Kayaking and Friends

After getting together with Dave and the Matlocks, we had a down day where we did absolutely nothing except read and watch TV. What a way to relax. But then Ron was getting a little restless so we found a kayak shop and did some information gathering on Kayak's (our 2nd trip on info gathering)!!. We met with a really neat guy and he introduced us to the Hobie line. As this was not a line that Ron and I had even considered we were a little skeptical at first. With the old engineer trying to figure out how it worked, it was a concept Ron wanted to understand better. Hobie has this drive that goes into a well like and you put this drive down in there. It has these 2 fins and they go underneath the kayak in the water. It kind of works on a penquin type of concept if you can imagine this. Hobie has rudders with all of their boats regardless of the lenght whereas their competitors usually don't start recommending a rudder until you reach the 14' lenght. As most of the kayaks we have been looking at are made of a hard shell material we have being careful as to lenght and weight. Hobie has a new line of inflatable which are a lot lighter than the hard shell version. After we spent a couple of hours with the sales guy, we signed up for their demo day during the week.

Our other friends, the Frankhouser's were out at an RV Ralley so they did not get home until Sunday, so on Monday we went over and visited with them. We were telling Mike and Bobbie about our kayak search and Bobbie was really interested in joining us for the demo day. So on Wednesday morning Bobbie, Ron and I went out to a lake in Florence. Thank goodness it was warmer (68 degrees) and sunny and no wind. We had an absolute blast. After about 20 minutes, I looked over at Ron and told him forget this paddling stuff, we are going to become peddlars. Yeah, the die heart kayakers will make fun of us, but that is okay with me. I am including a link so you can check out some of the pictures from our demo day. Bobbie brought along Bella, their very friendly lab and she had a great time out in the lake and on the kayaks with us as well. Mike who was in no way interested came out later in the morning. We talked him in to trying it out and he likes it as well. As I was not a big fan of the inflatable kayak, Hobie makes a great one and they have 2 new converts.

Okay, you are all wondering if we bought them, well no and yes. We were going to get the tandem as we figured that would be a good one to get for us when we were traveling. The shop we were negotiating with had a new one coming in. Well, when we went to go put it inside the back of the jeep, it was a struggle. We then took 2 singles and they fit perfectly in the back of the jeep. Since we were in Oregon, we wanted to take advantage of the no sales tax in Oregon. However, we could not come to agreement with the shop out here. After we talked about it, we decided to buy 2 singles from one of the local shops out in Grass Valley. This way if there was any issue with the kayaks we would have a local shop to deal with vs an out of state
shop.

So enjoy the pictures below. We had a really great time and I'll get those legs into shape!!!! hahaha