The Giant Duck Paddle Boat

“She threw her dirty shoes back in with her clean clothes!” said my wife. “Now everything in the suitcase stinks and needs to be washed!” 

The “she” my wife was referring to was our nine-year-old. We were unpacking after a summer vacation.

“I guess that’s something you don’t think of,” I replied. “Probably something you can only learn by doing.” 

And a lesson my daughter won’t learn now, considering that she’s upstairs sleeping while we stay up late, sniffing and sorting clothes pulled from the minivan. Now she’ll have to learn the hard way, by going to the gym in college.

I have so much to teach her. And my time is already half over.

My wife seemed to be attempting to direct the conversation towards a further re-evaluation of gymnastics class levels for the girls. (I think.) She was now in the kitchen with the dishwasher.

I had a partial sense of invoking profundity with my words:

 “Probably something you can only learn by doing.”

 I wanted to further unpack such wisdom before my focus passed to anything else.

What other life lessons fall into this category?

What is an example of something I was only able to learn through experience?

I don’t like paddle boats. I feel certain about that.

Why, just that day, my aversion toward that vehicle had become a topic of major consideration.

Hours earlier, we had been at a water park built on a small lake in northern Indiana. This water park had a sandy beach, waterslides, zip line, an obstacle course, and a paddle boat. 

A giant duck paddleboat.

My kids were perfectly happy going up and down the slides and running the gauntlet until they saw families taking turns on the Giant Duck.

“Can we go on the paddle boat?”

“No. Paddle boats are not fun.” 

That felt a little terse, so I softened it. “You guys are having fun on the water slides. You can ride a paddle boat anywhere.”

But I agreed with my definitive statement.

My rationale was strong, and evidence-based.

It all went down in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, more than 20 years ago. I was heading from California to Minnesota for my sophomore year of college, and the trade winds blew my Ford Tempo on a northern course through Canada.

I was looking for a place to camp, so, as was my custom, I referenced my AAA Campbook for suggestions – especially for waterfront sites with boat rentals. 

One never knew what boats “Boat Rentals” encompassed.

Usually it included canoes, and I like canoes.

One time, I got lucky at a campground in Florida and rented an electric jon boat, which I liked even more. It was like canoeing, but without having to paddle.

Buffalo Pound Provincial Park sure didn’t have any jon boats. They didn’t even have canoes. 

It had paddle boats.

Paddle boats aplenty. Pink paddle boats. The kind not sought after for duck hunting or other displays of manliness.

The rental rates were for one hour, half day, or a full day.

I was forced to condense this epic Canadian maritime adventure into a mere hour because of the rental place’s unaccommodating rate structure. 

I rushed to the vessel, resolved to extract each of my allotted sixty minutes on the open sea.

Intriguing scenery lay off in the distance, so I set my watch for 30 minutes, pushed out of the reeds, and made amazing headway to a far-off cove where I intentionally ran aground and located a scenic restroom.

At the 30-minute mark, I reconfigured myself into the boat and set my sights on the rental shanty across the lake. 

I detected a breeze. A strong Canadian breeze, often referred to as “wind” down in the U.S.

Specifically, the type of air current that blows a 19-year-old boy in a paddle boat to the other side of a Saskatchewan lake with deceitfully insignificant effort on his part.

If I stopped paddling, even for a second, the boat would drift backwards by three or four feet.

By the time I reached the middle of the lake, I was gasping for air while squeezing a knee that felt like it had slipped out of its joint.

I flopped over the seat and tried pedaling with my hands. In a lifejacket. This proved to be an uncomfortable and ill-suited contortion.

Bernoulli’s Principle lifted the bow. 

I kneeled in the stern. The paddlewheel lightly skimmed the surface of the water.

I was determined to get better drag by putting my weight directly over the paddle, so I straddled the cup holders between the chairs and pedaled with one foot on each side.

But in addition to cup holders, there is a steering control – essentially a bent metal rod – between the seats. Not something designed to be sat on while pedaling.

“Maybe I can sit on the smooth hood and pedal backwards,” I thought.

No dice. Slipping uncontrollably into the lake was refreshing in the moment, but terrifying as I bobbed back up to see my ship rapidly drifting away from me.

I could let it go and swim back to my car.

The rental shanty had my driver’s license, but not my credit card.

I could run back to my campsite, toss my gear in the car, and make it back down to the United States before a BOLO even went out.

But at the border…I would need that driver’s license to get back in.

I swam to the boat, grabbed the rope, and started towing it.

People saw me. I was afraid they would think I was in distress and come over to help.

I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I pulled myself back aboard.

I found the best way to do this was from the back of the boat, but I’m not going to put the modifier of “easy” anywhere near a sentence referencing that process.

As it was late afternoon, I hoped the rental shanty would be closed so I could beach this despicable paddle boat and walk away without human interaction.

But it wasn’t closed.

“OK. Oh. Now, you paid for an hour, but you’ve been gone more than two. We only do hours and half days…”

Severely oxygen-deprived, delirious, and incapable of coherent speech, I spilled all the change I had onto the counter.

In my defense, I know there was at least one Loonie in the drop.

“This is all I got. Sorry. Have a nice afternoon.”

                                                                                 ***

“That dad is on the duck paddle boat with his kids, Dad,” my daughter said, still pressing the issue.

“Right, but he’s not having any fun. He’ll never do it again. Neither will I.”

“You’ve been on a paddle boat before?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been on one shaped like a giant duck?”

“The line is too long. We need ice cream.”