Like Nick would tell me I started to like balance a little bit more crooked and crooked.
I didn't look like very consistent and five minutes later.
I could not like see where I was going.
What was how everything the world was spinning.
I went home driving like this.
Like I'm really like you drove.
Dude, I drove home.
I drove home.
I don't know why I did that.
Thankfully, I didn't live far a few blocks away, but I remember I pulled over a few
time. I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to do this.
I don't know how I'm going to do this.
Like I felt it was like being super drunk without being drunk.
Right.
I was like so out of it and I was it was terrifying and I went home laid down and
I told Nicole, my fiance about this.
I'm like, I haven't heard a good episode.
I'm not feeling great.
I'm terrified right now and she's like, oh, just try to sit up.
I sit like a little like sitting up in my bed.
The whole bedroom was spinning like like a hundred miles an hour.
It was wild.
I'm like, okay, this is terrifying.
I need to lay down again.
I try to sleep that night.
You know, you can imagine how that feels.
The whole bed is moving.
You don't sleep very good and it took me like two days.
That was one of the worst ones I've ever had.
It was two days to finally go away.
All aspects is brought to you by AspectAvy.
AspectAvy is a new safety tool that helps you make safer decisions in the back
country.
Did you know that we currently as an industry spend a billion dollars per
year on reactive avalanche gear?
So that's your beacon shovel probe airbag.
All those things only help you after you've been avalanche.
AspectAvy is the first preventative avalanche safety tool that is designed to
keep you out of avalanches altogether.
Our algorithm processes a huge amount of data and scrapes the avalanche forecast
in every forecast zone across the country.
Then it shows you on the map where it's high and low risk for today's avalanche
stage.
Clear means low risk.
Red is high risk.
Red equals death.
Don't go in there.
This is called adaptive slope shading or ass.
The reason why this is so revolutionary is because it changes and updates as the
conditions change.
Nobody else has asked because we invented it.
AspectAvy also has a ton of awesome tools built into it like a try axis slope
angle meter trailhead and drop-in checklist and my personal favorite the
forecast update tool.
The best part is AspectAvy is giving away this life-saving tool 100% free.
AspectAvy is committed to making the back country safer and more fun for everyone
in our community.
You can download AspectAvy on iOS right now for the App Store.
Android, it's coming soon.
Remember, there are dozens of apps that get you into the back country, but only
AspectAvy is designed to bring you home safely.
Thanks to our business daddy, AspectAvy, for making the All Aspects podcast possible.
Now let's get to the show.
All right, we're back.
Another episode of All Aspects and we're very excited here today to be with
Robin Gillen, aka Bino.
He is a professional skier, free skier.
He does all the flippy spinnies.
Me and him used to kind of like run in the same circles back like 10 years ago
in Breckenridge doing all the ski stuff.
And I'm super stoked to have you on the pod man.
Talk to you today.
So one really interesting about Bino is that he is severely deaf.
And can you just, can you just like tell us what that means?
Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me.
It's really cool to be able to reconnect with you and me, Jeff.
But yeah, so coming to the civilian deaf part is some people describe me as deaf
and some people don't, but it basically, and if we want to be politically correct
and really know exactly what my term is, there are different levels of deafness
and a lot of people don't know that.
And so you can be deaf, but you still have some hearing, which is my case.
My left ear is profoundly deaf, which means I don't have any, it doesn't really work at all.
My right ear is severely deaf, which means I still hear about 10 to 20% of what you guys hear.
And we are here, I wear hearing aids to be able to improve that number.
And I'm around like 50% of hearing loss at this point.
So I hear about 50% electronically of what you guys hear on one ear.
The other ear, I can only rely on some loud sounds like a door shutting really loud
or maybe a very loud, you know, bed neck car passing by or something.
You know, so there you go.
Dang, okay. Wow.
So can I just jump right into this, man?
I have so many.
Well, first off, I want to tell one story because so when we first met each other,
I mean, you're like such a nice, welcoming, fun person.
Like you're just like rad to hang out with.
And there were several times like we hung out, you know, your skeens,
you have your helmet, you're all your stuff on.
And there are a couple of times where I would just say, I didn't know that you couldn't hear me.
Like, because we just knew each other's scheme.
And so there are times where I would just say something to you and you just like ski away.
And I was like, I don't know, maybe that's just like, maybe that's just his style.
Like, I don't know.
It wasn't till we were like hanging out at Woodward, I think, jumping on the trampolines.
And I saw that you had like your hearing aids and I was like, oh dude, like what's up with that?
And then like, then we got into that conversation and it like explained so much to me.
But it was like a few times where you just fully ghosted me like to my face.
And it was so amazing.
But first, first of all, I apologize for this happening to you.
And definitely this is way too common in my history.
And many people have told me this going up.
And basically, there's a couple things to this.
I actually used to have on my social media bio say, I'm not rude and deaf.
So it's kind of like, hey, man, like if I don't hear you or something and I just like walk past you,
I've generally not rude.
I just generally didn't hear you, you know?
So do you have that experience?
Skiing was a shelf.
It really allowed me to for once in my life not to have to deal with it.
And I just, which is okay with that, right?
And it was kind of nice for me to wear like those balaclava, have long hair and everything back in the day
and not have people question my hearing or anything.
It was more, he's a skier and that's all we needed to know, right?
It was nice.
I've definitely hit behind that identity for a little bit too long, but it's okay.
It was, those were nice years.
It took a while for me to accept the idea that yes, I do have a disability
and I need to be okay with it and learn that it is all right to speak up about it to the general public
because at first I was really uncomfortable with the idea.
I always try my best to hide it as much as I could and push it as far as I could without acknowledging it.
And when it really, you know, like, for example, I would miss out on a major information,
then I'm like, okay, it's time to finally let them know.
I can't hear you well, you know, and I need you to repeat again, please, or write this down a piece of paper.
But if I, I used to really think I would be judged based on my hearing and they would categorize me as less amazing
or less of a normal person.
And so I would try to hide it as far as I could and that changed over time.
Thankfully.
Well, yeah.
And you were always, I feel like the ski world is definitely like quite a merit, meritocracy, you know,
like people are really like, hey, like that guy rips, but also he's like really cool.
And like those are the two main things that matter, you know, it's like, it did.
It did.
And I'm sure you remember, I feel like at least 10, 10 years ago in a golden era of skiing,
it really didn't matter what background you went in, what matter was your skiing, you know,
and we didn't really talk about people's personality.
So it was really about like how they expressed themselves, athletically speaking.
There was no cameras pointing at you asking your personal or questions like about your identity
after you've done skiing, right?
It was all about what trick he was going to do and what's his style, you know, and not like where he's from
and who raised you and what's your identity.
Now it's really changing.
A lot of people want to know much more about athletes in general.
You can see in our social media that it really push brands are really pushing for athletes or public figures
to get out of their comfort and speak more about than the only thing that they're good at, right?
Basically, humanizing them, which is a very good thing.
It's a very good thing if you ask me.
I'm just thankful for still having the experience of living both sides of the story, being just a skier
and then eventually grew into, okay, like I advocate about the deaf and hard of hearing community
and I started to speak up about bullying and all these things.
But you know, if people ask me, oh, would you wish to be doing this since you were very young?
I say no, because it took that process of going through this change and acceptance for me to be able to be an open book about this.
You just don't become like that, right?
You, you're, it takes time.
Yeah.
Dino, did you get bullied when you were a kid because you were deaf
and have you ever been bullied in the ski community because you're deaf?
Ooh.
Nobody asked me the question about the ski side, but let me ask you first, the general public side.
I say, in my, I've been bullied a lot actually.
And it was mostly during the awkward stage between eight to 12 years old.
And the reason is that's when the kids are really, really curious and they are, they are fully aware of, let me refrate this.
That's the time when kids ask a lot of questions and they have a good amount of words, you know,
and their knowledge should be able to express themselves and say what they say, what they see, right?
So, for example, at that age, if they see someone on a wheelchair, they'll point out the wheelchair.
Like, that's the wheelchair.
Why on a wheelchair?
You know, why can't you walk?
They have a lot of words and they, they really can see everything and, but they can't understand everything quite yet.
They don't understand why this person is in a wheelchair.
So during that time, that's when I was bullied super badly.
People misunderstood me and it was, it was complicated.
It was a very difficult phase and it can affect someone's.
It has affected me a lot in terms of my confidence in general because for, I would say for solid years,
I was constantly reminded of how weird I was, how I had a speech impediment, how my back then the hearing aids were huge.
They were all around my ears and my ears would pop out like that and they would say like, your ears look funny and what is this machine that you have?
It's disgusting.
It's gross.
Like, there was a lot of, they would just point out and say the things out loud to my face.
And then I just, you know, your confidence just tanks and you carry this for a long time.
It takes a while to recover from this.
And then, you know, it's just, it comes from a point of ignorance.
I don't blame them.
I'm not angry at the bullies or whoever they did that.
I just generally later on understood why they did it.
They didn't, you know, they've generally believed that, for example, if they were going to touch me, they were going to get sick and become deaf and how to wear hearing aids.
Right?
No way.
It was crazy.
Those were like wild years and they were avoiding to invite me to birthday parties because of that.
For example, I don't know how it is in America, but in Europe, what they do is every birthday party in the classroom,
they give envelopes with the birthday invites for whoever birthday was to the whole classroom to invite you to your birthday party for a couple.
Yeah.
For a couple of years, I'd never had that letter on my desk.
So it was really strange.
It was not fun.
I did not like that at all.
But at the time, I didn't understand why they were not inviting me, but I do now.
They just didn't know.
They just, they were just, yeah, they just generally were scared of me and didn't understand what it meant to be hanging out.
With me.
And that's okay.
It's all right.
I'm not angry at them.
I'm not mad at them, but it definitely has affected my confidence in general coming into my teens, you know, when your teenager is already awkward enough.
But on top of that, I just carried a lot of years of bullying and I'm like, oh my God, I'm not good enough.
I'm, I'm not smart enough.
I am weird.
You know, I really care that extra weight around me and I had to like slowly over time shave off of that weight of me to be able to be happy and be my own self.
Yeah.
Wow.
So that's so crazy that that like they thought they would catch deathness or something.
Yeah.
That's I mean, wow.
It's, you know, when you don't know, you don't know, right?
Yeah.
But at the same time, you believe what you hear when you're a kid.
So I remember my bully spreading that information around the school and that information is stuck within a kid's brain and it didn't matter how many times teachers and parents would say he's not going to make you deaf.
Right.
This doesn't work like that.
But once, you know, they just, they're just scared of it.
You know, it's just like, oh, we can't touch Robbins.
You know, he's, we're going to get deaf.
It's going to be weird.
You know, I laugh about it now, but at the time it was horrible.
But yeah, how can you describe the process of forgiveness that you come through because it's something I struggle with where fairness is really important for me.
Of like that since a kid, like to treat other people as I would want to be treated.
And when I feel that I've been wronged, it's probably got nothing to do with me.
It's probably all about their shit.
But I'll hold on to that way too long and I saw this quick post on Instagram.
It's like, it said, it's like you get bit by a snake and are you going to go chase that snake and tell the snake forever why what they did was wrong or are you going to try to heal yourself.
And so that healing is the forgiveness part.
I don't need to forgive them for their sake.
It's really to help me move on and not still be chasing after that approval.
What are some ways that you've been able to do that so that you don't carry around that pain?
Yeah, I mean, it's just an amazing thing you're talking about.
It was a process.
And like I said earlier in my teens, I was, I had a pretty rough start, right?
It was okay now with 13, 14 years old and everyone's going to this awkward change.
And I remember it, I just had a lot of weight on me and I had to really go to rock bottom to understand that changes needed to happen.
And those changes needed to come from me because I couldn't change with other with perceiving for me.
So realistically forgiveness was the only option that I really have to be able to let go of that weight.
Be like, okay, it's, I had to learn, well, sorry, let me rephrase that a little bit differently.
I had to learn it wasn't my fault because for so many years I thought it was my fault and it really wasn't.
Right? You're like, oh, I'm the weird one.
I was born this way and you would think, I was thinking it was really my fault that I was deaf and people were scared of me and misunderstanding me.
But then I realized it really wasn't.
I have to speak into so many doctors and psychologists and everything I did all these things and they really told me you were born this way.
And it's not something you could control, right?
So by letting go was one of the only things I had control of and forgiveness.
I had control of that too.
So by doing this, it just helped me shave all that weight off my shoulders over time.
It's just pretty beautiful.
All of a sudden you're like, I don't care what they've done to me.
And I can look forward to the future now.
It's pretty nice.
It's pretty cool.
So if I ever see some of the bullies that I had growing up, especially one that I can think of, he was really annoying.
I would be very indifferent.
I would actually probably say hi to him, hi again, be like, what's good, man?
Hope everything is well.
I know we're adults now, but so many people would hold grudges and I think that's just not a good thing.
It makes you really toxic and I don't want to be in that phase in my life where everything was heavy and dark.
I want to be the opposite of that.
I wanted to be able to shine.
I envied people that had confidence.
I envied people that were successful and were thriving throughout their passions.
I wanted that and they all had something in common is they were very good with themselves.
They were okay with who they were.
I can't think of someone that's really successful that hate themselves.
They all have to love themselves to a certain level.
So I hope that's a good explanation.
Yeah, I think that was awesome.
What you just made me think of is the irony there of when people are bullying, it's usually because they feel like they have low social status and they need to push someone else down and beat up on them verbally to feel like they're more powerful or more significant or special.
And so it'd be really curious if that kid from school who bullied you listened to this, if he's thinking that, hearing this and be like, oh, I was such an asshole as a kid.
It's so embarrassing.
There's very few things I regret in my life, but I can think back to painful moments where I didn't live up to my ideals and I let people down or treated people poorly.
And those are the things that I regret in life and like, you know, I don't want to look at it because it's too embarrassing.
It's too like awkward and cringy.
You're right. You're very right.
A lot of people keep asking me this is what would you think you fully feel about what he's done in the past and honestly, I couldn't kill us.
I don't care about what he thinks.
I care what I think I care how I feel.
And I'm at peace with it.
I'm totally okay with it.
But now I definitely made it a life mission to just continue speaking and speaking up about bullying and making sure some kids or parents have information for that matter, how they can have access to help what they can do to prevent it.
And realistically, I don't think bullying is ever going to go away.
It's always going to be there and that that could go for well above your adult life, right?
There will always be bullies. I'm sure there's bullies at work and everything, but you can't there's ways to to work through it, right?
There's ways to learn how to not entertain it and just get past it or change.
Maybe if you don't like what you work and you have a horrible boss, maybe just get a different job, you know, it might sound horrible, but that's a solution.
You really do have that solution.
You can look for different place that you work at where there might be more accepting and more fun, right?
Or they're more part of what you who you are and what you want to be.
It's, you know, some people feel stuck in places, but really you shouldn't be stuck.
There's always solutions to problems.
And I really want to relay that message.
I want to let people know that it's all right.
And it's normal that it's part of society and we have to just deal with it better.
Because back then it was pretty stigmatized.
I remember I was still part of that last piece of the generation where, you know, if you, you know, if you get like a teacher yelling at you, like, and you were telling your family that that you got yelled by the teacher, they'll probably yell even more, you know,
I was not part of the generation when my parents would go to the school and like yell at all the teachers. Like it needed, they needed to be a really good reason to do that.
But most of the time, like, if you teach it yell at you, like you personally yell louder, you know.
Yeah, you were, I was the problem for sure.
Like,
Hey, have you ever when someone's yelling at you, do you ever take the hearing aids out or turn them down?
I've done it once and it backfired really hard. I've done it in a very inappropriate way, but I was super mad. I was pissed off.
I was 16 years old, and we were going to an apprenticeship. I'm not sure if you guys have, I think you do have that in the US.
We can have a, instead, yeah.
So my parents thought it was a good idea for me at 16 to do an apprenticeship instead of going to college. I went to a bank, a local bank was like a badass Swiss bank. It was really awesome. The idea was awesome.
I had a nice suit on and you know, it was like a complete different version of me.
16 you're you're in a suit.
16.
I yup. 16 in a suit.
And working at a Swiss bank.
It was, it was really, really, the idea was pretty wild and quite cool. Honestly, but I remember I was pretty miserable pretty quickly because I, I've all I wanted to be was I wanted to be a skier.
I was actually pretty good at skiing at the time. I was one in contests during the weekends, but then in a weekday, I would have to go back in a bank and a suit that was so unlike my personality.
So I was pretty miserable there. And I had a, the lady that was taking care of the apprentice. She was not a cool person at all. And she was 100% not down with my hearing problems.
And one day I just got so fed up in the middle of a meeting at work. I took my hearing aids out and I put them on the table in front of her and I'm like, I can't hear you.
And she just, you know, oh yeah, drops Mike and just walks away.
Literally kind of it little that's kind of what happened what happened. And then I almost got fired over that. Like my parents will evolve. It was the whole thing, but I was just generally so fed up with this person. I'm like, I'm not letting you bully me.
I'm done. Like, this is not happening. I'm taking my hearing aids off. You know, you just respect me. I'm disrespecting you right now. You know, so.
And you wear a Gore-Tex suit to work. Yeah, exactly.
That's dude, that's really funny. Imagining you at a bank man. I gotta say that's amusing me that imagery.
It was, it was an interesting time. I worked there for 365 days. I did one full year. It was supposed to be three on apprenticeship. But thankfully you had a phone call from the Swiss Olympic Sports School out of the blue because I had won the best Swiss skier of the year.
And the school was the school for all like hopeful athletes for Switzerland. And they called me out of blue. My family said we would love to have Robin be part of our boarding school and program to go to college with us and everything.
And they only had like the top 100 athletes of every sport in Switzerland attended. So it was actually very incredible. And I did not know about the school really. I was not really chasing that kind of stuff. I didn't care about it. All I cared about my skiing.
And so when they called it changed my life and it was perfect timing because I was miserable at the bank. I didn't like it. I didn't want to be part of that. I was trying to get out of this. And that was my way out really. And it opened the actual opportunity to be a professional athlete.
Well, yeah, what Jeff, I'm really curious.
Well, I want to ask them one thing. Yeah, so go ahead. So before I think we've maybe talked about this to you and me before in the past, but it's been so long. So I just want to remember like, yeah, were you like, I feel like a lot of us the time we got into free skiing was kind of like the second wave.
There was like the first guys who started it like Tanner Hall and JP and like those guys. And then we're kind of in that second wave where it was like a real sport.
But nobody knew if you could like make it a job yet. And so like, that is correct.
Was it the same way in Switzerland? Like when you were coming up, did you have it in your head? Like I want to be a skier. I think I can do this.
Or did you kind of have this like, if it happens, it'll be nice. Like what was that like?
Dude, you know, I never really thought of it that way because you're right. There was the first wave and that first wave, I call it like the legendary era, right? The golden era.
And those guys, these are the guys that grew up watching and I've wanted their life, you know, and I've wanted to be doing what they were doing, except that it was not affiliated with any national team.
It wasn't an Olympic sport. It was nothing like that. It was all about your name. The flag didn't matter. It didn't matter where you were from. It was your name that mattered, right?
And so it was definitely an awkward transition because I remember when I started becoming pretty good and relevant in the competition scene, at least from the European standpoint, it was an awkward phase because all of a sudden they kind of had this like rumour that it was going to become an Olympic sport.
And Fizz was getting like, was about to get involved and all of a sudden became this national thing. It was like about the flag. It wasn't about the name. And that changed the whole dynamic.
To this day, I kind of wish we never went that route, really. I think it's kind of poisoned our industry for a while, really.
It's only the last couple of years that we're finally seeing a bit of progress in our sport and I'm pretty happy to hear that.
But I was definitely part of the awkward transitional generation between like the golden era skiing to what it is today.
Now there's a system in place. National teams are like, know where they are, what they're doing. And there's like kind of understanding how much an athlete can get paid for whatever.
So you're correct. It was a time where we were still individual riders at heart, but skiing under flags.
And we didn't know really where to put ourselves in the middle of all this. So, you know, it's like now if you look at contests,
most a lot of riders like wear this uniform for the national teams like the Italian ski team, the Finnish ski team. These guys are not even allowed to wear their personal sponsors.
They have to wear what the national team give them. But like in our time, no way. Like you were not like you couldn't even dare telling any of us you have to wear this.
Not hello. We were wearing whatever we wanted to wear.
Totally individual. I think it's, I don't know who said this, but they were just talking about new sports. Dude, it might have been like Jake Burton, I don't know.
But like, he's like there's a window where a sport becomes a sport and everyone agrees that it's a sport. And then there's like 10 years before it becomes an industry.
And if you ace that window, that's like the most fun time to be in a sport because it doesn't really know what its identity is yet.
And I feel like like mountain biking is sort of like the contest team mountain biking is kind of in that 10 year period right now.
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But like correct. I think you're right. It's like getting really big, but it's not to the point where like downhill racing is in the Olympics or stuff like that.
You know, like people aren't getting huge endorsements from to be a downer bike or whatever. You know, so I think I did want to, man, that's so like, so it's always the same way in Switzerland.
Right. However, I do have to say that most northern Americans were getting the big juicy deals, which at the time was one of the main reasons why many Europeans or, you know, Kiwis or whatever you were from, we were all like migrating to the US to be able to ski.
Because that's where the sponsors had actual money. That's where the bigger parks were. That's where the bigger contests were. Like that's where most of the real stuff really happening. And now it's like the other way around.
It's literally like all North Americans have to go to Europe all the time because the parks are now like how the standard fees like jump size and pipe shape and everything and they do a better job at upkeeping it versus Americans are going to this weird phase with corporate kind of
running the ski industry and like not allowing the parks. Yeah, to veil baby. Yeah. Oh man, it's such a hard one. That's a hard one. You're going to get your past blacklisted man. You better be careful.
They know what they're doing. I'm not saying anything that nobody knows about. True. That's true. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely the world has flipped upside down at least in the industry now.
I was like, I mean, I talked to all my homies that I grew up skiing with in the US. They all tell me, hey, I'm going to Europe for three months. I'm going to Europe for four months. And that was us Europeans going to North America 15 years ago.
Right. It's just kind of completely flipped the script. It's no longer the same sport. It's definitely become very different. And there's so many to this. It's not just fits in general. It's the only picks is also the national team really being involved with this.
It's changed a lot of the dynamics, making it less about the person more about the country, the government getting involved with this. It definitely changes dynamic. I know the US key team, the government has nothing to do with it.
It's all nonprofits. So they're a little bit different. They still get some pretty cool deals and the writers are still pretty independent. I mean, you, you look at some of the top skiers now they still have like their own bosses, their own clothing and everything.
So I think they still value individuality, which is good. I think that's a good thing for us for. But yeah, I was, I was kind of lucky to be in a transitional phase, like you say, but also unlucky. I think I was able to get away with cool deals and get creative with things.
I was still able to be my own person. But at times, I mean, we would go to like horrible contest. I mean, I'm telling like there were some World Cups, especially when the first World Cup started to show up and we were going to all of those.
It was, yeah, it was cool, but we didn't really care for it that much. Like now you say your World Cup skiers like it has this heavy like sense to it.
And that's the end of my like competitive career. Being able to say you a World Cup skier was kind of, it was starting to become pretty cool. But in beginning, we didn't care. We're like, this is nobody.
Yeah, we're like, it's kind of dumb, you know,
You know, do you remember when like they started doing like they started doing like basically the half pipe Grand Prix.
I don't know what it was like 2012 or whenever they started. Yeah. Yeah. And every single like people like Alex, you know, like for era and like you were, you know, the champions of of that now.
Like all of us were kind of like eye rolling at it. We're like, cool, great, a Grand Prix. Like awesome.
And now it's the thing. Yeah, man. Right. Nobody really liked them. Yeah, keep going.
Dude, I wanted, I wanted to ask you something because I was just learning about this because I watched that I watched. Well, actually, I subscribed to your YouTube now.
So I watched like every video you have on there. Turns out Nick Geper is a is a savage rollerblader. Yes, he is. That is insane.
Big ups to Nick, dude. That's awesome.
Everyone hope you joined the pod so far. I just wanted to take a quick break to tell you about one of the most unique features of aspect app, which is the forecast update.
The forecast update tool allows you to input real time feedback about snow conditions and stability into the app as you're touring.
So say we're out touring in this area. It's a moderate day, but all of a sudden we experienced signs of instability.
We come up to the corner and we click this little button right here brings up the forecast update tool.
Then we can go in and let's say we got whoops, and we got shooting cracks. We click done.
Your map is going to be updated to considerable Abbey danger and will now have the updated high and low risk areas painted onto the map in that forecast zone.
This works even offline, which is super badass.
If you want to try out the forecast update tool for yourself, head on over to the app store and download aspect abbey for free on iOS.
Okay, back to the show.
Wait, I wanted to ask you one thing about.
So like you do like Jeff, I don't know if you've seen being a ski. He is in the top tier. You know, he's doing double corks. He's like flipping onto rails.
How do you do that? When your deafness affects your balance? That's what I want to know.
Give us the lowdown. Like what's up?
I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I, there's a lot to it, but I have vertigo. I have vertigo and I have the common waves. I have episodes.
And when it do happen, I have to lay down and sometimes it takes one or two days to wear off, which is really not fun.
Whoa.
So unfortunately, it's not if that's one of the downside, of course, to be hard of hearing or deaf, whatever you want to call me.
But it's, it's, it's one of the downsides and I had to learn how to manage it.
Trepidines usually were not a good friend to me. I had kind of a window of how much trampoline I could do until I started to feel I was about to have a vertigo episode and I had to stop completely, like out cold and just stop the training, go home, drink water.
And it had a lot to do with how hydrated I was, how much energy I had. What did I eat? You know, there was a lot of little thing that affected this.
If I came in exhausted, dehydrated and didn't have a good mindset. I mean, if I, if I wasn't in my prime jumping on a trip, I would do five bounces and then would have to deal with vertigo for a whole day.
And I was not good. So balance definitely was something I had to think about a lot. And I've always made sure I had to stay hydrated.
I always made sure I was avoiding those episodes as much as I could. And there had been times where I was skiing and I started to feel a little bit off balance and I had to like leave, leave the mountain, go home.
Or, you know, thankfully I didn't have to experience them too much in contests. And I think a lot of it is because it came down to when you compete, you don't ski as much.
I'm sure you remember that right? Like when you come super bored, you don't ski a lot. Yeah, it's actually a boring day.
You just sit around for like all day to do two runs. It's incredibly boring.
Yep. And so that was kind of to my advantage really, because I was just showing up prepared, ready. And then I just dropped my two runs.
And then that was just not like, I wasn't at the point where I was facing a potential vertigo. Right. I just had to make sure I had a good night of sleep before was hydrated a good food.
And most of the time I was able to get away with it. But yeah, it's definitely, it definitely was always kind of, I was pretty anxious that I would have one of these episodes before dropping.
That would make my life little impossible and dangerous really. So, but yeah, I had training days and training camps that turn into pretty complicated moments where I had to completely stop because if it wasn't working, I couldn't walk straight.
So, wow. Yeah, it's part of being a deaf individual unfortunately.
I totally got that. Like, I had some serious ear problems for a couple years and couldn't hear out of my left ear because the eustachian tube was blocked. And it was like, I was underwater for a couple years.
And my daughter was so excited to get on trampolines. She should be like, come on, dad, come play with me. And I'd do a couple bounces. And then I was just like, oh, no, this is hell. This is hell. Yeah.
Yeah. So how did it happen? By the way, how did you get that?
You know, it's an interesting thing. And when I went to the doctors, the ear, nose and throat specialists, they're just like,
and I got pretty lucky because yeah, where they're just like, sorry, this sucks. Good luck. And when I went to get the hearing tests, they're like, okay, you know, it doesn't look too bad.
You know, it's not great. The eustachian tube is really important. But the ear, nose and throat doctor was like, I'm sorry, you have Meneer's disease. And that is really bad. And you really don't want that with the tinnitus, the vertigo.
And like, it'll come on suddenly without any warning. And you just collapse and hit the ground. And as a mountain guide, that was terrifying because I was like, I'm going to have to stop guiding.
And then turns out it wasn't Meneer's, it was just the eustachian tube. And for me, it seemed to be stress, lack of sleep, and a food allergy to eggs. And so, wow,
I was like, I'm going to eat eggs together. And I just feel like, whoa, really lightheaded. And, wow. Yeah, it was really unpleasant. And then I was like, okay, I stopped eating eggs for a couple years. And now I can eat a little bit and make sure that I sleep and try to keep the stress down.
And then it's saying that you had to be on your own journey to figure this out, right? No doctor was able to tell you, this is what's wrong. And do this, you have to do it yourself. You know, this is, is that how you had to figure it out too with you?
Yeah, I mean, what you said about the ENT doctors, it's such a typical example. I mean, we went to show many of those doctors going up for whatever reason, like vertigo, like my ear, my hearing getting worse or having episodes, whatever. And it's always like, we can do a stare shot if you want.
I'm like, God damn it. Like straight into your ear or what?
Literally, they do that. They come with a syringe, literally do that. They come with a syringe and start of your ear and it's like, I, like, this is not a joke.
What the fuck, dude? No way. That's so gnarly.
I know. Yeah, you don't want that. It's not fun. It feels really funky for the next 48 hours. But yeah, I was always like, that's what I realized. Doctors and stuff, like they still have a lot of stuff to figure out. Obviously, it's amazing. We have them. I'm not saying that.
I'm thankful we have them, but I'm just saying there's a lot more that we have to figure out about the human body and the ears are just so complex and nobody really know much about them yet still.
Yeah. When I went to the ear nose and throat specialist, they said, yeah, it's incredibly complex and maniers is poorly understood. It's just a collection of symptoms. But we don't really know what causes it seems to be a strong genetic component.
And they said no salt. And I was like, like, what does that mean? Like no salt on my food. And they're like, period. Eat any salt because it affects the fluid balance. So you have to repair all the food yourself. No, no processed food, no restaurant food.
Like, wow. And then you have to take diamox, the altitude drug, because it helps first for kidney patients, and it helps you pee off excess fluid. And with that, you get rid of a lot of salt. And you know, it makes your fingers and toes tingle and feel numb.
And I was just like, oh, my gosh, so much work so much work.
So I couldn't eat salt for a couple years. And then it turns out, make a difference at all.
No way.
Dosis and I was just like, oh, are you here again, and get rid of the tinnitus and the lightheadedness. And I never had the full on vertigo but I've seen other people who have had it. And it's just brutal and it's really scary when you're trying to do dangerous things in the mountains.
100% Yeah, it's really made me question if I could trust my body and trust myself and like what might happen in the future.
100% correct. And one of the I agree with you when you say it's terrifying to have the thought of maybe having to deal with it when you're mountains. I mean, I was, I was just hoping, you know, it was, I try to forget about it, but sometimes it was unfortunately back in my mind.
It could trigger at any uncontrolled moment. Right. It's like, okay, now, you know, needs to lay down for half a day or a day or two, because he's done like you can't, he can't move.
It's, I was, you know, it wasn't fun to deal with it at times. I was definitely I felt at a disadvantage. But at the same time, I just looked at it and I'm like, okay, well, the days I feel great.
What happened that often just so to put it in the context so like, not people think it was happening like every week if it didn't. But it would happen a couple of times a year out of the blue and I just didn't know how to deal with it.
Right.
And how fast did you have any warning that it was coming or would it just bam hit you fast.
It was, it was fast. Like I would say I would have like a minute like probably like less than a minute window all the time. Like I'm feeling a bit dizzy. And if I did one more big balance of one more big jump or one more like big impact of something, I was done.
So how to really catch it very early before it was like gonna backfire. I remember one time I was to a trampoline training.
I was, I think, five years ago something like that I was at Gepers backyard and you have so much fun on a brand new super tramp in his backyard.
And I'm like, I like I was going there like almost every day to like practice tricks and stuff on a tramp. And then one day, it just happened I started not feel very good.
And I decided to override it. I'm like, shoot. Fuck this. I'm over like, like letting it control me. I'm just going to continue bouncing. And I went and literally like five minutes later.
But you could like Nick will tell me I started like balanced a little bit more crooked and crooked. I didn't look like very consistent. And five minutes later, I could not like see where I was going.
What was how everything well was spinning.
I went home driving like this. Like I'm really like you drove.
I drove home. I drove home. I don't know why I did that. Thankfully, I didn't live far a few blocks away. But I remember I pulled over a few times. I'm like, I don't know how I'm going to do this.
I don't know how I'm going to do this. Like I felt it was like being super drunk without being drunk. Right. I was like so out of it. And I was, it was terrifying.
And I went home and laid down. And I told Nicole, my fiance about this. I'm like, I haven't heard a good episode. I'm not feeling great. I'm terrified right now.
And she's like, just try to sit up. I sit like a little like sitting up in my bed. The whole bedroom was spinning like, like a hundred miles an hour. It was wild.
I'm like, okay, this is terrifying. I need to lay down again. I try to sleep that night. You know, you can imagine how that feels.
The whole bed is moving. You don't sleep very good. And it took me like two days. That was one of the worst ones I've ever had.
It was two days to finally go away. And I went to like the ENT who again told me, we don't know what to do. Like, do you want another stare at shot?
Like two on a shot?
Cool. I don't want that. Yeah. Exactly. And then we went to like, I did acupuncture and like acupuncture is cool and all, but it doesn't, it didn't help.
I guess, you know, it just feels like a luxury, but it doesn't really. Yeah, I tried everything. Exactly.
And you're desperate. So you'll, if someone says, oh, have you tried this crazy thing and you're like, I'll try it. I don't care.
Exactly. Have you tried rubbing butter all over your thighs?
Whatever, man. Exactly. That's funny, David. I have a group chat with a bunch of really close friends in it. And that one time I had a really bad episode.
They literally like one of my friends was like, did you try banging your head against the door?
Just like being funny about it. Like at this point, we just need to laugh about this. Like, you know, I don't want people to feel sorry, but yeah, so I was a pretty good one.
Damn, orically banging your head against the wall. Yes, literally. Actually, this is pretty crazy. So this friend of mine back in Vermont, apparently you have these crystals in your ears.
When she told me this, I was like, there's no fucking way. He was having really rough sex with her boyfriend and banged her head against the headboard on the bed and it knocked the crystals out out of whack.
And she thought she had a really bad concussion and they went to the hospital and they said, no, we need to rebalance the crystals in your ears. You don't have a concussion. Don't worry. It'll be okay.
How did you do this? Was it a car accident? And she told him the truth and they're like, right on.
Oh, my gosh. Wow. That is an insane story. What did not hear that. But I do know about the crystals and that was one thing that kind of helped at times.
Oh, really? Yeah. These doctors that anti would refer me to I don't even know what they are. They're not audiologists and anti they were like some neuro whatever neuro doctors like more in the brain.
And they would have me laid down on this table and like to all kind of like weird movements sides upside down like upside down crooked.
Put me in all these crazy body position with this machine. And sometimes like it did help a little I would come out of the session a bit less like having feeling like the earth wasn't moving as much, you know, so it did help.
But it wasn't a quick fix. It was never like Johnny down. It time was needed. It's like I needed hours of my time to to let it settle down again.
And then it goes away. Then I just I just have to it's kind of a ticking time bomb. Maybe once in a while just happens. And like you said, with your like egg situation for me, I figured I needed to be.
I need to have good night of good night of rest. Lots of stay really night like good hydrated stay healthy. You know, it's just overall have a good physical body.
And it made me have these episodes less frequently so far. That's what I got. I don't know specifically if there's one thing I eat more of or not.
But in general sense, if I was healthy, the healthier was the better energy as I was the less likely I was going to have this kind of stuff.
Do you kind of tracks with my experience to where it felt like if inflammation was high in my body because of lack of sleep stress and the egg thing.
And the egg was amazing. If I'd have some mayonnaise that would do it. That would kick it off. Yeah. And I'm not eating mayonnaise by the gallon. In fact, I hate mayonnaise.
You call it a holy I'm totally down. But if it's made, I know you're American if you don't like mayonnaise.
But if you call it a holy and there's mayonnaise in Europe is better all over that shit. And it's, you know, and I that could be totally a wrong belief system on my part but it seemed like if my body was stressed and inflammation levels were high.
You know, this was the, the really sensitive instrument that would pick up on it and be like, Hey dude, you need to get healthy and get your life in order or we're going to be really pissed and make it hard for you to hear and you're going to feel lightheaded and not really busy but just like a little like
a little busy. Yep. Yep. And hard to concentrate. It is 100%. I mean, during those times you couldn't, you know, even watching a movie was not possible. Like I was just like laying down and just wait for it to pass. Super boring.
The first few times it happened, I thought like my life was going to end. You know, it's like, Oh my God, like am I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life but you know, in a sense it was never going to stop but no I just figured that this episodes and you know, the smaller ones last for a couple hours but the bigger one is one or two days but it's just nice to know that it's not forever.
You know, it's just kind of, I can't function. So to answer the initial question is most of the time when I'm skiing, I don't have like balance issues. I'm feeling pretty good on my feet, which you know, explain why I was comfortable enough with the idea of doing big tricks.
Well, so what about if you're headed into the back country? You know, how do you approach that possibility in your mind of, Oh shit, there are some things beyond my control. What if we've snowmobiled in 45 minutes an hour, and we're on a back country gap jump.
Yep.
And what if I start to get vertigo or how do you handle that?
I really have a team of trusted people around me. And all of these guys know me super well. And I trust them with my life literally. I mean, we've done some of the dumbest stuff in the world but we always were able to, we were always able to get out of any situations properly and do a good job with that.
So I'm pretty picky with who I go out in the back country and I'm sure the guys you could probably relate to that point, right? I just don't want to have to deal with ambicels or people that think they're bigger than nature. I don't do that stuff.
And I literally have refused to go in a back country with people just by judging them within the first five minutes of my encounter with them. Really? Because I just don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with people that have too big of an ego or just, you know, don't think critically in stressful moments.
I can tell by the first like five minutes of conversation of who I'm going to deal with, especially the morning of an exciting day when there's a lot of powder and everyone is excited. I'm like, oh man, I'm not going with you. I'm not.
Wow.
Some of the things that you do to sniff out the people that don't feel right, that don't resonate with you because I'm just thinking like oftentimes you're going to be on film shoots or photo shoots and like working maybe with a film crew that you don't know and doing life or death stuff.
And like, that's probably a lot of pressure, financial pressure. Like, how do you figure that stuff out?
I think at the end of the day, like, regardless of the shoot or whatever you do in with brands, I think most people would have my back if I tell them I'm not comfortable with this because this is, like you said, the life of that situation.
I don't want to have to deal with people that like are having crazy ego that would put us in this type situation and if we are in a type situation like that, I would like them to be able to be collected and think critically and be able to help each other, you know, not freak out and lose their mind.
It does happen quite often, but it has happened where I was like, I'm not doing that. And for that matter, I have been denied to go with my best friend once in the back country because I and I'm glad he did that.
One day I showed we wanted to go on a sled ride with with Gepa actually.
We are like both of us were obsessed. We started studying together. We go studying all the time any minute we can we go together.
And that one morning I, okay, so I came in. I didn't have batteries in my beacon. He had some extra batteries. So that's fine. It's like, okay, you have your batteries here. Go like I'll I give you extra batteries. Cool. Thanks.
Well, first of all, I showed up late. I showed up late to the site. So that's very not Swiss. Very not.
That's very true. I am known for being a little bit late, but usually when I care about something, I'm not I'm not late. I will show up one time. But this time I showed up late. It was not cool. It was not very stoked.
And it was a beautiful day. We were all like very excited about this. So he was not pumping out. Second, I didn't have battery in my beacon. That was not cool either. I came in unprepared.
So he gave me some extra batteries to make sure it works. And then third and last, I forgot my fucking snowbill helmet. And that was just like, the same that tipped him off. He's like Robin, you're not like you're not collected today.
I don't like the situation. I'm not going studying with you. Sorry, you have to go home. And I, I, I, I understood him. I didn't fight it because I've done this to people before. I was like, you know what dude, you're right.
Last night I came in late. I didn't have batteries. I forgot my helmet. Even if I go with my ski helmet, whatever, like you run into a tree with the sled and the way we sled, it's just not going to work. It's going to be way too narrowly. You know, you can be disfigured.
It's pretty bad. So he was like, we're not doing this. Like you go home. I'm going to go with the other guys you go home. And I, I appreciate him for telling me that. And I would, you know, I do the same. I do the same.
That's a, that's a really good like lesson to be on the receiving end of at least once I think to kind of have a moment of like, oh, I'm the problem today.
Yeah.
Definitely kind of like a walk of shame, right? I loaded my truck and I'm like, God damn it. Like I'm such an idiot, you know,
it makes a lot of sense though, because if, you know, we've got kind of three critical errors, you know, they say like to crash a 747 you need not one mistake, but you need like seven mistakes because the systems are so redundant.
And if you keep pushing past errors, it's called the error cascade, like a waterfall of errors. And it sounds like your friends like, Hey, I can see you're not your normal self.
You know, usually you're on it with all these things. You're probably going to continue this error cascade this waterfall of, you know, you're distracted or tired or something's going on.
That makes sense. That'd be an interesting checklist.
I like it. I like it. And I respect the heck out of this because it just like you said, it kind of dictates the person you're about to go out on that day.
Right.
And Nick didn't want to have to deal with that. It's like, I'm not dealing with you, you know, getting like making a wrong turn or making a mistake. This like, you know, something like this and you you seem off today.
So we're not doing this.
Yeah, well, and it sets the tone, you know, like, anytime you're going out in the back country, it's, it's inherently dangerous. And you want to make sure that you're like you, like, I am on point for you guys.
And I want to know that you guys are on point for me. And it's just like, I don't know, like in some ways that is 100% the most respectable thing you could do is just be like, Hey man, what not today?
What's this?
You know, but not today.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly how it was.
Yeah, I wonder if there's kind of a instead of go.
No go. I wonder if there's kind of a middle ground to of saying, Hey, I'm off today. I didn't sleep at all last night because of the time change and the altitude. And I'm like, Okay, plan A is gone.
Let's go. Let's stay out of avalanche terrain. Let's keep the risk super low. We'll ski really mellow stuff or snowboard really mellow stuff. And we'll just have a fun day in nature.
But we're not going into serious terrain, consequential terrain, because we're in a depleted state. We're really worn down.
So I wonder like, I don't know, were you guys going to ski and snowmobile or just snowmobile?
Yeah, that's a whole can of warm and I'm stoked. We're talking about this.
Basically, I've always been drawn to like backcountry skiing a little bit, even though I was like competing and like being full like full time park skier. I liked it when it was powder. I was pretty stoked on it. I enjoyed it.
I mean, I grew up skiing the Alps, right? It's kind of a normal trade to do. We would go like chase some lines and have some fun with that.
The one day what thing changed a little bit is I remember I moved to Utah full time and I was always kind of jealous to see, and I was jealous of strong word, but generally felt that I was jealous to know that some American or Canadian kids like 16, 18 years old driving massive pickup truck with their really nice like steep snow snowmobiles in the back, right?
And I'm like, wow, why can't we have that in Europe? Like we can't have trucks. We can't have sleds. We can't have all these like big things and cool stuff, cool stories. Not that I'm a materialist person, but it did look super fun.
Like I apologize, but it looked really cool, you know?
No apology necessary.
Exactly. So I was like, you know what? Like the first chance I get, I would love to try it. And Geper bought two sleds, I think eight years ago, and he just told me like, you want to come? I'm like, say less. Like I'm there, you know?
Say less?
Yes, like I'm coming. Like we're going sledding. And I had no idea what to expect because I don't know what I've never been on a snowmobile before. I've been like towed by some, but it's like those, you know, those big, wide heavy ones that she's curious about, not the actual ones, right?
So it was a super deep day. And we were like, even, even the trails were like, probably like, at least chest deep. It was unbelievable. I knew the second I was on the sled in the deep snow that all my money was going to be gone the next day, because I was going to buy a sled.
But that's how much I loved it. I literally like, we did the first like 30 seconds in it, the next stop turns around like, what'd you say? I'm like, I'm going to be broke. Like that's literally what happened the next day.
I got a, I had a sponsor that gave wire me a check for the season. And all of that went straight into a snowmobile. I literally remember that like I got the check drove to the bank, cash it all out.
And like gave it to a guy for the snowmobile. And I'm like, no shame. I don't care. Like I don't care. I'm going to be rice and beans. I'm buying this super expensive machine. You know, it was so fun. I was so glad I did it.
But to answer your question. Now, I only go back country and free ride skiing. If we have a very specific plans for a project or film or something like that, I'm not going to do it just to do it.
And it sounds lame. It's not, it's just, it's so much effort to get those shots or do these projects that I just cannot imagine doing it for nothing. I know you're supposed to say I ski for passion. I'm saying I still do.
But for those days, I would rather be snowmobiling, you know, so I just leave the skis in the truck and I go full blown sledder.
Okay. So I am, I am a sled neck at this point. I really am. I love it. What is a deep snow day? We don't have a project. I'm sledding. Like I, my skis, I know where to be found. I wear the onesies from my sponsors.
Like I got company that back me for my snowmobile stuff and it's really cool. I really enjoy it.
Who's the, who's the company that's backing you for your snowmobile toys?
So I have a Scott sport have been my sponsors. My first actual real sponsors since I was 16. And they've always had snowmobile equipment and they always were in the snowmobile world.
And so when they found out I was snowmobiling and most importantly, I was starting to get better at it. They literally put me on their team. So I, it's just really cool. I was like, how do you like
I like the way you, you've said that when they found out I was a snowmobiler, like you were coming out of the closet as a snowmobile.
Kind of.
So like this.
So she'll be beating beat up as a snowmobile. Oh my God.
Honestly, like it's really was like that because it's Europe. This is, this is, it's not a stigma. It's unfortunately it's, it's not, it's fun.
It's you can only use a snowmobile for work. Like if you have a hut in the mountains and you need to bring food and supplies in, it's not like the U.S. which is hard for people to imagine. Yeah.
Exactly. And as much as Scott sport wasn't just snowmobile and it's only in very specific markets that they were doing this.
But in a grass chemist things as a European born and raised and fully knowing the environment impact and everything. It was a difficult thing to approach.
And to kind of justify a hobby like this.
I'm like, wow, like how I'm all for snow. I'm all for the environment.
But at the same time, I really love snowmobiling and it's, it's, it's a crappy situation to be in because I don't know. I don't really have anything to say about this.
There was a whole movie that this girl did. I think it's called a hypocrite and she was talking about this. You guys watch this.
No, no, you have to watch it. It was it was literally sponsored by the pal foundation. What is it called again?
Yeah, protect our winter. Yeah, protect that winter. Exactly. And they sponsored that movie and it's this girl like this free rider. She's on Scott too, by the way.
She she was literally saying like, Hey, like I'm a post gear, but I also do Helis King and I love snowmobiling.
But I'm also funny environment. Right.
I don't fully agree with her message. You know, I was like, I don't feel like I'm in the right place to be able to tell people what they should be doing about the environment because I freaking I fly planes.
I ride snowmobiles. I love dirt bikes. I ride motorcycles. Like I do everything that has a piston. Right.
I really love machines. And I've been a fan of this and it's part of what I do and what I am.
Oh, I feel like I'm the last person that should be able to say, Hey, man, like protect the environment. You know, so it's a very sensitive topic.
I don't know how to approach it. I don't have any answers to this really. But you know, sledding has definitely been a big part of my life now.
I've had angry people pull up to me and go, you know, you smell like you do it. You do it. I say funny environment. I have nothing for them.
I don't know what that I don't really have a real proper asset to them.
I mean, well, can it help you feel a little better, be no like go ahead.
When you think about, you know, I would say Dave and I, we live in a liberal progressive ski town. And, you know, a lot of people don't think twice about flying all the way to Europe or Japan to go on a ski trip.
But they're like, Oh, snowmobile. Oh, that's horrible for the environment. And you're like, it gets 20 miles to the gallon. And if Dave and I are going to use it to go skiing, we might only snowmobile 10 miles.
Yeah, I mean, it's loud. And the newer ones aren't that smelly. But you know, it's not super clean. It'd be great to have electric snowmobiles, right? And electric dirt bikes are quiet.
I've seen some electric dirt bikes and I was like, Oh, Oh, now this is the first time I'm actually interested in dirt biking because there you go out because I hate that the way my ears are very sensitive.
But, you know, I think we need to look realistically at what burns carbon, like if you're driving three hours to go to veil from Denver, and you're going to go to veil pass and go ski touring and you're screaming at the snowmobiles for not being environmentally friendly and you're like, I don't know, dude,
look at the carbon you burned today versus snowmobile. I think you're probably worse off as the elitist tree hugger wearing wool and your tell mark skis and leather boots.
I appreciate that. I mean, this is a pretty good insight. I would argue that you're not wrong. But I definitely don't ever feel I'm in the right shoe to be able to dictate people what they should be doing, right, for the environment.
Because I'm not a very good example. It's just I can't be taken seriously. Like imagine I do a video I'm standing on my two stroke turbo like 850 sled, like all murdered out go tell like, Hey, we need to protect our winter like that's just too narrowly like I can't do that, you know,
That would be a really funny video though. If you want to do that video, okay, do that when I come through.
We could do it. I mean, you get some views on that dude. That'd be funny.
Views will go down. I'm not sure if the level got down.
I think we're going to get a lot of hate mail from ear from the four listeners of the show.
And people we've offended on both sides of the snowmobile skier debate. Please direct Dave, not me.
Yes, no, we definitely need to I think it's important that we speak about these things one way or another right.
And that's what this lady was doing in a movie. The hypocrites you would try to explain that at the end of the day.
If we are all pointing fingers at each other at all time and the outdoor industry that's such a it's like her argument was pretty interesting.
She was saying like, imagine if she's not pro NRA at all, but she was saying the NRA is one group of a few million people.
I think like three or four million people and they all are like together in what they believe in and they're able to really like voice and change policies strongly.
She said we at the outdoor industry should be doing the same instead of pointing fingers at each other all the time.
We should just unite together because she was making an argument that snow billers also want the nature to be somewhat protected to right for their actual hobbies.
So we can unite and find compromise and solution together instead of pointing fingers at each other.
So I thought that was a pretty one of the good argument that she had.
But I don't have much more other thing to say that I really love pulling wheelies and doing tricks must let so.
Well, can I ask you one other thing? So I'm definitely going to check this out. I actually saw this because it is cool and it's something I think that the outdoor industry like like how power specially is like kind of the first people to do it well.
And they're like, hey, we got a lobby. We got to do all stuff.
But I think everyone kind of recognizes that like, I mean, if you live in the US, like there's not a single part of your life that is not somehow touched by fossil fuels. Like it's just the reality.
Yeah. So we can't be too hard on ourselves. I don't think.
But I did want to Jeff, I don't know if you caught what Beano said like a couple minutes ago. He says he flies planes.
So be knows working on getting pilot license.
Oh, shit, you burn a lot of dinosaurs.
Actually planes are fairly planes like prop planes are okay. They're like not that bad.
Like relatively low power. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
It's like a gallon a second right as you're.
I don't have that kind of money man. I couldn't fly jets.
Oh, but planes really came from a passion. My grandpa from the Netherlands. He was a fighter pilot and he fought the Germans and the Japanese.
He was based in Indonesia.
Like this super extremely badass guy. And my whole YouTube was telling me all about his stories as a fighter pilot and I was just obsessed with them.
I just couldn't, you know, that was like skiing was a big thing in my life, but aviation was always like this.
The other big thing, right? I was always like, this is the coolest thing someone can do.
Right.
I always looked at them as like heroes straight up like fighter pilots are absolute heroes. These guys are wicked smart.
They train their whole life for something that's so specific.
They're so niche and so special.
And they are heroes, right? When you like wash your blue angels do their thing is unbelievable what they can do.
It's like it feels like they're aliens.
And that's how I perceive them. And I wish I was able to do that because of my ears. I was not ever allowing myself to sort that I would ever be able to do something like that.
So it was kind of a fantasy really for me to be thinking about flying planes one day. I was like, there's no way. There's no way I will never be able to do that.
But I can admire it. I can admire it. And I always did.
Until one day I took a test secretly. I didn't tell anyone about that.
It was three years ago. I was like, dude, I need to get it off my chest. I need to know. I need to officially know if I'm allowed or not allowed to do it.
And it came out of time when I had received the newest thing that I'm wearing right now.
But I was super, super good. I never heard this well in my life before. And I was like, okay, let me see what the actual official statement would be.
Is Robin allowed to fly planes? Yes or no?
So I went to the specialist. It's like a doctor in aviation in Salt Lake. Didn't tell anyone about this because I just was like, you know, I didn't want to tell my family or anything.
I was like, I need to do it for myself. And at the end of the test, sure enough, he was like, yeah, man, I don't see why not.
And I was like, what? I was prepared for them to say no way. No way you can ever fly a plane. But he's like, nope, you actually can.
And it's because you're able to fully understand me what your new hangings is. And that's what matters.
Like if the communication goes through and he had me tested, he was throwing a bunch of words at me, how to be turning around.
He had the audiology test, like what I hear with my hangings without it, the sound frequency I'm capable of hearing versus what the planes have for certain types of frequencies.
So they have like, they all have their numbers checked out. And I said, well, for sure cannot fly without hanging it. That would be extremely illegal and dangerous.
But if you have your hangings, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to fly.
So yeah, here you go. Like they gave me the permit to be able to start flying. And I was completely in disbelief.
And the time was really good because it was in an awkward phase in my life where I had retired competitively.
I was still skiing, but I had a lot more time on my hand. And I was kind of going through a little bit of identity crisis.
I didn't know what I wanted for myself and what was coming next. Right. I'm sure you guys can relate to that a lot.
For sure. And I just was like, perfect. I found something that I can chase for myself and there's nothing more addictive than to get better at something you love every time you go.
Right. It's super fulfilling. So aviation is now part of what I'm doing now. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I definitely want to earn my private and my instrument license to be able to fly whenever I please.
And the ultimate dream would be able to have my own little plane to be able to check out some spots in the mountains for my next like projects and stuff.
Wow. Like a little bush plane. Put the skis on it. That would be so sick.
Like an engine order, something like that. Like they use to land on the glaciers in Denali.
You put like those little skis on the wheels. Yeah. You can do it would be insane. That's a little bit far away dream. I still need to work on like actually getting a license, but it's feasible.
And I I've looked at the numbers. I mean, it's more feasible than people think. A lot of people think aviation means you have to be a true in there, but not really. It's just just a little bit.
Yeah. Just milling it. No, but anyone could be that these days.
Right. If you wake up at 1.17 a.m. do five marathons every day, like these influences say.
Totally. Drink and and and you know how extreme are you going with your snowmobiling? It sounds like this is your passion. Like this is the thing that gives you so much pleasure.
Like you're doing a lot of high marking and really steep slopes or are you mostly playing in the powder and technical riding through the forest jumps? Like what kind of stuff?
Technical writing. I'm definitely all about technical deep snow days. You will not see me on a sled if the conditions are not like remotely fun. I don't think it's that fun. I'm sure. Have you guys know what it's like rock hard?
Yeah, it's horrible. It sucks. Yeah.
It's like the literal it's like, yeah, like everything hurts. Yeah, it's exhausting anyway. Yeah. And then like, you're like, wow, I didn't even have like that much fun. I'm just like every part of me hurts.
Literally, that's what it is. So you always can find spots like that are in a shade and a right face. They say, but sometimes like three hours of absolute pain just to be able to have five minutes of fun.
And I'm like, okay, like that's when I'm like, not worse than anymore. But if the conditions are right, you know, it's just like what a free rider would do. They would look at the conditions like, oh my God, tomorrow is like an amazing day.
It's like I'm on my sled. I'm going sledding. We're going to go chase some lines. We're going to do specific tree lines. We're going to be doing tricks. I'm starting to jump a little bit.
I'm jumping on the sleds a little terrifying because I don't like the idea that my sled could go over me. You know, yeah, yeah, especially yeah, and I think there hasn't been enough accident for people to fully realize that it is it can kill you.
It can paralyze you. It can really do a lot of damage. It's worse than moto really like moto.
Yeah, motor is super dangerous for sure. But snowmobiling man, like you have you don't have 200 pounds. You have 450 pounds, right?
Yeah. And you're in a pool.
Yeah.
Like literally like you can get trapped under your sled like in suffocate. Like it doesn't even have to like kill you.
Literally, I mean that's what happened. It can't block right. So it's and it can block like when it's amazing pioneers and athletes, this guy that like knows everything about motorsport and he suffocated like he was pinned down under the snow.
So wow.
And it's two minutes, two minutes for two minutes. His friend did a see him. They were looking for him and he was pinned down on the snow. Unbelievable.
So I'm not a big fan of going out with like newsletters or people that are not like fully aware or they they they're ego at too high.
You know, you can sense it before you're about to go on a big day and you don't know this person well. You see it. They're like looking out around and they're like, oh, like this guy how like a nice sled and nice equipment and like it could be big.
They have to prove myself. I hate that attitude. Like this is going to lead to so much problems. Like it's unbelievable.
They're the first one as I put trees. Yeah, go ahead.
Like Dave and I are novice letters like I've had a snowbill for a very long time, but it's a two-seater skidoo. It's like a Cadillac. This is what we take to go skiing and it does not want to turn in the snow.
So like if we showed up and you were like, oh, these guys are a big red flag.
What would we look like? You know, would it be like all new gear that's super expensive or like, you know, what would be the stereotype of this person is a walking red flag for a human factor trap on a on a deep day where stability is maybe not so good and we're going to have to really stay disciplined and stay in low angle
terrain and have fun there instead of high marking today. And you know, something to be like, I don't want to ride with this person.
I mean, you guys would definitely not be a red flag on a percent because age, you're a guide, you know, so they're the worst on their day off or guides. They're the worst.
You got to look out for the guides, dude.
Okay, thanks for the one. Thanks for the one. But I just think it might sound too crazy with judgmental, but there's definitely like a couple stereotypes where they're most likely would fall into the category of being that that's not a good idea to go with them is the guy that's roll up with
a brand new Denali and like a massive trailer with all the most expensive toys you could possibly imagine and they don't have once led to have five replica of them with all murdered out to have like half a million dollars of material.
They get out and have a beer belly. Right. And I'm like, what like, you know what I mean? It's just you and then they kick they have this like, they're excited, which is almost no man's freakin amazing so much fun.
It's so much fun. I understand that. But then all of a sudden I think they they have their competitive in some ways, but he that has this type of money and material possession are not competitive.
They had to be competitive in the mindset, right? Because you don't become a certain way like with money if you're not competitive by the slightest.
So all of a sudden they're surrounded by maybe some younger guys that are pretty good at studying and then like there's no tricks and I feel that there's an ego issue.
And I I'm afraid of them because they they will put themselves in really dangerous situations just to prove a point that they're worthy of being with with people that have been professionals or good at their sport.
And that's kind of that scares me. That scares me so much. I don't want to be around that. It's and the whole it drives a whole group dynamic poorly to everyone's trying to show off.
It doesn't work. I think that's not a good, not a good environment. I'm more of a we're all on the same level for all at the same level.
Doesn't matter if you won the X game or if you first time, everyone is the same level. Nature is stronger than us. Period.
We just go with a very like cold head into this. You know, and then we work ourselves up and hype ourselves up in the right environment.
If someone wants to do a trick, you have to have like another eye of parable on you. Like, yeah, another eye of sorry, what am I trying to say?
I boss. Yeah. Sorry, my English is struggling.
That's right. You speak Dutch and French and probably German as well.
You got a lot of languages floating around your head. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry.
But yeah, so there's certain things I should want to set up to be feeling right to be able to take those risks really.
How is it for you as a guy, Jeff?
Yeah, like the bullshit meter has to be finely attuned to like, because people say, Hey, you know, the first day out, we want to go really big and ski these really big lines.
And I'm like, Well, we've never skied together. So I need to see your abilities and see how we communicate how you follow instructions.
And then we can ramp it up over a couple days if conditions are, you know, suitable for riding steeps.
But I've got a question for you because I'd never heard this before.
Going back, I don't know, maybe a half hour, you said there have been times when someone shows up and immediately.
I'm going to not quite get the words exactly right, but you sense this isn't going to work.
And you say, Hey, I'm out. And I'm really surprised at that because I haven't seen that before.
Yeah, and I will hear maybe that maybe this is a stretch, but do you think maybe that's from your childhood experiences as well?
Yeah, for sure.
So the one thing a lot of people don't know is when you're a deaf or hard of hearing for that matter, you have to rely on lip reading and facial expressions.
And that's, that's kind of a, I call this a superpower, but it really isn't. It's just like a way to compensate a problem.
Like it's a blind person all of a sudden is much more, their sense of smell or touching and everything becomes way more aware of this.
And they're much better than someone that does see something.
So for a hard of hearing person, they use their eyes a lot more than a regular person because that's what we have to rely on.
And before hearing a technology got as good as they did, they do now.
That's all I had. That's the only tool, like reliable tool that I had.
So I was able to follow conversations without even hearing an actual word properly that came out of this because I was lip reading or I was reading facial expression.
Body language.
Body language. Exactly.
So I would just come into play.
It sounds horrible, but I definitely do read people all the time.
And it's a tool.
It's kind of, I use this as a tool for anything really.
And I don't, you know, I'm not a mean person or whatever, but if I don't like you within the first five minutes, I'm not going to be spending much time with you after that.
Right.
Because I try to stay away from from like people that might harm me or cause problems in my surrounding.
So I just know pretty quickly who I'm dealing with.
I make you, you, you, you're prone to mistakes.
Of course, like you, it's never, it's never perfect.
How do you say like a perfect tool, but it has been pretty beneficial.
And it, it most of the time it was pretty spot on.
So I trust it.
I trust it.
It's kind of like my instinct and I just trust that.
And I'm sure you, you, you guys can probably notice it as well.
Like there's certain body language people and everything.
And it, you know, you would have to be pretty blind not to see it at times, but there has been other times where my friends were like, to be not like, why, why are you like not friend with this guy?
Or like, why don't you want to like ski with him or do something with him?
I'm like, I, the vibe is way off.
Like I don't like what I saw and I'm out, you know, and I, I'm quite frank with that.
It's, I don't want to waste time with people who I believe that might harm me, you know, well, you know, I do.
That's a great life.
That's like, more people should be like that in general.
Like why waste time with people that aren't going to like elevate you anyway.
Like, yeah.
Yeah, I'm sure a couple career choices for you, like working with like the CIA or the FBI to be like, they're lying.
I'm not sure how, but I've spent a lifetime reading people's physical body cues.
Don't trust this person or like in business when someone's closing a like a larger deal.
Yeah.
And they're like, don't trust this person.
She's lying to you.
Yeah.
It's wrong.
It feels bad.
So you, you know, I love what you're saying.
And I've actually met a couple of her family deaf people that have jobs like this.
Really?
I'm not kidding.
Yeah.
One, one person, one person.
So one person was working with the secret agent for the UK and she was explaining.
She's like a 45 year old mom and she was telling me about her job a little bit.
She couldn't obviously, there was a lot of things she was not allowed to say, but she was saying like her job was to read people's physical body cues.
Her job was to read people and let, you know, the government of the UK know about their intention and whatever.
It's amazing.
And this other lady also from the UK, her job was to lip read the, the, the king's family and the queen at the time too.
And she's lip reading them based on like outside videos and their behavior, what the intentions are going to be and stuff like that.
That's her full time job.
She works like for this major newspaper.
It's not like a felony thing.
It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold up.
Wait, am I following this right?
Like she works.
So it's like when there's video of pop, like paparazzi get of like the royal family, like across a lawn or something like that.
Like she is the one who's hired to decode what they're saying by lip reading.
Literally, literally.
What?
And she's profoundly deaf.
So it's like super cool that she was able to use a skill she's learned from her disability and became her life now.
It's like her mission and became a skill that pay her bills.
And I think it's amazing.
It's really cool.
Yeah.
Wow.
What if you could do that with the snow?
Hold on guys.
This slope.
No, no.
Snow is talking to me.
I'm reading the snow.
I was I whisper the guys and what you guys go through the program is you've learned so much.
I would never be able to allow myself to say I know the same thing as you guys do.
And I try not to have that approach because I think nature is something that's beyond my comprehension.
So I don't, I don't want to get cocky with it.
I just don't want to even try, you know, I will pay attention to details.
But even with those details, I'm like, I don't know.
I'm going to ask all the people around me all the time.
I just want to make sure I don't make any stupid decisions.
It's just not worth it.
It bumps me out when I see people lose their lives over this.
It's just gnarly.
Damn.
You know, you're, you're, it's so fun talking to you, man.
Thank you.
I mean, you're a rad person to just cut it up with for sure.
I appreciate that.
Great on the podcast to get so many different people's perspectives and trying to get more away from just like avalanche experts and,
and find out about how they do dangerous things the safest way possible.
And, you know, what we can share with people and lessons learned in your perspective is really unique.
And I'm really psyched.
We got to hear it.
Thanks.
Totally.
Yeah.
No.
Bottom line is my family, they educated me.
They did such a good job with like, you know, becoming a person I am today.
But when I look back at it, I've taken a route that's so completely different than any of my other family members.
And that's really thanks to my hair.
Literally, like because of bullying, I found skateboarding and skateboarding is an accepting community.
I was six years old and when I was exposed to it, nobody cares.
What color your skin is, what disabilities you have.
Skateboarding is cool for everyone.
And then that, that led to park skiing.
I love the snow and I realized snow parks is the same as skate parks, but it added the element of snow.
And then the next thing, you know, it's just snowballed into I landed in Utah.
I love sledding skiing all of these things.
I have like my entire existence has been really a snowball effect from my hearing and I'm just thankful for it.
Wow.
I've got one more question.
I feel like that was like the mic drop.
Like that was like the close of the podcast episode and yeah, exactly.
But I have a technical question.
So back when I was starting my guiding career, we didn't have radios to speak with the clients.
Dude, that's gnarly.
That's so my modeling.
And so we would wave our polls like making X for stock and go over there, go over there.
And we're skiing with crevasses and bird shrines.
So it's like, you know, if we don't all have radios, I'm not going.
That's gnarly.
So I'm wondering how is it for you with communication with your team and are there ways that maybe you've, you know, you kind of have some superhero powers that you've learned to compensate.
For lack of hearing.
So I'm wondering like, you know, you know, there's a great example like crested but there's this amazing YouTube clip of these two guys out skiing.
And then all of a sudden you hear on the radio from the guy's GoPro camera, turn right, turn right, avalanche, avalanche, turn right.
And the guy goes 45 degrees right.
He doesn't even look over his shoulder because he doesn't have time and he's going fast.
And he just barely gets off into the forest and he turns back and it's like the size of a train.
The house is right.
That radio probably saved his partner's life.
And so I'm wondering like what are some workarounds that you do or how do you make it work with communication so that you can manage risk in the mountains with your partners.
So that's a beautiful question.
The radio is at least when I was exposed to him.
I think it was like 10 years ago.
They started to be around for me or I just started to use them.
It wasn't it wasn't working really well for me.
It was pretty difficult.
I had to really like completely if I was on a snowmobile or like if I was in a loud environment, I had to complete stop whatever I was doing and like ask again, again, put the radio really close to my ear.
Like I didn't hear you.
So I had to be really careful with that and circling back a little bit to what I was saying when it comes to reading the terrain, everything.
I really want to take extra measures and I asked like extra questions and trust my surrounding for this because I do have to rely on them a lot on this.
Unfortunately, before we're about to do a line or something like that, I might be a little risky.
And like you said, I might actually not hear the radio say like turn or like they could sharp right turn or whatever.
I will generally miss this.
I can't miss this properly.
So it's really about like the preparation for me beforehand.
Ask all the question and make sure that we've covered every single details before I do anything.
So sometime I'm a bit of a pain to go out in the back of the sheet because I get a little scared, but it's for the right reason.
And I just don't want to take the risks.
You know, it is so so outside of anybody's comfort zone.
So there's that, but the good news and to finish this off is now I literally received I'm the only guy to work this thing is out of mind right now.
They're just saying they look black.
I've had the black ones for ages, but those are the absolute new ones.
They've improved connectivity to all kind of technologies and I am looking into possibly connecting them directly to the.
Yeah, the radios.
So that would be life changing for me because like I'm talking to you guys now I hear you voice directly my ear like earbuds and I'm able to really increase the volume and that would be amazing.
If I could do that when I'm skiing and have radio control like this, it would change the game for me.
Wow, that would feel significantly safer.
Yeah.
So dude, that's yeah.
Wow.
I never of course.
There's solution to every problem right.
I like to believe that I like to believe that.
Sometimes there isn't, but at least try like find compromise or something.
You know, and it's just, I don't know.
I people always ask me how, you know, they're like, oh poor Robin, poor Robin, like, you know, it's not that it's not what I'm trying.
It's not the image I want to portray.
It's not what I'm trying to go with.
It's just all about like compromising, find a solution and it's always people to have it way to fuck worse than you do, you know, way to fuck worse.
So honestly, yeah.
Comparison is the way to unhappiness, right? Because there's always going to be someone who's just like living their best vacation ever while I'm answering emails and doing spreadsheets and just like, ah, and yeah, and then there's also people who are going through some real
painful suffering, whatever it is. And all I have to do is walk outside and I'm in this beautiful mountain town and can go out for a quick ski for maybe it's just a Nordic ski for 40 minutes ski to fond and you know, they would do anything to trade places.
So yeah, you're right. You just have to be thankful what you have. I do you're so correct.
And it's hard to remind ourselves that right like I'm guilty of that all the time. It's just everyone's like, all right, dude, like it's not that bad like we got pretty good, you know,
social media that's not unless you're going to follow aspect abby and then it might help save your life. Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for having me today. It's been a pleasure to to speak to you guys I would love to to see you in person again David and Jeff I would love to meet you in person.
So, yeah, I think to meet up out in the snow. So come on down to Crested but and
I think I will or Jeff Jeff this is a crazy idea. You could leave Crested but and we could go skiing somewhere else.
Okay, crazy idea. You had me a crazy. Yeah, I mean I could press the beat. I mean I've heard I've never been there actually I'm guessing you would highly recommend it if you're living there.
It sucks. Don't tell anyone.
It's horrible. It's super gross looking. It never snowed it's windy all the time. You can't even park at the trail heads because there's so many people you got to drive forever to get to the skiing.
Sounds good. I'll see you tomorrow. Sounds good.
Oh man. Alright, thanks so much for joining us. And real quick where can people find you like what where. Oh yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Look, they can follow me on Instagram. I think this is mostly what I just put my stuff is at Robin Gillan. I do this Instagram thing I've tried. I keep trying. I don't you know like I don't I don't like lose my mind over this but I should generally post what I want to post and share my
message. Whether there's a middle view or two view I don't care. You know, but I live by my truth. And I just, you know, if I can help one person with the bullying or with their disabilities or differences that cool and it's all matters to me.
Hell yeah. And how do you spell your last name so people can find you easier.
G I L L O N as in November Gillan. My first name is like Robin and Batman. There you go.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright, thank you. Well, thanks very much. Good to see you, mate. I'll see it. I'll see it back on you.
That's it. That's the show. Thanks so much for listening, watching however you're doing your pods these days. If you like what we're doing, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or rating, sending it to your friends really does help us out.
One last thanks to our business daddy aspect, Davy for making the all aspects podcast possible. If you want to try out aspec, dev for yourself head on over to the app store and download it on iOS for free. Thanks so much for listening and watching and we'll see in the next one you