Hi Bill Newman here, I must admit I feel young again after seeing the average age of posts. I am just a youngster of 37, although I often feel much older- my body does not take the wear and tear the way it did when I was in my 20s. I started kayaking soon after learning to walk - yes my parents have a photo of me at about age 3 holding my paddle upside down in the pool with " water-wings " for a PFD (not USCG approved). I did not start sea kayaking until about 10 years ago, but after having paddled a fair bit of white water I had a good base of skills to build from. My roll is ususually pretty good although my white water friends have and extensive gallery or photos of me swimming rapids. I am glad that they get so much joy out of my occassional misfortune. My offside roll is never as good as I would like, and although I could hand roll my white water from time to time, I just now managed to hand roll my Romany 18 sea kayak this last Sunday! Patrick Maun who already introduced himself was at the pool session and will do his best to deny that he witnessed this event! I am fortunate to live right on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis MN so I have no excuses for not paddling, at least when the ice clears out like it has this week. Most of my paddling has been on the Great Lakes and especially Lake Superior, with a few trips to the Saint Lawrence, and Baja. After my housemate and I became creatively unemployed this summer we had the chance to explore all of the Great Lakes researching two guide books for Globe Pequot Press. Our guides to kayaking the Western (Superior&Michigan) and Eastern(Huron, Lake Saint Clair, Detroit River, Erie, Ontario, and the Saint Lawrence) will be out by early summer (end of shame-less promotion). I have ACA and BCU instructor certifications and hope that my job as free-lance environmental consultant will give me the flexability to do a bit of instruction and guiding for a friends company. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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