Kayak

Sometimes things work out the way they are supposed to....

Part of loosing weight is avoiding excess or "empty" calories. Of course life isn't about eating brown rice and broccoli 3X's per day so you shouldn't' get crazy militant about it if you do things like occasionally drink a beer or 2.

That being said when you have a capable all grain home brewery in your house, and always have beers and various styles on tap and in bottles within easy reach..(Like I used to have available) it's a conflict of interest. It has been nagging at me for a while now but my beloved hobby of brewing beer just doesn't fit into the lifestyle changes I'm making right now. It might be several years until I'll be in a position to handle having that much beer accessibility and I really needed to let it go for now. Instead of a passive hobby that gives me excess calories I really needed an active hobby to burn some calories...get out there and mix it up a little.

The idea to sell/trade my brewing gear for a kayak started forming and after some acceptance and grieving process of giving up my brew gear I know it was the right having to do for several reasons. A short while later a deal was hatched and off I went to pick up a kayak. I did tons of research and for my first kayak I decided on the yak board ocean kayak. I had 45 spare min yesterday so I decided to go grab my new toy at Academy...things did not go well. I wound up wasting 30 min with those clowns and despite my telling them clearly "I'm in a hurry but will buy one of these kayaks right now if you can tell me how to do it"....3 different employees trying to figure out what to do...eventually a guy tells me I am going to have to fill out an aquatic license paperwork of something but I could just throw away the registration papers when they mailed them to me, it should only take 10 min, blah, blah, blah,.. I walked out disgusted with how hard it is to buy things sometimes.

Having only 10min left I went into Gander Mountain and found the first salesman in the boat dept. I pretty much ran up to him and said "I have 10 min to spare and $300 to spend. I want an entry level sit on top kayak that I can just try out to see if I even like kayaks before I get something more expensive, can you help me?"

12 min. later I was driving away with my new kayak and 45 min after that I was in the water. :)

Today I took it out for the first real test. I spent an hour on the water this morning. The weather was perfect and after 20 min or so I realized I stumbled upon the absolute perfect kayak for what I wanted. There are some significant disadvantages to getting an entry level kayak like this and those deficiencies work directly to my advantage. For one this little 8'er is tippy....if feels WAY tippy when you first get in it. Excellent! It's a freaking core workout just to keep from dumping your ass in the water. HA! In reality it isn't that bad. It "feels" like you are going to topple over but I've leaned into it at a lot of angles and dug in pretty deep....it has not dumped me yet. I think having to balance it is a bonus for me. It tracks poorly (does not stay pointing were you want to go very easily) Perfect! This causes me to work harder to get where I want to go.

My goal was to get some exercise, upper body, and be active.

Because this kayak is so small it's a snap to transport to the water. I've had it out twice in the last two days and it's not a production at all. I can be in the water in under 15 min of just deciding I feel like it. This ease of use is vitally important. If I had to load up for half an hour and drive 30 min each way I'd probably be able to get it out 1-2 times per month. Now I can go out as often as I want.

If I'd have had time to research this kayak I never would have chosen it. It's only because I was aggravated and in a hurry that I just grabbed it. I think it's perfect for my needs and goals at this time.

I'm half tempted to start answering people differently when they ask..

"So what do you do?"

I climb mountains and kayak. ;)