Dolphin Bubble Rings

A friend emailed me this video of dolphins playing with bubble rings.

I have had so many cool experiences with dolphins over the years, but I want to share one of my favorite dolphin stories, ever.

I was about to finish my last semester of college. I had gotten up early to study a little bit more for an 8 a.m. final. I had 20 minutes to surf. Twenty minutes of surfing with an hour of execution: driving to the beach, undressing, suiting up, suiting down, dressing and driving home would all take much longer than my surf session.

I paddle out at Huntington Cliffs and it is soooooooooooooooo good. I can still see the waves in my head, even though it was eighteen years ago. The conditions were flawless. Glassy head high waves peeling to the beach. I caught a perfect wave. As I am paddling back out to the line up, a giant dolphin leaped out of the water, right over me! Everything started happenening in slow motion. As I looked up she was right over me. As in above me. Dolphins look much larger when they are hovering above me as opposed to swimming by.

"I hope she doesn't land on me," is all I could think. After what seemed like an hour she splashed into the water never to be seen by my eyes again.

"Thank goodness!" I say in relief.

Now everything was making sense. At first it seemed illogical to go surfing for 20 minutes. But if I hadn't made the effort I wouldn't have had that amazing experience. And as Stefan reminded me while we watched the dolphin video above, "dolphins are masters of play."

Sometimes, everyone gets so busy running here and there, but the dolphins are playing hard to remind us how important play is.