Around America Adventure: One woman, one bike, one kayak, and 48 states

Sometimes leisure is best left to the professionals. Take 32-year-old Swede Renata Chlumska, who passed through Williston last week riding a beat up touring bike towing a beat up orange kayak. Not something you see every day. Duct tape held a few key parts of the tow hitch together. Her faded was attire obviously bleached by long hours of sun exposure.

Chlumska was in town for a brief stay at the Best Value Inn, before heading towards Seattle, Wash., where she launched this adventure 13 months ago - July 4, 2005.

That was the day she put her kayak in the water and began paddling, solo, down the western coast off Washington, Oregon and California. Her goal - circumnavigating the outer edges and waters of the lower 48 United States.

Born in the town of Malmö, Sweden to immigrant Czech parents, Chlumska quickly found her favorite things were sports. She tried everything from swimming to badminton. Trying lots of sports, she says on her Web site, “I learnt not to be afraid of trying new things and that you can find strength in knowing what you are less good at.”

She turned her love of adventure, the outdoors, and sport, into her profession eight years ago when she spent seven weeks at base camp as manager of a Swedish solo expedition up Mount Everest. That's where she met Göran Kropp, the expedition's leader. He inspired her enough to attempt the climb herself and at 25 she became the first woman in both Czechoslovakia and Sweden to summit Mount Everest. Kropp and Chlumska became engaged sometime after that.

The couple planned to move to Seattle and were in the process of doing so, when they thought up the idea of the Around America Adventure.

Then tragedy struck, and Kropp was killed in a climbing accident outside Seattle.

Despite the heart breaking loss, Renata decided to do the trip they had planned together anyway.

In San Diego, she came ashore with the kayak and bought a bike. A friend helped her design and build a custom light-weight trailer and tow arm for the kayak. The trailer and hitch both collapse to fit inside the kayak when not in use.

Averaging 60-70 miles per day, Renata biked to Brownsville, Texas. There she got back into her kayak and paddled the Gulf of Mexico, past Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, around the Florida Keys, and up the eastern seaboard all the way to Maine. Her bike was shipped on ahead to Eastport, Maine, where it waited for her.

Renata biked and kayaked around the northern edge of the eastern states, then kayaked in every one of the Great Lakes for a little bit. She said, “the wind was too strong, but I got some paddling in each lake.”

The lack of serious kayak time on the Great Lakes put her well ahead of schedule. They had estimated the trip would take 478 days to go the approximately 17,666 km or 11,045 miles distance.

“I like long expeditions. I love the physical and mental challenge, and the chance to rediscover America a bit. This is a huge country with every kind of terrain in it.”

When asked if she felt safe traveling alone, she said that she did. “There have been, of course, a few times, when it got to be a tense situation, but you just have to keep attentive to what's going on.” She gets that question a lot, she said. For the most part, she's felt very safe. She carries a global positioning system and a cell phone, and her movement is closely tracked through her Web site.

The most recent entry on her Web site is Aug. 17. In it, she mentions the challenge of the heat to her completing the plains states. It's taking a definite toll on her energy. “It makes a month seem like a long time,” she writes. Hopefully the recent cooler temperatures and rain will help.

Her gear is mostly provided by her numerous sponsors, the rest of the expenses are hers personally. The kayak weighs between 150-200 pounds, depending on how much she carries, which varies depending mostly on how much freeze dried food she's got, and is provided by Swedish kayak manufacturer Prijon. Batteries are provided by Energizer, clothing by Helly Hansen, eyewear by Adidas, tent by Hilleberg. Some of the companies that sponsor her are Swedish based, others are large global enterprises.

Chlumska is among the top 25 woman athletes in the world according to one outdoor sporting e-zine. She says she really likes the United States, where “people are so friendly.”

Once she gets back to Seattle, her plans are indefinite. She'll be doing a lot of thinking, this last month alone with her thoughts, before returning to the everyday world, about whether or not to stay in the United States.

Talking to her as she packs up the last of her gear, you realize you feel energized. You wish you were going with her, instead of to the office, and you know that planning your next year's vacation is going to be a whole different prospect than what it was fifteen minutes ago.

Cheryl Sanderhill can be reached at 572-2163 or life@willistonherald.com