A garden hose that doesn't kink

Newsflash:  There isn't a garden hose that doesn't kink.  Not that I've found.  But there is good news anyway, if you can just manage to read past my obligatory rant. 

Forget about it.  It's never going to not happen.  As near as I've been able to determine, they ALL do this kinky thing. 

About a year ago, the residential garden hose predicament morphed into what I call one of my morning tea vendettas.  I usually spend the first part of the morning drinking vast amounts of Gyokuro (one of Kurzweil's well-publicized habits, not that I necessarily agree with everything Mr. Kurzweil claims).  Well, a person can't just sit there and embalm oneself with green tea to the exclusion of all other activity (although there are Japanese who might disagree with me).  So I use that time to do internet research and write blog posts.  Sip, sip. 

Simply put (sip-ly put?), I wanted a garden hose that did not kink.  I'm sick and tired of purchasing hose after hose only to have them last only a few years before they split.  Only to have them be a constant annoyance with their water-stopping kinkage in the brief interval before they split and I have to throw them away and buy yet another.

How do I curse ye... let me count the ways.  Also let me also count the money I've wasted on you in the process. 

 I would rather spend a larger sum of money and buy a good product one time, a product that will last for years and function properly.  To hell with inferior construction and built-in obsolescence. 

Anyway, as I was doing my tea research, and I sure wish I had bookmarked this source, I came across one blog or listserv commenter who put the whole quandary in perspective.  He said (paraphrased), "Rather than searching for the Holy Grail of un-kink-able garden hoses, you should just buy a Sears Craftsman rubber hose.  It will kink, but the kinks are easier to straighten back out than they would be in a vinyl hose, and rubber is much better about not developing a kink-memory." 

So I tried his approach, and I have come to agree with him.

Craftsman it is.  I finally replaced that leaky bright green atrocity last night, which was the last of our legacy hoses (we'd already replaced others with Craftsmans over the past year or so). 

The 80/20 rule comes to mind on this one.  Sometimes resolving a consumer issue is less about a victory and more about a truce.