Why I Love Half Moon Bay, Pt 5

It was sunny this morning by the house, the fog having retreated about half a mile offshore, but you could see that a couple miles south, down by the state beach, the fog was still ashore. I decided to go for a bike ride, to get my one cardio point for the day.

[Laszlo and I are in the middle of cardio month, in which 30 minutes of cardio activity constitutes 1 point, and you can earn up to 1 point per day. We're in a friendly contest to see who gets the most points by the end of November. Right now I'm up 11-10, unless he runs tonight.]

Once down by the state beach, where the path starts going up along the cliff, the view became awesome- there was fog everywhere, I was biking right along the edge of the cliff, and it was high tide, so the waves were coming in at about 8-10 feet. Really spectacular.

And then I noticed a fin in the water. Slowing down to look, I saw that it seemed very dolphin-like. I've heard down at the harbor that there are dolphins in the area, but I'd never seen any. And although it looked dolphin-like, I always thought dolphins were not solitary creatures, so I was trying to figure out what else it could be when I looked to my left at a particularly big wave beginning to break and saw that there was not just 1 fin, but 2....3...4..5.6.7.8 fins.

Oh.

A whole pod of dolphins, coming in to ride the big waves. They looked like they were having fun.

I watched them for a while, and then I started hatching a plan whereby I would tie my sweatshirt to the brush on the edge of the cliff, bike like crazy the 1/4 mile down to the beach trail, ride down to the sand, abandon the bike, run back the 1/4 mile until I saw the sweatshirt hanging, then shuck my shirt and shoes and go in to swim among the dolphins. At exactly the point I got all this worked out, the dolphins all turned around and started swimming straight out to sea.

Damn.

My dream of swimming with the dolphins will have to wait for another day. Well, that's OK- the sea teaches you to be patient, and it was a bit chilly anyway. But still, it was awesome to see dolphins. As JJM would say, it warms the soul.

I love HMB.