Extraordinary Experience

Sorry folks, I just have to mention a pretty amazing experience I had yesterday. I am in California to get some work
done, and just for fun, last night I took a small boat out to do some fishing in the Pacific near Newport Beach.

I was alone, about a mile off-shore with the pole in the water when out of my peripheral vision, I caught site of a
pod of porpoises. They were coming right at me, about 25 of them, leaping out of the water and cruising along at an
even pace. They went right below my boat. I decided to follow them, and caught up with the pod going about 8 mph. There
were about two dozen animals and they were split evenly on each side of the bow. Then a pair of them cut in close, and
started to ride on the bow waves of my small boat. They swam with me like that for about two minutes, jumping in the
waves not more than four feet from me.

I let the boat drive itself and went up to the bow and put my hands out over the water and one of the porpoises jumped
up to my hands so I was kind of patting it’s back and dorsal fin. This went on for about a minute. Truly extraordinary.
If I was new agey, I’d probably believe that I was communicating with them, perhaps a quick tactile discussion about
the Middle East conflict, but in reality it was just a brief human/animal interaction. Of course I have no photo
because I left my camera at home (the one here, I just found on the Web), but man, it was cool.