West Side Stories: Dog-paddling with humpback whales

A tech-worker’s vacation-trip cure for looking boring to speed-daters|

It’s 2006, my life is a rat race. I’m working at a high pressure company. I won’t mention the name of it because it’s not right to do that. I’ll just tell you the initials - I.B.M.

It’s all work and all play and I feel so boring. There’s no time for dating.

But I do sometimes have five minutes for “speed-dating.”

So, I’m speed-dating, and I meet this amazing woman, Carla. She’s an animal conservationist, and she tells me, with a gleam in her eye, she works for the humane society. She’s saved moneys in Africa. She took an incredible trip to swim with humpback whales. And I immediately mark Carla as a “match,” and she immediately marks me as a “non-match.”

And I go home, and I keep thinking about Carla, and her life. How Silicon Valley is a rat race. I look out the window and all I see is cars. I think they should just change the name of the state to Car-lifornia. And I think, “I wish I could be like Carla, and do something meaningful, and go somewhere meaningful.”

So, I get this idea that I will go to Tonga, to swim with humpback whales, just like Carla.

Tonga is 170 islands in the South Pacific, and it’s so difficult to get there. You have to fly from San Francisco to Hawaii, to Samoa, to the main island of Tonga, then take a boat to another island, then another boat to the island where the whales are.

And it is expensive.

It’s hella expensive.

But of course I can afford it, because I’ve never gone anywhere else in my life, because I’m so boring.

There’s one little problem.

I can’t swim.

Well, I can barely swim.

I can do the dog-paddle.

But I read this brochure about these whale swim trips, and there’s something called “soft swims.” Basically, all you do is plop in the water, and you snorkel near the surface, and the mother whale is forty feet down at the bottom of the ocean, nursing the baby whales. And they just come up and down every few minutes. The buoyancy of the wetsuit and of the saltwater will keep you up.

So I make it to Tonga.

And I plop in this water.

And I do doggy-paddle a little.

And the whales are right there, at the bottom of the ocean! I can’t believe it!

What’s happening is, the baby whale keeps coming up every few minutes, and I … am … mesmerized. And I’m looking at this baby whale, about this far away from me [gestures with his arms], and it looks just like a six-foot giant dill pickle. Or maybe a cucumber, or maybe a zucchini. You just want to eat it, and you can’t eat it, but that’s exactly what a baby humpback whale looks like.

And I’m transfixed.

And I’m thinking, ‘If I could just thank my next girlfriend Carla for this!’ I am so happy!

But I’m forgetting about something very important.

I’m forgetting about the mother whale.

And I have drifted.

I have drifted in between the baby whale and the mother whale, and the mother whale ... is coming up! And I can’t get out of the way, because I can barely swim. And I know that the mother whale is going to collide with me.

And so, here I am, having left the safety of boring Silicon Valley for this place I’m going to die in, in Tonga, where I’m going to be crushed … by a humpback whale.

But instead, what the whale does is she takes her fin and she gently pushes me way. It feels like bumper cars, it feels like rubber, pushing me. And I’m shocked. And I’m in awe, that the largest, most powerful creature in the history of the planet is actually also the most gentle.

It’s such a stark contrast to the world that we live in, the competitive world. So I spend two weeks in Tonga, swimming with whales, something I’ve never done before, and it feels meaningful. It feels special. But, of course, I can’t move to Tonga, so I come back home, and after a while I’m speed dating again.

And I look at the woman across from me, and she’s like, “Hey. My name’s Jane, and I work for a software company, and I’m in marketing, and I like to take trips to Santa Cruz.”

And I’m like, “Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’m Hari, and I almost died swimming with humpback whales in Tonga!”

And she looks at me, and she says, “That is so interesting.”

And I feel, for the first time, after this trip, that maybe, just maybe, my life is not so boring after all.

Thank you.

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