Uneasy Sweetness

The waves have been steadily incredible throughout the last couple weeks with Hurricanes, Irene and Katia, sweeping by. The Saturday morning of Irene, out Kyle Linsly and myself paddled out alone in a most beautiful place.  (Where, shall remain mysteriously unknown) It was still dark. Below is a little picture of that morning after the sun rose. We were the only ones out, or at least that's what we thought.

Ten minutes after reaching the empty lineup. I heard some splashing behind us. Turning my head, I saw a thick dorsal fin cruising slowly. It rose 2 feet tall and swam less than 10 feet behind us. Several feet behind the dorsal, followed a tall tail fin, waving slowly, offering a very ominous propulsion My stomach sank. For some reason I uttered, "Kyle don't look behind you...." He did of course, but as he did, the prehistoric beast submerged, into the murky ocean. I remember thinking, "I liked him much more on the surface. At least we knew where he was then." We could only sit quietly and pray he is not interested, or hungry... I'm sure we don't taste good anyway, right? Funny thing about it is that neither of us wanted to paddle in. The swell was too good. It was too perfect. We shakily decided the animal was probably just curious about what who we were exactly. "He probably left...yea?" (These thoughts can help sometimes) We even named him Andy to make ourselves feel better. Andy the giant shark. There, I said it, the S-word. 

We kept surfing for a few more hours. However, neither of us could escape the ugly thought that Andy might be lurking below us in the coffee brown water, trying to guess what our feet would taste like.