[Paddlewise] The Twelve-Step Program...

My name is Craig and I have a problem. It could be worse, of course. I could
be a drunk or chase women; both more expensive than what I do... heck, I
have a friend who had a $400 bar tab one December at his local Moose Lodge
(where drinks are cheap!). And you don't want to hear what renting a car for
his hot girlfriend cost a pal of mine a few years ago. Plus the mutterings
of another buddy who told me that the next time he felt like getting married
he'd just find a woman he hated and buy her a new house. So while it could
be worse, it's still not pretty.

I buy kayaks. Second hand kayaks, to be sure, but kayaks nevertheless. Last
night I paid a paltry sum for a Mariner Escape from a nice elderly (although
she was younger than me) woman in Yakima who seemed pathetically grateful to
me to take it away. Maybe I should have looked at it in the daylight.

But I digress. I now have a triplex of sea kayaks, a quartet of white water
kayaks, a menage a troi of dinghies, a pair of sailboats, a couplet of jet
skis (my wife bought those, honest!), and one gutted power boat. Ok... maybe
it's not just kayaks that I buy. And anyway, technically the gutted power
boat belongs to my daughter and her husband. But I forgot to mention the
aluminum canoe (which, when the wind and waves hit the hull to make just the
right sound, attracts beer drinkers from miles around). I'm digressing
again, aren't I?

My wife, some of you may remember, asked me to do anything (including
getting a teen-aged girlfriend) to stop buying kayaks. But she was with me
on the trip to Yakima and mollifying her was as ridiculously easy as
treating her to a $100 dinner at an expensive restaurant. She practically
threw the new Escape onto the kayak rack in her eagerness to move on to the
main course, so to speak. I'm only surprised it took me 33 years to learn
that trick. This, of course, could lead to further "bad things".

And it's not like I don't paddle these kayaks. Not all of them at one time,
of course. But most of them some of the time and a couple of them a lot of
the time. I just bought a former automobile repair shop on a double lot in
town to store the stuff from the farm but, in reality, it will be full of
kayaks. Unlike a friend who told me she kept her Mariner Sprite on her car
all the time simply because she had the rest of her kayaks in the living
room and couldn't squeeze another one in, I am assured of an almost endless
bounty of room to store boats. As long as I can keep space mined out for my
wife's craft room, anyway.

Kayaks are a form of art, of course. Those graceful lines practically
begging for waves and sunny days would enhance almost any room. Heck, there
is a bar in Port Townsend with a Pygmy suspended from the ceiling and I'd
bet that it's far from the only one. If form follows function then kayaks
are surely sculpture of the highest sort. Like sailplanes and surfboards,
they scream movement even when they're sitting behind a couch. Not that a
sailplane would fit behind my couch, mind you, but you get the idea.

I own two sailplanes, too. And even, when I can be pried out of a kayak, fly
them.

So even if there is nothing quite so much worth doing as messing about in
small boats, I am clearly in need of help. If there is a twelve-step program
for boat junkies I'll join it just as soon as I find that Coaster I want.


Craig Jungers
Moses Lake, WA
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