The First Time I saw the Ocean

I'm sure it wasn't exactly the first time, but at least it was the first I remember.  I think I was seven or eight, and at the time my father's company had a house on the shore in Capitola California.  As my mom likes to say "it was right near that O'neill guy's place" meaning Jack O'neill, the famous surfer and founder of the wet suit company.  I remember one summer we went down there for an entire month, my dad having finished a large project and deciding it was time for a long break.  I don't remember arriving there and I don't remember most of that summer, but what I remember is the beach.  I remember every day walking across the highway and onto the path that led down to the about 300 yard long beach.  Spending days digging through piles of seaweed and digging up sand.  I remember running out into the waves and wondering why the water wasn't much warmer, in the movies the ocean was always warm, and as far as I knew at the time, that was the way it always should be.  Of course even now I curse the fact that California has a cold coast rather than the warm waters of the gulf, but our Pacific ocean has its own beauty and unique wonder.  I doubt that any person does not love the ocean.  i know a few who are scared of it, who refuse to go on cruises because they have seen to many movies where the boat goes down or capsizes.  But there is hardly anyone who could stand on the top of the Marin headlands and not gaze in wonder at the massive an unending expanse of water lying before them.  That is how I felt as a child during that summer.  I was mystified by that enormous and unending basin stretching thousands of miles.  Awed by the power of the waves, and desperate to learn more about it.  It is from that summer that I fell in love with the ocean.  I have since been to Hawaii, the Carribean, the coast of Vietnam, Florida's Cays, and every time I see the ocean I am still exited.