Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Crowd control



It was the start of spring school holidays so to try to escape the family madness I drove out of the Gold Coast down to Byron bay. The waves were small and clean at a fairly packed main beach with a mix of euro backpacker's and pimple faced teenagers crowding the lineup. A great little wave was peeling off at the wreck so I put my board shorts on and joined the crowd in the mid day warm small surf. Getting a few waves that were great little peeler's I was thinking it was worth the effort getting out amongst this mayham. When all the sudden behind me I heard this man with a blood curdling scream "SHARK SHARK SHARK". I then noticed I was sitting the deepest out in the water my first instinct was to locate this thing. Meanwhile people starting to become frantic for the shore. Then there it was literally making a B-line straight towards me looking more like a small nuclear submarine than a fully teeth killing machine. I then thought man this is a mix between a nightmare that I have had before and a bad B rated movie. It was to late to try to out swift this shark to the shore to safety and was closing in fast. Still the shark was gaining and getting all of about six feet from me. Fist clenched ready to punch this would be stalker it calmy veered at the last possible instance. The shark was about 2 meters long and slipping away back out to sea content to find something else to pick on. Then I came back to reality looking around still a bit shakey when I noticed there was nobody left out in the water except me. They all were staring at me like they were a about to see the latest You tube victim on the net when a set came in. With no competion I turned and dropped in and got a great little peeler to myself. After the wave was done I had the delema of do I go in like the rest of the herd or stay out. Well I had a few more waves like this to myself before once again being surrounded by a pack of people around me like nothing ever happened out in the water. I am now Pro shark thinking of how I can implant these things at the most crowded points so I once again can get a wave unhasseled and uncontested. What lengths we farmer's will goto for pure BLISS...

4 comments:

wheaty said...

Well the Tube Farm preditor breeding program is working on this solution.
From an early age all of their food is attached to a 6' pointy nosed 3 finned board and the water well chummed.
So far the results are very promising. They seem to recognise Quiksilver and Billabong logos now and attack making the connection with easy food. It's like McD's for them I guess.

hodaddy said...

it was actually my radio controlled shark, i do it all the time at the wreack, as the radio range and visibility are so good.
I think i remember this day, when a stylish cat stayed out in the water....
you would be surprised,
usually it works, but in some cases, the surfers just stay out because it was uncrowded.
this was one of those days, and i had to bring the shark down to belongil and pull it out of the water.
It is actually a cheap chinese submarine remote controlled, with a plastic fin attached to the dorsal area.
If we were really doing it proper, we would have the tail fin too....but i cant get it far enough back to make it scary.
Anyway, sorry bout the scare mate and if you want to learn how to use the thing, give me a call sometime.


Ps like the idea of introducing some sort of blood seeping plastic that we can attached to the corporate stickers....is that terroism?
If we write terroism on the internet, will we be shot at close range by an oil baron??

wheaty said...

No shark is going to attack you in those pink Birdwells MP.

wheaty said...

I heard it was a fat iranian terrorist chick in a navy seal wetsuit comining to make you eat some baclava! As for the shark breeding programme I have doctor Andy Davies back in cornwall working on some breeding tho he didn't mention sharks..
Gav