Whales as Swim Instructors - May 27, 2010

WHALE WATCHING

DIVING DEEP

THE MONO-FIN

LOOK MA - NO HANDS!

BOTTOMS UP!

Whaling, whaling over the bounding Maine.

Actually the ocean today is not very bounding – not even very bouncy. And we’re not even in Maine- we’re in P-town on Cape Cod. We have just embarked on the whale watching ship Dolphin IV with about 150 other passengers including sister-in-law Josephine and her friend Peter. The sun is bright and temp in the 80’s. Looks like smooth sailing. But just in case, the Dolphin Fleet operators are offering free Dramamine at the snack bar before departure. Peter and Jo avail themselves but Rena and I are good.

It doesn’t take long to spot the whales. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are feeding all around us as soon as we reach Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. I’ve seen whales many times before but they never fail to impress. One female has a calf but she keeps her distance and it’s not easy to get pictures.

We enjoy several displays of cetacean behavior including blowing, breaching, fluking and the famous ‘tails-up’ dive maneuver. The whales seem to enjoy their diet of krill and are very, very frisky.

Seeing all these Humpback shenanigans reminds me of my newest obsession. Swimming with a “Mono-fin”.

About 10,000 years ago or so, people got tired of falling in water, sinking to the bottom, running out of air and dying. Finally, someone got the bright idea of imitating dogs, horses, goats or what have you, and began paddling arms and kicking feet, and managed to get back to dry land without drowning. She called it swimming. This doggie-paddle technique did work, if somewhat awkwardly. However, the paradigm of swimming on all fours has not changed noticeably over the last ten millennia. The basic stroke is still called the Australian crawl. (And even Michael Phelps who can swim rather well, would appear to the unbiased observer to be ungainly while doing it.)

Now, imagine if pre-historic men and women chose to imitate the dolphin, the shark or the whale instead of the dog and the goat. Imagine further that they had the technology to fashion fish-tails out of sticks, skins and bark. Just think how much better and more graceful swimming would be today!

All that is water under the bridge, of course.

Not until the tail end of the 20th century did the folks at the Finis corporation actually design an artificial terminal appendage based on a cetacean blueprint which enables homo sapiens to undulate effortlessly through stretches of water without drowning- The Mono-fin!

The Mono-fin is a plastic swim-fin shaped like a whale's tail with a place to snug both feet together at the base. The fin is held in place with a strap around both heels. Once firmly strapped-in, one has successfully converted from a crawling terrestrial to an aquatic power-swimmer like the dolphin, the whale or Mr. Phelps after he makes an underwater turn!

No need for any other appendages to propulse through the liquid medium - just use your strap-on artificial tail. Also, no need to coordinate breathing and strokes. When you feel like breathing - push hard with your 'tail' until you 'breach' the surface, leaping out of the water, blowing out the old air, sucking in the new and diving under again in one fluid maneuver. Just like a humpback whale!

I went to the local Aqua-spa last Wednesday to get a one-hour lesson in this new way to swim. That and some practice is all it takes! For Father’s Day I’m giving myself a present of a Mono-fin Wave (the blue one). I’m looking forward to using my new toy in the Powow River and in the Atlantic this summer. (UPS tracking assures me that my tail is in the mail!)

By the way, the Mono-fin is great exercise for abdominal, back, thigh and leg muscles. (Hip action in the Samba and Rhumba is also enhanced.)

The only down-side is a possible encounter with real whalers while Mono-finning the Seven Seas. An accidental harpooning would be distinctly unpleasant. I will just have to risk it, I guess!

Now if only someone would invent the artificial blowhole, I would be all set. I suppose I could mono-fin underwater on my back and use my nostrils for a spout – hmmmm. Sounds like another mad-science experiment for Daktari!

DAKTARI

Old Cape Cod - September 7-8, 2007

B & B with private Porch




Breakfast is served!.................................................The Murphy Bed



Desperado from Colorado

(Although I wrote this one year ago, Cape Cod is still the same and so aren't we. Daktari)

Cape Cod is beautiful this time of year. Rena and I are heading for a romantic getaway to a bed and breakfast in Wellfleet. It’s bright and sunny in the late afternoon and the dashboard thermometer reads 93 degrees F. Time to head for the beach!

We stop at a nice restaurant outside Plymouth to have a pizza and a salad in a small café while the Friday evening traffic clears. The waitress is incredibly perky and the Red Sox are winning. So far so good! I tell Rena how thankful I am for this opportunity to be alone for a weekend. “We’re always doing something but never by ourselves. It’ll be like old times.”
“What do you mean we’re never alone!” protests my wife of 36 years.
“When was the last time we did something just the two of us,” I counter.
She thinks for a minute then cracks a wide smile. “Hey, we just spent 38 hours alone together flying from Cape Town to Boston.” We both break out laughing. That trip was not exactly quality time – 4 flights, three stops, endless lines, bad food and expensive airport coffee. Like steerage on the Mayflower – to use a phrase from Cape Cod’s pilgrim past.

We pull into our bed and breakfast about 10 PM. It looks beautiful – a small Victorian house right in the main part of the village. There’s a Koi pond in front filled with fat orange fish coruscating beneath underwater lights. There’s a private entrance to our room which is spacious and has a fireplace. The bed is a Murphy bed – one that folds down from the wall – What fun! We have our own porch so we slip a note under our hosts’ door to serve breakfast outside at 9 AM. And so to sleep – perchance to dream.

Sleep must have been dreamless. I don’t remember anything. The next thing I do remember is scrabbling noises coming from the bathroom along with muttered curses. “Whazzup in there?” I inquire. “I left my deodorant at home,” wails Rena. “Use mine,” I suggest. “But then I’ll smell like a guy,” she complains. “Consider the alternative,” I admonish.

It’s 9 AM and we are sitting on our porch, both smelling vaguely like guys – ahh togetherness and sharing – isn’t that what this weekend is all about? Our porch overlooks the front yard of the Flying Fish Café where the locals are reading their papers and sipping their first java of the day. Our hosts, Dan and Brad, bring the breakfast. They are a very nice couple. (and they smell like guys too!) After introductions, breakfast is served.

Breakfast is fresh coffee, granola, fruit and a basket of muffins – yum! We ask Brad and Dan a little about Wellfleet and try to remember the last time we stayed here. I think it was at least 30 years ago. “I remember our favorite restaurant, Aesop’s Tables and the seafood crepes with a white grape garnish,” I say. Dan and Brad exchange looks. “ Then I think one of us must have served dinner to you guys,” says Dan. “We were the waiters at Aesop’s Tables for years and years.”

Dan gives us some tips on places to eat and then suggests we head to Great Island on the Bay side of the Cape. It’s a nature reserve where footpaths lead to several isolated sandy beaches. Isolated beaches sound good to Rena. In addition to forgetting to bring deodorant she has neglected to bring the bottom of her bathing suit. “I can’t help you there,” I say. So she decides to make do with her bathing suit top and a pair of yellow and pink underpants. She tries on her ensemble and we both laugh. “Hey, this is the Lower Cape. It’s not the first time that folks wearing men’s deodorant take off for the beach in underpants and a bra,” I exclaim. We are laughing again.

The sky is azure and it’s mid-80 degrees. Perfect! Rena’s little orange car with the pink-and-purple mermaid on the driver-side door takes us along the bay to the reserve’s parking lot. Making sure the coast is clear, we hike off along a piney forest path toward Great Island. We remember characters we met on our old days on the Cape: Mary who used to swim down from the nude beach in Truro, heaving her 250+ pounds out of the ocean covered with goose bumps to trudge happily back the way she came. Michael with his boundless enthusiasm. And beautiful busty Rhonda with the seagull feathers in her hair.

We find a beach where there are no other people and arrange our little enclave – folding chairs, newspapers, towel, plastic bag of peaches. The sun is warm but a sea breeze keeps us from feeling it. We both get a little burnt! I go for a swim but can’t entice Rena to join me – underpants at the beach is one thing but wet underpants is definitely over the line.

A woman and her two boys – one aged about 8 and the other about 4 – approach along the waters’ edge. The little one goes on strike just before they reach our spot. He sits down in the sand and won’t go further. Mom and older brother continue on. For some reason this little tableau strikes me. It’s a contest of wills. Will the angry little boy get his way? Will Mom and big brother come back for him? Will he give up and run to join them as they get farther and farther away? Finally Mom gets too far ahead for her own comfort. She turns and heads back, picks up her younger son and the three recede the way they came. It’s mostly wordless – no pleading, cajoling, or angry words. A decision is made without thought. This family could be gazelles on the savannah or ancestral anthropoids traversing the great lake-bed at Olduvai. In the dazzle of the shore, they stand out so clearly illuminated. Parenting seems an ageless dance, complicated but familiar – coming together and then going apart and coming together again. Sometimes I think that beyond words lies a whole “nother world”– like ours but more authentic. The world of dancing birds.

Rena and I hike back the way we came. After changing into tourist outfits back at the B & B, we walk into town and explore. The Wellfleet General store combines food, books and bumper stickers with multi-colored kites and assorted tapes and glues. I buy a bumper sticker which has 01-20-2009 at the top and the caption says “Bush’s Last Day”. I plan to send it to my Mom. Rena spots a poster for a coffeehouse in Eastham. “Tonight 8 PM – Paul Rishell and Annie Raines - Blues Concert”. Sounds good to us.

We set out to find dinner and the coffee house. I give Rena a couple of gifts to mark our little adventure. A CD of tunes that I’ve compiled from the internet and a black and white photo, enlarged to 5 x 7 and framed. It’s me at age 21 when I was working as a hail-chaser in New Raymer, Colorado. I’m in jeans and a work-shirt with binoculars slung over one shoulder and a large sombrero. All of us hail-chasers were wearing sombreros that summer in imitation of the bad guys in the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. I’m sporting a scruffy beard. My first facial hair - I remember I was quite proud of it at the time. In the background is a washing machine piled high with the detritus of my bachelor prairie existence. It’s 1969, the same year that Rena and I met.

We drive off listening to the new CD and searching for food. Just before passing out from starvation I find a bar and grille in Falmouth where we score a table for two by the window. We share a great lobster salad followed by lobster alfredo. The Red Sox are still winning!

The coffee house is hard to find but we make it just before all the seats are sold out. Great blues - only my damn shoulder has been starting to ache and by intermission it is killing me. It’s been three weeks since I wrenched it while cage diving for great white sharks and it still hurts at the end of the day. We skip the second set and return to our nest to curl up with a DVD. After Rena falls asleep, I turn off the TV.

As I watch her sleeping, I’m thinking of the backyard wedding that we passed earlier on our stroll through Wellfleet. Will the young groom be staring at his spouse’s back in 36 years and fondly remembering the old days? I hope so. Silently in the middle of the night, I wish the two of them the best of luck and many happy years together. Us too.

Daktari