Day One at Oceanside: Meeting the Beach

I don't enjoy flying. I'm not afraid of heights; I'm afraid of falling from them. But I didn't let Charlotte in on my fears, and so she was pretty excited for her time on a plane.

The first flight took us to Denver, then we had 35 minutes to get on the next plane to San Diego. We made it without any problems, and by the afternoon Charlotte and I were looking at the Pacific Ocean for the first time in our lives. That was pretty dang cool.

This was the only day I brought the camera down to the beach. It's a pain having to worry that it might get wet, broken, or stolen. But I wanted to capture Char's first few minutes in salt water.

If I had any complaints about our first day of traveling, then it would be about the flight out of Denver. The seats on the plane had video monitors installed in the backrests, and for two hours they broadcasted a Discovery Channel program about shark photographers. Even with the sound turned off, the slow motion images of sharks exploding out of the sea with their jaws violently snapping were pretty jarring. We turned off the monitors in front of us, but the show kept playing on all the other seats. Doesn't United Airlines think kids fly too?

On the first day, sharks were on Char's mind.

But she got over it... kind of.