The age-old friction between kayakers and open boaters, double blade vesus single blade, may soon become moot. Imagine, for a moment, a river running future where every one descends rivers with nothing but webbed gloves and flippers, seat-belted into an inflatable, pontoon armchair.

This is the vision of Don and Sabine Allardice of Riverbug.me, a German company pioneering "riverbugging" on rivers and creeks across Europe. Now, Trailhead of Ottawa will be making Riverbugs available to Canadian whitewater enthusiasts for the 2010 paddling season.




The standard Riverbug will cost Trailhead shoppers $859 Cdn. The "Superbug"—a performance-oriented craft with lower volume pontoons that are less forgiving for beginners but make it easier for advanced 'buggers to hand-roll and bust freestyle tricks—is a new model for 2010 that is not yet available in North America.

I'll reserve my opinion until the snow melts and I can get in one of these things, but I can't help thinking that this looks uncannily like overzealous flyfishermen getting swept down the rapids in their float tubes...

Learn more at www.riverbug.info/www/index.php?Itemid=99