It’s 7am Sunday (Easter) morning. Later today we will again be going out for a day paddle with friends from the area. Today as I think of loading the boats, I’m also reminded of when we had no money for heating fuel. When I’m hauling out my digital SLR, I’m drawn back to my long-gone father’s unrealized dream to be a pro-photographer. Many times I find myself caught up in the David Lynchian surrealism of this life. How much things have changed and how the past always lingers over your shoulder reminding you to truly breathe in each moment. This too is fleeting. . .

Speaking of money, (complete right turn. . ) a couple years ago Mary and I had to get new saddles for our car. We really love the Yakima rollers and saddles but at the same time we couldn’t really afford them. These things are expensive! Kayaking is NOT a cheap sport. What we did find were some new Malone J-cradles. The cost was not bad at all and they held the boats up at an angle which really made it easy to put them up on the car. From a shoulder carry you basically just transfer the boat right on to the cradle with very little additional effort. But the best part was that when the boats were off and the J-cradles were rising off our Pontiac Grand Prix it looked like a Lotus Esprit with the gull-wings open. Very cool. Even when we got the new system Mary was tempted to leave the J-cradles on the car just because they looked cool.

The reason for this story is to tell you about a problem and then a solution. It was not long after we got the cradles that we were finding black streaks on our boats. For some reason the traction strips in the saddles would leave these big black stripes on the contact points. I probably should have taken them back and and exchanged them right away. But It really didn’t register in my head that this may have been a unique defect and not a quality issue in general. So, I thought “Man, we have to make due until we can afford something else”. And we did. For the next year or so we would just clean off the boats every so often. Usually right before we were going to a “public” paddling event. This actually plays in later in my story.

So recently Paddling.net added the Malone Auto Racks to their buyer’s guide and I browsed through the reviews and saw everyone seemed really happy with the product. No one mentioned the issue I had had with them. I thought, maybe I’d better jump in and cover our issue so at least folks looking at the rack would have a more rounded view. I enjoy paddling.net but I don’t often find the reviews section to be very well-rounded. Often people are very high on a new toy or very ticked off. Not many reviews say, “Hey this is great, but there is this one little downside. . ” Which is usually much closer to the truth. So in a short paragraph I stated my experience with the scuffing. End of story?? NOPE!

Couple days later the owner of Malone Auto Racks emailed me. Not just from Pnet, but from my journal and my personal email as well. Talk about diligent! I think only the phone company would be that thorough and then only if they were trying to collect money. Luckily in this case MAR is a small family owned company, and Mr. Malone was truly concerned about what was happening. With a little work I was able to find a couple pictures between the times I was washing the boats to show him. Malone uses (I know now) Non-marking, UV resistant rubber that would not damage a boat, so something very unique was going on with our cradles. I am sending them back to MAR so they can check it out.

Now to the title of the day. . . We have all had products with issues from various companies over the years. Often you just exchange them. If you do try to contact a company they almost never respond to emails with anything more than a non-related form letter, or they spend hours trying to tell you why it’s your fault. Hey, like I’ve said before, we go through ARC-lights like water around here. No one has come up with an answer for that! But in this case Mr. Malone chased ME down to resolve the problem, they deserve a lot of credit. It’s not like my one comment on PNET was going to break the bank. They could have just blow it off. But they didn’t. Today, it’s tough to find any companies who give a damn about a “consumer” (consumer = locust, I really hate that word) and remember that their customers are actually humans too. So with that in mind I had to give Malone a little nod. Caring customer support will always keep you in business. Thank You! I do appreciate it. Their website is Here.

Ok, I have to get outside and load the boats!!

-dm