Immersion Research 2008

I realize that this may be quite the stretch, but I promise to be able to tie the two together.
On February 13th, I flew over to England to attend the first annual Canoexpo, the largest retail paddlesports trade show in the UK. The show was organized by Brookband Canoe and Kayak, an awesome retailer in the UK with 5 outlets. I was hosted by System X, our distributor in the UK and mainland Europe.
The show was really fun as it was a completely new set of faces for me as I haven’t spent any time in the UK market. UK paddlers are kind of like Northeast paddlers as it is always cold and wet when they go out. I now know why IR has thousands of union suits floating around that area. Aside from the short power outage, the show went off without a hitch.

The most exciting part of the trip was watching Andy Zimmerman and Woody Calloway of Legacy Paddlesports try to cross the road. None of us, save Danny Mongno from Werner, ever got the hang of the oter side of the road thing. We all managed to survive, but we had quite a few close calls. Damn roundabouts.
OK, the Shakespeare part. We were staying in the quaint town of Stratford-Upon-Avon in a sweet bed and breakfast with a wood fired hot tub that we never managed to get above freezing cold. The hot tub was merely a metaphor for the weather: wet and cold!