John Fereira is hoping to fly into Miami Thursday night.  He 46 years young (will be
47 when the trip occurs) and works as a programmer/analyst at Cornell University in
Ithaca, NY.  He owns two touring kayaks, a VCP Skerray, and a Chesapeake Light Craft
Northbay he built last winter.  He also has a whitewater boat and a canoe.  He has
been paddling kayaks for about three years, but like every other interest has become
passionate about the sport, which includes a desire to paddle as many different boats
as possible, and get formal instruction from some of the best (Derek Hutchinson, 
Nigel Dennis,  Chris Duff,  Scott Fairity). Other interests include flyfishing, downhill
skiing, dart playing (used to play cometitively), and working on his recently bought
house (preferably, in that order).  He created a paddling web site which includes
a kayak statistic database he wrote which provides information about over 700 different
models (http://mayfly.mannlib.cornell.edu/paddle)

The following picture shows him practicing a sculling brace on Cayuga Lake in Ithaca.