Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.

– Aldous Huxley

I have a used 1988 Coleman 17 foot canoe for sale. It has a couple of scratches and is otherwise in excellent condition. (The canoe pictured is not the real canoe, but is an accurate representation) Mine is a Coleman RAM-X 17, very durable and will probably outlast me. Included in the sale are some new paddles, an anchor (still with a packaged rope) and 2 brand new adult life vests (price tags attached).

It was purchased from an older gentleman that advised me that while the canoe was in physically good shape, it was extremely low in good intentions. It seems he had bought the canoe the same year that Bush senior pledged no new taxes. During the following years, although he and Bush invested huge amounts of good intentions, things just didn’t work out.

Yearly the gentleman would go down to the motor vehicle department and renew the canoe’s license. Then he would put the new license in the kitchen drawer with the plan of putting on the registration sticker before he headed out to the lake. In April it snowed, May included daily rain storms, with June, came his summer vacations out east! The rest of the year was just too darn hot to sit on the middle of the lake in a boat. Year after year his good intentions and registration stickers were stored away in that kitchen drawer.

Five years ago his wife decided to remodel the house and all those stored up intentions were consumed in the new kitchen cabinets.

That same year, in an act of contrition; he put the boat out in the front yard with a sign which said, “Good canoe for sale – plenty of use left!”

In what many would describe as destiny, I was out driving my truck that day and happened upon the canoe. Immediate dreams of drifting lazily down a stream fill my head and I was smitten. The gentleman sadly explained that while it was a beautiful canoe, its’ intentions were misplaced in his cabinets. It seemed a shame until I realized I had a whole basement full of good intentions stored up in my stair-stepper and a stationary bike. I could easily transfer those to the canoe.

We struck a deal and the adventure was transferred to me. That was 2012, the year of the Summer Olympics and the chase for gold in Great Britain. Who can forget GB’s quest for its’ first Dressage Gold Medal ever. The next year it snowed in April and rained too hard in May…

Now in 2014, I went to use the canoe only to find out that my store of good intentions was transferred to my daughter’s car engine repair. It seems she had neglected to put in oil and went too far between oil changes. She planned on changing it often but…

So if you would like to own a canoe that has never been in the water (that I know of), and you have plenty of good intentions, call me before the canoe is gone. You’d hate to miss out on the deal since you have all those good intentions.

(Update – Canoe was sold this week)