9 hours and 45 minutes in San Diego...

In this episode of The Adventures of WHAW, we found ourselves headed to the airport at 6:30 AM hoping to catch our 7:45 flight to San Diego. The weather according to Yahoo said 65 degrees and partly cloudy in the morning with sunshine in the afternoon. Pretty typical for San Diego in June. They don't call it June gloom for nothing. After arriving at the Parking Spot, we parked the car, hopped into the shuttle and headed to terminal 4. We arrived at the airport and proceeded through security with no wait at all. After all, it was 7:15 am on a Saturday morning.

We got to gate A7 and waited to board the plane. Once we got on the plane, the co pilot asked Weston and Alea to help fly the plane since he hadn't seen the pilot yet this morning. Now, since Weston or Alea don't even have a driver’s license let alone a pilot’s license, they had to have Heidi help them fly the plane. Meanwhile, I had to sit in the back of the plane next to the bathroom door, which if you have ever sat in the aisle seat of row 25, you know what I'm talking about. Every time someone opens the door to come out of the bathroom, there's a race to see what hits you in the face first. Will it be the smell or the door? Okay, so I didn't really have to sit in row 25, nor did Heidi and the kids really have to fly the plane. The pilot eventually showed up and asked Weston to give up the yoke. Weston complied, and we took our seats in row 6.

A quick 55 minutes later, we landed in beautiful sunny, I mean cloudy, San Diego! Now having checked the weather the night before, I knew that 65 degrees would seem a tad bit cold to us Phoenicians. Afterall, that is a 40 degree differential in June! So as you can see, the kids were well prepared and wearing their hoodies! We picked up our Alamo rental car which was a black HHR, which feels like driving a lunch box, you know the metal kind we all had as kids...without the Thermos though. At least the kids thought it was cool! We headed out to find the best breakfast in cloudy San Diego. Turns out it was here:

Now that our biological need for hot cocoa and pan cakes was fullfilled, I just new what was coming next. The beach! But wait, its still pretty gloomy and still only 65 degrees out side. So being the part time San Diego tour guide that I am, I opted to take everyone to see the Sea Lions in La Jolla. As we walked out on the sea wall closer to the Sea Lions, the smell became almost unbearable. At first everyone thought that Weston had farted or something. But we soon realized that the sea lions weren’t obeying the beach rules and using the public bathrooms next to the life guard station. What can you expect from sea lions? After all they don’t exactly have arms to wipe themselves, let alone the ability to use public bathrooms. But I digress… In all we counted 93 sea lions.

Once we had enough of the smell, we ventured out to the beach. As I alluded to earlier, I am somewhat of a San Diego tour guide, at least part time. So I found us this beautiful secluded sandy beach that I thought every one would love. Turns out it was too narrow…

We really wanted to rent sea kayaks and take a few hours to paddle around the beach but we were told they were all tied up and that we couldn’t rent any…

Since we couldn’t rent the sea kayaks, we opted to hit the beach with a blanket and relax while the kids played in the ocean. Since the temperature was still 65 degrees, Weston opted to build sand castles while Alea body surfed on her kick board the whole time. Weston, in deep thought asked, “Is there more sand particles on the beach or more water in the ocean?” I told him we would google that when we got back home. After watching Alea drift farther out and to the right, I was forced to head into the ocean to go get her and remind her of her position. She really had no fear and for the most part, the waves were fairly small and the depth pretty shallow. The water was considerably warm for a cloudy 65 degree June gloom afternoon.

After we convinced Alea to get out of the water we headed to Sea Port Village to get fudge. Traditions often start without any prior thought, and fortunately for Heidi’s sweet tooth, we stumbled upon a tradition of consuming Sea Port Village Fudge. I couldn’t even tell you the name of the shop, but I can get anyone there that asks for directions. After all, I am the part time San Diego tour guide. By this time, it was almost 5:00 pm which signaled it was time to head back to the airport to catch our 6:40 flight. We put 1.5 gallons of $3.09 a gallon of gas into the lunchbox thermos and returned the lunchbox back to Alamo, hopped into the shuttle and were dropped of at the terminal. After heading through security and before getting to the gate, we had to stop to use the bathrooms. Some of us really had to go!

On the way home, they didn’t ask any of us to fly the plane and sat us in row 7. Upon landing, we got off the plane and noticed right away that someone left the heat on in Phoenix while we were enjoying our cloudy 65 degree day in San Diego.

All 9 hours and 45 minutes of it…