What's SUP

Ted with Incline Village in the background

On vacation, whole family together in the mountains. 


This morning Ted and I rented Stand Up Paddleboards. People use the acronym, SUP, as either a noun and verb. It's a good thing when your item for sale makes it into English like that.


SUP is a way to go out on the water. It's as relaxing and as mellow as it looks. Sort of like walking on water.


The water is really really cold still, but if you're careful—I was careful—you won't go in.


We had a really good time.

Quotes

 A 70 year-old wooden 110 keelboat sailing in Tomales Bay out of Inverness Yacht Club

Two quotes have been rattling around in my head of late. The first is by E.B. White, my favorite American essayist who shared my obsession with sailing:

"If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble." -- E.B. White

The second passage, this one by Joseph Campbell, points at something I suspect is true:

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life...I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on a purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive. --Joseph Campbell

The experience of being fully alive is available everywhere, of course. For me, it is readily accessible while sailing a boat moving in the confluence of flowing wind and water.

There's nothing obviously meaningful about sailing; it's simply exhilarating beyond measure.