Do you have a fear of
sharks?
So I'm surfing at the local break on sunset, pretty rays of orange, red, purple, blue gleaming off the city landscape in the background and the rolling hills in the distance.
Perfect 3ft barrels peal across an excellent bank extending 100 meters down the line. Pete and I share the normally crowded popular city surf beach break. Its just one of those perfect moments a surfer never wants to leave.
My mate goes in complaining of a cramp or something. It's to good to leave now - no need to explain to him I will be out for another half an hour, but this leaves me alone, alone with the beauty, alone with my paranoia - I hate Sharks.
The sun goes down a little further and the red gleam now looks angry. Shadows apear everywhere around me like spectors inches under the waters surface. The waves stop coming, its flat and I'm stuck out 200 meters from shore alone and freaked out like a dog in a thunder storm. I tuck my legs up on my board and I pray, please God let me get out of this, I'll do anything! Please send me a wave so I can get into shore alive and all limbs intact.
I see a shadow beside my board, this one is not imagined, and I just know its a shark. The world slows down into a surrealism seen only in movies as a dorsel fin protrudes from the now gray green murky depths. My mind screams, my body convuses....the fin raises then porpoises - its a dolphin.
Stoked! I reach down and pat my awesome new friend as the rest of the pod surface around me. I thank god and surf the rest of the most beautiful sunset of my life.
True story.