Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Capturing Special Moments

The kids are on Summer break so I wont be writing much until September... I did have something very special happen to me last week, and I thought I would write about it here.

The kids were at a sleepover Mountain Camp for the week so C & I took a last minute trip to the windiest place we could find with warm & flat water. That turned out to be Bonaire. We had a terrific week of non-stop kiteboarding. On the last day, I was the last one on the water - as it was almost 6pm and the rescue boat was already out. All of a sudden I hear C screaming at me (she had gotten out of the water 10 minutes before). At first, I thought she was telling me to get out of the water because there was no rescue boat. Then I saw splashing on the water, like when fish are feeding, and I thought there was a shark there. But then I realized there was a pack of dolphins next to me. I kiteboarded to them and they started to swim next to me. For the next 10 or so minutes I kiteboarded back and forth with the dolphins (somewhere between 10 and 20 of them) swiming next to and under me - as well as jumping around. They were so close I could almost touch them. And there were a couple of babies as well. I have seen dolphins before many times, including sailing next to them on sailboats. But kiteboarding with them was a truly surreal experience. One of those once-in-a-lifetime moments...

On shore, everyone was looking and C got the camera and took some video. But unfortunately I and the dolphins were too far from the shore and you can't see anything on the video. Bummer! How I wished I had a camera on my kite! Which brings me to the purpose for this post: we are pretty spoiled these days with photos and videos to capture our special moments, but what to do when there are no images? I guess a written description such as the one above is the best alternative. Like in the "old days"...