Lately I have been talking a lot about dolphins surfing. Surfing is a great way to meet dolphins because many of them are also surfers. Dolphins are very friendly and curious people.

Yesterday there was a large swell of 5-7 foot waves hitting the Ventura area. I watched the surf from the beach and saw a dolphin surfing. Usually you can just see their fins popping out of the wave, but this dolphin was different. He kept jumping out of the water as he rode the wave, and there was a human surfer right next to him, just a few feet away. They rode the wave together for quite a while. I had never seen a dolphin jump while riding the wave, I think this dolphin must be a pro-surfer. There were camera men on the beach with big, fancy cameras. Maybe the dolphin was there doing a photo shoot for Surfer magazine.

The above pic was taken on my iphone, so I couldn't zoom and I only have this bad photo. You can see a person surfing next to the white water, to the left of him is a horizontal shape, that is the dolphin. I wish I had my video camera. I paddled out right after taking this and I saw the same dolphin on a wave right in front of me. He was very large, and he almost jumped right over me. I was scared that he would hit me when he landed. It would be a lot of dolphin to be hit with. I was worried he might be mad at me for eating some of his friends before. Sorry, dolphin.

I spent the first days of 2010 in a place called Big Sur. Big Sur is a coast and forest area between Los Angeles and San Francisco and it's full of happy animals. The first animals I met were a group of grey whales who, like me, were also passing through Big Sur. They were pretty far away, but I could see them blowing whale water high up into the air, and I saw a baby whale jump out of the water. I'm not sure what his name was because he was so far away.

While I was watching the whales, a man next to me said he had seen a California Condor . It's the largest and rarest bird in America and it only eats dead things. I mostly only eat dead things as well, so I think we would have a lot in common.I didn't get to see the condor though, because it had already gone into the trees. It probably had some work to do.

I also saw sea lions, otters, dolphins and homo sapiens.

In the south part of Big Sur is a surf beach called Sand Dollar. I paddled into the waves as the sun was setting. The waves were not so big, 3 or 4 feet, but they were very powerful. The current was pushing me toward a rocky area, so I caught a wave to try to get out of the rocks. I surfed the wave for a few seconds and then turned into it to let it break over my head. I do this a lot with the gentle waves in Los Angeles, and the wave always gives me a friendly pat on the back and head. When the Big Sur wave hit my back it felt like Ichiro Suzuki had whacked me with a baseball bat. I lost my breath for a second and my body felt all stiff.
I'm not sure what I did, but I must have made the ocean very angry for the wave to hit me so hard. I want to apologize to the Sand Dollar beach for whatever I did to make it so mad at me. Please forgive me.