Author Event with Rod Wellington
Tuesday, August 9, 5:30 pm
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
Rod Wellington
FLORENCE-Author, adventurer, and TEDx speaker Rod Wellington will visit FLPL to talk about his book River Angels. During the event, he will talk about his books and about his river journeys as a kayaker.
If you’re a fan of adventure and expedition stories, you’ll know that most books in this genre focus on the expedition itself—the action, the struggles, the joys, the heartbreaks, the lessons, the rewards. But what about the events that happen prior to an expedition—the planning, the organizing, the logistics, the endless research, the pleas to prospective sponsors, the correspondence between team members? Most books in the adventure travel genre spend less than a chapter explaining “what come before.” This book, however, is not like most.
River Angels takes readers behind the scenes for a candid look at the simultaneous organization of three self-propelled expeditions and introduces the world to a burgeoning network of altruistic “river angels”—riverside citizens who not only assist long-distance paddlers, but also help preserve and promote the rivers they love.
On April 2, 2013, Rod Wellington became the first Canadian (and first North American) to kayak the Missouri-Mississippi river system from source to sea, a distance of 3800 miles/6100km. The solo journey took 256 days to complete. Rod’s triumphant arrival at the Gulf of Mexico marked the completion of Stage One of his Magnificent Seven Expedition, a personal quest to descend the longest river system on each continent from source to sea using only human-powered transportation (on foot, kayak and raft). He estimates it will take 15 years to complete the project. Rod plans to write a book about each of the seven journeys.
No stranger to adventure, Rod has bicycled more than 25,000km, including continental crossings of North America and Australia. He has also logged over 13,000km of river travel, including source-to-sea descents of the Mississippi River (3700km) and the Murray River, Australia’s longest waterway (2500km).
Rod is an accomplished public speaker and author of two books – Part-Time Superheroes, Full-Time Friends and River Angels.
For more information, call 256-764-6564,ext. 28.
