What's SUP?

Last week my college roomie and best friend Sarah Roland came to visit me and John in Charleston. Sarah and I lived together for three years at OU and I was so excited to live with her again, if only for five days. We had a great time exploring Charleston together and she helped me cross several things off my Charleston bucket list while she was here.

My beautiful roomie. Miss you already!

One of my favorite things we did while she was in town was stand-up paddle boarding (or what the locals call SUP.) You don't know what SUP is? Well let me show you...

There are plenty of tour companies in Charleston who offer SUP guided tours, classes and even fitness classes. But we decided just to rent a few boards for the day and wing it. First thing's first, loading them up in the truck.

Three paddle boards ready to go.

The second obstacle was getting them from the truck to the ocean. You see, a paddle board is much bigger than even a surfboard. And despite the convenient handle in the middle, they are much heavier than you'd think.

What a trooper, carrying her own board. 

Demonstrating some SUP techniques, or just posing on the board, whatever.

We took our boards to Sullivan's Island (per the rental dude's advice) because the water there is much calmer thanks to the sandbar about 100 yards out. We soon discovered why he recommended calm water. Waves were our enemy on the stand-up paddle boards.

Oh yeah, we've got this.

After about 10 minutes of struggling, falling off in the water and getting laughed at by some passersby, we got up on the boards and were doing pretty good. The best part of the afternoon was when Sarah freaked out because she saw a fin near my board (lots of "It's a shark! It's a shark!") Turns out it was a dolphin! And he/she swam along side our boards for a while, which was pretty amazing! Who's laughing now, land-locked passersby? 

Paddling off into the sunset.