Sitting high on the rock wall west of wave No. 3—in his khaki shorts, trimmed goatee, and Mion sandals—James MacBeath looks like any other spectator enjoying the Rodeo semifinals at the Reno River Festival. You’d guess he’s a boater by his World Kayak T-shirt and his appropriately timed cheers when an athlete completes an obscure trick. But what his casual outward appearance hides is a business savvy that just might contain the right components for the future of whitewater kayaking. Click for story
Halfway through one of the last days in November, Rush TV camera crews were filming Todd Anderson—the 23-year-old owner of Hood River, Oregon’s Columbia Gorge Kayaking School—as he nervously peered down Middle Palguin Falls in Pucon, Chile. He had every right to be apprehensive; in minutes he planned to seal launch off the rock ledge perched above a small, tumultuous lead in to the 70-foot
waterfall.
If you are one of the 150 or so students who will attend his kayaking school this year, you probably won’t ever learn about this drop. In fact, Anderson doesn’t want you to. In the world of professional kayaking, where bragging rights and egos can make careers, the young entrepreneur has based his school’s success around being humble, kind, and welcoming for the two years he has owned it. Click for story
I wrote all of these New Products Showcases except for the Thule Ascent, Bending Branches Splash, Seaward Kayaks’ Chinook, and the NRS Wingman. Click for piece
When Chad Long refers to his father and semi-boss, he rarely uses formalities. The kayak school coordinator for Cascade Raft and Kayak on Idaho’s Payette River usually doesn’t weigh you down with his father’s given name or say “my father” when he tells you stories of how the man, Tom Long, started the company’s kayak school in 1991—ish. He simply refers to him as, “Dad.” Cascade Raft and Kayak is a family company in the oldest-fashioned sense of the term. Click for story
Matt Streib speaks with a soft and even tone, even when asking his wife to tell an employee’s children to stop the ruckus that would awaken his sleeping 10-month-old son. Streib’s canoe and kayak retail shop, Fluid Fun, is based out of his home in sleepy Bristol, Indiana—a town with two stoplights and 2,000 residents.
Fluid Fun averages 600 boat sales a year. Yes, that’s correct, 600 boats per year.
“It works out to about 550 kayaks and 50 canoes,” says Streib. Click for story
I wrote the showcases for Petzl’s Myo XP, ExOfficio’s Ambush Pant, OR’s Women’s Misto Sombrero, Big Agnes’ Yellow Wall, Smith’s Interlock Trace glasses, and NRS’ Pilot knife. Click for piece
Be it the way it stays warm in your hands, the manner in which it interacts with the water, or the dynamic shapes that wood grain makes on a paddle or oar—wood
feels more traditional. There’s the obvious factor that all of the original paddles were made out of wood. There’s also the intangible fact that wood seems to have more soul than plastic.
Bruce Bergstrom, owner of Sawyer Paddles—the main manufacturer of oars in the United States—is keenly aware of the intricacies of the tradition. Click for story
Listening to Tammy Borichevsky tell California Canoe and Kayak’s history has a lot in common with watching a well-done, feel-good movie. The main characters—owners Borichevsky and her husband Keith Miller—along with a supporting cast of retail employees and local boaters are well-developed. You cheer for them when they gamble on using computers in the early 1980s and it pays off. You are on the edge of your seat when the 1989 earthquakes in the Bay Area destroys their shop and halts the entire operation. And in the end, the story leaves you with that happy feeling when the good guys win. The fact that this retailer, with three locations in Northern California, is still chugging along after 36 years of business warms your heart.
The main difference between a feel-good movie and California Canoe and Kayak’s history is that there is no room for the creeping suspicion that your feelings have been manipulated. In California Canoe and Kayak’s case, the protagonists win for realistic reasons. Click for story
Chris Jonason greets her students warmly as they enter her Wavetrek Rescue School on this November morning in Index, Washington. A few Australian blue heelers wag their tails, bark anxiously, and sniff backpacks and purses as instructors usher people into their boss’s living room, which doubles as a classroom. The 43-year-old invites her students—here for a three-day swiftwater animal rescue course— to lounge on the L-shaped couch space
next to the wood burning stove.
Several times during Jonason’s introduction, the heelers interrupt her with a ballad of high-pitched yaps. For Jonason, however, talking over something loud is natural.
“You may notice I am naturally a very loud person,” Jonason tells the students. “This is because of 25 years of yelling in whitewater rescue situations.” Click for story
Steven Moser is not known by his birth name around Palos Verdes, his Southern California hometown. His neighbors, UPS delivery man, even bank tellers know him as the “paddle guy.”
It’s true. Moser does paddle. He has, in fact, won the U.S. waveski championship. Four times. But his pro paddling career is not the source of his nickname.
Locals call him the “paddle guy” because the chief executive of Wavemaster, a manufacturer of waveskis, is also a zealot and producer of an ancient paddlesport that has boomed in the past five years: stand-up paddleboarding. Click for story
Sitting high on the rock wall west of wave No. 3—in his khaki shorts, trimmed goatee, and Mion sandals—James MacBeath looks like any other spectator enjoying the Rodeo semifinals at the Reno River Festival. You’d guess he’s a boater by his World Kayak T-shirt and his appropriately timed cheers when an athlete completes an obscure trick. But what his casual outward appearance hides is a business savvy that just might contain the right components for the future of whitewater kayaking. Click for story
