Cool Bus Graphics

[350HP930]

Not good for those that are fearful of shark attack though. What would that one armed surfer girl think about having to get on this thing?

[GettinHeadStuds]

I'm going to NorCal to surf in a couple weeks...grrreeeeat....just what I need to start thinking about.

[serge944]

Thats really cool!

[widebody911]

Originally posted by GettinHeadStuds


I'm going to NorCal to surf in a couple weeks...grrreeeeat....just what I need to start thinking about.

Where in NorCal?

[GettinHeadStuds]

Starting in SF... surfing pacifica, half moon bay for a couple of days. Then we'll go either north or south, depending on the surf/weather.

I get a little freaked out surfing up there... so many seals...and well we know that seals act as bait for the men in the grey suits. I used to surf a little in Oregon when I was in college and had some SCARY experiences up there. For example, one time I was sitting in the lineup (me and two other guys), seals all around, then all of a sudden the seals dissappeared. I could feel the tension in the water, like something nasty showed up... I caught the next one in. Call me a puss, that's fine, but I like having two legs, two feet, and my arms.



I gotta stop thinking about whitey and start thinking about stand up barrels....

[widebody911]

Originally posted by GettinHeadStuds
Starting in SF... surfing pacifica, half moon bay for a couple of days. Then we'll go either north or south, depending on the surf/weather.

Gimme a holler, Maybe I can meet you out there. There's a nice, little-known reef break @ Bolinas, and a few other out-of-way spots.

[jim72911t]

Grew up in SoCal surfing and never once thought about a shark. (Dolphins, yes, but the only thing they've ever done is drop in on me!) In my early college years, I started making treks to the Santa Cruz/SF area and suddenly became much more aware of the shark thing, mostly from my NoCal friends who had been surfing there all their lives. Never seen one, though.

You should have fun on your trip, though it's probably a bit early to catch a really big swell. I've had great surf at 4-mile and Scott Creek (both between SC and Davenport IIRC), and a truly frightening day at Ocean Beach in SF.

Enjoy,
Jim

[david914]

Originally posted by 350HP930
Not good for those that are fearful of shark attack though. What would that one armed surfer girl think about having to get on this thing?

Maybe they should wait for the next bus...

Seriously, that is really cool!

[4to8m8]

Half Moon Bay, Isn't that Mavericks? I used to share a duplex with Boby Owens on the N shore. He moved up there in 95 but I havn't heard anything about him being in the water.

[mikester]

I tell you what. Sharks are hard to get over for me.

I've been surfing all my life nearly - started in the Gulf of Mexico (yes there is surfing there) and then we moved out to CA. I started going to Camp Pendelton, Tresles and Oceanside pretty regularly. I moved out to Jax, FL and surfed there for a long time too and that's where it happened.

I swear it was as long as I am high (no pun intended).

My buddy and I are sitting out there and it's real quiet. Just us - we're having a lazy saturday and the weather and the water is f'ing beautiful. Blue...clear...you can see the fish in the water (just north of St. Augusting near the Gate station). My buddy gets an odd look (well, how about he's just odd looking) and says "I'm goin in to take a nap." Not an uncommon occurance for the sloutch to take a nap on the beach while I surf...

So...there I am...by myself...in the water...or so I thought.

I'm sittin there - on the board - indian style whirling my hands in the water for balance and I see a school of mullet schooling past me. I'm thinking to myself "How cool is this, I could reach down and grab a fish." Well before I could finish that thought in my head (I got about to "down") A freaking huge grey mass is thrashing in the water attacking the fish.

I'm in the dinner bowl apparently.

Then...just as fast as it showed up it was gone and the water was calm. I felt like I'd lost all the blood in my body - I grabed the nose of my board - extended my feet and paddled into the next wave and rode it all the way in.

I walked over to my buddy on the beach...kicked him in the side and said "Why didn't you tell me there was an f'ing shark!?"

His response..."Would it have made a difference?"

Well...hell yeah it would have. I woulda got the heck out of his dinner bowl for sure.

Fact is that beach is a breeding ground for black tip sharks. In the later months of the summer we always catch the yungins when we are beach fishing and there are ALWAYS reports of sharks attacking little kids (just the right size). This one was quite a bit bigger than the little ones of course.

I haven't been the same since in the water - I'm always afraid and watching the local news reports of sharks everywhere is really kept me on edge. Apparently there was a dead whale of the coast of OC or so and that brought a lot of sharks into the area.

Oh and there is no way in hell I'm getting on that bus.

[GettinHeadStuds]

Mike, that is a creeepy story... The most comforting line was "the water is f'ing beautiful. Blue...clear".

Most shark attacks occur in murky water, when the shark can't really see you too well. Unless we're talking about whitey... in his case, he eats when he wants regardless of who what where. I've only seen little 3-5 feet long leopard sharks here in socal, they get close and swim away. Dolphins have been really scary around here, especially when the have their youngens around...pheew weee...

RE: Your shark sighting....I had a smiliar experience as a kid... summer time, sitting on a longboard, trunking it, it's pretty flat out and the water is perfectly clear. I'm checking out chicks and day dreaming until I look down and see a huuuuge grey thing under me. I got really sketched out and get on my hands and knees (on top of my board). I don't see it for a few seconds and then it reappears. So now I'm thinking, "Next wave is my ticket in mother f-er." Well it was really flat that day and nothing came rolling in. So here am, on my board, on my hands and knees, with googly eyes focused on the water beneth me, when all of a sudden it hits me.... it's the *****in shadow of my board on the sand below.

I was still freaked out and paddled in on the next wave. Shieet, foiled by mother ocean again... hehe

[GettinHeadStuds]

Originally posted by 4to8m8
Half Moon Bay, Isn't that Mavericks? I used to share a duplex with Boby Owens on the N shore. He moved up there in 95 but I havn't heard anything about him being in the water.

Yup.

I've surfed the jetty there and seen mavericks when it was 40+. In fact I was there the day before Mark Foo died (1996 or 1997?). The guys that surf there are NUTS, 100% crazy. It's not the waves that are creepy, it's the fact that it's soooo freggin rocky there. Crazy...

[mikester]

I don't like sharks.

[djmcmath]

Mike -- not quite so personally scary, but shortly after my first surfing experiment at a beach near Jacksonville, a friend showed me an aerial picture of the beach. You could see the sharks, and you could see the surfers. There were maybe 5 or 6 visible sharks, just floating around, eating fish and whatever else. (shudder)

Dan

[mikester]

Oh yeah. Believe me - I was 100% aware that there were sharks there. I'd been fishing in that area for most of my life and caught them upwards of 4 feet long - but being in the dinner bowl was different.

Dad and I used to fly up and down the coast counting them at times.

[Overpaid Slacker]

First -- cool pix. Ingenious.

Second -- I'm fascinated and horrified by sharks b/c I don't like being reminded that I'm not alone at the top of the food chain. Large bears, though fellow "top link" mates don't give me the feeling of prey like sharks do.

My own little story, if you'll indulge me:

It's Thanksgiving-ish a few years back, and I'm diving in the Keys (out of Largo w/ an outfit called Quiescence which I highly recommend). We're on a six-pack and go to a particular reef (French Ledge, I think; though it could have been Molasses) for the day's first dive.

The anchor line is at the end of this reef and we're in about 60' of water. The reef itself is about 10-12' tall, with a large cave/cut-back into the end of the reef (about 6 feet from the seafloor to the top of the "cave", which goes back into the reef about 20'). I'm a big guy, so I'm the last in the water and I get to the bottom and see the others have moved off down the reef. No big deal, they're not too far away; but they essentially "skipped" the tip of the reef, which usually has a bunch of smaller fish, hanging out outside of the current. So I drift on over there to check it out, and it's empty (!). Obviously the Spidey-sense had taken the morning off, and I click on my light, just as my head comes under the edge of the cutback in the reef.

The first thing the light hits is a black eye -- large, dull and about 8 feet from me. My heart stopped. I'm not kidding. Stopped dead. I pan the light to the right and cover the 3-4' expanse of head of a GWS. The business end of the perfect killing machine. Eight feet away. Staring at me (I assume). And the only plexi between me and those teeth are my goggles.

Well, what got my heart going again was me screaming "Holy *****" into my regulator. I stopped moving around, dropped to the seafloor and just backed up slowly.

Now, of course, this shark is not going to confuse me for a fish (or a turtle or a seal, which is how I think many surfers get chomped) because I'm making more noise just by breathing with SCUBA than anything else for a mile around. He heard me coming from the moment I hit the water, right up until I shined a flashlight right in his eye like some kind of fish cop.

But I was not having such reassuring conscious thoughts at that moment -- the reptilian brain had seized the controls and, having turned the corner from the mouth of the cave, I was edging my way along the reef toward my colleagues ( I don't have to out-swim the shark, I've just gotta out-swim YOU!). Well, they're nowhere in sight, so I keep putting distance between me and the Perfect Eating Machine.

Once the heart-rate dropped into the triple digits, I started looking around again, checking stuff out -- If I'm gonna go, I might was well enjoy the scenery. A moment later, about a million coppery fish come pouring over the top of the reef, like a living carpet, and zip around me on their way to wherever they're going. I could feel my brain about to think "Wow, that's cool." but just after it got to "Wow" and before it got to "that's cool", it was hijacked by "what scared all those fish?"

I put my back to the reef, expecting to see the underside of the shark coming overhead like the Star Destroyer in the opening scene of Star Wars. Several minutes later -- no shark. So I've had enough and hustle on over to the anchor line and begin my ascent. You've got to do a decompression stop at 15' for a minute -- and that was probably the longest minute of my life b/c the shark, if it wanted to come, could come from ANYwhere -- above, below, behind, etc. My head was on a swivel. I got to the surface and came out of the water like a Polaris missile, not wanting to leave my feet dangling.

I tell the dive master I'd seen a great white, and he was ... skeptical. Nobody else on the dive had seen any shark at all and GWS are not common in that area, so he politely, quietly believed I had lost it.

Fast forward three months. I'm back in the Keys, going out on a Quiescence boat and the (same) dive master asks us where we want to go. Someone says how 'bout "X". I say, anywhere is fine except French, b/c last time I had a bit of a shark encounter. The dive master looks at me, stunned and says "Holy crap YOU'RE that guy. With the great white. That was like Thanksgiving, right?"
"Yeah." Says I.
"About a week later, they caught the largest great white shark ever seen in the Keys on Molasses." (which is about 500 feet from where I'd seen him). The DM goes below and grabs a magazine that's got the fisherman and the caught shark - my buddy- on the cover. I looked at the shark and said "that's him, officer."

The DM says "man, I'm sorry, I really thought you'd imagined it. I was telling my buddies about 'this guy' who'd seen a GWS and we laughed our a$$es off. And one of my buddies brought this magazine to me a few weeks later. Dude, I owe you a beer."

JP

[GettinHeadStuds]

Originally posted by Overpaid Slacker
He heard me coming from the moment I hit the water, right up until I shined a flashlight right in his eye like some kind of fish cop.

Lol...

[mikester]

I have a bear story too...but I digress...

Have I mentioned that I don't like sharks?

[djmcmath]

JP, between this one and your "I drove my car off a corner into a tree at full speed" story, I'd say you win the prize for Most Likely To Die Before 30. Holy cow...

Dan

[Overpaid Slacker]

Dan, when I turned 30, my mom said something like "Well, you're 30. If your dad was still alive, I'd owe him five bucks."

Mom's a softie like that.

JP