Well OF COURSE I came up with something to write about. . .

Hmph. Like I said previously, because of how my brain works, I'm going to post now that I've told you I wouldn't be posting for a while. A few thoughts this morning...

Wanna buy a kayak?
A popular allusion in the world of whitewater boating is when someone has "the wife and kids talk." It's basically a reference to the inherent danger of whitewater kayaking and a means of broaching the subject of scaling back the risks one is willing to take. In other words, when a boater reaches a certain point in his or her life, said boater may have "the wife and kids talk" (with a friend or with his/her own conscience) and decide that maybe running that Class V with a suicide strap is a bad idea.

I've never been a serious whitewater boater. Oh, sure, I got really interested in it and there for a while could snap off clean rolls just fine, but I've never had whitewater fever the same way I get flyfishing fever or soccer fever. When I moved to Laramie three years ago one of the first things I did was take a trip to Ft. Collins to buy a whitewater kayak, and I took it down the Poudre River precisely one time.

Now that Kathryn's in the picture, and now that we've moved to a place with very few Class III runs, my whitewater kayaking days are over. Anything that involves the possibility of knocking her head on rocks is straight out for her, and anything that involves storing an 8 foot plastic boat in our spare bedroom is right out for me. So while I never really had a true "wife and kids talk," I think it's safe to say that any kayaking we do in the future will be of the touring/flatwater sort, and that means I'm selling my boat.

It's a Pyranha Inazone 230, if you're interested. I'll let it go, along with sprayskirt and floatbags, for $250.

Scary math.
I realized something this morning and it truly horrified me: I've been paying rent for about ten years. If we say the average has been $500/month, that means I've paid roughly $60K in rent. Not cool, man. Not cool. Time to buy a house.