One-Canoe Garage

Early in the summer, Robert got the idea that we should have a canoe. I pointed out the problems with having a canoe like not having a place to store it. Also, canoes have four seats, while our family has five.

But it was okay. Robert was just looking on Craigslist. No decisions were being made. Just looking.

But then there were emails with someone who wanted to sell their canoe, and an appointment was made for Robert to go look at it. And I said, "I didn't think we were buying a canoe."

And he said, "we're not buying a canoe. I'm just looking. I don't even have a way to get it home."

Apparently he did have a way to get it home, because that evening, he came home with a canoe.

With in the next two days he purchased a roof rack system (more expensive than the canoe) and life jackets and Other Things that go in a special duffel bag that stays with the canoe. And then he took the canoe to Hagg Lake, and Sturgeon Lake and Trillium Lake. The boys love it.

But as the weather cools and the days shorten, I want to park my car in the garage again. The time has come to find out where to put the canoe.

Robert called me to the garage. "If I move this," he said, pointing to the bike racks on the ceiling, "and change this," he said pointing to something else I can't remember, "I might be able to rig something up so we can hoist the canoe on a pulley system and hang it here."

I imagined the canoe falling on my head while I was carrying groceries into the house.

"Or," I said, we could put it on the side of the house and cover it with a tarp." We walked out to the side of the house to survey the scene. "We could fashion a platform with all this wood I've been begging you to get rid of," I pointed out. "We could turn it upside down on the wood. The canoe wouldn't even touch the ground. And we would use bungee cords to keep the tarp on it."

It was the perfect solution.

But, Robert is not an engineer for nothing. If there are two ways to do something, there are probably three, or four, or ten. So he got on the internet and started searching.

Guess what he found out?

REI, that company that sells outdoor stuff, has figured out everything that would be easy and perfect for storing our canoe and has created a website explaining why all of it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

"It says here a canoe should never be stored outside," Robert read. "And that it should be stored right side up with the tarp suspended above so it doesn't touch the shell."

Thanks a lot REI.

I don't think I'll ever get my car in the garage now.