Jason Gondonneau

Profile - Jason Gondonneau

JASON GONDONNEAU

Can you introduce yourself in a few words?

JG: My name is Jason Gondonneau ( Jaz ), I'm 25 years old. I was born in the south west of France, near Agen and its good prunes. Very young, I was apart, unable to integrate. All my schooling was nothing but suffering, so I shut myself off from video games. At 15, I left for a CAP in carpentry. CAP + BP carpentry in my pocket, I started a forging workshop in cutlery, my hands allowed me to express myself. Happy and at peace with myself, at the age of 19 I decide to bring together all the elements that have allowed me to be happy. It is inevitable, it is on the road meeting people that I feel good. Meeting, learning, feeling alive and learning again. That's what I like!

Jason Gondonneau in bivouac

When and how did you learn paraglider ?

JG: I learned at the end of my first trip (8 months on the road with my friend Nicolas). After being picked up by paragliding pilots, they explained to me that it's not that inaccessible, and that you can Take-off with all your hiking gear. It's decided I won't break my knees anymore going down all the mountains I would have climbed. After my initiation course and 5 flights, I bought my gear and flew 20 times alone in the Pyrenees. Then 80 more in the Cantal, where I do the shuttles for the school paraglider Puy Mary during 4 months.

Jason Gondonneau in STEP

Can you tell us more about the project you created?

JG: The project that Supair helped me with was Au Line du Vent. Even though I only had 80 flights at the time, Supair believed in me and my ex-girlfriend.
The idea was to finish what I had started, i.e. a tour of France on foot to meet the inhabitants of France on the principle of sharing and exchange. I left for a year on foot, hitchhiking, without money, with my paraglider on my back, to tour France. I cross the Pyrenees from East to West, along the coast to the North. Then, in Brittany, I follow the coast from West to North-East until Dunkerque and then I go back down to the South through Belgium and the Alps.
Supair will allow me to considerably lighten my Backpack with its light equipment (Leaf light and Radicale 3). Only 6 kilos, wing, harness, rescue included, to fly all along this trip. I could have been even lighter in terms of equipment paraglider, but you mustn't forget that at the time of my departure I had only 100 flights and barely 1 year of practice.

Jason Gondonneau

Do you have a special memory of flight to share with us?

JG: Just one? I think the hardest thing is to choose, they have all been unique and have all taught me. But the flight I will never forget: my very first one. I take off, I was looking forward to it, a slight lump in my stomach and barely a minute later the lump in my stomach disappeared, looking at my wing, this thing that makes me fly and the landscape around me, I remember starting to cry with this sentence in my head "Why did I take so many years to get here?" I had just found my element.

Jason Gondonneau

What are your upcoming projects (paraglider and outside paraglider) ?

JG: I have lots of them! The first one is to finish editing the film of this whole journey. Travelling the globe to meet people. An idea of leaving with two on horseback with paraglider on my back with Apolline my darling. A dream for her and another for me, with the possibility of training the horses to winch me. The project with Nicolas is to one day find a place and live there as independently as possible. To have our own place, and the possibility of hosting our own guests. Then the daily life, sculpture, drawing, creation and experiments of all kinds.

Contact:
www.au-Line-du-vent.fr
https://www.instagram.com/aufilduvent.fr/
https://www.facebook.com/Aufilduvent.fr/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo3hKyXONNwjJTKRsUcXhnw

Kinga Masztalerz in flight with WILD
Portrait - Kinga Masztalerz
Health recommendations COVID-19