I was introduced to Paul “Peck” Euwer at a coffee-shop one day: a nice calm guy making a documentary on Maverick’s. The next day I saw him on the news, holding a board with huge teeth marks imprinted on it. He’d been attacked by a Great White Shark out by Mushroom Rock. The shark lifted him out of the water, wounding its own gums on the fiberglass of his board, and cutting through his wetsuit, without breaking his skin at all. Not a scratch.
While noticeably shaken up, he also seemed somewhat stoked. “I hugged a Great White,” he told one reporter.
He hung the chomped board in his war-room, and the wetsuit, well, what do you do with a torn wetsuit?
A couple days later, I was climbing down the boulders to catch some small surf peeling at the base of the Half Moon Bay jetty. What happened remains something of a fuzzy spot in my memory. One minute I was climbing down the rocks, and the next I was way down in the rocks wondering why I wasn’t dead.
There was a moment, right as I leaned down at the edge of the boulder to jump to the next when I realized, “Hey this thing is rolling.” Then I jumped, and the boulder came tumbling down behind me, and over me.
As best as I can recall, I landed hard on my feet and the boulder struck my back, knocking me down, before it settled into a new precarious niche. Two guys who heard, then saw, tumbling boulder were already moving to my rescue. But somehow, I was fine. I looked at my body and saw no detached limbs or spilling brains. I looked at my board, and there wasn’t even a ding. My rescuers looked at me in amazement, and I mocked wiping sweat off my brow as if to say, “Whew, that was a close one.”
I climbed down to the water and paddled out.
Life is precious. Every day is important. At any moment, for no reason at all, that boulder can roll and squeeze our brains right out onto the sand. Go figure. But worrying about it doesn’t help anything, so relax and forget about it.
So then I’m out in the line-up, sucking the blood from a cut in my hand so as not to attract that Great White that people have been sighting (and hugging) recently. The jetty looks right out onto Maverick’s, and I know that big fella can’t be too far away. A cold sensation on my ass alerts me that my brand new wetsuit was torn in my Great White Boulder attack. My nether-regions were now grinning a big white smile as I paddled. My brand new wetsuit! Do even you realize how many Suite101 articles I’d have to write to pay for that wetsuit? 20! Twenty of these damn things. And now it was ruined. Ruined!! I felt like crying.
While noticeably shaken up, he also seemed somewhat stoked. “I hugged a Great White,” he told one reporter.
He hung the chomped board in his war-room, and the wetsuit, well, what do you do with a torn wetsuit?
There was a moment, right as I leaned down at the edge of the boulder to jump to the next when I realized, “Hey this thing is rolling.” Then I jumped, and the boulder came tumbling down behind me, and over me.
As best as I can recall, I landed hard on my feet and the boulder struck my back, knocking me down, before it settled into a new precarious niche. Two guys who heard, then saw, tumbling boulder were already moving to my rescue. But somehow, I was fine. I looked at my body and saw no detached limbs or spilling brains. I looked at my board, and there wasn’t even a ding. My rescuers looked at me in amazement, and I mocked wiping sweat off my brow as if to say, “Whew, that was a close one.”
I climbed down to the water and paddled out.
Life is precious. Every day is important. At any moment, for no reason at all, that boulder can roll and squeeze our brains right out onto the sand. Go figure. But worrying about it doesn’t help anything, so relax and forget about it.
So then I’m out in the line-up, sucking the blood from a cut in my hand so as not to attract that Great White that people have been sighting (and hugging) recently. The jetty looks right out onto Maverick’s, and I know that big fella can’t be too far away. A cold sensation on my ass alerts me that my brand new wetsuit was torn in my Great White Boulder attack. My nether-regions were now grinning a big white smile as I paddled. My brand new wetsuit! Do even you realize how many Suite101 articles I’d have to write to pay for that wetsuit? 20! Twenty of these damn things. And now it was ruined. Ruined!! I felt like crying.
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