The Best thing I ever got from Flying is Friendship

By: Jacob Glass

By KAVU

August 24^th, 2021

Paul

Life is better when shared with others. We are social creatures that revel in the opportunities to connect, laugh, and explore together. Good, reliable friendships make sunny brighter, and overcast days more bearable.

Since moving to Missoula, Montana in the fall of 2018, I have been fortunate enough to get to know some truly unique birds. A few of us have formed close bonds, sharing in the important moments of each others' lives. I am going to highlight three of these adventure buddies: Paul, Dexter, and Nick. Each of them is a paraglider pilot, and each of them brings a different perspective to free-flight and to general fun-having!

Paul Roys is our fearless leader. A Ohio boy originally, Paul made a home of Missoula nearly 20 years ago when he enrolled at the University of Montana. A boy scout in his formative years, he came to the intermountain West with a general comfort in the outdoors and much know-how. For him, every season has its opportunities: he is equally at home on a snowboard, in a canoe, or under a wing. When not outside or taking care of his seemingly 100 year old cat, Paul can be found brewing all of the beer selections at Lolo Brewery.

The Best thing I ever got from Flying is Friendship

His straight-forward, diligent approach to things has made him a very capable leader for the flying club in Missoula. His staying on top of paperwork and communicating successfully with several landholders allows us to maintain the privilege of flying in town. While many pilots across the country need to dry more than an hour to access their "local" flying site, we here benefit from having the mountains within eyesight of our backyards. A decent number of us can even bike to the trailheads to access the launches. For his hard work in keeping these sites open, Paul deserves a big thank you.

My connection to Paul began with my being a little intimidated by his reserved and wry demeanor. Not one to waste words, I did not exactly know if my chatterbox tendencies would mince well with his laconic tone. (Side note: Paul has described me as "vibrant," and has warned people when we hike up that I am more than a little talkative.) Well, we broke the ice during a paragliding trip in Colombia in 2019. Though we hadn't planned our trips to coincide, we got to know each other better during the rides to launch in the back of Colombia's favorite means of transportation: Jeep Willys. We got along pretty well, and flying together there brought us together pretty quickly.

After that trip, our friendship has only gotten stronger. Tennis matches, backyard BBQs, and the occasional riveting game of farkle have furthered our bond.There is definitely a bit of a yin & yang dichotomy at play in our connection. He is not given to embellishments, whereas I may or may not exaggerate most of the time. He is tall, whereas I am vertically still growing. He is bald, whereas I have radiant curls. Despite the differences, we seem to make it work.

Favorite Times Together:

Renting motorcycles and zipping around the the hills of the Cauca Valley in Colombia
Seeing the final Star wars film on Christmas Day
Landing at the local winery where we were each gifted a bottle of wine

Dexter

Dexter Hale's origin story begins in sunny Florida. Legend has it that he may even be the original Florida Man. Despite the agreeable climate, Dexter realized early in his youth that the mountains of Florida would not satiate his ambitions. He headed west and settled in Great Falls, Montana, where he owned and operated an outdoor gear store for almost three decades. Humble and self-effacing by nature, Dexter is not one to shout about his impressive lifetime of forays into the mountains. It is like pulling teeth to get him to admit that he has climbed to the summit of Denali several times. He gave a presentation at a local community space about some of his other escapes to the mountains of Alaska in his earlier life. Everyone came away enthralled by his photos of wild terrains and encampments on steep slopes. His stories that night were no less inspiring.

The waterways also called to his heart. He taught kayaking for years on the Missouri River, which became his playground for many seasons. In his typical unassuming style, he claimed, "That I was never anything special, but I could surf the waves a bit." I have a slight suspicion that he was more than just alright with a paddle.

In addition to his interests in mountaineering and whitewater, the nascent sport of paragliding captured his imagination and developed into a mainstay in his life. When everyone else was super-manning around the Montana skies, Dexter was launching his nine-celled Summit Magic Cloud base off of almost every hill, butte, or buffalo jump he could find. He really was one of the early adopters paragliding in the Treasure State, first taking lessons in May 1988, five years before I was born. His original flight log records his first 31 flights totalling 33 minutes of airtime... obviously, this was a man doing it for the love of the game!

Despite often strong winds on the east side of the Continental Divide and the absence of a community of fellow pilots, his passion for free-flight endured. Dexter eventually sold his portion of the gear store to his business partner and moved to Missoula with his wife, Alisa. Why Missoula? Because he wants to hike and fly as much as possible in his retirement!!

Now, Dexter is fulfilling the dreams of his retirement more so than he had envisioned! An indefatigable hiker from his decades of scrambling up mountain slopes, Dexter never turns down the opportunity to lug his kit up Mount Sentinel or Mount Jumbo if flying is possible. It is quite probable that he flies the most number of days a year out of all the pilots in town. By his own account, this new regularity of flying has increased his skills tenfold. He has improved his thermalling noticeably and now his stable on the XC days. Furthermore, this past winter he added a miniwing to his quiver, which makes for much more rewarding flying on stable days. He said that he won't be rolling it anytime soon, but I see a little twinkle asking about how exactly to do the maneuver.

Dexter adds so much to any day that we try to get in the sky. He is easy-going, positive, and open to seeing if a new site will work. He also brings to the table a mature perspective on risk-management, so his contributions to discussions about whether or not to fly are always respected. In short, he is a true role model for us all for how to find and sustain passions over the decades. I, for one, certainly hope to still be hiking and flying when I am in my 60s.

Favorite Times Together:

Nick

Sick Nick... Papa Franczyk... The Man with 10,000 Lives... How do you begin to describe the character that is Nicholas Franczyk? Some say that he was born fully aware that he would forever be too cool for school. Others claim that he has yet to meet a dragon that he couldn't wrangle. Personally, I have never seen him not be ready for a run up the mountain if we could speedfly down!

Hailing from the great state of Wisconsin, Nick moved out of the flat lands as soon as he graduated high school. Missoula became his forever home starting when he invested in a property during his freshman year at college. First obtaining a bachelor's degree in Geology, and then a Master of Fine Arts Media Arts, Nick arrived as the Chief Technology Officer by virtue of his resourcefulness and autodidact skills.

Informed by stone-cold logic (and misled by a lack of fear), this man takes on life with the belief that anything is possible and that any problem can be solved. All kidding aside, these qualities lead to an inexhaustible can-do attitude. Though sarcastic and undeniably willful to his core, Nick has a hidden heart of gold that shines through whenever he can be helpful pragmatically.

He is a true wiz when he comes to the realms of mechanics, organization, and life optimization. The derailleur of your bike is broken? Go to Nick. You want to put a weather station on a new launch site? Go to Nick. You want to talk about your feelings? Go to anyone but Nick.

Nick has been my most regular partner in crime since moving here. I have flown with him more than anyone else in the five years since I first learned to fly. He challenges me to hike faster and stay in the air longer. I think we see each other or talk by phone at least once a day. He wants to know what the weather is like and why we aren't flying.

Through our friendship, I have gotten to know his wife and kids. Aine, Jude, and Isis truly do keep Nick in check and add so much positivity to his life. They are a great family. We took a trip to Utah this past November for a week of mountain biking around hurricane. Watching the kids enjoy the undulated slick-rock was awesome!

If you can't find Nick around town in late summer, head to Burning Man and look for the Onewheel track. I am sure he will be blasting dub step from a speaker larger than his oldest child.

Favorite Times Together

Our annual trip to Chelan for helicopters & speedflying
Riding Onewheels with his to get ice cream
Rafting down the Alberton Gorge on hot summer day

In the beginning stages of getting to know someone, it can be hard to predict the level of depth that a connection will go. With each of these three awesome guys, I have been pleasantly surprised at the bonds that we have formed and the good memories that we have created together. I hope that everyone reading this grabs some good people and makes some wild machinations into reality sometime soon.