Ed’s note: Note: I just found the text to this post on a long-missing thumb drive, so I’m publishing it here more than 2 years later. Make sure to check out the rest of the vacation posts by searching for “Oceanside”. Day 5 is coming… Who the hell is Ed anyway?

Today was all about the ocean. We barely left the house except to walk to the fishing pier and back, and chose instead to spend our time on the beach. The surf that had been extraordinarily high for the last few days-even prompting a weather warning of 6-12 foot waves-had subsided. The waves had previously banged against the rocks just off our deck. Now they were 50 feet lower leaving us a semblance of a beach. The high surf had carried up piles of golf ball-sized stones (or perhaps washed away tons of sand exposing the stones) but we would make due. The kids–all of them–seemed to be discovering the beach for the first time.

There’s no greater display of excitement than the children making squealing noises as they make discoveries about the ocean. Wes handed Wyatt a sand crab on the couch in the family room. Wyatt squealed. Lauren and Patrick walked down the beach far enough to be hit by an unexpected wave. They squealed. Wes caught a sand shark from the shore and everybody squealed.

The weather was just warm enough to tempt me into the water and I decided after a dose of liquid courage to brave the cold water and extremely choppy seas and try my skills at boogie boarding. It would be the first time since perhaps 1990. It may have been a mistake.

I had forgotten the awesome power the ocean wields and how unrelenting the waves can be. I was tossed around like a rag doll as one 8-footer after another pummeled me. My attempts to dive under them were fruitless. Either these were more ferocious seas than I had expected or my skills at lying on the bottom had escaped me. I felt like I was in the spin cycle in a front-loading washer. I ate sand. I had more salt-water injected into my sinuses than I care to admit. Fueled by the constant watch of the family from the beach-house patio, I pressed on until I finally managed to ride a solid six-footer all the way in. It wasn’t a mistake after all.

Now shivering fiercely I turned to face the ocean, to endure the barrage of waves again, to find another ride home. I was hooked.

Eventually my body told me it was time to go in. (We had shrinkage.) I was shivering so badly I could barely hold the boogie-board. I was the only person in the water not wearing a skin suit. I found the apex of two sideways-flowing waves (yes, it was that kind of day) just as they crashed into each other announcing their presence like a breaching whale spraying 20 feet into the air. I rode the results all the way to the sand.

Wes and Robert were fishing from the shore as I ran past toward the hot tub, and only minutes later I was back on the beach to grab video of Wes pulling in his first catch. That night the video would reveal that I was too cold to properly handle a camera. I caught only a few seconds of the action as he pulled in a two and a half foot sand shark. It drew the family to the edge of the upper deck to witness the event.

From that same vantage point a few hours later we watched a large pod of dolphins frolicking in the waves, at times surfing just below the surface. They performed for us for nearly a half hour at the end of a day filled with ocean activities.