What Almost Losing My Paddling Partner Halfway Through Taught Me About Flexibility
For about twenty-four hours in the middle of our five-day paddleboard circumnavigation of Lake Tahoe, I genuinely believed I was going to finish the second half of the trip alone. My best friend Michael Whalen had a prior commitment that meant his schedule might not allow him to complete the full seventy-two miles with me, and the plan we built around that possibility changed how I felt about every mile we'd already covered together. Here's what that near miss actually taught me.
How the Problem Surfaced
By our second day, paddling north through Tahoma toward Homewood, we realized we weren't covering enough daily mileage to finish the full route on our original timeline. That math problem ran directly into a scheduling problem, Michael had somewhere he needed to be that our slower pace put in jeopardy. We sat with that over food at West Shore Market, working through the actual numbers rather than avoiding the conversation.
The Plan We Built Around Losing Half the Team
We landed on a real contingency. Michael would paddle with me through day three, and on the morning of day four, my partner Kristin would arrive with a resupply and take him home, leaving me to finish the remaining distance alone. It was a workable plan, logistically sound, and it still felt like a loss the moment we agreed to it. I remember describing the thought as already a little sad, and that was an understatement.
What Changed a Day Later
The plan dissolved almost as quickly as it had formed. Michael's schedule opened back up, and over coffee the following morning, we realized he could actually stay for the full circumnavigation after all. The relief of that shift is hard to fully describe. I'd spent about a full day mentally preparing to finish this alone, and having that plan reversed changed the entire emotional shape of the remaining days.
What Almost Losing Him Taught Me About the Trip Itself
That twenty-four-hour window forced me to confront what this project was actually about. If it had only been about the seventy-two miles, finishing alone wouldn't have mattered much beyond the logistics. But the near loss made clear that the miles were never really the point. The point was doing this specific hard thing with this specific person, and the prospect of losing that changed how much the remaining miles meant to me before we'd even paddled them.
What This Taught Me About Building Flexibility Into Plans
Beyond the emotional side, the practical lesson stuck with me too. Any multi-day trip with a partner should have a real contingency plan built in before departure, not improvised under pressure once a problem surfaces. We built ours reactively, at a market table, with real time pressure attached. Having that conversation earlier, before launch, would have taken some of the stress out of an already difficult moment.
Why the Uncertainty Made the Finish Better
Knowing how close we came to splitting up changed how the actual finish line felt five days later. Michael and I crossed that final stretch together, watched him trip and go face-first into the shallows on the last twenty feet, and stood there afterward with a kind of relief that wouldn't have existed the same way if the whole trip had gone according to plan without a single hitch. The uncertainty in the middle made the ending mean more than it would have otherwise.
What I Would Have Actually Done Alone
In the twenty-four hours we spent believing Michael would leave, I ran through what finishing solo would have actually looked like. Fewer conversations, more silence, a different kind of focus on the water without someone else's read on conditions to weigh against my own. I don't think I would have quit. But I know the trip would have felt like a different project entirely, closer to the solo expeditions I've done before in other parts of my career than to what 72 Miles of Blue actually became. That contrast helped me understand, even before the plan reversed, exactly what having him there was contributing to the experience.
How This Changed the Way I Plan Trips With Other People
Since this trip, I've become more deliberate about having the contingency conversation early with anyone I'm bringing on a demanding project, rather than waiting until a problem actually surfaces. Michael and I worked out our plan reactively, under real time pressure, sitting at a market table with the clock already running on his schedule. That conversation would have been easier, and less emotionally loaded, if we'd had it before we ever launched from Ski Run Marina. It's a small planning change with a real impact on how much stress a mid-trip schedule conflict actually creates. Building that conversation into pre-trip planning rather than treating it as an emergency response has become a standard part of how I prepare for any project I'm doing with someone else now, regardless of how solid the plan looks on paper before departure.
What Michael Said About the Same Twenty-Four Hours
We've talked since the trip about what that day felt like from his side, weighing a real commitment against a chance to finish something he'd already invested days of effort and physical strain into. He described it as one of the harder decisions he's had to sit with on any trip we've done together, not because the logistics were complicated, but because neither option felt fully right. That kind of shared difficulty, even when it ultimately resolved in our favor, is part of what made the friendship side of this project as meaningful as the physical accomplishment of it, and it's a big part of why we still talk about that specific day more than almost any other single moment from the entire trip. Twenty-four hours of uncertainty ended up teaching both of us more about what this project actually meant than any single mile of open water did, and neither of us would trade that lesson for a smoother, less complicated version of the same five days on the water together.
Before You Close This Tab
How did the moment Big Mike's schedule nearly forced him to leave change the shape of the entire trip, and what would you have done in his position?
Do you have a real contingency plan built into your own upcoming trips, or would you be improvising under pressure like we were?
What would it mean for you to finish something difficult alone that you'd planned to do with someone else?
How does uncertainty in the middle of a hard project change how the ending feels once you get there?
Dalton Johnson is a photographer, filmmaker, and brand storyteller based in South Lake Tahoe, California. Over the past decade he has worked with brands including Patagonia, GoPro, Arc'teryx, Four Seasons, Nike, Rivian, and Ford Bronco across all seven continents. He is the creator of the Follow The Journey distribution framework, which has produced over one million organic views per 30-day cycle without paid media. His work includes two published books, an award-winning documentary that aired on PBS, and more than fifty commercial spots directed. He runs Stories by Dalton on Substack, read by more than 34,000 subscribers.