Occasionally in my youth I had thought about kayaks and kayaking.  I had seen them in books or magazine articles, but they were exotic and out of the mainstream.  In the 1990s kayaks started becoming an occasional sight in my travels, but It wasn't until a friend of mine purchased one and had just started kayaking that I thought kayaking was within the realm of possibility for me.

   

I bought my first kayak in 2002, it was a Perception America.  It was a recreational kayak, made of plastic, with a wide flat bottom and all of 13 ft. long. It was fun and suited my just fine.  Then while at work, while talking to a co-worker about kayaking a person working at a neighboring cube overheard our conversation and chimed in about his adventures kayaking and invited me to kayak with him and a group of his friends.

   

He and his friends, introduced me to the concept of adventure kayaking, with sea kayaks, and going on overnight camping trips.  As time went on, these became multi-day trips on somewhat remote lakes in the "North Country".  My first trip of this kind was on lake on the New Hampshire  /  Maine border, Lake Umbagog.  Eventually, I started going on my own solo trips, to lakes I had never been to or ever thought of visiting. 

   

Shown here are some of the components of a coffee table book I am creating to show my friends what all that kayaking was about.