3344: Blog #10

My Amazing Trip

It was a nice, quiet, and dark night when I was having the best dream one can ever imagine when suddenly I was rudely awakened by the sound of my father and my uncles yelling. “It’s already 5:00” yells Uncle Carlos. “Hurry, Hurry, we should have been there by now! Can somebody please wake Shawn up, I don’t want him to miss this trip,” says father. I lied there waiting and thinking to myself; do I really want to go or should I just stay home? I soon found myself walking out the door with my father (Oscar), Alex (my brother), Uncle Carlos, and Uncle Steven. I never imagined I would be walking out the door to have the most amazing trip ever!
We left the house at 5:30am, which was late according to my father. We were on our way to a deep-sea fishing trip which had been planned for weeks now. This was my first time ever going fishing on a boat and I was really excited, but also afraid. I never did say I was afraid because they would make fun of me; I was already 14 years old. It was still dark outside and I could not see anything out of my father’s big, white, work truck. It seemed as if darkness went on forever. I looked out every window and there was no sign of life. At times I could not even see the road. There were no street lights, no buildings, just water. Inside the truck there was absolute silence, then suddenly a loud yell. “There it is! Turn around you just passed it.” Uncle Carlos almost made my dad crash. My heart starting pumping, my hands started sweating, and I even felt tears in my eyes. For a minute I wished my uncle had never seen the place. We pulled up to a little rundown shack. The man who came out of the place looked like an old pirate. “Your late” he says. My father blames everybody else, like usual. “Here are the keys and everything else you should need out there,” says the owner. Wait isn’t he going with us? I felt myself turn red. “No,” says my father. “Uncle Carlos use to own a boat when we were younger he knows what to do.” My day had just gotten worse. I really did trust my uncle with almost anything, but somehow with a boat and me in it was very difficult to do. We began packing all our things into the boat and before you know it off we were in the middle of the ocean. Now all I could see was the water that was in front of the boat, but I could hear much more. Everyone in the boat was talking like there was nothing to be afraid of; I could not help but listen to the sounds of the waves crashing into our boat. I waited for the water to tip us over, but my uncle said there was no way this could happen with waves this small. What was he talking about these waves were huge, or they seemed huge to me.

The sun began to rise a little after we got in the water; this was great news for me. For my father and uncles this was not too good. It seemed like my brother would only go to these trips to eat. He just sits around everywhere eating all the snacks my mother packed for us. I could not even think of eating yet. After be able to see a little more I asked my father if he could help me throw out a line. His face lit up and both my uncles smiled. “You have just become a man,” they said. I just smiled. Why do they say that? I asked my brother. “When you learn to fish in the ocean, you can fish anywhere. To them knowing how to fish makes you a real man,” Alex says while rolling his eyes. I threw out my line and just sat there waiting. How can they find this so interesting, I thought. I was about to see why. My father jumped all of a sudden and yelled, “help.” My uncle Carlos jumped out of his chair and ran over to my dad. They both pulled on the pole as my uncle Steven pulled the fishing line with both hands. I slowly got up from my chair and started to make my way over to them. What is it? Nobody answered. All I could hear at this time was the sounds coming from them as they tugged and pulled to get this thing out of the water. I got closer to the edge of the boat and looked into the water. There it was, a huge fish splashing all over the place. It pulled one way, then the other; it would swim back and forth. It took all three men to finally pull it out. As they brought it closer to the boat my uncle Steven yells, “give me a knife, I need to cut this line!” Cut the line, I yelled, wouldn’t that let the fish go? My brother runs the knife over and we all watch the fish swim away. What was that all about? My father turns to me and says, “not all fish are good, like not all dolphins save people.” All dolphins! How many different types are there? They all laughed. “There are 32 types,” he says. “I can’t tell you about all of them, but I can tell you to make sure you are swimming with the bottlenose if ever in that situation.” “If you get a chance, always look at their nose,” says Uncle Carlos. “This will tell you what type of dolphin it is.” I just laughed. How can you have time to look at their nose if you happen to fall in unexpectedly? I was soon to answer my own question.

As the day went on fish began to fill our tanks. I was just beginning to feel safe on the boat when suddenly, as I walked over to get bait, I slipped on some water and fell overboard. I began to panic. My arms and legs would not stop moving and I just began to yell. I could hear everyone yelling “don’t move, stay still, and calm down!” How can I calm down? I was about to cry when I focused on the swimming object and clearly saw his nose, it was a bottlenose dolphin. I stayed still just waiting to see what would happen next, suddenly he swam under me and began to push me closer to the boat. I had never felt so afraid in my life, but at the same time so safe. The dolphin swam as fast as he could to get me to the boat. I hadn’t realized how far away from the boat I was. The dolphin pushed me up just enough for my father to pull me back onto the boat. As I stood there in shock, I took a good look at him and thought to myself; dolphins are the best ocean creatures one could ever ask for. He made a high pitched sound and was back on his way. I was so glad to have been in the water with him and not any other ocean creature. My father decided to call this a day when he saw how soaked I was.

As we got back home we couldn’t wait to tell everyone what happened. Everyone was waiting for us to get home so they could see all the fish we caught. My mother ran out when she heard our truck pull up. “How was your first fishing trip” she asked me. I smiled and said I had the best time of my life. My brother thought the whole thing was very funny and called our trip “a swim with dolphins.” As we sat there and told her everything she began to cry. I asked her why she was crying and she said she could just imagine how scared I was. My father grinned and told her how excited I was when I got back on the boat. I was glad I had a chance to live this experience and see for myself the wonderful ocean creatures and their personalities. My mother cooked us a good hot meal and we were ready for bed. When I got to my room I went straight to bed I began to think, what if I had never gone to this trip? I would have missed the best experience one could ever have. I must say this trip turned out to be the most amazing trip I could ever imagine.