I love airport security. It is one equalizer of all social classes. No matter the limit on your corporate gold card or number of zeros in your yearly salary, you’ve put all your valuables, your phone and pDa, in the tray and you’re standing there in your sock feet (or bare feet) feeding your shoes into the scanner and shuffling through the X-ray doorframe to the lady with the chirping wand. It’s the type of place where it is easy to strike up conversations with complete strangers who otherwise may have appeared too busy or important.
Keola Pang-Ching is a regional cargo sales manager for a national airline. He followed me through the security line-up in the Chicago airport and then flopped down beside me in business class. He was wearing the typical summer business uniform: khakis, company logo–embroidered golf shirt, Blackberry, leather shoes and black socks.
“It must be nice to do business in flip-flops,” he said before he introduced himself. “What do you do anyway?”
Keola says he spends most of his time in the air, looking down and dreaming of being on the water. “I want to buy a couple kayaks and get out on the water, veg out for a while and just let go,” he told me. “My son and I rented a double for a couple of hours when I took him on a business trip to Hawaii. I haven’t stopped dreaming about it since.”
DREAMING THE LIFE OF A PADDLER
When I tell people I’m the publisher of paddling magazines, it doesn’t matter if the person next to me is a wealthy grandma, multinational CEO, high-tech geek or an airline cargo manager. They all have dreams, and many of them dream the life of a paddler.
Kayaking is another economic class-breaking activity, one that captures imaginations and fuels a sense of adventure or escape in everyone. and the busier or more bored someone is with life and their job, the stronger their desire to escape and be on the water.
What’s your dream? Is it to work in flip-flops, live off the grid, travel the world or embark on a hairy expedition?
Dave Adler dreamed of starting his sea kayaking instruction and guiding business when studying mud to complete a master’s degree in benthic oceanography. Jon Bowermaster, now a well-recognized professional adventurer, was working as a freelance journalist interviewing talent like the Osmond Family when he had the time to dream up his first National Geographic expedition. Justine Curgenven was a working a hectic job at a TV network in the U.K. with no time left to paddle, while dream- ing of her own production company that would allow her the freedom to travel, kayak and film around the world.
Keola and I talked for the rest of the flight. I told him that I used live behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer, rolling down the highway shifting gears and speaking my dream of starting a paddling magazine into a Dictaphone. When the wheels of the plane touched down in Toronto we swapped business cards and shook hands wishing each other well.
Keola emailed me on his Blackberry just before Christmas from the Honolulu International Airport, “Scott, we just landed in Hawaii for the holidays and we’re going kayaking.” In the postscript, he told me what dreamers in leather shoes and work boots everywhere know to be true: “It feels good to be wearing my flip-flops.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
