Carol Pilon
Wingwalker
The latest episode of The WorkNotWork Show is out now. In this in-depth interview, wingwalker Carol Pilon takes us with her on the wild ride on the top wing of her Stearman, and then through the wild ride which is her life.
Sometimes life changing inspiration comes in an instant and from an unexpected source. In Carol Pilon’s case, it was the split second clip of a wingwalker she saw advertised for a local airshow in 1993. She was transformed by the experience and knew that it was something she simply had to do.
Little did Carol know that it would take seven years for her to get her first opportunity to step out of the cockpit of a Stearman biplane and climb up onto the top wing. Eventually Margi Stivers, a veteran wingwalker herself and her husband Hartley Folstad thought she had waited long enough and took her for her first wingwalk. It was a life changing moment for Carol — she knew at that precise second it was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
But the wild ride on the top wing was not the only wild ride she would encounter. For seventeen years, she has waged a day-to-day, moment-to-moment campaign to stay out there in the slipstream. After working with other teams for a time, Carol eventually concluded the only way she could control her future was to own her future. She bought her own plane and she and her bright red Stearman have been on the airshow circuit ever since. In a twist of fate, the plane Carol campaigns on the airshow circuit is the very one Margi and Hartley took her up in that first time.
You may also recognize Carol as the main characters from the 2015 Discovery Channel series Airshow, in which she was prominently featured. She talks candidly about the two years she spent working on the show and the feelings she has for the finished product. She also had a featured in Les Dieux du Ciel which ran on Historia.
Like other creative professions, the 15 minutes Carol gets to wingwalk during a typical performance is the culmination of weeks, if not months of work and involves a supporting cast of remarkable professionals in their own right. It’s also a world where the danger is very real, as opposed to cinematic, and Carol also talks poignantly about the friends she has lost, including three pilots with whom she worked directly.
You will love Carol’s story and she is a great storyteller. It is all about the tenacity, perseverance, persistence and downright stubbornness it sometimes takes to do what you were born to do. It is also about the sometimes terrible sacrifices you have to make to keep doing it.
It really is a wild ride and may just provide the inspiration you need to chase your own personal dreams.
You can find the interview with Carol Pilon on your favourite podcasting service: Apple Podcasts, Fireside, Google Play and coming soon to Castro, Overcast, and other fine podcasting services everywhere. Also, if you like this article, adding one or more claps below helps spread the good word.
