Lately I have been talking a lot about dolphins surfing. Surfing is a great way to meet dolphins because many of them are also surfers. Dolphins are very friendly and curious people.

Yesterday there was a large swell of 5-7 foot waves hitting the Ventura area. I watched the surf from the beach and saw a dolphin surfing. Usually you can just see their fins popping out of the wave, but this dolphin was different. He kept jumping out of the water as he rode the wave, and there was a human surfer right next to him, just a few feet away. They rode the wave together for quite a while. I had never seen a dolphin jump while riding the wave, I think this dolphin must be a pro-surfer. There were camera men on the beach with big, fancy cameras. Maybe the dolphin was there doing a photo shoot for Surfer magazine.

The above pic was taken on my iphone, so I couldn't zoom and I only have this bad photo. You can see a person surfing next to the white water, to the left of him is a horizontal shape, that is the dolphin. I wish I had my video camera. I paddled out right after taking this and I saw the same dolphin on a wave right in front of me. He was very large, and he almost jumped right over me. I was scared that he would hit me when he landed. It would be a lot of dolphin to be hit with. I was worried he might be mad at me for eating some of his friends before. Sorry, dolphin.

I just got back from boogie boarding 10-12 foot+ waves in the city of Ventura. It's about one hour north of Los Angeles.
People call these waves "double over head". I have surfed double-baby overhead before, which is about 2 babies high, so I thought I could handle these, but when I got there, I saw that the waves were too big for me to surf, so I brought out my boogie board and flippers. It was very rough, and hard to paddle out to the waves. When I finally got there, my breath was very heavy and the waves looked like giant apartment buildings coming at me. Just as I was thinking about what kind of fish and creatures live in these liquid apartment buildings, I saw two dolphins surfing on a 10 foot wave. I wrote an earlier blog post about seeing dolphins surf. I really wanted to catch the wave with these dolphins, so I turned around and paddled, but I missed it. I didn't see the dolphins again. I guess they rode that wave in to the beach and went home.

It was pretty scary to be out in these big waves and paddle over them. At first, I was scared of them, but then a giant one broke right in front of me. I was in the worst place to be. It was a lot of water. I took a big breath and dove under the wave and waited to be thrown around by the ocean and held under, but Mr. Ocean only shook me a little bit for a few seconds and then popped me out onto the surface. That was very kind of him.

I caught a nice 10 foot wave, and rode it all the way to the beach. At the end of my ride, it broke in a hollow tube, and I popped out of it. When I grow up, I want to be a wave just like that one, or a fire truck.