So this video clip of an orca smashing a
kayaker (and the kayaker recovering) has been making the rounds and has lots of people a-twitter over the poor
kayaker’s fate. Of course, it’s completely fake. The video is actually from a Korean Powerade commercial. Watch it
a few times, it becomes pretty obvious it’s been doctored, but you have to admit it’s fun in a sadistic way.
Photo of the Day: (1/27/05)
Today’s photo of the day comes from Paddler
Magazine and features kayaker Chris Joosse on Celestial Falls. Completely mind-blowing this photo. What is going
through Joosse’s mind right now? Other than a lot of water, of course.
Kayaking Na Pali Coast
Freelance writer Jad Davenport is no stranger to kayaking, having
done a fair number of articles and photos on this subject and others for major publications like National
Geographic Adventure and the New York Times. One of his latest,
written for the Seattle Post Intelligencer,
focuses on kayaking a grueling trip on the rugged, undeveloped Na Pali Coast of Hawaii. It seems from Davenport’s
description that it was quite a 17-mile haul, with the guides which were leading the group he was part of warning all
of them once they were past Ke’e Beach they were fully committed to the “Mount Everest of sea kayaking”.
Greg Allen: Paraplegic Paddler
While we’re on the topics of sea kayaking and heroism, I want to post
this
article about Greg Allen, a herioc paraplegic who recently successfully canoed the 1000-mile MacKenzie River. Solo.
Quite a feat and one worthy of celebration. Read the interview
here.
Adventure Expo: Being Jon Bowermaster
I left this for next to last because it was the high point of my time at the Adventure Travel Expo here this
weekend. I met tons of adventurers and outfitters and interesting people, but then I got to meet one of my heroes. Jon
Bowermaster.
Jon Bowermaster is a modern day adventurer who has done
some of the best adventure journalism of the last 20 years. I’ve
posted about him before. His current project
Oceans 8 is an epic effort to paddle all of the earth’s
major waterways from the seat of a sea kayak. The stories and pictures he’s come back with on these trips are
mind-blowing, and every time I read something new by him (for example in this month’s Nat Geo Adventure), I get a
debilitating case of wanderlust. Of course, going to the Adventure Travel Expo this weekend didn’t help me with
that problem at all.
So how great then that I got to chat with Bowermaster for a few minutes at the Expo, to ask him about his next trip
(he’s going to Croatia) and what the Oceans 8 trip is all about. “This is the closest thing paddlers have to a seven
summits,” he said. Bowermaster also said the thing that turns him on the most about these trips are the folks he meets
along the way. “I love the people I get to meet. I love discovering new things about new places.” I nodded, in complete
agreement. ”I mean, how do you live in the driest place on earth?” he asked rhetorically about his last trip to
the altiplano.
Bowermaster had to bail to catch up with Nat Geo Adventure editor-in-chief John Rasmus, but if we’re lucky
Bowermater said he will talk to us again by phone in the future, so stay tuned.