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Location: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

Friday, September 03, 2004

Malibu

This is just a story of something interesting that happened a little while back with my friend McCall. We both had a weekday free, and decided to do something interesting with it, so we got in the car and headed north. We drove up the PCH, which was cool, and after getting about halfway through Malibu, we stopped at a small surf shop there. We ended up renting a tandem kayak there to take out on the ocean. The people in the shop warned that the waves were supposed to have been big today, but thus far it was still flat, so they still agreed to rent us the kayak. In the 20 minutes it took us to get everything ready and get the kayak down to the beach, the waves had come in; about 3-4 foot waves, breaking right on the beach, which meant it would be really hard to get the kayak in the water and any momentum going to get over the first wave before it broke over us. We were both a little concerned, and McCall suggested we give up and try again later (which is very unlike her – I think she only said it because she knew I would overrule her), of course I told her we had gotten this far, we werent going to give up without at least giving it a few tries. She was in front, and after one failed attempt, we were able to get the kayak in the water between waves and I pushed it off and jumped in. we paddled hard for some momentum because we saw the wave coming; when we hit it, the front of the kayak went up in the air, but we kept the kayak straight, and we shot right over the top of the wave. We kept up our momentum, and though there were other big waves to jump, the breaking wave is always the hardest, and that was past. Of course, we were covered in sand and soaked to the bone, and my ankles were bleeding a bit, but I had expected to get wet, so it was okay, and McCall didn’t care about getting wet since her cigarettes were still dry.
It was fun riding over the waves, and as we got further out it calmed down a bit. After we passed the outer buoy we slowed down and relaxed. McCall mentioned that it would be really cool if we saw a dolphin or anything, and I had been thinking so too – or even a seal. Though there was probably much in the sea beneath us, we couldn’t see anything, but it was very nice to just relax on the glassy water, watch the clouds pass over the mountains on the coast, see the sun shining off the buildings of Santa Monica in the far distance. Then we heard a splash and looked over to the north just in time to see a very large grey dorsal fin submerge beneath the water. We looked at each other with concern. McCall said “That was way too big to be anything but a shark.” “No” I tried to reassure her, “Sharks don’t really breach like that – only dolphins do – its probably a dolphin.” “Dolphins also never travel alone – do you see any other dorsal fins?” At that point I began to worry, because she was right – sharks swim alone, but dolphins always swim in groups. I told her again that sharks only breach like that in movies, not for real. She asked me that if I intended to debate that point with the shark before or after it ate me? At this point she had gotten me to worry a bit too, though our course of action was pretty much the same either way, hold still and wait for it to pass, hoping we dont attract its attention to the not-very-stable kayak. Then there was another splash on the other side of the boat, closer. We looked over in time to see an enormous, dark grey dolphin sliding back into the water. When we looked back north where it had come from, we saw around 12-24 other dolphins coming our way, swimming and jumping. They swam right around us, under us, and to both sides. It was one of the most surreal things I have ever encountered in the absence of drugs. One jumped right alongside, maybe six feet from the side of the boat – the thing must have been 9 feet long – bigger than most sharks I’ve seen. I had to restrain McCall from jumping into the water after them. They played alongside us for a while, and we tried to keep up with them for a while, but once they became bored, they left us behind quickly. There was just something really amazing about it that putting it in words does not convey. Like nature popped up and gave you a smile and a wink just to show you her favor. We were both breathless from it. After savoring the experience for a little while, we decided to head back. I turned us around and headed towards the shore – when we got a little closer we saw that the waves had gotten even bigger than when we had left. I promised it would be easier this way – we’d just have to catch a wave on the way in just like if we were surfing it. As we came in we built up as much speed as we could, and then caught a big wave just as it came in; it took us down – as we rode the crest the front edge of the boat was over air, and we were looking down at the beach. When the wave crashed down, it slid us right up onto the beach, and all we had to do was jump out and pull it the rest of the way up. We returned the kayak, and went down through Malibu to eat at the Reel inn – we got some food and beer and ate on the patio, still in somewhat of a state of euphoria. There was a little black cat there that I fed little pieces of my fish taco to. After that we went home, still light-headed from what we had experienced.

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