Stand up paddleboarding

It's especially fun to work on activities on my 101 in 1,001 list with my friend Kate because she and her sister are the ones who inspired me to start my own list. Earlier this week, I checked #8 Try stand up paddleboarding off my list with help from Kate!

Kate had been paddleboarding once before, so she walked me through how it all worked. After last summer's kayaking adventure, I came across a Crowd Cut coupon for Wheel Fun Rentals, the company from which we rented kayaks last year. They also rent paddleboards and paddleboats, so I figured I'd use it sometime this summer even if my family didn't get out on the lakes again. The coupon cost $15 and bought $35 worth of rentals, and an hour's worth of two paddleboards cost $32, so it was just about perfect.

We went over to Lake Nokomis after work. The weather was perfect - the combination of 86 + sunny + a light breeze that makes for a great summer afternoon.

Basically, the day looked like this:

We rented our boards and dragged them from the beach into the water, and we were off!

And if you're hoping for a magic formula for perfecto paddleboarding, you've come to the wrong place. You hop up on the board, feel your balance muscles kick into gear, and then just start paddling. I'm sure there are technique guidelines that flew over my head, but the upside is that the basic paddleboarding motion is pretty intuitive and definitely not complicated.

That's not to say there's not a thrill every time you think about how you're standing on a little board in the middle of a lake! I see Lake Nokomis pretty regularly from the paths that circle the lake, but these vantage points of the lake were totally new to me. I've never actually gone, for example, under the Cedar bridge.

You can make your stand up paddleboarding experience leisurely, like we did, but I can also see that it could easily be a really great workout with just a little more effort. On my first trip, though, I just enjoyed hanging out on the water with this view in front of me:

And there's Kate!  Thanks to her for showing me the ropes!

And then she fell in!

No, I'm totally kidding. We actually weren't close to falling at any point in the trip, with such sturdy boards and such a placid body of water, and falling into the water seems to be a paddleboarding exception rather than the rule. I was a little envious because Kate had her swimsuit on and I just had a tank top and shorts, and it turned out to be the kind of day where you wanted to fall in. So when we were almost done and near shore, Kate hopped into the lake to cool off and swam next to her board the rest of the way.

Want my tips for stand up paddleboarding?

1. Wear a swimsuit in case you want to jump in! But as Kate noted, it might be hard to get back on the board in the middle of the lake. (Save it for the end.)
2. An hour of paddling was perfect for my first go. If I kept doing this, it'd be fun to start at Calhoun to have the Chain of Lakes as options for a longer trip.
3. I want to go again! If you're at all curious, give it a try. It was really fun.

It really felt like play - and since we headed to the lake right after work, it was all the fun of meeting a friend for happy hour but with the added bonus of spending a summer night out on the water.