Kayaking's summer safari: Top, a junior level paddler gets ready to put in on Tennessee's Ocoee River; playboater Luke Hopkins unwinds with a friend; competitor Ivan Hibarger repacks his wagon.

John Goodman (3)

"Paddlers have a tight network," explains Rob Lesser, one of the original Stanley organizers. "It doesn't take long for ideas to cross-pollinate." At AWA fund-raiser festivals, rodeo is almost a tradition. At last December's worlds, in New Zealand, 22 countries were represented, including Nepal and Togo.

Along with competitions and sponsored paddlers, it's hoped that man-made holes will bring freestyle to the masses. Already, manufactured whitewater parks exist in Ducktown, Tennessee; Salida, Colorado; Denver's Confluence Park; and South Bend, Indiana, and Wausau, Wisconsin, the sites of two new August rodeos also offering prize money. Each uses various combinations of concrete, wood, rubber, and fiberglass fastened to the river bottom. Not all playboaters are impressed. "They haven't yet developed sites that are quality," says Emerick. "But it's going to happen."

Emerick took up the job of video documentarian right from the start, in the pizza van. Now, with two instructional videos to his name (Play Daze and SOAR), he's been hired by Dagger and Outdoorplay.com, a kayak retailer, to chronicle this year's tour, featuring Ludden and rival paddlers Jay Kincaid and Javid Grubbs. Byrd, who is lucky to be tagging along, will star as well. The working title: Full Circle.

Ludden grew up next to the Swan River, in Bigfork, which is less than two hours from the glassy waves of the Kootenai River. At age nine his parents taught him to kayak on Idaho's Lochsa River, his favorite still. He began racing slalom by the time he was 12, attending junior nationals when he was 14. A year later he took up freestyle, made the U.S. Junior Freestyle Team, picked up his first sponsorship (from Riot, then a new kayak company in Montreal), and won a bronze medal at the 1997 Worlds, in Canada. After the Worlds in Taupo, New Zealand, last year, he used the rest of a round-the-world ticket to paddle in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Ludden, Kincaid, Grubbs, and Byrd all personify the new school. They spend hours at a single hole practicing stunts. Old-schoolers run rivers from the put-in to the take-out; they quickly find their way into wilderness that would take days to reach on foot. Critics see freestyle in much the way that backcountry skiers see resort skiing: It's too limited; it has nothing to do with self-reliance or appreciating nature. "My pet peeve: The fact that everyone I meet on the rivers these days (under age 30) is sponsored," Bob Woodward, editor of Snews, an opinionated outdoor industry newsletter, wrote last March in a letter to the American Whitewater Journal. "They can barely read water and they're 'like, sponsored by Boof Daddy, Boof Mommy and, like, Anarchist Paddle Gear.'"

"I think [our critics] are kind of jealous," counters Ludden. "The new school people make money and do what they want to do. I've just found a way to kayak more than 100 days a year."