Paddles, reresining, and tacos

We needed some paddles for our "new" canoe, and have found out that canoes, at least here in SW Florida are passé.  So it's hard to find a store that has canoe paddles. Everything here is kayaks and paddle boards.  I understand the kayak thing, but paddle boards just escape me.  Do I want to paddle down an alligator river in a kayak, a canoe, or do I want to be standing up balancing on a paddle board?  You decide.  So anyway we find a canoe shop up in St. Petersburg and head on up to check out bent paddles.  No we weren't sure what they were either, but were told they make paddling a bit more efficient, read easier:-)  St Pete is about 60 miles away and the shop didn't open until noon, so, of course, we had to stop for lunch on the way, and where better than the Taco Bus!

Yummy!

Now this is not the same one we showed you before, that other one was the original.  This one is in a nice section of downtown St Pete with outdoor seating and yes, it was delicious!!

We headed over to the canoe store and ended up getting a couple bent shaft paddles.  Although they are wood, they are amazingly light.  And beautiful, but I'm sure I can mark them up with my inept technique.

FoxWorx paddle

It was funny, when we went to Alaska in 2005, we bought that heavy, heavy canoe I was telling you about here in Florida before we left.  Of course neither Jan nor I could remember where we had gotten it.  Well, after wandering around this store, Canoe Country, it dawned on us we had bought it right here!  Oh the CRS is alive and well.

Looking at our new canoe we felt it needed a little tender loving care as it had obviously spent quite a bit of time in the sun over its 12 year life.  I did some research on refinishing a kevlar canoe, specifically a Souris River Canoe, and found that we could apply a thin coating of epoxy resin to the outside.  So off to West Marine to get our resin and Lowes for a million foam brushes.  We tentatively applied a thin coat of resin, and wow, it really popped!  Darkened the hull color and really made it look better, have to believe it will help the integrity of the canoe as well.  We also found out resin is not necessarily the easiest thing to work with.  You expect it to act like paint, but it doesn't, the tiniest amount will run and run, and then, of course, set up hard as nails.  We are 1 1/2 coats in and are planning 3 coats, and it is looking quite good, if I do say myself.  I'll get some pictures posted when we finish up.

We also celebrated a couple milestone birthdays this past week with friends, Happy Birthday Ann and Jean!

We contacted the tile guy and told him we had increased the size of our job and he said no problem.  The tile hasn't come in yet, but we think it may be getting installed next weekend, so that means back down on our hands and knees and get the demo done.  Yippeee