Whale Watching September 27 - October 10, 2004 Did you know that whales can fly? Not for long, of course.

	Some orcas have visible white spots

	Dominant killer whale males often sport such a long dorsal fin that it forms a scroll.

It's a shame -- in four years I have been living here, I never went whaling. I know Monterey Aquarium and Point Lobos like the back of my own hand, but we always seem to have passed by those booths offering bay tours to see the great cetaceans. It's because of Sid's hesitation to go again, after his experience some long time ago, when he went and saw just one small piece of a single whale. Despite that, we have to take advantage of granny being here with us, who's stay is coming now to an end, so we try to engage in activities where we cannot take Tom along.

We started our whaling expedition by weather-proofing ourselves at a restaurant. First we had a seafood lunch -- Sid said that we were being actually very ecological, for we would, in the case of sea sickness, hurl into the ocean objects that already belong there. To forestall sea sickness, we afforded ourselves each a glass of wine. Its function is plain -- your body has already encountered a situation after imbibing alcohol with everything tumbling and one gets hit by door jambs and sometimes even the floor. Therefore your body does not panic, if after a glass of wine, a previously quiet world transforms into a ship deck on a stormy sea.

	Orcas are the wolves of the seas: they hunt in packs.

	Time on a boat moves slowly, when the whales ain't showin'...

	... and then suddenly we can't look fast enough, much less take pictures. A tail of a humpback whale.

Actually, we did not get a chance to enjoy any stormy sea -- just a few waves right after we departed, which induced a feeling of mild indigestion in me. Given that I used to feel like that throughout my pregnancy (i.e. for seven months), I concluded that I would survive three hours just fine. However, the ocean got quiet soon and we found ourselves in a gray void. A gray sea and gray skies merged on the horizon. The humdrum was occasionally broken by orange and blue jellyfish right under the surface. We wrapped ourselves in fleece, windbreakers and hats; a fashion-aware lady in a light autumn dress disappeared in the cabin (see, elegance comes with a price -- you get cold a lot) and waiting ensued. Sid explained how we would cruise for three hours and gape at the empty ocean and then return totally frozen and disappointed into the port. I already tend to take his catastrophic scenarios with a grain of salt, but this time it seemed like a sober assessment of our situation.

Then suddenly our boat accelerated and eventually even I could see - whale blows in the distance ahead, with another boat already circling around them. Before we could approach them, the whales vanished and the other boat staggered away in the direction towards Monterey. Our guide declared that we were being lucky for we had encountered killer whales. I just hoped that these big, predatory dolphins would cooperate enough so that they show themselves really up close. We tracked them for the next hour -- this whaling expedition is a mildly schizophrenic affair. Nothing happens for five, ten minutes -- then somebody spots a whale and the boat picks up maximum speed in that direction, a little bit to the left. All people rush to the right side of the deck and take pictures. Eventually the whale disappears, leaving only a smooth circle where it was last -- for the next boring ten minutes there's nothing to do, kicking around the boat, sitting down on benches and entering and leaving the boat's cabin; then the engine roars, the boat accelerates and the whole circus repeats itself.

	Now imagine a full size bus jumping above the water surface.

	This humpback really enjoyed his jumping.

For one moment I had an impression of seeing in front of the orcas on the horizon (or behind the orcas in the distance, as Sid would put it), a huge tail of a real whale, but since it disappeared and did not show again, I dismissed it as some fantasy of mine. Our guides also said that when the orcas move in the ocean, it's like a wolf pack running through the woods -- everybody takes to hiding, so our chances to see any other whales were minimal. A while later both Sid and I caught a glimpse of something "weird" in the distance again. We raised an alarm, our boat went for it and we immediately started to feel embarassed -- there was nothing there. Our guide, however, claimed that it was a humpback whale and said we were leaving the killer whales and going to watch this one.

Sid's note: the first sentence of the previous paragraph led to a surprising discovery in our family, namely that Carol and I each live in a different version of the time-space continuum. While I (Sid) order things so that those farther away from me seem to be behind those that are closer, Carol has it the other way around: objects more remote appear in front of those near her. I offer truce, using expressions like: I am sitting at my desk, looking forward; I see my computer monitor and a wall behind it; stressing that the wall is behind the monitor. Carol disagrees and explains: I am driving on a freeway behind a truck, on the horizon I see a car driving in the same direction like we do, therefore, the car is in front of me as well as in front of the truck. Hence, the whale was in front of, or behind the orcas, respectively.

	Another humpback whale surfaced regularly to breathe...

	...and eventually waved to us with his huge flippers.

In a few minutes my mirage turned into the shape of two huge monsters that wallowed in the ocean, waved with their flippers and lobtailed (slapped their flukes = tails into the water). And then suddenly on whale jumped straight up and fell back with a big noisy splash into the ocean. This is called breaching and nobody really knows why they do it - one of the possibilities was that the whale was trying to affect the nearby killer whales. For the rest of our trip we tracked the humpbacks and tensely awaited more breaching. The whale sometimes rolled in the air around his axis -- although we always kept in a respectful distance from this living mountain, it was a fascinating show. Eventually our time ran out and we had to return to the port. For a long time we could see an emerging, cigar-like shape on the horizon - perhaps the very distance revealed how large this beast was.

	Tom practices walking with his new red car.

Just so that you would not miss any update on Tommy:

Tom keeps getting larger and heavier. My back and my arms complain loudly that he has become too heavy and I seriously began to look forward to the time he will start walking. So far he has been practicing with a new car. I must say that I am very grateful for my friend Petra and her Lukas -- he's one year older and so I gather much inspiration for Tom there, instead of letting toy stores confuse me into buying all those beautiful toys; I get what the baby will appreciate. So with cars, I dismissed all fun and funky color combinations, and got the simplest model, which offers the highest ground clearance (nothing fancy gets broken off when bumping into a curb), and which has a tall back support that can be used to push it. Tom, just like Luke, does not use the car much the way it was meant, and does not sit on it, pushing forward with his feet; he holds it before him and pushes forward while walking (I assume a doll pram fulfills the same function for baby girls).

	Tommy learns to swim in a pool

	This is fun!

We continue our swimming lessons. Tom has been extatic, he really figured out that he has to kick with his feet while in the water, and throws himself after his toys. He also does not hesitate to jump in after me -- and he does not get detracted by the fact that he submerges for a moment.

He manages to create heart-stopping situations for me at least once a day -- his last one was, when he played very quietly in a corner for a minute. Being clever, he turned his back to me so that I could not see what he was doing. A look at my child, covered by a continuous layer of petroleum jelly from his hairs to his socks, was unbelievable. Whenever I read about such things, they seem funny and cute, yet in the moment when I did not know how to even grab my suddenly slick baby and how to best transport him to the bathroom, any thought of fun simply vanished. Washing Tom and his clothes, stuffing him into his crib and rectifying all secondary damage: jelly on our hardwood floor, on our linoleum floor, jelly rubbed into a foam puzzle in the family room and into the fur of his stuffed monkey Sophia -- all this cancelled my sense of humor for the rest of the day. Still our son remains merry and maybe tasting of the jelly taught him that fruit is better after all.

Copyright © 2004-2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.