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I’m not sure how I became fascinated with water. Perhaps it was the fact that I grew up so far away from any of it. Well at least any water that you’d want to swim in.

Growing up in the Midwest in suburbs west of Cleveland, my exposure to the great blue sea was limited to occasional visits to my grandparents place in Fort Myers, Florida. And there, it was the early morning shelling on Sanibel Island that left an impression on me. The fact that the Gulf of Mexico would release such strange creatures as sand dollars, horseshoe crabs and jellyfish made me wonder—what was it holding on to? What else was under the surface, in the coral reefs or miles off shore?

This curiosity, coupled with my inability to excel at most terrestrial sports, drove me to explore ways in which could spend more and more time in or near the water. I quickly learned to snorkel and then became certified to scuba dive. In the first five years of my marriage, my wife Carolyn and I took numerous dive trips, exploring the waters of The Great Barrier Reef, the British & US Virgin Islands, Bonaire, Turks & Caicos, Honduras, and Cabo San Lucas.

When we were lucky enough to have kids (two boys who are now 2 and 5) the dynamics changed a bit. These guys weren’t gonna be diving for a long time. So I took my passion for the ocean topside. I learned how to sea kayak on a week-long expedition through Glacier Bay, Alaska. And came back all fired up to share this with my family.

Our next family vacation was to St. John in the US Virgin Islands. This was one of our favorite places but this trip was gonna be different. Having seen a way to make even more of our family time in the ocean, I began my research. We clearly needed a kayak — one that was portable so we could take it down dirt paths to any of the 16 or so beaches on the island. And we would need a GPS receiver, one that was waterproof of course, to ensure that I wouldn’t get lost at sea (especially with my 4 year-old son). We also needed life vests, collapsible paddles, a backpack frame for the inflatable kayak — the list went on and on.

So I began to return to some of my favorite online sources for such equipment. I read reviews, and asked questions in discussion forums. I wanted to make sure that I was buying good quality, reliable (and cool) equipment. I found myself conducting research both before and after the purchase — before to make sure that I bought the right thing and sometimes after to convince myself or my wife, Carolyn, that the purchase was indeed a good decision.

I found myself becoming an expert in inflatable kayak options and actually geeking out when friends were over who somehow stumbled into the topic of vacations, kayaking, or the ocean. There were even a few poor souls that I dragged into my garage to bore them with the stats on the inflatable “portable” kayak solution that we would be carting around on our family vacation.

So as I consider a category of purchases where I’ve invested a disproportionate amount of my income over the last 5-10 years, it’s one that’s driven by my drive to escape land-locked Cincinnati.

I’ve spent money on outdoor apparel and professional guides to support our weeklong kayaking trip in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Comfortable wetsuits and Scuba gear to make sure that we’d enjoy 4 dives a day for a week in Bonaire. And inflatable, “portable” sea kayaking gear to make sure my son and I could safely explore every nook and cranny of St. John.

In my pursuit of happiness, I have been trading up in the category of adventure travel and outdoor gear and apparel for some time. And with my eyes set on a 2007 sea kayaking and scuba diving trip to the Galapagos Islands next summer, it’s clear that I’ll need to be trading down in other categories in order to continue trading up in this one.