Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
DAY THREE:
Whale watching day! Of, if you're a whale, paparazzi day!
Sue and I are early risers, so we were up in plenty of time to have a bit of breakfast and still be down to the dock over a half-hour early. We wanted front-row seats, both for the view and so we wouldn't be down-wind of any motion-sickness attacks.
While waiting at the dock, we could see a more-elevated dock just a couple of doors down, with what looked like guys checking in ice chests of fish. Underneath this dock was what I thought was a rock sticking out of the water, until it started quoting Harpo Marx dialog:
So I took a closer look.
Obviously, experience had taught this guy to hang out here for easy meals, sort of like finding the places in New York where things fall out of trucks. I know the picture above just looks like a blow-up of the previous one, but it's not... it was taken a couple of minutes later. This seal never moved. He looked just like this later that day, and I'm betting I could run back up to Morro Bay today and take this same picture. I could almost admire his tenacity if I wasn't imagining the barnacled nightmare of his below-the-surface regions.
After watching this marine equivalent of the Queen's Guard for a while, I turned around and got a picture of the catamaran we'd be taking.
As you can see, someone's basically bolted some park benches onto a platform, then put the whole thing on a couple of pontoons and labeled it so everyone will know that you're not in the bleachers for a deep-sea water polo match. It's designed to attract whales, who are always desperate for a laugh. The name of the vessel made me nervous. Everyone knows that "Dos Osos" is Italian for "those so-and-so's!", but all I could see was a couple of SOS's.
As we had hoped, once we were piped on board, Sue and I were able to get one of the front benches, along with another couple that looked to be about our age. We were told the tour was booked to capacity, so everyone on board was scrunching together to make room for later arrivals, but after a few minutes our captain announced that seven people had cancelled (probably after seeing they had booked a ride on an air foil). So we spread out a bit. The couple sharing the bench with us split up; the woman moved to the back bench while the guy stayed where he was next to Sue. I thought this seemed sort of funny, but I was also grateful Sue hadn't thought of it first, so I shrugged it off until we were underway.
That's when we learned that the gentleman seated next to Sue was named Charles, and it quickly became obvious why his companion had opted for a different bench. As soon as we started heading out of the harbor, Charles exclaimed, "This is going to be a great trip!"
I've warned Sue about the danger of striking up new acquaintances (she's still paying for the ill-advised decision to get to know me), but she's never learned to be anything but pleasant to people around her, so she said, "Yes, it should be a lot of fun."
From there, Charles took the wheel, conversation-wise. He was a combination of Cliff Clavin from Cheers and Rainman (Dustin Hoffman, not Tom Cruise). He let us know that he was a retired park ranger that served in the greater central California area and then launched into a running commentary about... well, about almost everything.
A random snippet ran something like this:
"I'm really looking forward to seeing some whales there's lot of animal life to see around here the birds are very important they interact with the fish and the seals and the otters the birds have very sharp eyes they can spot the fish from way up in the air there's different seals to see around here some of them have ear holes and others have ear flaps they can hear pretty good the birds rely more on their eyes we have our eyes that we see with, our nose that we smell with and our mouth that we taste with birds have eyes that they see with and nose holes that they smell with but they got no upper lip just a bill seals have lips look for the whale's spout that's how you spot them they breath air so they have to come up to exhale they're air-breathing mammals we might see some sharks they're not mammals they're fish you want to stay away from their teeth I used to be a ranger all through this area it was great I loved it your husband doesn't talk very much does he be sure to look for a spout or a fin..."
And so forth.
I know the rule of the sea is women and children first, but when it came to Charles, I had already jumped ship, and Sue was on her own. At one point, Charles' companion yelled from her back-row bench, "Charles! Give the lady a break! You're overloading her!" but that didn't seem to discourage him, and she made no more attempts to rein him in... she probably recognized the expression of resignation on Sue's face.