Our Stand Up Paddle Boarding Passion

My husband, Mike, and I started paddling in 2005 while vacationing on Maui. We immediately adopted it once home in Bend, Oregon and spent the next year exploring local rivers, lakes and the coast (thank you Randall Barna for our first boards!). With each sunny day to hit the Northwest we eagerly loaded up and went out for a paddle. Our vizsla dog, Sierra, benefited from free rides and her official role became ‘board hood ornament’. Our young daughter, Makena, joined in and happily took rides sitting between our legs. In no time friends and family were trying our boards and ‘this new stand-up paddling sport.’ They were loving it and finding stand-up paddling to be fun & accessible. It was great to see how everyone adopted paddling differently – it ran the gamut from ‘ leisurely paddles’ to ‘ fitness lunch-hour breaks’ to ‘surfing the coast’ to ‘hard-core racing’. And there’s the added bonus (shhh, don’t tell my husband)…we don’t bring our cell phones (though water-proof cases exist) and get to completely detach from our hectic, connected lives. Double yay.