Our first "toy"

So C and I did get our canoe on Thursday night. It was quite the ordeal. I'll explain. First, I got out of class early and took the dogs for a walk up to the gym where C was. I figured it'd be a good surprise since we hadn't seen each other in a week and he was leaving the next day. And do you know what he says when he sees me sitting there? "Hi, can we go get the canoe now?" Geeze ... I missed you, too. So, we drive to REI to pick up the canoe and when we get there we asked them if they could help us put it on our car. The next thing I see is two guys WHEELING the canoe out of the store and my thought was "crap, this thing is going to be ridiculously heavy".

We get the thing outside, the guys lift it on top of the car and it turns out our roof rack isn't wide enough. So the guy at the store helps us tie it down and then goes "Um, you can't drive anywhere like that. You need wider racks." Umm ... then why did we just spend 20 minutes tying it down. I go to move the car to a parking spot while C goes inside to grab us some new (but very expensive) racks. And the guy from REI is watching me move the car 20 feet, the whole time going, "careful! not too fast!".

Once we got the new racks we realized that we had to take the canoe off the car, put it somewhere, and install these new racks. All of this happened in the parking lot. We got the strangest looks. Our canoe 'parked' in one spot and our car in the next.

We haven't taken it out yet but so far I've learned:

1. It is one thing to pick up a canoe. It is an entirely different thing to pick up the canoe, hoist it over your head, and gently set it on top of your car. This sucks even more if you're short.

2. If you drive with anything on the roof of your car make sure EVERYTHING is tied down. I mean EVERYTHING. This was learned the hard way, obviously.

3. Canoes look much smaller online than they do in person.

I'm hoping it will all be worth it once we get it out on the water. Then I remember my last canoeing experience with C. Hmmm ... I think there was a lot of yelling because I wanted a relaxing day out and he wanted to race people in a kayak.

Canoeing in DC. I'm being distracted by something. Probably a floating shoe or piece of trash.