Tao: What it's like when you've run it all
By Tammy Batey
My first thought after Bryon asked if I could interview professional extreme kayaker Tao Berman and I visited his website was, “Damn straight.”
I appreciate a chiseled torso, and Tao’s photos are provocative to say the least. The second thing I thought – after I stopped ogling and perused the website further – was, “Holy crap, what did I get myself into?”
I worked as a newspaper reporter for more than seven years and interviewed a celebrity or two – Charlie Daniels (what a gentleman) and Eddie Money (wore sunglasses the entire time and we were inside – draw your own conclusions).
What I remembered after interviewing Tao is that interviewing celebrities is way more difficult than interviewing Jane or Joe Smith.
You might think the opposite. After all, the information available on a famous person is much more prolific. What could be easier? The problem is exactly that overabundance of material. Tao has been interviewed dozens of times. “I’m not terribly surprised” by any question a reporter asks, he told me.
So what information can be added to the warehouse’s worth of childhood anecdotes, quotes and trivia bits already available for public consumption? Tao is a well-deserved legend in the kayaking world and his history and current glories are well known.
But I was determined to get my own childhood antidote from Tao. Everything we are as adults springs from the children we once were. Tao is no exception.
Tao Berman spent his childhood jumping off high places -- adrenaline firing his body and impulse firing his brain.
As a boy, Tao climbed trees outside his family’s rural mountain home and leapt from tree to tree. He and his friends turned the fun into a competition. The boy who leapt to the tree the farthest from the one in which he balanced was declared the winner. The prize? Bragging rights.
A few years later, when he was 12 and 13, Tao jumped off 60- and 70-foot-high bridges and executed jumps on his BMX bike.
“I’d be the guy trying to land Superman-style on my belly,” Tao says.
“My whole life there’s always been things that might not have been the most
intelligent thing to do. I had to find my own entertainment. If I wanted
something, I had to create it for myself. So I’ve applied that same
principle to kayaking. If there’s something I want to achieve, I do it.”
As an adult, the 28-year-old professional kayaker tempers his lifelong hunger for an adrenaline rush with the confidence that comes from being one of the world’s best kayakers.
He’s captured three world records – for waterfall descent (that one for plowing off a 98.4-foot-high waterfall), speed altitude descent and vertical distance descent. He’s completed more than 50 first descents around the world.
His drive? “To succeed,” he said. “I hate to lose or fail at anything.”
It takes much of Tao’s time to improve at the sport and make a living at it – a rare thing indeed that requires all the marketing skills he learned at Southern Oregon University before making kayaking his full-time occupation.
And time poses the other chief challenge with interviewing celebrities. I had less than 15 minutes with Charlie Daniels and about the same amount of time with Eddie Money before their respective publicists dragged them away.
Tao gave me more time than Mr. Devil Went Down to Georgia or Mr. Take Me Home Tonight -- 30 minutes. But still a challenging length of time to conduct an interview of substance.
When I regularly wrote profiles for newspapers, I’d caution my interviewees that the interview would take about two hours. They were always skeptical – “Two hours. Oh my life is not that interesting.” But almost without fail, the interview would last exactly two hours. And I wasn’t watching the clock.
Ever wonder how long your life story would take to tell? Yeah, now you know. It’s two hours.
Don’t take this to be a complaint. My life fills with obligations and I’m not a celebrity. So I understood Tao’s time limitations when I agreed to them. Given that Tao has acted as his own publicist for much of his career, he is incredibly well-spoken. He served up amazing quotes in the time allotted.
Take this one when I asked him whether he gets nervous before a big waterfall.
“I don’t get nervous and that’s because nervousness comes from doubt,” Tao said. “When I climb in my kayak before a big drop, I don’t doubt myself. If I did, the risks are too high. I wouldn’t do it.”
While the non-kayaking aspects of being a famous kayaker – working with sponsors on product development, public speaking and talking to the media – feed his intellect, more difficult runs challenge his body.
Achieving fame in a sport means running up against its limits.
Ironically, since he’s bombed off seriously frightening waterfalls, fame means the possibility of boredom. The higher caliber the athlete, the fewer challenges left in the sport. And that means the possibility of skilling yourself right out of the sport you love.
Add to that Tao’s belief that while unexplored rivers abound, there will not be a seriously more extreme level this sport can reach, and you have yourself a quandary.
Tao keeps doing what he’s always done. He pushes himself.
“(The risk of boredom) is one of the reasons I keep running harder and harder stuff,” he said. “If I get out on a normal Class 5 run, it’s so easy I could break a paddle and kayak with half a paddle and only roll once or twice. I have to take higher risks. Most Class 5 runs aren’t difficult.”
But before Tao became famous, he simply was a guy who loved to kayak.
No matter how many more world records he breaks. No matter how many more first descents he accumulates. And no matter how many more “Did he just do that?” reactions he arouses in those who kayak for fun and not for money, there is this simple truth.
He’s just like you in one essential way. He’s a man who remains passionate about the sport.
“Every day on the river is a good day on the river if the water level is good.”
Spoken like a true kayaker.
Check out Tao's homepage at
http://www.taoberman.com/