One of the 'fun' things tourists sometimes do is rent a pedal-paddle and cross the straits, be too tired to paddle back, then pay someone to come get them and the boat.
LOL!
I have sailed since I was ten, and when I went to the Bahamas with my buddy back in my thirties, I wanted to try sailboarding because it looked like so much fun.
The guy asked if I had ever done it before and if I wanted a lesson, and when I said no, but I had experience sailing so I thought I could figure it out on my own, he raised his eyebrows but rented me the board.
Well.
I used to do stress tests on people a long time ago before they had drugs that could get the same results for heart perfusion, and if someone couldn’t walk, we could try to have them exercise by stepping up and down repeatedly on a sturdy wooden box created for that purpose.
It never worked that well, because heck, if someone can’t walk on a treadmill, stepping up and down probably won’t be that effective either. I never saw someone get their heart rate up that high on that damn box.
But I was determined.
So I took the board out, stood up on it, and promptly fell off. Determined, I climbed back on the board, stood up, pulled up the sail, and...fell back in. Climbed back up. Pulled up the sail. Went a few feet. Fell off again.
Next thing I knew, I was laying on that sailboard on my stomach, my heart pounding like it had never pounded before (that I remembered) both arms dangling in the water, and my tongue lolling out. I took my pulse and it was 240 beats a minute!
I kept trying, but eventually, had to give up because my time had run out. However, when I looked at the beach, I didn’t recognize anything. I am blind as a bat without my glasses, so I paddled to the shore and walked back up the beach, dragging the sailboard behind me, looking for the rental shack.
After about a mile, I found it. The Bahamian guy was grinning broadly when I dragged the board up to him. He had seen this before. He said: “When I saw you disappear around the bend, I knew I would see you dragging the board back to me!”
Yep. He had seen it before. To this day, I wish I had taken a sailboarding lesson, but I was young and full of myself and was sure I could figure it out.
I didn’t figure that out, but I distinctly remember thinking “Damn. That was like stepping on and off of that stupid wooden box in the Nuclear Medicine stress lab, and it nearly gave me a heart attack!”