Kayaking For the First Time in Cali

We didn't bring the camera with us kayaking because we were afraid that we'd tip the kayaks, so we only got this one picture before we left:



The baja with two 17ft sea kayaks on top, ready to go!

Yes, thats the tiny baja, dwarfed by our two 17ft sea kayaks on top. Its really kind of funny to see it in that perspective. When we bought the kayaks almost half a year ago from a guy in Petaluma, we were afraid that we wouldn't be able to get them home because they were so long. In fact, we took the bus to pick them up, thinking that we'd fit them in, but they were even longer than the bus by 3 feet. We ended up keeping the back hatch on the bus slightly open and driving with the kayaks sticking out the back. The front of the kayaks went right up to the windshield! This prompted us to check out how long the bus actually was, and compare it to the baja. Did you know that the VW Bus is only one foot longer than a VW Beetle!? Could you believe that!? And all this time, I thought that the Beetles were so tiny and compact. How amazing it is to figure out that the VW Bus is only one foot longer than a Beetle!!!! In actuality, the VW Bus should be labeled as 'compact!'

Anyways, we got a lot of looks and thumbs up and calls from bystanders on the street as we drove the two kayaks to Lake Chabot, just a few miles south of where we live. It was really funny! And it was a beautiful day to go kayaking for the first time in Cali and for the first time in our very own kayaks! We'd wanted to get our own for a long time and one day we found an awesome price on craigslist. We were looking for two matching sea kayaks, and we found them and had to act fast (you know craigslist). The guy selling them said he developed back problems which made it painful to sit in the kayak for more than an hour. The other kayak was his friend's, who married a rich Mexican woman and now lives in a castle in Mexico with his wife, and left the kayak with his friend in Petaluma, Ca. Now he was trying to get rid of them, and sold us all of his accessory gear with them, like paddles, skirts, neoprene gloves, bilge pump, etc. It took us a while to get our own life vests and roof rack gear to carry them, but now that we finally got everything together and the weather was starting to warm up, we finally took the kayaks out. It was fun!