Kayaking     I started kayaking aged 14, and for fifty years now have treated the kayak much as another person might use their bicycle or car. Bird watching by kayak is an almost everyday part of my life. Simply working with tides on estuaries, bays and sloughs to get to places where the shorebirds and waterfowl feed, I lead trips doing this and also teach kayaking skills and participate in racing events. (see Adventure Kayaking - Trips from the Russian River to Monterey ).     As a young lieutenant in the Royal Marines, taking a course at Greenwich on the River Thames, I paddled solo from London to Paris to see my girlfriend--it was the cheapest way to go. Of course it took a long time to get there (six weeks), and by the time I reached Paris my bird had flown. That story you can read in Sea Kayaker Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1.     Twice I have lived out of my kayak, unsupported by any indoor facilities--no shopping, no dwellings--for a full month while exploring the Maine Archipelago; and another trip has been a reconnaissance of the Hudson River from source to estuary. This 26 day journey became a six credit graduate course at Boston University; it was the summer component of my courses for students specializing in outdoor education. James Feron covered this epic journey for the New York Times; it included studying the Hudson River School of Painting; the five climate regions through which we traveled; forestry, industry, and population density.     California's Bolinas Lagoon--one of the late Roger Tory Peterson's "Top Ten Hot Spots" for birding North America--is accessible from my garden. To do my laundry each week I leave my cottage in Stinson Beach by kayak and paddle 2.5 miles down to the laundromat in Bolinas, do the wash and paddle back to hang it in the sun. The kayak is my transport of choice. Bird Watching     Aged nine I started studying birds and published a bird poem (Ode to the Willow Wren) when I was fourteen. Already my hand drawn greetings cards of birds were selling for one guinea in a Knightsbridge gallery. So all my life I've watched birds, and now take great pleasure leading birding trips, particularly by kayak, and coaching birding skills. I've watched birds in 48 countries; saw my first Sardinian warbler in Sardinia and my first Kentish plover (the snowy) in Kent.     Birds in Great Literature: Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Chekhov and Whitman have become a major project in my life. These writers really were for the birds; in Whitman's case he was susceptible to them rather than knowledgeable. My poem Walt Whitman's Wings, accompanied by many watercolours of his birds has been shown more than 1,000 times in the past five years on educational TV programs. The video, "Michael Jeneid's Poems and Paintings of Birds," produced by Econews, #1302, is available from Educational Communications, Inc., P. O. Box 351419, Los Angeles, CA 90035.     My duck print, Waterfowl of the Sierra Nevada is hanging in 36 states. The 42 waterfowl in it were used to illustrate my weekly columns written for eight years in the Tahoe World's "Mountain Bird Notes", and the Sierra Sun's "On The Wing". The Playwright and The Falcon My favourite lecture in schools--or to private groups--is from a lifetime study of Shakespeare's birds. In the Playwright and The Falcon, Shakespeare's remarkable use of thirteen species of birds of prey is revealed and The Riddle of The Pheonix--possibly a real bird--is revealed. Cross-Country Skiing     At this sport I was a late starter, but made up for it by becoming a full time ski-teacher and marathon racer. Certified by the Professional Ski Instructors of America in 1972, I have skied Sweden's famous Vasalopp five times and published The Way to Mora (the town where the 87 km. race ends). This book is an exhibit in the Skier's Hall of Fame, in Mora. Twice I have completed the Canadian 100 mile marathon, Les Coureurs de Bois, with a best time of 13 hours and 14 minutes.     In 1978 I came out to California to start a ski school, and ran that school at Soda Springs-Norden for eight years. The teaching book, Five Easy Turns, done with Tom Martens, was the instructional manual for that school. Cross-Country Skiing California was published in 1999 by Wilderness Press. It takes you to every cross-country skiing area of note in California, also to Spooner Lake X-C in Nevada. Autographed copies of all of these books are available by clicking onto Books at the top of this page.
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	For More information, please contact Michael Jeneid P. O. Box 1060, Stinson Beach, California 94970 j e n e i d @ j e n e i d o u t d o o r s . c o m