Surfing with Dinosaurs

Yesterday was THE MOST GORGEOUS day at the beach in, well, two weeks.  It was finally sunny, a little coolish, and the water was crystal clear.  Paddling out on my surfboard, I could see my nine foot leash dangling five feet down.  I took some pictures after the lesson.  (Abut 200 pictures.)  Here are some of the best.  Don’t they make you want to come visit us?

I really like the picture above, because the water looks like liquid glass or a really shiny piece of wintergreen candy, or limeade.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Not Being Able to See

When I surf, I can’t see anything very specifically.  I can tell what is a person and what is a bird.  More or less.  I can see the waves best in the morning, when they are back-lit by the sun.  I’m looking into perscription surf goggles/glasses.  An advantage of not being able to see is that I am still a little bit creeped out by things swimming around me, even though that is inevitable when you swim in the ocean, and also kind of neat.  I partially got over that fear on Saturday when the pelicans came to visit us.

I love watching the pelicans.  Normally, if you are on the shore, you don’t end up very close to them.  Yesterday, while I was in my lesson with Kim and Tracy, the water all of a sudden started to smell very fishy.  Then, Tracy started to shriek and point.  “LOOK AT THE FISH”  “CAN YOU SEE THE FISH???”   “I can’t see anything,” I said.  “RIGHT THERE, IN THE TOP OF THE WAVE.”  “I’m not sure I want to see the fish.”  Then, we were surrounded by about twenty Brown Pelicans.  They were everywhere around us, swooping and diving, scooping up fish with their beaks.

I floated on the top of my board with Tracy hanging on to me so I didn’t drift away.  “That one over there (pointing to a pelican floating about ten feet away from us) is giving you the hairy eyeball,” Tracy said.  “He’s saying ‘Don’t eat my fish.’”  “NO chance of that happening,” I thought!

Kim paddled over and said “Where there is a whole school of fish, there are probably sharks, yes?”  At that point, Tracy said “ENOUGH watching pelicans.  Time to surf again.  Plus, the sharks are probably well-fed today, so they’re not going to bother us.  They don’t want us.”  Well, if she could say that, when she was the one dangling entierly in the water, I guess I was fine.  ‘specially because they would eat her first.

This surfer is NOT me, nor is it Kim.

Because of the fish, our place in the water, and the number of birds, we were bound to get close enough to them that even I could see them. They look like giant, funny, amazing, beautiful dinosaurs. In the surf book I reviewed a couple of days ago, Louise talks about how amazing it is to see all of the wildlife while surfing. I’m still not quite ready to see SOME things with me, but the pelicans definitely welcomed me into the fold, or at least made me less leery. Being in the water, with just the three of us around and lots and lots of pelicans flying around us was magical.