An Account of the Best Day of My Life
I feel bored, and a bit depressed by the mildly good, mildy shitty weather. So today I was thinking of the best memory I could, trying to get myself back up. It was a pretty fucking amazing day, so I decided to share it with all you people out there in intranet land. Its kind of longwinded, but no one's forcing you to read.
The year was 2002, mid april, in a wonderful little town in Australia called Byron bay. I awoke to the sound of birds and the babble of a little fountain out side the cabin/tent I was sleeping in at my hostel. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 8 in the morning. I got up, put on my board shorts and had a bite to eat. Then I meandered down the road to the beach with my surfboard and walked along it for about half an hour to another beach where the waves were POUNDING in. The beach was about ten miles long and had perfect white sand, so fine it felt like flour. The tropical rain forest came right down to the beach and there were birds everywhere. I got all streched out and headed into the water and into what ended up being the hardest struggle I have ever had in the ocean.
45 minutes of pure terror, trying to fight my way out through the shore break in ten foot waves on a beach I had never even seen before, knew nothing about and which had rips I didn't even know about till the next day (the rips can suck you a mile out to sea in a matter of minutes and there ain't shit you can do about it). Every second wave would send me right back to shore forcing me to use almost all my enegry just to get out past them. when I finally got out to the place where the waves were actually breaking (the white water was what had been knocking me in), I saw something that made me really want to give up. As the waves stood up, the faces where full of fish swimming VERY fast away from something. In Australia that is a bad sign. So I figure "hey there is two other guys out here, if there's a shark around, I have a one in three chance." Stupid perhaps? Anyway, I kept on paddling and finnaly made it almost out past the waves when I finally saw what had been chasing the fish as the next wave the stood up in front of me. Imagine a wall in your house, plus two feet, of water, about to crash down on your head while you're lying on your stomach. Okay now your there. So in this, perfect, glassy, crystal blue wave are three dark forms about the size of a .....well, about the size of dolphins I guess, swam by me at incredible speed, I have never seen anything move so fast ocean the ocean before. It wasn't sharks that had the fish riled up! It was dolphins! So I got out past the waves and there in front of me was a whole pod of dolphins jumping and playing in the water. I was exausted by that point so I just sat and watched them for a few minutes until the swam right over to me. I slid off my board and started swimming along with them while the kept just out of my reach but close enough that I though I could touch them. They were all around me, under me on all sides, front and back. I think there were about ten of them all together. I got to swim with them for a while and then they got distracted and swam away. I was feeling pretty great by then so i thought I'd go for some waves. After trying and failing for a while (I'd never been out in anything over 6 feet before and I was only 18=scrawny weakling), I finnaly got into one. As I was riding, inside the wave were two dolphins right beside me riding along with me. As the wave ended the doplhins, in almost perfect sync, backflipped out of the wave infront of me. I shit you not.
I only got one wave that day and that was it. I went in and there on the beach was a nice British guy who offered to share his spliff with me, and as we were smoking it, two sexy young Australian chicks (the only other people on the whole beach, ten feet from where we were) decided it would be better it they sunbathed nude that day. I don't remember the rest of the day but that was up to about 9:45 am. And I'll tell you this much, I'm sure it didn't get worse.
As an after though I now rememeber going up to the top of a cliff the next day and seeing at least five big white tipped sharks swimming right where I had been surfing the day before.
The year was 2002, mid april, in a wonderful little town in Australia called Byron bay. I awoke to the sound of birds and the babble of a little fountain out side the cabin/tent I was sleeping in at my hostel. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 8 in the morning. I got up, put on my board shorts and had a bite to eat. Then I meandered down the road to the beach with my surfboard and walked along it for about half an hour to another beach where the waves were POUNDING in. The beach was about ten miles long and had perfect white sand, so fine it felt like flour. The tropical rain forest came right down to the beach and there were birds everywhere. I got all streched out and headed into the water and into what ended up being the hardest struggle I have ever had in the ocean.
45 minutes of pure terror, trying to fight my way out through the shore break in ten foot waves on a beach I had never even seen before, knew nothing about and which had rips I didn't even know about till the next day (the rips can suck you a mile out to sea in a matter of minutes and there ain't shit you can do about it). Every second wave would send me right back to shore forcing me to use almost all my enegry just to get out past them. when I finally got out to the place where the waves were actually breaking (the white water was what had been knocking me in), I saw something that made me really want to give up. As the waves stood up, the faces where full of fish swimming VERY fast away from something. In Australia that is a bad sign. So I figure "hey there is two other guys out here, if there's a shark around, I have a one in three chance." Stupid perhaps? Anyway, I kept on paddling and finnaly made it almost out past the waves when I finally saw what had been chasing the fish as the next wave the stood up in front of me. Imagine a wall in your house, plus two feet, of water, about to crash down on your head while you're lying on your stomach. Okay now your there. So in this, perfect, glassy, crystal blue wave are three dark forms about the size of a .....well, about the size of dolphins I guess, swam by me at incredible speed, I have never seen anything move so fast ocean the ocean before. It wasn't sharks that had the fish riled up! It was dolphins! So I got out past the waves and there in front of me was a whole pod of dolphins jumping and playing in the water. I was exausted by that point so I just sat and watched them for a few minutes until the swam right over to me. I slid off my board and started swimming along with them while the kept just out of my reach but close enough that I though I could touch them. They were all around me, under me on all sides, front and back. I think there were about ten of them all together. I got to swim with them for a while and then they got distracted and swam away. I was feeling pretty great by then so i thought I'd go for some waves. After trying and failing for a while (I'd never been out in anything over 6 feet before and I was only 18=scrawny weakling), I finnaly got into one. As I was riding, inside the wave were two dolphins right beside me riding along with me. As the wave ended the doplhins, in almost perfect sync, backflipped out of the wave infront of me. I shit you not.
I only got one wave that day and that was it. I went in and there on the beach was a nice British guy who offered to share his spliff with me, and as we were smoking it, two sexy young Australian chicks (the only other people on the whole beach, ten feet from where we were) decided it would be better it they sunbathed nude that day. I don't remember the rest of the day but that was up to about 9:45 am. And I'll tell you this much, I'm sure it didn't get worse.
As an after though I now rememeber going up to the top of a cliff the next day and seeing at least five big white tipped sharks swimming right where I had been surfing the day before.
posted by C'uhlq?y'ac at 10:33 PM
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