His updated profile seems more like an In Memoriam to me. I assume the worst. 
I’m 
sad
I thought so too, but I just don’t want to believe that.
I hadn’t realized his profile was updated. Yeah, i hope that’s not what it means. But it would kind of be like him to ask his survivors to let him quietly drift away, and not make an announcement.
Agreed. Although I don’t understand the Jack Webb/Joe Friday/Dragnet reference.
I know his name & location in RL. Nothing unusual from a Google search. A message on his FB page from a couple weeks ago said he was signing up for a 5K run.
Thanks.
When and where is that 5K? Let’s all go! 
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing that!
Oh man, that’s great news!
j
Jeez. Relief.
Come back @kayaker
I found that page, and it looks like he’s saying sayonara to us, not the world.
Come back any time, Kayaker!
I always enjoyed his posts. Miss you kayaker!
I like to think that he’s too busy kayaking to post here, but I seem to have a vague memory from a past “What does your username mean?” thread that he came up with his handle due to some other reason than a love of paddling small watercraft down a river. A love of perusing discount travel sites, maybe?
He (at least once) joked that his real name was Kay Aker. Dunno if that’s what you’re thinking of.
No, I’m not above getting whooshed occasionally, but that would have pretty clearly been a joke, even to me. I don’t remember exactly what he did say about the origin of his handle though, or even if he did. Just a vague, and possibly faulty, memory.
Well, in the three threads I’ve found about username meanings, he made the same joke and didn’t provide any other explanation. And in other threads, he’s talked about kayaking and the “many kayaks” he’s bought.
I doubt you got whooshed at the time, more likely a conflation of different memories.
Yeah, probably so.
In that case, I hope he is off kayaking. Or enjoying a vacation he booked on kayak[dot]com 
Maybe he’s a fan of a certain prog rock band…