Shark Attack

Not too long after I moved to California I discovered many different things. The first was that everyone spoke with a funny accent. Of course I learned to live with it. But also there were a lot of people who didn’t know how to drive. I mean they actually drove the posted speed limit. They actually slowed down when the stop light changed to yellow. But that relates to another story.

One of the first friends I made when I got to California was John who originally from England. A huge Newcastle soccer fan as well as a great chess player. He could play chess games without looking at the board. His main job was captain of a fishing boat taking people for bay or deep sea fishing as well as catching a few sharks to sell to aquariums across the country.

It was a lot of fun getting up early in the morning to pick up bait, donuts and coffee all at the same place as with going to airports at all hours. That’s when I learned that the food trucks stationed at airport cargo centers have the best foods. Burritos 10 times larger than regular Taco Bells burritos and for the same price. Not to mention a few Chinese restaurants nearby that really served a lot of great food at cheap prices.

On one of my first boat trips with John was with a group of other people as we fished for Halibut in the San Francisco Bay. Everyone is having fun watching planes land at the Oakland Airport. There was one guy showing off a bit but as a way to ease the ones too scared of handling live bait. As one of the people onboard caught a baby shark this person unhooked it and started showing it off like he was recreating a scene from JAWS. But as everyone was having there fun I stayed focus on my fishing line for what I thought was something nibbling on the bait.

So as this guy came up behind me, the shark struggled loose as he clamped down on the side of my neck. The guy grabbed the shark to try and force it to open his mouth, letting me go as nearly all the women are screaming their heads off, men are in shock and I lost the fish I had on my line. The shark did let go and John checked my neck to see how bad it was. It wasn’t too bad but I had to keep it wrapped up for a while. For about a year I had a nice outline of shark teeth marks on the side of my neck.