“I would like to say that I didn’t think about my own coolness at all in this process, but that would be a lie. Even if paddleboarding itself was not cool, the idea of becoming someone comfortable on the river seemed cool. But it was also not the kind of thing that I usually did; I am indoor-oriented. And it often seems like the only form of cool with any currency in middle age is a certain stalwart consistency of style, Haruki Murakami and his t-shirts or Grace Coddington’s red hair. Paddleboarding was the opposite of that.” A Middle-Aged Person Takes Up A Hobby. (I’ve been researching kayaks for 4 years. Seriously. But I can’t pull the trigger, in part because my hammies are tight, but mostly because this is my nature. My wife says I should row instead, so I’ve started researching row boats. This article makes me realize that maybe I should have been researching paddleboarding all along.)