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!
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.
Can you tell us more about the project you created?
JG : The project that Supair helped me with is Au Line of the Wind. 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, that is to say the tour of France on foot to meet the inhabitants of France on the principle of sharing and exchange. I leave for 1 year on foot, hitchhiking, without money, my paraglider on the back to go around 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 to Dunkirk to go back down to the south through Belgium and the Alps.
Supair will allow me to lighten my bag considerably with its light gear (Leaf light and Radicale 3). Only 6 kilos, glider, harness, including rescue, to fly throughout this journey. I could have been even lighter in terms of gear paraglider, but don't forget that at the time of my departure I was only 100 flights away and barely 1 year of practice.
Do you have a special memory of flight to share with us?
JG : Just one? I think the hardest part is choosing, they were all unique and taught me all of them. But the flight one I'll never forget: my very first. I take off, I was just waiting for this, I couldn't wait, a slight lump in my stomach and barely 1 minute later the lump in my stomach disappeared, looking at my glider, this thing that makes me fly and the landscape that surrounds me, I remember crying with this sentence in my head "Why did it take me so many years to be here?" I had just found my element.
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
