April 7th,
2014
I remember sitting on my south-facing,
top-floor balcony for hours watching the waves break and feeling the power of
those waves reverberate through my building in the form of minute vibrations. I would soak-up sun there on the third-floor
looking out to the ocean from that courtyard-style building amid an impressive
collection of exotic flowers, weird plants, and cacti, all of which seemed to
collect there on my balcony over time and forever seemed to thrive upon their
arrival. (I’ll try to find a photo
somewhere to upload to show how awesome it all really was in a cozy sort of way
– at least to me.) I mean, I had a job,
but whenever I was not working or road-tripping to the desert or something, I
was hoping to be on that balcony watching the ocean. It was merely a comfortable one-bedroom
apartment with a balcony but with the most fantastic of views. And, not that I mean to brag, but it was just
a fantastic location all year-round!
Like…, a non-stop ocean-front vacation in SoCal.
But even
with all that, an even more impressive thing about the whole experience, in my
opinion, was that a there seemed to be a pod or team of dolphins that also
called those waves and that area of the South Bay/Redondo Beach shore home as
well. I remember how I would watch for
the dolphins from my balcony. If they
did not appear earlier, the dolphins would almost always show-up during
early-dinner time without fail, say around three o’clock in the afternoon or
so. From my balcony I would sit and
watch the dolphins as they swam out beyond the break and try to determine how
many different ones comprised that local pod.
Then, when sets of really big waves would roll-in (sometimes with maybe
even with like 25-foot faces in the winter), to watch those dolphins body-surf
struck me like magic not to be seen anywhere else – as they could be seen
riding/moving inside and through the crest of the wave and body-surfing down
along the line of the wave. Of course,
the dolphins could always swim much faster than the wave could move, so it
really made no difference to them how big the waves were. In fact, the bigger dolphins only seemed to
care to body-surf if the waves were very, very large.
As an avid
swimmer and enjoyer (sic:) of surf, I also would spend a significant amount of every
day in the water swimming and playing in the break.
And not that I would really ever worry about it much, but I remember
thinking that it was at least somewhat reassuring to know those dolphins were
probably in the area and they might choose to keep any less-nice, non-mammal
creatures from the deep at-bay. It was
also oddly reassuring to know the dolphins were there (somewhere) whenever I
would get caught out in the ocean when sets of the seemingly massive waves rolled-in
too. Like I would think to myself, ‘if I
get really slammed by one of these waves, maybe those dolphins will come to my
aid and rescue me’ – or so I liked to think was possible anyhow. ‘Cause when the really big waves would
roll-in on me, I would have to seemingly swim like 3/4ths of a mile out from
the shore to be outside the break. As
these waves had a steep face and were typically totally walled-up, so to go
'over the falls' or to get tossed by one of the really big waves could easily
be life-threatening – without any luck, anyhow.
Often times
as I was exiting the water, folks/strangers from the beach would approach me
and ask if I had noticed the dolphins that were apparently swimming right next
to me when I was in the water. Sometimes
I had noticed, most of the other times I did not. Even friends who would sometimes sit on the
beach as I swam would say, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t see that dolphin right
next to you! It was with you for a long
way down the beach!’ But sometimes as I was in the water, I would see the
dolphins approach surfers down-beach and seemingly allow the surfers to pet
them – which I always thought was pretty cool.
So anyway,
for the most tripped-out memory of it all, over time it seemed that the dolphins
became familiar with me and it seemed like they began to recognize me outside
of the water as well.
What’s more, it
was like they would show up and wait for me to come down off my balcony to join
them in the ocean.
It was if somewhere
inside of me I could sense them calling to me, for some unknown reason.
It was kind’a bizzare and I suppose you
sort-of had to be there to understand.
But to that end, when women-folk would come over for a visit, they would
joke to me that my dolphin friends were out there waiting for me to get in the
ocean.
It was like the pod would swim
around out past the break, maybe looking for fish or whatever, until I would go
down to the beach for a swim.
When I
would get down to the beach and begin to prepare for entering the water, the
dolphins would then come in closer to the shore, as if to say hello – like,
they would even then be mulling-around inside the break.
Then it would often seem that they would come
and join me for body-surfing in the break – at least if there were any decent
waves to make it worth the dolphins’ time.
I remember trying to figure out if it were
even possible for the dolphins to see/view me way up there on the balcony or
even standing on the beach.
Of course, I
never really knew for sure, either way.
(For one of my prior blogs where a dolphin was playing alongside me in
the break see:
“The Dolphin Inside the
Break.”
http://adamvernontrotter.blogspot.com/2012/05/dolphin-inside-break.html
.)
I eventually
came to realize that if I started doing my favorite thing in the water, if the
dolphins were not present, this would often seem to cause them to show-up. What it entailed was for me to sort-of hang
around inside the break and wait for a good-sized wave to show on the outside
horizon– mind you I always wore swim fins and even webbed gloves to have as much
power available as I could muster. As
the wave began to crest, I would swim full-force as hard as I could at the
wave. I would then swim up the face of
the wave and launch myself through and out of the back side of the wave. Somewhat like a dolphin (or more likely,
a whale by comparison) when it breaches.
Given a big enough wave, I could sometimes launch my whole body out of
the water. I even began to spin like we
see them do sometimes. After doing this
for several waves, it would seem the dolphins would show-up to see what all the
commotion was about. :) Sometimes I would even notice that people
would stop up on the road to watch me too, because I guess maybe it was not all
that common to see any surf-players swimming or riding against the waves.
But over the
course of time, patterns developed in that the dolphins would appear when it
was about my time of day to head into the ocean for a swim and some
body-surfing. This was usually at a time
later in the afternoon but when the sun would typically still be warm. Of course, the strangers and tourists would
repeatedly come up to me as I exited the water to ask if I noticed the dolphin
that was swimming “…LIKE…, IT WAS RIGHT NEXT TO YOU…?!?!? Like…,when you were swimming down the beach,
it was swimming right next to you the whole time.” I can only imagine that it must have looked
as though I was ‘walking a dog,’ with the dog being a dolphin, of course. Or, more to the point, the dolphin was
‘walking me’ – or ‘swimming me,’ as the case may have been. Some of the tourists would even argue that
the dolphins were sharks, at least until I explained how easily one can tell
the difference by the tail structures and therefore the difference in motions
between the mammals/dolphins and the sharks as well. Either way, I always couldn’t help but to
chuckle about it all.
So, as the
job that I had then eventually came to an end (along with so many other
jobs in SoCal at that time), the fantastic ocean-front/dolphin-front apartment did
likewise. But I managed to stay-on in
the apartment for a good while with no employer requiring my attendance
anywhere. I just hung-out on the
balcony, jammed-out with good tunes and friends, and looked to go swim with the
dolphins whenever possible. This went on
for quite some time thereafter. Also
during those endless months, I noticed the dolphins’ schedules again began to mimic
mine, or so it seemed anyhow. Like…, the
time of day that I normally would head to the beach for my swim, say one
o’clock to two o’clock in the afternoon, is when the dolphins would start to
surface beyond the break.
After
vacating the apartment, I always sort-of wondered if the dolphins would remember me
when I would go back to Redondo for a swim – which I still did for some amount
of time thereafter. Interestingly
enough, at least for some period of time, it seemed to me that they did. But what do I really know, ultimately. Right?
Maybe the dolphins are just ‘nice-guys’ and are friendly to
everyone. :)
Adam Vernon
Trotter / AVT
Again,
Another of my humorous dolphin memories can be had at:
The Dolphin
Inside the Break.
See also (My
other blog where I had posted the photo above/part of the view from my
balcony):
Enjoy the Sunset:
Redondo Beach, California
Oh yea…, per chance anyone doesn’t understand what I mean by
‘body surfing,’ read this one, maybe.
Body Surf Atlantic City….
