It's a dreary, rainy Monday in downtown Greenville - a perfect day from Corey Volt's perspective.
The 26-year-old professional kayaker, who competed in last year's World Freestyle Kayaking Championships in Thun, Switzerland, has decided to take advantage of the surge of storm water run off to make a few training runs over the Reedy River Falls. While inexperienced paddlers should beware, Volt makes the rocky descent look effortless, even going over the falls backwards on one occasion.
After years on the road pursuing whitewater adventures - sometimes sleeping on friends' sofas or in his own car - this Utahgypsy has found love as well as a place to call home in Upstate South Carolina.
Volt began wintering locally several years ago. This year he made the move permanent, citing the area's close proximity to whitewater, affection for Greenville's downtown and the fact that one of his key sponsors, Dagger Kayaks, is located in Easley.
"Mainly," he adds, "my wife lives here."
That would be Jessica Volt - formerly Jessica Whiting - a graphic designer he met while she was working for Confluence Watersports, Dagger's parent company. The outdoorsman courted his new lady by taking her downstream, of course.
Jessica, who had an aversion to water sports and had never been in a kayak, had her heart captured, both by the paddler and, to her surprise, his sport. "The first time I went out with Corey I just had a blast,"she admits.
She, in turn, introduced him to the arts culture she adores. Their happy union was a quintessential case of yin meets yang - she's a little bit urban, he's a little bit Eskimo roll.
After marrying in the spring, the couple loaded their kayaks and headed out West. Touring and paddling rivers by day, they slept in their Subaru more than 70 nights.
It was all designed to prepare for the biennial world championships.
According to Volt, freestyle kayaking harkens back to the paddling Inuit people of Alaska, and has existed as a competitive sport only since the 1980s. Unlike its cousin - Olympic slalom kayaking - freestyle is a tiny, extreme sport still fighting for respectability.
Freestyle paddlers work exclusively in treacherous whitewater, performing tricks, such as flips and rolls, judged on their technical merit; the more difficult the trick and the better the execution, the higher the score.
Like other extreme sport specialists, Volt's dare devil streak rejects slaloming as too tame for his tastes. "I've got kind of that adrenaline junkie attitude," he says.
But just getting to the world championships presented a challenge. With Americans dominant in the sport in recent years, Volt had failed in his previous attempts to qualify for the highly competitive national team.
This time, however, he performed well at the team trials andwas one of five American men chosen to represent the country in his division.
The setting for last year's world championships was Thun, a picturesque Swiss village situated in a glacier valley surrounded by mountain peaks. Competing against 102 of the world's best male freestyle kayakers, Volt finished a respectable 35th. (He also broadcast the semi-finals and finals over the Internet to approximately 20,000 viewers.)
Thun represented the culmination of a vision born nearly aquarter-century ago. Volt first paddled a kayak as a three-year-old while on a family vacation in Moab, Utah - and was smitten. By age 14, he made a commitment to pursue the sport as his life's work.
Lacking the family resources to fund his ambition, he gleaned the fundamentals from local clubs and set out on the road tailing private academy teams, training himself at the same venues where they stopped. His inspiration was freestyle pioneers, known as "boater bums," who traveled a circuit of whitewater venues.
Volt turned professional in 2001 at age 18. With no television contracts or big endorsement deals, he and his close-knit circle of peers survive mostly on small sponsorships-and their wits. He solicited nearly $3,000 in online donations from supporters to pay for him and Jessica to travel to Thun.
Yet Volt still contends the chance to do what he loves is a fair trade for his "four-figure" income: "As I like to say, 'It's about living, not making a living.'"
The move to Greenville should be good for his business relationship with Dagger. Mark Robertson, who designs kayaks for the company, says Volt consults on and tests new products, meets with dealers and promotes the sport. "He's really a paddling ambassador," Robertson says.
Surprisingly, the relocation may also prove to benefit Volt's training. The Green River Narrows, site of a prestigious annual freestyle event, is just 45 minutes away near Hendersonville, N.C.
Robertson says the Narrow s whitewater reputation has made this area a desirable home for other professional kayakers. "The Green River is sort of a world-class river," he says.
But, ultimately, the biggest beneficiary may be Volt's marriage. While he intends to continue competing, he appears ready to trade-in the wanderer lifestyle for a more sedate domesticity with Jessica. His long-term plans include completing his education and becoming an elementaryschool teacher.
