Tuesday 27 May, 2003 at 3:44PM (Nereus)  ::  permalink  ::  comments (6)

Yo. Yesterday was a holiday here in the US (Memorial Day) and the other Weasel managed to get Friday off as well, so it was a 4-day weekend for us together! The only setback was the weather - it was crap. I actually have no idea what Memorial Day is about, so I guess I'd better look it up.. ahh ok. It's observed on the last Monday of May each year, and is a day set aside in memory of the honoured dead US military, much like ANZAC day in New Zealand (no, I did not misspell honour, that is how it's spelt in NZ ..the US spell it as honor).

The original plan IceQueen came up with a week or two ago was to go have a picnic / barbeque with a few friends somewhere, but the weather kind of shot that idea down (also we don't have a barbeque, but that's not the point ..well, it would've been ..but whatever). Next plan was to head to the Bronx Zoo as I've never been there and apparently it's pretty major - a lot bigger than the one in Central Park obviously. Again the weather killed that idea, so yesterday we went to the Coney Island Aquarium which was real groovy (not our first visit there).

I think I mentioned the Central Park polar bears a while ago, well here's a photo of it swimming underwater. Shame there isn't a person there to give you an idea of just how huge this beast is, but believe me, it's butt alone is probably bigger than both of us put together. I'm not sure why I just singled out it's butt as a point of reference ..hrmm. That white plastic thing it is playing with is actually one of those big industrial-sized trash bins. Yeah, it's that big. I wonder if polar bears get depressed ..then they'd be bipolar bears. Bwahaha. Yeah ok, just shuddup and show the picture already, right?

Groovy huh? File size is pretty big ..too bad - it's a big bear. Anyway back to the Coney Island Aquarium. The dolphins weren't there! Shock horror! Maybe they were on holiday ..their tank had heaps of stingrays flying around it instead, which were pleasing enough to watch for a while. Amazing how they glide through the water so effortlessly. A few new areas have been added since our last visit, including a big area on jellyfish of all sorts. I don't like jellyfish much. I was stung by a highly poisonous bluebottle (jellyfish) while surfing on the Coromandel (NZ) years ago, which resulted in these welts across my foot that itched severely for about a week or three, but when you tried to scratch them they would hurt like hell. The scars were there for months. Actually I have a heap of sea stories I can tell over the nearly 30 years I've been surfing. I'll stick to the subject for now though.

Our regulars were there - our cousin the sea otter who still insists on licking his balls in public (although there only seemed to be the one otter there at the time). The fur seals have multiplied. There's one big momma seal and a bunch of little ones that are really cute. Ya just wanna grab 'em by the snout and go "cuuuuuuute!". The sharks were cruising around in slow circles as they do ..actually, more like 'slinking' around ..no, 'sitfing' is what they were doing, yeah, definitely sifting. Shady buggers ..got a few shark stories in my past too. Among the many other critters were the walrus family. I have a story about a walrus I met one day too. Really.

The walrus is another farking big beast - as big as a polar bear. The ones at the aquarium didn't have the two big tusks like the one I encountered in the wild, but they're pretty formidable beasties regardless. Shame we didn't bring the camera because when we went underground to look through the glass wall at them underwater, two of them kept coming right up to the other side of the glass from me and checking me out, like less than a foot between us. The head of these beasts alone are about the same size as my torso. Yeah, that big.

I came across one when I was going for a surf at a primo spot called Murderers (Murdering Beach officially) which is a classic point break in the middle of nowhere, a bit of a drive out of Port Chalmers. Port Chalmers itself is a small coastal town a fair drive from the city of Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand. Me and a mate (it was either Dave or Ben) were climbing over the boulders to get further out on the point, and as we climbed over one particularly big boulder (about 8 feet high) and jumped down the other side of it with our surfboards, there was a loud grunting kind of burp sound - and neither of us were responsible for the noise.

About 10 feet in front of us was this massive walrus with two big tusks. It 'stood' right up on it's tail and glared at as threateningly. This was scary. If this thing decided to go for us, we were definitely toast. It towered above us and we just froze. The standoff had begun. It felt like 5 minutes but was probably only about 30 seconds before either us or the walrus made a move or a sound. The huge walrus made another grunt and then wobbled itself away from us and across the few feet of exposed rocks and slipped into the water. What an adrenalin rush! Once we got over the initial shock, we were buzzing. We could not believe how big this walrus was. Anyway we didn't see it again and went surfing. There were a few penguins swimming around in the surf that day too, I guess maybe that's what attracted the walrus.

Ok there's one of my stories, hope you enjoyed it. Happy birthday to the Lemur last Sunday too! Lemur has a bug and isn't feeling too well, so think positive anti-sick thoughts if you've read this far and help him get better. For those who don't know, The Lemur is IceQueen's Dad. Yeah, you heard me.