How did this trip come about?

Before I came to uni, I'd headed out to New Zealand for a month and really caught the travelling bug. At the time, I was looking to go through uni clearing since I had changed my course choice, and remember commenting to a friend that if I didn't get in this year, it wouldn't be so much of a hardship as I could go travelling instead. She pointed out that just because I was a student, it didn't mean I couldn't go travelling anyway. So it was that I headed to uni, planning to do a year long trip around the world when I finished.

It was at the University of Reading, that I discovered the canoe club's idea of taking kayaks down a river and mine differed somewhat – theirs involved more whitewater than I had thought about, but it became rather addicitive. It was through the club that I met David, who was heading out to the US to work at a summer camp soon after we got together. Taking the opportunity to meet him in Canada, I found myself at Heathrow desperately convincing the check in clerk that a kayak was a reasonable thing to take on the plane. Eventually she agreed, though she charged me enough, and so I enjoyed my first travels with a kayak.

As time goes by, those pie in the sky dreams you have, either need to become reality or they'll just float away. David wanted to see more of the world and a 12 month kayaking trip together started to take shape. It's involved lots of saving up, and quite a bit of preparation which you can read about soon, however I know when we're throgh all the check in and security checks and are on the plane to Los Angeles with our kayaks safely in the hold, then the excitement will really kick in.