NEPTUNE BEACH: A BYGONE ERA

My wife, who has forgotten more about marketing than I'll ever know, taught me a life lesson that day: Focus on what you can control. In his zeal to conjure a humpback for his clients, the whale boat operator ignored the bounty all around him: the rare perspective of passing under the Golden Gate Bridge; a pod of bottlenose dolphins frolicking just off the starboard side; and the up-close look at the mysterious Farallon Islands, which are mere bumps on the horizon from any vantage point on land. Any of these events -- but certainly the lot of them -- might have made his customers feel they got their money's worth for booking passage.