My buddy, Mark Flood, is always sending e-mail little notes about his weekends to make us all jealous. Well, I have a tale of my own:

I have spearfished wading in from shore with a polespear before and I absolutely LOVED it. When Matt Brauning set up a trip with a buddy of his to spearfish in the open ocean from a boat, I was all in! We got to his buddy Sean’s house at 8:00 Sunday morning, after a breakfast stop to Jack-in–the-Box, and found that the “boat” was a 4-man jet ski – no big deal... We put in at the San Pedro boat launch and motored through 7 miles of open ocean, with 7-8’ swells to a particular kelp bed. I was a little green when we got there, but I figured it would be all better once I got into the water – WRONG! The abdominal cramps made me double over into the fetal position in pain as I chummed the Pacific Ocean with a Supreme Breakfast Croissant. After I ran out of substance in my stomach, I started expressing green chalky bile while trying to keep my head out of the water. I was not all that successful at that endeavor since each time I threw up I had half a mouth full of seawater that would eventually make it down my throat. I began to accept a painful death. To make it worse the fish began mocking me and palm/forearm sized little bastards popped up to the top of the water and started munching on the bounty that I had decided to give to the sea…

Somewhere in the middle of all this pain, I decided to move away from the ocean. I felt right then that I hated saltwater and every activity associated with it. I decided to move to Kansas or to a lonely cabin high up in the Rockies and far, far away from the fucking ocean. I was also self-conscious about being such a big pussy. I looked back, hoping that the other three guys weren’t laughing at me. Brauning was too busy holding onto the side of the jet-ski, trying very hard to cough up the soles of his feet, to worry about me. Every single one of us puked, including Sean, a native Hawaiian, who has been spearfishing/freediving all his life. Brauning and I ended up passing out on the seat of the jet-ski. All I could think about was being safe on still land and in Laurel’s soft bed while she held me sleeping. A low flying copter woke us up and we got moving because we didn’t want a rescue boat to be sent out for the ‘four stupid assholes passed out in a pile of neoprene-clad man-love on a jet-ski.’

As we started to leave, the fourth member of our party, Caesar, lost his weight belt overboard and kelp got sucked into the impeller. After retrieving the weights and spending 30 minutes fucking with the jet-ski impeller intake, we started back for the harbor. The minute we hit the throttle, Caesar lost a fin overboard, which promptly sank out of sight. The weight on the boat and the kelp caused the transom cable on the impeller exhaust to malfunction and for ¾ of our trip we rode at 10kmph with the “boats” nose in the air. When we hit the mouth of the harbor, the gas warning siren on the jet-ski went off and we had to switch to the reserve tank. We coasted in on fumes to the dock and Caesar, after jumping in to swim the jet-ski the final 10 feet, was too week to get out of the water. Brauning had to pull him out.

We pulled the boat out of the water and made lunch. Poor Caesar, cut the tip of his finger almost to the bone with Brauning’s new titanium dive knife while cutting French bread and had to spend some time in the Lifeguard Headquarters Building getting patched up. After pulling the jet-ski all the way there and back, we almost lost it off the back of the truck because Sean’s hitch-ball came loose.

It is the only fishing trip that I have ever been on where I didn’t even get a chance to touch a spear, spear gun or rod. Brauning did a little better though: He held his gun for about three minutes before neatly putting it away and making room in his tummy. Sean nailed one Calico Bass before turning similarly green. At least no one drowned or was attacked by a shark.

Top that, Mark Flood!!