I felt like Jacques Cousteau today on my stand up paddle board – a voyeur extraordinaire, minus the camera. 
Where is my camera at moments like these?
I went for a solo paddle at Butterfly Beach, Santa Barbara and found myself intimately involved with mating dolphins! Not knowing what to expect from their behavior, I kept a respectable distance until my curiosity got the best of me and I had to go in for a closer look.
Close enough, in fact, to earn the nickname ‘dolphin whisperer‘ and be the envy of anyone who has ever dreamed of having a threesome with dolphins. Hold on there, perverts, let me explain!
Visualize this – and take note to improve your own sex life: I was standing on my Hawaii Paddle Surf SUP, completely present in the moment. I triangulated a position in the middle of the three pair of dolphins who were undulating, breaching, rolling, frolicking, and altogether getting-it-on in a most erotic, emotional, and playful fashion.
The next thing I knew, I was being used as a prop. One pair swam stealthily to the surface behind me, separated on either side of my board and joined together at the nose, where they rolled onto their sides and looked up at me. The male (this had to be the male) swam ahead, pulled his sleek gray body halfway out of the water and swam backwards, watching me with an enormous grin on his face. He went under again and surfaced by breaching over the nose of my board without causing a ripple.
WHOA!!! This has to be one of the coolest moments of my life. My emotions ran the gammet of fear, curiosity, and utter amazement, yet were somehow pure enough to be granted permission to remain in the presence of the wild. Wikipedia says even experts rarely witness mating dolphins in the wild. Yet I just spent over an hour observing the energetically expensive mating ritual of not one, but 3 pair of dolphins. Not only did they not seem to mind, but I think, maybe they enjoyed it as much as I did.
What was your last intimate brush with the wild?