After we left the pipeline house 🙁

The last sunset

The beer of choice at Pipeline this trip

Waves are small, wind is up, no surfers in the way… I know let’s kite board the pipeline.

We went to the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu with Mom and Dad for three more days of hang out time before heading to Tampa.  It is a pretty amazing resort with a man made lagoon and about 3000 rooms.  It kind of felt like a Mexican resort in the middle of Honolulu except it isn’t all inclusive.  We hung there with Mom and Dad for 3 days, taking in the sights of Honolulu which we have never done and chilling with my parents.  It was a good time.  We ate at the Cheesecake Factory which was awesome and saw the aquarium which was good too.  We did make the mistake of walking back from the aquarium which turned out to be twice as far as expected and that kicked our butts.

Fish bigger than the kids

God = Amazing. This jelly fish is 98% water, 1.5 inches in diameter and 12″ long and seems to defy gravity. No one could paint with God’s paint brush.

Mooky chillin’ at the aquarium

Our travel plans involved two early mornings, one in Honolulu and one in Los Angeles.  When we booked the flights our options were a wheels up to wheels down itinerary duration of 13 hours straight from HNL to TPA or leave 8 hours earlier (6:30 am) and spend 12 hours in LA then leave again and travel to Tampa.  We chose the second option, in retrospect it was the right choice when travelling with a 2 year old, not that it was easy.  We had to drag him out of bed two days in a row, both days I dressed him for the day while he was still asleep, then carried him to the taxi or shuttle bus.

One challenge was our 22 pieces of luggage, in HNL we needed two taxis to transport them, though if it was just us we could have fit it into one Sienna but we would have needed to use laps.  Next we forgot what hotel we were staying at in LAX which took two stops before we reached the right one.  Then I spent an hour in search of diapers as the supply had ended… initially I was frustrated but ended up right under the approach path for LAX which was awesome having a plane fly over me at less than 100 feet.  Sweet.  If you ever get to stay near LAX go to Sepulveda Blvd and be amazed.

Not my pic. I walked the sidewalk here… but it was dark and a homeless person was preparing to camp in the hedge while I walked by.

We got to Tampa and it was COLD… what the hell is going on here… I guess while we were blissfully unaware the entire east coast of N. America got hammered with a cold front while we were in Hawaii.  We landed in TPA on the tail end of the storm/system.  We might not have clothing for this…