Just when you thought it is over...

I just went to the rapidsriders website. (Rapidsriders is MNs white water community). Someone had found this kayak post on "Best of Craigslist", that made me roll on the floor laughing! I'll share it with you at the end of this post. It is particularly funny for those who have been trying to decipher my kayak jargon, seriously guys you need to read this!


Just when people start asking me, if the kayaking season is over and when I will be able to take the boat out again I surprise them with an "err, well actually...we go to the pool in the winter."

When I first heard that you can take whole boats into a pool and several of them I didn't really believe it, but I decided I had to see this! First of all I noticed, that those white water boats didn't really look like boats, they certainly didn't look like they would keep a person above water, let alone some of those buff 235 pound lads that were already there!



And here is what this looks like: My friend called it "chlorinated kayaking":







And because I hope to do quite a bit of chlorinated kayaking before the river season starts again with the snow melt I followed my friend's clarion call and joined not one, but two more kayaking clubs: ISK and SKOAC. He's a member of both and probably the best eskimo roller in the Upper Midwest and certainly one of the best instructors anyone could wish for! Now these are for the longer and properly boat-like looking sea-kayaks, but I figure, where there's room for 16+ footers, there's always room for a little 6-footer. They won't even notice I'm there..now wait, maybe I do want them to notice I am there... Anyway, Eskimo Roll, not if but when! I hope to have a very busy winter kayaking to make up for the time lost in summer due to work commitments!


It is really perfectly natural, that boats that don't really look like boats would have to have a description that doesn't really sound like a boat :-) Enjoy!



Best of Craigslist:
BUY MY STUPID COUSIN'S AWESOME KAYAK
My cousin is a grown up child man with all the best toys and here's your chance to own one of them!
Whilst between jobs - though both the one before and the one to come were both long out of sight - he needed a place to stay so he lived with me for a while. He paid rent for a while too, though one while was a lot shorter than the other while. He moved out to live with some buddies and left a bunch of his junk here. Sometimes he comes back to pick something up but somehow it always seems to coincide with needing to borrow money, though he doesn't seem to need to borrow it to pay me any rent.
One of the things he left - one of the largest things he left - is a kayak. A red kayak. It looks an awful lot like this, except it's red:






I asked him to tell me about it and this is what he typed:
KAYAK FOR SALE
PRIJON LUV 8'
Good Condition
River running playboat
excellent for surfing ocean waves
$300.00


Frankly, I was underwhelmed by his effort, but somehow, not terribly surprised. On top of that, the name sounds dangerously close to "prison love" but that's not really a selling point, so forget I said that.
I did my own research, being a citizen of the Information Age, and discovered that according to the World Wide Web, the specs are as follows:[abridged]
The most important part is this though:

Main use: playboat

Dude, how could you not buy your own watercraft whose main use is "playboat"? I don't have any idea what that means, but just reading it feels kinda bitchin! In point of fact, here's what the manufacturer would have you believe:

This Liquid-Utility-Vehicle is the ultimate in whitewater performance, maximum comfort and rad lines. This lightweight play hound has great stability on the flats and awesome control in the vertical world. Custom tailored features like the chine groove, planning hull width and bow & stern keels for play hogs like you. Engage the low volume ends for hesitation-free wheels and spark up the flat bottom for spin-mania. Bow and stern keel lines provide great tracking when moving from one play spot to the next. Superior comfort and an ergonomic fit for medium to large sized paddlers with large. It comes with super groovy, custom foam outfitting. Of course the LUV is made with HTP, which spins faster, rock wheels without grindage and reacts at your command. Stiff, durable, it rules.



Awesome control in the vertical world? Spin-mania? Rock wheels without grindage?? How can you pass this up???
I don't actually know if this one comes with the hesitation-free wheels because I don't see any wheels. Come to think of it, I've never seen a kayak with wheels, but if you get the right wheels for it, they will apparently be hesitation-free and how hard would that rock, dude?
I'm a little frightened to know what the "large sized paddlers with large" are going to do with this boat, so I'm not gonna ask. What happens in the Prijon stays in the Prijon, as far as I'm concerned.
Any which way, shoot the rapids, sit in it in the middle of your living room floor, or just drive around with it on the roof of your Volkswagen to make people think you're cool but get on over here and buy this dumb thing for three hundred bucks. It's totally awesome!



As soon as I get the chance and people talk about their SUVs I will mention my LUVs, yep, I have two, and when you visit me at home, you will see them "parked" along the way to the entrance door :-) That way you also know that you are on the right track, just like I find it really so much easier to find my car in a large parking lot, when I have a bright red boat strapped to my roof, sooo handy!!!