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This is Shane Robinson. We're standing in the small storage area of a Seattle home looking at a bright yellow kayak.

It's what we have in Peru. Same model, same, I had the same color, everything.

Shane is a soft spoken, 34-year-old, who's about to begin a career in land use law.

It doesn't punctuate each sentence with bro or dude. He does not live life to get radical.

Each rapid, each run presents Shane with the opportunity to exist in a razor-sharp world of surging water and boat eating holes.

For 15 years, he's been searching for the edge of his ability.

Running a really hard drop, you're not thinking about anything else. You're just in the moment of that drop.

The very minutiae paddle strokes you need to be making.

As human nature, we're planners and we're thinkers and we're doers and enjoying and embracing the moment is almost against our nature.

We're meant to be like ahead of ourselves, I think.

While our levels of commitment, the hours we spend training, the fervor with which we paddle climb or ski, they may vary.

But to some extent, we are all searching for that moment when our abilities, our experience, when our mental control are perfectly balanced against risk.

If all goes right, for a few moments, we exist in the teetering sway of the present.

I mean, sometimes that edge becomes apparent on one rapid.

And you know, oh, I went beyond that edge on that rapid, like I should have portaged.

But when all of a sudden you're doing that day in and day out for seven days, you just start to tap into it and let you become a little bit more aware of where that edge is.

You have to be, I think, or else. You're probably risking danger.

If you're a climber, I want you to think to the most tenuous fingerlocker, the smallest handhold you've ever held onto.

If you're a mountain biker, I want you to think about letting the grasp on the brake ease, the bike accelerating until the wind draws tears from the corners of your eyes.

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