As Pam watched the morning news, she saw a blurb for a paddleboard race in support of the “be nice” program by Mental Health Foundation of West Michigan. As president of the local NAMI affiliate, NAMI Kent, she’d worked with these folks and wanted to support them. Pam was also a fan of paddleboarding and wanted to go.

Steve, however, was less enthusiastic. His experience showed him that he had enough of a challenge racing to the surface, much less trying to move in a horizontal direction. He agreed to go as tech support to help inflate/deflate the paddleboard at the lake.

When Pam signed up, she was given a choice of different races: one mile, 5k, and 10k. Given her vast experience of having paddleboarded 4 times, she decided that a mile wasn’t enough. She did concede that 10k might be a bit much so she settled for the “Goldilocks” distance of 5k.

At the race, Pam noticed that most of the other racers wore shorts and long-sleeved t-shirts as opposed to swimsuits like herself. Their life-jackets were more like belts that inflated with a button instead of her traditional bulky life-jacket.

The 5k race would be two laps around the lake and the 10k race would be 4 laps.

When the race started, Pam noticed other differences. She put her board in the water and saw that the board’s fins were stuck in the sand. She picked up the board and moved it further into the lake. The fins were stuck in the sand again. The third time was the charm. She then got on all fours onto the board, settled onto her knees, paddled out for a few hundred yards and then began the process of trying to stand up.

The other racers used this method: they walked out with their boards into a foot or two of water, stepped on the board and started paddling. It seemed awfully efficient.

By the time that Pam was a quarter mile out, all that Steve could see of her was a tiny orange dot that was the paddleboard and a tiny black dot that was Pam.

It was shortly after this that Steve noticed that the black dot had disappeared. That couldn’t be good. He was about to go over to the organizers’ tent and say something stupid like “It appears that my wife is separated from her paddleboard” when he noticed that one of the bigger boats was making its way over to Pam’s paddleboat and (hopefully) Pam.

Then the orange dot started moving again accompanied by the little black dot.

Let’s switch to Pam’s perspective:

Pam fell off the board. She tried to get back on the board but was surprised at how difficult it was. Apparently, while she’d been laughing at all the times that Steve was falling off the board and getting back on, she’d neglected to get much practice at getting back on the board herself.

After trying and failing to get on the board, a boat came by. “Do you need any help? We don’t meant to offend but we do have a ladder available for you.”

Pam said something like “gimme the ducking ladder.”

Actually, she was very polite and gracious and used the ducking ladder.

Let’s go back to Steve:

As Steve watched the black/orange dots move another couple hundred yards, he saw them getting passed by the more efficient paddleboarders. Shortly after that, Steve saw these same efficient paddleboarders crossing the finish line.

This was about 30 minutes into the race. Steve started to wonder: “Is Pam gonna insist on doing both laps? She’s gotta be exhausted.”

She didn’t and she was.