The Long and the Short of It

I never know what to post on Facebook. I don’t post that often, so when I do, it seems kind of weird to make some trivial comment - like boy is it hot today. It’s summer in Southern California, so of course it’s hot.

Maybe if you post all the time it’s okay to keep a running commentary going on things like the weather or what you had for lunch. I forgot to have lunch today, so what would I post anyway - maybe had air for lunch today.

I suppose I could post something about our whale watching expedition last week in Monterey. I found out the hard way that Facebook posts have a limited number of characters. So, they are more like snippets. You can’t really tell a story. I wouldn’t be able to explain that last year when we went whale watching it was magical. It began with a the rare sighting of a blue whale (they are the biggest and either as big or bigger than our boat) Then, for an hour we were surrounded by humpbacks eating krill. Their heads rose out of the water and they made this whoosh kind of sound. In the distance as far as we could see there was spray coming from whales in the area. It was a whale fiesta. It was my first time, so I thought it was always like that. Ha! Not exactly.

Though we went on the same boat, it was a totally different experience. Something must have happened between last year and this year because a very large part of the spiel on the loudspeaker was about getting sea sick and to throw up at the back of the boat. It was a total xnay on using the bathrooms and the voice on the loudspeaker said if you went in there, the close, hot confined quarters would make you feel worse and you’d never come out.

There did seem to be a lot more sea sick people this time. A woman who worked on the boat seemed to be rushing back and forth constantly offering paper towels to people who felt ill.

Last year we were the only boat out there bobbing over the swells. This year, there were at least five boats staking out the same area. Finally two humpbacks were spotted swimming together and all the boats rushed after them, ending up making a circle around them. The black whales made a number of appearances, mostly just diving and giving us their tails as they did. Eventually time was up and the voice broke the news we were getting ready to head back.

Just then a large ominous fin appeared in the water. A giant black shark perhaps? The voice over the loudspeaker explained it was a sunfish and gave us the 411 about them as the boat turned and pointed toward the shore.

A Facebook post could only give an impressionistic swipe of that story. Something like - last year whale watching; this year more like boat watching.

What kind of stuff do you post on Facebook?