She’s home! Our trip to REI on Sunday was quite a success and we came home with our first boat. Unfortunately, the weather has been chilly and rainy – generally unpleasant kayaking weather – so for now my review is limited to “Damn, she looks good on top of a car!” Hey, that’s important to some people.

We showed up at REI around 1:00, surprised to find that it was not all that crowded despite their ongoing anniversary sale (yay, recession).  I made a beeline to the paddling section and did a quick scan of the inventory – no Necky!  Disappointment set in until Dave caught up to me a moment later, “I saw her! She’s in the display up front, hanging from the ceiling!”  I ran back to confirm that, indeed, my little blue boat was dangling from the rafters and then began the arduous task of finding a salesperson to assist us. Apparently REI doesn’t believe in staffing up for their self-proclaimed “biggest sale of the year.” I finally managed to hunt someone down and from then on it was smooth sailing, er, paddling.

“I’ve done my research and I want that boat,” I said, pointing to the ceiling display. “Unless you can talk me out of it.”  The poor kid just laughed nervously, asked me a few standard questions (Have you kayaked before? Where do you plan to use it?), and then decided I really had done my research and went off to find the purchase agreement.

With his help, I also selected a nice, mid-range paddle.  I decided on the Aqua Bound Sting Ray with small shaft.  It’s lightweight with a fiberglass shaft, fits my small hands, and has a reasonable price tag. I’m not hard to please.

Our final purchase of the day was a rack for the car. It came down to Yakima vs. Thule. I left this decision up to Dave because he’s generally the one who loads and unloads our gear. I’m too short. He settled on the Yakima rack and before we knew it we were in the parking lot rigging up our car with our shiny new boat. Doesn’t she look good up there?