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.