From dp025@seqeb.gov.au Tue Nov 26 04:13:25 1996
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: D.J.Files..bits of a surfin life #67 Hide & Squeak - djdolfin.67 [1/1]
From: dp025@seqeb.gov.au (Bear)
Date: 26 Nov 1996 04:13:25 GMT

  
  Disclaimer :  None needed, for a change.
                

                  The D.J.Files #67

        Hide and Squeak

        A Sunday in 1996. Krakatoa decides to check out the bottom end of
 the 'Coast, after the weather has cleared up and the wind dropped. It was
 crap in the morning. 
        Snapper/Greenmount doesn't look too bad: about 3-5' faces. Good long-
 boarding conditions...and that's what Krak' rides, these days. Along with
 the majority of Gold Coast surfers over 40. Their surfing is slowing down,
 along with their sex lives and general metabolism, and golf is beginning
 to look like strenuous activity. But who am I to criticise!?
        There's not much of a crowd out either, but it's getting late, so
 there may not be too many rides. Krak' drops into the first empty one he
 sees, sets up the turn and walks up the fiberglass path to a forward trim
 position. There are enough people about, paddling back, to necessitate a
 few walk-back stalls, turns and repeat walk-ups. He rounds the corner into
 Greenmount, due to a combination of wave-of-the-day and being able to push
 thru the 'dead' spot just before the rox. By the time he pulls out, he's
 had a 200metre plus ride.
       Most sensible blokes would get out and walk back around the path, but
 Krak' is, in all fairness, still a pretty fit man. He swims (for a club)
 and cycles. You have to do these sorta things on the 'Coast. Yuppies, posers
 and their older equivalents. Joggers, cyclists and power-walkers( funny this
 one...I've never seen the batteries, it looks like normal propulsion to me)
 abound around dawn, most days, in the special lane set aside for them on the
 beach-side road. All designer gear and walkman stereos. Oh!, and mobile phones
 of course, being the 90s.
       So Krak' decides to paddle back. It takes some minutes, but he gets out
 again before sunset. He lets a few people take off unhindered - he's never
 been a snaker, of course. Then he gets another wave to himself. As he cranks
 his log thru its initial turn, something flashes in the water. Before he can
 think "shark!", a dolphin's head pokes out of the wave, right in front of the
 nose of his board, just as he's doing his style walk-up. There's a special
 kind of joy in sharing a wave with a dolphin, as I'm sure many of you will
 know. As he sees the first of the 'obstacle coursers' paddling toward him,
 Krak' shouts "looka-the-dolphin!"
      But as he does, it slips into the wave, behind and beneath his board..
 The guy paddling out peers along the wave. Sees nothing. The cetacean pops
 out again. Another surfer drifts near. Krak stalls slightly, leans into a
 casual bottom turn, shouts "looka-the-dolphin!" again. Once more, it's not to
 be seen by the passing paddler. This repeats several times, with Krak' doing
 the shout and the dolphin hiding. Once he could swear the dolphin winked at
 him when it re-appeared. 
     Hardly realising he had rounded Greenmount again, Krak was totally
 enthralled by this cheeky ocean fellow. When he pulled out eventually, the
 dolphin leapt once,in delight thought Krak'( but maybe we anthropomorphise
 too much with these creatures ? ), before heading off out into the Pacific.
 And that was the end of his late arvo session. Two waves, both well over
 200metre rides; one shared with a non-human snaker.

     "The world", as our SBS channel ad. says, "is an amazing place".
 
      
                               ***

-- 
Bear