.....is a roller coaster of memories. Going through my phone’s gallery of images from this year makes my brain feel like a 1980s VHS tape rewinding at high speed. Scrolling through all of the epic days, good and bad, makes me smile and.... kinda also hurt a bit, but in the end I know I did the right thing....know I'm living my truest life. Some of the best highlights are from two incredible trips to China.
It's funny, I find myself asking how the hell a multiple college dropout and “professional” airborne bum ended up flying so much in a country that so many Americans know so little about? Well, I'm here to tell you a bit about the place.
I was in the country to promote a friend's charity - Wings for Love to support victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Yunnan province in 2014. For us, this meant traveling to Dashanbao and jumping off a giant cliff to raise awareness and financial support for said victims (crazy world we live in, isn't it?). Lucky for us, we had the pleasure to experience the true magnitude of the country side here - jumping with our Wings for Love team in a place that can only be described as nothing short of spectacular!
Giant canyon walls ring a seven thousand foot valley which feeds into the Jinsha river. For a wing suit BASE jumper, the place is Shangri-la-la-land. My teammates and I - Pat Walker, Hartman Rector, and Liz Freeman - did 10 wing suit jumps in the Yunnan region, even opening a few new ones.
Getting to share such a strange sport like wing suit BASE jumping, with a part of the world that has mostly seen aviation as just contrails high in the sky, made me a happy man. In pursuit of mythical giant Chinese walls, we walked through villages that had rarely seen (if ever) outsiders from the west. We brought smiles and perspectives to places that likely had as little knowledge about us as we did of them, in turn increasing our perspectives. This true, unique, and foreign human interaction is what separates these trips from the rest.
I look forward to continuing to explore the mountains and valleys of China and all over the rest of this beautiful planet. I will be releasing a video of my travels soon but, until then, I hope you can enjoy these memories and keep searching for your KAVU day! We.....are indeed the lucky ones!
© 2026 KAVU
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)
/1x.jpeg?auto=webp)