Boater Humor,
The following bits of humor have come to me in various emails. As with most email humor, I'm not sure of the original source.

You might be a boater if . . .

On the Road

Your boat is worth more than your car.

you paid more for a roof-rack for the boat than you spent for anniversary presents.

You keep a tide chart in your car.

The idea of a 15k mile per year car lease seems ridiculous.

Your only considerations when buying a car are ground clearance, and the size of the rain gutters.

You build a 2 car garage addition and you still can't park your car inside.

You maneuver your car on five-lane streets by eddying out behind trucks and making S-moves in the left turn lane. And you lean into the turns

Driving 800 miles for a weekend paddle doesn't seem strange to you.

You scout every river, stream, and little rivelet of water from your car while driving past and can't drive over a bridge without looking for water under it.

If you live in a town with a river running through it, you give street directions with descriptions like "upstream of the ..." or "two blocks down on river left ..."

You choose a new car based on whether or not your rack system will fit it

You've never setup a tent when it's light out.

Dress/Appearance

A dress shirt and tie no longer bother you, because they're looser than a dry suit neck gasket.

The smell of old polypro doesn't bother you.

You've stopped worrying at all about getting undressed in public.

You have a bathing suit that's wet from March to October.

You often find yourself responding "What smell?"

You leave your glasses strap on at night.

Your dog loves to roll in your pile of paddling clothes.

You're all dressed up and don't notice that you're being rained on.

You ask the clerk at Tom McCann how well these wing tips hold up to immersion.

Even in the dead of winter, you never actually lose the PFD tan lines...

You freely discuss how much you and others weigh, and don't feel self-conscious about it (or about asking others how much they weigh).

Family/Friends

You have friends (that you even may have known a while) that you don't recognize without their pfd, paddling jacket, and boat ensemble...

There's no room on your speed-dial for anything but gauge readings and the numbers of people with nicknames like Psycho.

When your non-boating friends visit your home or your car they ask "Do you have dogs?"

You bug out on your wife and kids to go paddling for the weekend because you are SURE your priorities are right.

Your wife says you love your boat and your boat'n buddies more than her, and she sounds just like your first wife...and your second

You tie down the boat better than you seat belt in the kids.

Your Mom has stopped saying "be careful this weekend"

You move to the mid-west temporarily and whine about missing your kayak, more than you whine about missing your girlfriend

You co-workers (and non-boating friends, family and your spouse) will not ride in your vehicle between during spring snow melt because of the ode de polypro.

Your wife catches you in bed with your kayak.

You've tied up your mate using either a taught-line or trucker's hitch.

House guests ask you why you replaced your living room sofa with a sea kayak...

Lifestyle / Off the water

All career, personal and financial decisions are judged by the criteria of "How will this increase my paddling time?"

You measure major purchases relative to the cost of a new boat...('Hmmm, that new computer will cost me about 2 1/2 kayak units'

You look at the water slide at a theme park and try to figure out the best line.

Your friends or relatives are shocked when you answer the phone at home on a weekend.

Your neighbor asks you what's going on when they see you BBQ on the weekend.

You build your new house as close as possible to the flood plain.

You always have sinus congestion on monday morning.

Weather / River Conditions

"Small craft advisories" make you praise the Ocean gods.

You get pouty and cranky when the hurricane misses you.

You practically salivate at the sound of rainfall... and will do a ring around of all local weather stations during flood season.

You "pour over" stream flow readings the way a stockbroker scans the markets everyday.

You highlight the highest tides of year on your chart.

You're the one with the Bright Sunny Smile on the Cold Rainy Day.

You find yourself humming Weather Channel tunes.

You kinda pulled your head down between your shoulders and tried not to look left or right and catch people's eyes as you were driving to the put-in last weekend. Because the river you were about to float was in their liveingrooms the day before. But you paddled it anyway.

Trivia

You knew Old Town when it was still New Town.

You can ID make and model on a car topped canoe or kayak at a quarter mile...

You have no trouble saying "Rotomolded Crosslink Polyethelyne" ten times fast.

On Your Mind

You concentrate so much on technique that you need a helmet for the docks along the shore.

You find yourself sitting at work twirling your pen/pencil to figure out the Retendo your going to try the next weekend.

"waterproof" means "a little damp" or "might-float".

You use a river trip to rinse seaweed, sand, and salt from your boat.

Every once in a while you touch your paddle, just to touch it.

Every once in a while you let go of your paddle, just to eat or something...

You visit Niagara Falls and think "This may be runnable."

When you hear grown men bragging about the size of their power boats you laugh secretly because you know better, because you have an eleven foot kayak in your garage.

You rank your trip by the number of cuts and bruises.

It takes longer and longer to get your "land legs" back. Solid ground "feels funny".

If Microsoft made kayaks...

10. A particular model year of kayak wouldn't be available until AFTER that year, instead of before.

9. Every time you wanted to try a new paddle, you would have to buy a new kayak.

8. Occasionally your kayak would stop dead in the water for no apparent cause. No amount of paddling would budge it. You would have to tow it back to the launch site and restart your kayak. For some strange reason, you would simply just accept this.

7. Two people could not both paddle your kayak unless you paid extra for a '95 kayak or NT kayak in which case you would also have to buy an extra seat and expensive new charts.

6. A sophisticated marketing blitz would make you feel like a second-rate tasteless slacker for failing to upgrade your kayak. OOPS -- wait a minute -- that's ALREADY happening.

5. Sun Microsystem would make a kayak with 70% less hull drag, half the weight, watertight in all conditions and twice as stable. Unfortunately, it could be used on only 5% of the existing rivers.

4.Your Microsoft kayak's compass, weather radio, and sump pump would be replaced with a single "General Kayak Fault" warning light.

3. The enthusiast press would get people excited about the "new" features of Microsoft kayaks, forgetting completely that they had been available in other brands for years.

2. Microsoft's inconsiderable owners manual would spawn a whole cottage industry of outsiders who would write hundreds of books explaining how to paddle your Microsoft kayak. Amazingly, we would buy all they printed.

1. If you wanted to go kayaking in a group with your club members or friends ( known as Network Kayaking) . EVERYONE in the group will have BUY special group kayaking accessories :however, only one member of the group ( known as the kayop) would have the foggiest notion of exactly what they did and no one else would be permitted operate them