot of questions from that. And that led to me studying philosophy and psychology. Victor and I lived in an apartment together briefly at the University of Minnesota.

[00:12:29] My intention was to become a therapist in one capacity or another. But, I don't know, at a certain point, I realized I wasn't so sure about doing grad school and spending my whole youth in college. And I didn't know if anyone would want to hear from somebody who had spent their whole life in school. And so, I just kind of took off after working for a mental health clinic for like six months

[00:12:59] after graduation and traveled for a little bit, taught English and taught English for a year. You lived in a van in New Zealand, worked in a vineyard? Yep. And the brakes failed on that van and crashed into the side of a mountain. But while I was in China, I did some reading about Chinese philosophy because it seemed like I should brush up on it while I was there.

[00:13:21] That led to me reading about Taoism and it talked about the joy that someone can find in being lost in a pursuit. And that made me think of snowboarding through trees. And it made me realize that I like things like driving and motorcycles and roller coasters. And I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. And I just started to ask myself like, all right, if I seem to like being in motion,

[00:13:48] like what is the best way for me to just get paid to do that? At that time, the only pilot that I knew was my uncle who was a crop duster. And I just shot a message out to him just asking if I could work for him while I figured out the next steps for pilot training. That is arguably the most dangerous type of piloting, is it not? Oh, crop dusting is definitely up there.

[00:14:16] It's I can't think of much else that would be more dangerous except for maybe active duty military flying and, you know, things like that. Certain search and rescue operations flying like six feet off the ground, 150 miles an hour. I saw a guy last year go under the power line, which I thought was a bold move. Terrifying.

[00:14:43] One of the guys that I met along the way, he and I owned this like 75-year-old airplane together. And like both of us were fascinated by flying low. And he tells a story about like he's like finally worked up the courage to fly under a power line. And when he did it, like there was there's like a tree line along this field that was, you know, like this tree line is like perpendicular to his path of travel and everything.

[00:15:10] And so as he's coming up to this power line, an RV comes out from behind this tree line. And he like he was just he's like it's too late. He's committed at this point. And he says that he got close enough that he could like, you know, see the looks on the faces of the people inside the RV. And he likes to tell me that like now, Paul, like I'm pretty sure I actually died that day. And this is just like a parallel universe where everything is OK.

[00:15:40] Well, there is, you know, there's got to be something about just embracing your mortality along the way. After you left college to you, you worked at a at a drop zone in Washington State where you were skydiving regularly. How many? Remind me, how many jumps have you done? I've done about 300. I've done zero because I'm terrified. That's all right.

[00:16:08] Well, I mean, like a lot of the people that I worked with, like the instructors and everything, they have thousands of jumps. And like their their career kind of parallels pilots because like a long a long career for a pilot is like 20,000 flight hours and like a long career for a skydiving instructor is like 20,000 jumps. What happens after you break the 20,000 threshold? It's not like a cutoff where you just you do the Wile E. Coyote splat. You can retire.

[00:16:38] No, yes. It's just tendencies like what, you know, what the numbers end up being over the course of decades. To think about the idea of movement kind of driving one's life, I think is really, really kind of profound. I mean, I drive from place to place, but it's only the movement really that kicks off like what my job is. I mean, I guess like the movement of the soul from the body maybe.

[00:17:05] But after that, like the only way that any of any of what I am going to do happens is because I got to go drive and get a body. So funny, funny that it kind of like kickstarts, you know, your career from philosophy into flight. Right. Well, I mean, I think it comes down to, you know, like flow state basically. Just because there is something about just watching things go by.

[00:17:33] And there's, I don't know if I ever sent you the video about like slow-mo, this guy who was a doctor who just got himself like a pair of rollerblades in San Diego. And he just, you know, tries to cruise and basically like he tries to like prolong his rate of acceleration as long as possible. He tries to just like go as slowly as he can while still accelerating.

[00:18:00] And he talks about how like there's just, you know, it's like a very like basic kind of happiness that just comes from like the little calcium plate in your ear moving, you know. I wasn't sure when we were going to jump into it, but I want to talk about this because your uncle that taught you how to fly. He wasn't an instructor. He kind of helped me figure out. He was your coach. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:24] He was my first point of contact and he gave me the number for a flight instructor and helped to explain to me like what the steps are going to have to be basically. And so he, he died. He did. Yep. When can you, can you walk us, can you walk us through that? Because this is, well, you tell the story and then I have some follow-up. So I worked for him for a season loading his plane and just kind of doing general farm work and everything for him.

[00:18:53] Uh, cause he was a farmer as well. And, uh, when I started flying, I thought that I wanted to be a crop duster, um, just because flying low really fascinated me and everything. But I was kind of eventually talked out of it just because whenever I would mention this to people that like, there's like a, like 40% chance that they would tell me that about somebody they knew who died crop dusting. Um, you know, still for a while, I kind of persisted and I thought I was going to work for my uncle.

[00:19:24] Um, he ended up hiring someone else instead. It was just much further along in, in his, uh, training in his aviation journey, basically. And I was kind of devastated by that, but it, I don't like, I suppose I had hard feelings at the time, but, um, the guy that he hired ended up being like one of my best friends and someone who helped me the most in my flight training.

[00:19:51] I, I went off and pursued other kinds of flying, like flying skydivers and aerial survey. And I had been out here for a few months doing air ambulance work when, uh, my mom called me and told me that, uh, my uncle Larry had crashed. Yeah, I was flying under power lines.

[00:20:12] Um, and it's something that he, you know, would have done thousands and thousands of times, but this time just, you know, just didn't clear it and clip the tail, like the, the vertical part of his tail on the line and lost control. Um, and that's how it went. And, uh, you, you know, I remember talking to you after this and you, you said something to me, I think that was really wise. And actually I repeat it to families all the time.

[00:20:40] And you said, Victor, you know, I don't know, you know, I don't really believe everything that was talked about when we walked in the door of the church, but there was something about being in a room with a bunch of people who felt the same way you do. And, uh, I, I, I still pass that along. Cause like I, I get, you know, it's very often that the children don't believe the same thing that the parents believe. And I'm like, well, let's just, let's just do the thing because the fact is we're all going to be in a room together and we're all going to feel the same way.

[00:21:11] And like that, even that small consolation, I think really does have kind of a knock on effect about how we, how we handle grief. I think, you know, and I've, and I've done it too. You know, I've, I've been to funerals of, of any number of my friends and relatives, or I don't really, you know, I don't really know what's going on, but it just feels good to all be there together. You know, to sit there and, and maybe not wallow in your grief together.

[00:21:39] You know, you, you all feel it differently, but, um, but just to simply just experience this big looming thing and then to come out the other side and be able to like also laugh. Right. Like it. Oh yeah. Isn't that a strange thing though? Cause you, you, you find even on that, the day of the dang funeral, you're able to like share stories and laugh. And the only way you're going to do that is if you get in a room full of people who also just feel that way. Definitely.

[00:22:06] Well, like I, I, I really appreciate the wake as well. Like, especially at, like at my uncle's, like the room was packed, you know, like people were standing outside of where they were holding the wake.

[00:22:19] And yeah, there were, there were a lot of great stories and like something that really hit me afterwards, um, was like, I mean, like in aviation, a lot of people, you know, it was just a couple degrees of separate separation and everything.

[00:22:37] And, um, somebody that I, I knew previously from when I flew survey, uh, who lives in Iowa called me and told me like all the, all the old timers at his airport were talking about this crop duster who had just died. And, uh, they were saying that, you know, he never met a nicer guy and realized that we were talking about my uncle Larry.

[00:23:01] And it, um, it was amazing to see how, how wide his, his life had reached. And just, to me, it, it showed the importance of just being friendly to, to people and just doing what you can to try to help out. I mean, to be honest, we, we both grew up in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota. Um, but he was even a little closer to the middle of nowhere. You'd think that that wouldn't have a wide reach at all.

[00:23:31] Uh, but I see it all the time. I mean, I see it all the time where, yeah, you have, you have some little old guy who, you know, farms a patch of dirt somewhere. Yeah. And yet you get condolences pouring in from around the country.

[00:23:46] And it is, it's, I think at the end of the day, it is those small things, you know, that the kind of affability, you know, I like to talk about affability a lot, but just, just the, the simple being generous and being kind to every person you encounter just for the simple fact that they are also walking around.

[00:24:03] As far as, as far as your philosophical musings, what, what do you think about when you are, when you are up, you know, piloting a piece of metal through, through the ether? What's, what's going through your head? Because I, you know, I know what I deal with day in and day out and I pretty well have my, my thoughts summed up, but I, I can't really even begin to grasp what that must be like.

[00:24:30] So it, it kind of takes a conscious effort a lot of times to really appreciate like where I am and what I'm doing sometimes while I'm in flight, just because it's definitely my dream job and everything. But, you know, after you've been doing it for years and you're familiar with everything, there's still a tendency for it to become, you know, just another job.

[00:24:53] And like, while you're flying, it's, it's a lot of just making sure that you're, you know, matching up numbers or different numbers are within parameters. Whether that's like you're approaching your target altitude or something, or you're flying at the right airspeed, or, you know, your engine is in like a green arc on the gauge. And so you like, a lot of times we just kind of get really wrapped up in that.

[00:25:21] And, and then finally, like every once in a while, you'll like, look out the window and see like a wahoo off, off your left side. And you're like, man, this is actually incredible. Yeah.

[00:25:35] And it's, it's a, it's a weird, it's a weird blend of skills kind of, cause there's like the communication and then just, I don't know, like actually landing on the runway and everything is almost, I don't, I don't, I don't know what to compare it to.

[00:25:52] It's more like a skill kind of like snowboarding or skiing or something, or like, I mean, like if you try to, you know, get a, a boat onto a trailer at incredibly high speed, that's, that's about what it is. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a kind of a athleticism to it. I suppose. Yeah.

[00:26:14] But I, I suppose like a lot of times, like on the actual flight, um, now it's not so much a ton of philosophical thinking. Cause I have, I have a medical crew with me all the time. So a lot of times it's, it's conversation with them. Um, and that can be any, any wide range of, of topics on, you know, the human experience is like previous jobs. I'd be flying alone quite a bit.

[00:26:42] Um, and I don't know, like what comes to mind for me right now is like when I flew skydivers, um, if you're in an aircraft with a turbine engine, it like with piston engines, like what's in your car, you're limited on the descent in terms of how fast you go just by trying to avoid cooling the, the, the engine of the plane too much. Um, and so, you know, it's the slower descent. It's kind of more controlled and everything.

[00:27:13] Um, but if you're in an airplane with a turbine engine, which is more similar to what jets have, that's not a factor. And you can just, you can just take it to like the maximum speed that the, the actual physical airframe of the plane can handle. And like, you, you, you get down to the ground faster than some of the skydivers do.

[00:27:33] And like, I would like something I would often think about while I was doing that was like, I'll never have this much freedom with such like an advanced piece of machinery. Even though this thing is from like the sixties, like such an incredible machine to just be able to bomb around like the airspace in Washington and just. Did you start skydiving before you started training as a pilot?

[00:28:02] Uh, no, has started my flight training in 2014. And like, I, I got my commercial license in 2017 and I, like, I knew at that time that I wanted to fly skydivers because like jumping was something that I wanted to do. And so I, I started, I started jumping in like mid summer of 2017.

[00:28:28] Did you like having a, like a, I mean, cause there's something I think, you know, I'm, I'm a person where I, I want my finger in every pie. For a funeral. Let's say like, I want to just know what's going on all the time. Um, if you're jumping, like, did you, did you find you were doing that? Like with, with the other pilot where you're like kind of watching what they're doing or like, is it one of those where you really have to focus on, on the activity at hand?

[00:28:52] So I often, I trained other pilots, newer pilots coming on to, to the drop zone and everything. And, um, you know, I would, for their first few flights, a lot of times I would just be with, them for the whole flight and everything. But once they started to get a handle on things, I would just wear my parachute and be like, all right, you know, I'll come with you to the top, but I'm going to jump out. And you're on your own from then on.

[00:29:20] That's, that's either a vote of confidence or, uh, or the absolute opposite. My ass bitter bowl. I am not going to watch you land. Well, like even outside the training though. Yeah. Like when you're, if you're, uh, if you're on the climb, uh, for a jump run and everything, like you're not as a skydiver, you're not doing very much.

[00:29:44] So you can definitely, you know, depending on how much you can see of the gauges and everything, you can definitely watch what the pilot's doing and. You know, give them shit for it later on. Um, or just, you know, tell them like, oh, you know, I like to do this or whatever. I did end up getting involved in a lot of different elements of the drop zone, uh, like packing the parachutes as well and packing the reserves.

[00:30:11] Um, and just kind of jumping in here and there and like doing about as much of the maintenance as we legally could. I think that, um, like the pilots who go and work for a drop zone who don't make a jump and out missing on a lot of that experience. And I think that just the more elements of it that you can do, like the more deeply you get into it, the more, the more you definitely get out of it.

[00:30:40] Have you had any near misses? So with skydiving, uh, the closest I personally had was a situation where, um, so like, so with the, with skydiving, like the, the thing that holds your parachute, it's called a rig, it's like the backpack looking part. Um, or while the rig is like the whole thing, the, the backpack portion of it is called the container.

[00:31:09] Um, and there's your main parachute is on the bottom of that backpack. And then your reserve parachute is more at the top. And, um, there are these like fabric flaps that hold, hold those, uh, those parachutes in. And, um, on one of my jumps, the flaps that hold my reserve parachute in had come open.

[00:31:36] And so I came very close to having, uh, they call two out, which is both your main and your reserve parachute are out at the same time. And that's, that's one of the worst case scenarios there can be because if they become tangled in each other, you potentially have nothing but just a ball of shit over you and no other options. I would have thought the worst case scenario is that the parachutes not deployed. So actually it's the opposite.

[00:32:06] If both come out, that's really when you're in trouble. It, it, it, it, well, specifically when they, when they get tangled in each other, cause it like, there's different scenarios that can happen where they, like, they both fly along like one in front of the other, you know, and like, that's fine. You just have to be cautious about it. And like another scenario is like, they'll kind of like branch off to the sides, sort of one will go one way and the other will go another way.

[00:32:32] And you'll start to, you'll start to, uh, um, you'd be like pointed at the ground basically in descending. But when they, when they branch off in different directions, you can at least cut away your main parachute without, you know, so much risk of it becoming tangled in reserve. So I, I know you said like when you're flying, like there's a lot of chatter in the ambulance.

[00:32:57] Um, do you, I mean, you, you're not, you're never involved in any of the medical aspect that goes on behind you, right? Oh, that's. Or like, is there, is there, is there a way to just like shut that out? Like how does, yeah. How does that work? Yeah. Well, there is, um, there's. Well, first of all, like, no, I'm not, I'm not involved in the medical care at all. Just like, you know, you're not supposed to text and drive. Like people. They're not, they're not like, they're not like, they're not like, they're not like hold this, hold this hemostat real quick.

[00:33:27] No, I'm not telling people that we need. That's good. You know? Yeah. Fluid stat or anything. Um, it's yeah. Like I was going to say, like, just like you're not really supposed to text and drive. Like people don't really want the guy flying the plane to be doing CPR or anything, but for the, uh, the chatter and everything, like it, um, there, there is like a, a control.

[00:33:52] That we have in the plane that allows us to, uh, isolate ourselves from, uh, the conversation that the med crew is having. And that is a lot of times that's just so that we can understand ATC more clearly so that we don't have other voices competing in our headset. That we do end up hearing quite a bit.

[00:34:13] And like, usually like the more that the med crew is talking about, um, you know, just technical terms, um, or speaking in technical terms, uh, the more serious it is. Like another form of isolation. And this just comes from the fact that like they're speaking a different language than I am, you know, um, just because I don't understand the terminology that they're using. Cause I don't, I don't have the medical background that they do.

[00:34:42] You know, do you see yourself, I mean, do you see yourself kind of remaining a pilot for the full 20,000 hours, Paul, or do you, do you have any other aspirations? I, so I don't, I don't ever think about quitting, um, on my own. Like I, I think, well, I mean, I did it one time there was, there was a point, um, but I think is one of the most relevant to the podcast. Um, but I was, I was thinking that, you know, maybe flying professionally wasn't going to work out.

[00:35:11] And I remember like the day when I was really thinking about this, um, it seemed to me like the less certain I was about being a pilot, uh, the more certain I seem to be that I would like live to reach old age. Cause I was, you know, when you hear all these stories about people dying and crashes and everything, like it's, you have to come to terms with that one way or another and like really have to accept that it could happen to you.

[00:35:41] And like, you know, how, what are you going to do about that? So yeah, you have to make peace with your one way or another. Your non, your non-zero chance of that happens increases. It's a, it's a complicated relationship. I was thinking about that before the podcast. Cause like I'd have to review what it is for like flying in general, but like for skydivers, there's, um, there's like charts showing like different experience levels and you know, the number of accidents and everything.

[00:36:08] And that you, you have, you know, you have, you know, a decent chance of being in an accident when you're first learning to skydive or like higher than higher than normal. Uh, just because you're new and then it drops down, but then it increases again as people gain a lot of experience.

[00:36:28] And there's different theories about why that is part of it's because people pursue really, um, just really difficult forms of skydiving. And like, there's one discipline in particular called swooping, um, where like when you're, when they're coming into land, they're just like trying to maximize their speed and like how far and fast they fly. Like just over the ground.

[00:36:54] As far as I know, that's still considered to be the most dangerous, uh, discipline in skydiving. Um, but then there's also theories that it's, uh, you know, a matter of complacency as you've just been doing it for so long and thinking that, you know, better. And the complacency aspect is really interesting. Um, because I think, you know, that's something that all of us kind of wrestle with in one way or another. Yeah.

[00:37:23] And, uh, I, and I, I think that that is like you said earlier, like that, that's the thing. Like you want a person has to be present, you know, you have to be present wherever you are, like whether you're on the job. I, I recently just snagged a funeral from another funeral home because the director, uh, I'm quoting the son here. Didn't look like he wanted to be there. Oh, right. And, uh, and then, yeah, I mean, anybody in your plane doesn't want, doesn't want to be there on the day that you don't want to.

[00:37:51] You don't really want to be there, you know? So there's something about being present that I think is, is important, but no, Paul, I, I just want to thank you for being, being here on the show. Just sharing yourself, your time with us. I know it's really early where you are. I miss you already. I know we just saw you a couple of weeks ago. Um, but, uh, no, it's, it's been a, I mean, it's been a pleasure to watch you grow up. I think, I think in some ways, like we can live vicariously through each other a little bit.

[00:38:20] You, you live a much wilder, more interesting life. Uh, when just, when Paul's not doing flying stuff, like he's spearfishing and surfing, I'm just driving dead bodies around. But, uh, yeah, we live it and I'm grateful for that. Well, your ears is wild in different respects. Yeah. I'm like, there's, I mean, my household is fairly calm compared to, compared to yours and all the chaos that you have to wrangle and everything.

[00:38:48] Keep everybody going where they need to be. One of these days, I'm going to bring all four kids out to you as well. So we'll, we'll hopefully make that happen one of these days. But Paul, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for being here. And, uh, Godspeed, my friend. Back at you, man.

[00:39:09] In reflecting on our conversation, um, in addition to, I think the very poignant thoughts about his uncle and kind of how I just share that same lesson with other families when it seems appropriate. But I thought the discussion about going into a flow state was really interesting. I don't really think about it much, but I do think there's something about the flow state that actually can direct your course in life.

[00:39:34] You know, maybe it's not the thrill seeking of your, of your inner ear bone rattling that puts you in the flow state. Uh, for me, I find myself in a flow state when I'm embalming. I'll walk into the room and I'll think about the case at hand. And, and it's not that the brain shuts off, but it just, it works on a different plane. When you're doing the thing you are supposed to do, your brain kind of clicks into gear, doesn't it?

[00:40:02] And I, I find that I, I know how much cotton to pull out and put into a mouth to make it resume a natural state. I look at a body and I can, I can just tell what solution I need to, to balance the amount of water, the amount of preservative, the amount of dye. Um, I still measure it out. The state requires that I, that I write down my, my ounces and such.

[00:40:26] Um, but everybody is different and everybody, I guess, viewed in my flow state gets handled in, in whatever manner they need. I want to thank you all for just joining us in the podcast today. You know, sometimes I get into a conversation and it just goes in directions I never expect. Sometimes I get a guest and we just talk about the humdrum of life.

[00:40:52] But the fact is it's very different from my own and chances are my life is very different from yours, but I'm glad that we can all share it. I'm glad that we can be here together. We can chat as friends and we can enjoy our time together living while listening to another episode of death. Until next time, I'm your host, Victor M Sweeney, and I am ever grateful that you are here.