During the last December holidays, I had the lovely job of running the renting of the stand up paddleboards on the lagoon of my local beach. All fun and games and unicorn farts until you realize how damn heavy those boards are, and you have to carry twelve of them down to the lagoon. Sure, the first four or five that you walk down are a bit heavy, but nothing you cant handle. By the time you’ve got your sixth to ninth board on the beach, you’re sweating and in general pain from hoisting the boards onto your back in awkward positions to try and move them easily, but by the time you’ve got that twelfth board laying in a pristine line along the lagoon, paddles propped in the sand, flag hoisted and informational board all polished and laid out nicely, you’re basically a piece of toast. I’m serious, delusional images cross my mind as I stumble over to the water’s edge, flopping down to cool off after the morning treck. The bootcampers have to step over me in order to continue their militant exercises and they march in and out of the lagoon on an early morning, usually carrying sand packs over their shoulders or some other form of odd shaped weight.
it was a fabulous job, however strenuous and tiring it was, as i got to spend the entire day on the beach. what a life! over all the managing and headaches that went into the running of the rentals, i learned a few things, not only beach life or paddleboards, but about myself. turns out my social skills were nearly non existent before these holidays, and like all your social or retail workers, i had to jack myself up in order to deal with customers. i personally think i handled well, considering I had the facial expression of a deer at a headlight whenever approached by groups of people larger than three when i was first introduced to the job. Now i just cruise through it, and since i survived these last holidays nearly unscathed by the flaming swarm of pushy customers, i think these next holidays will be a breeze.
Here’s a little piece of information that I had to repeat to almost every second person on that packed December beach- stand up paddleboards ( even if they are shaped like surfboards and look like surfboards) are not surfboards. No, you cannot stand on a surfboard like you can the paddleboard ( I mean you probably could but it’d have an awkward effect) and no, they are not canoes, although if you squat down and paddle alternatingly you’d probably achieve a similar effect.
All in all it was a pretty fabulous summer job, and I’m looking forward to many more seasons of working with them!
The Water Walking Vagabond 