PERSPECTIVE.

Anyone who’s built up a steady rhythm on a sup board will confirm that the act of paddling can be meditative, and here’s something else to consider next time you’re tapping your way towards a distant marker: there are two types of energy in the universe, potential and kinetic. This can be thought of as objects which are about to do something, and objects which are doing something. As a pendulum swinging is really an object in ‘controlled freefall’, so is a planet orbiting the sun, the tide sweeping in and out of an estuary, a person walking, a person paddling… As we are about ‘fall’ onto our paddle in the catch phase of a stroke we have maximum potential energy which converts to maximum kinetic energy in the power phase of the stroke. This energy transfer can easily be plotted in a sine wave that resembles a tidal flow rate chart, a planet’s orbit, and of course any type of wave you can think of. Paddlers, surfers, celestial objects, we’re all the same…

PHOTO  Paul Karaolides