Canoecopia

At the end of Saturday. Tired enough to put a pot on my head and pose for a picture.

This past weekend our sales agency took four of our brands(Sea To Summit, Jetboil, Petzl and AMK) to the largest paddlesport event in the nation, Canoecopia. Over 25,000 people attend the three day consumer event each year and some travel from around the world for it. I definitely talked to a number of Euro's this weekend about which dry sack they wanted. More than half of the people I talked to weren't even from the Madison area.

For so many the attendees this is the kickoff to their paddling season. Seeing as I don't paddle anything, this event is a bit lukewarm for me. I have fun but by the end of the weekend I'm pretty ready for it to be over. The crowds are massive and can be incredibly intense at times. For about a 6 hour period on Saturday we had well over 50 people in our 20 foot by 30 foot booth at all times.

One thing that strikes me about the paddlesport community is how positive they are. All weekend long everyone there was genuinely happy and didn't want to be anywhere else. Perfect example was Sunday Morning before the doors opened. While I was groggy and half awake, everyone in the entry way, all 1000 of them, started to clap in unison trying to get the doors open sooner. That was the last thing I was expecting.

All in all it's a great event and brings the entire community together for a weekend. It's something that every industry should have.

On that note, it looks like Katie and I may have a day or 2 of climbing this week. Her ankle was doing better until this past weekend and hopefully it can recover enough to feel OK for this week. Unfortunately I have yet to try the Projects out, but will give them a good workout tomorrow I hope.

It's sunny and 60 now. Wish I were outside...