Feb 21, 2017

Southern California has a little town 5 miles off the 101 that is unusually Danish, at least in architecture. We ate breakfast in a Danish diner named Paula’s Pancake house. The service was stellar, and kept up with the twins’ needed for high chairs, baby food, napkins, and more napkins. The waitresses wore Danish uniforms, and I think I ordered a Danish omelette (whatever that was.) All I remember is I left fat, happy and satisfied.

We wine tasted in a Tiki bar that looked typically Hawaiian, and played with my best friends’ six month old twins. To paraphrase the infamous movie quote: “Wow! You have two babies baby… in a bar!”

Me and Jaydon:

Lenox’s thoughts on Danny: “Is this guy off his formula???”

Jon, put the dumb-phone down.

Southern California in February 2017 was drenched and actually green.

A fake tiki bar and a fake Danish brewery town.

Wise Dieting advice.

Danny and I bought chicken, meat, fish, and vegetables for the barbeque. Arielle called and asked us to buy diapers with only certain specifications. I did my best, but the ones I picked ended up leaking more than the Trump administration, and full of the exact same cargo.

We stayed in a small trailer in Buellton, on the 101, with a loft I wanted to sleep in, but since I obviously was too tall for it, Danny, the shortest of us, offered to take it, and let me have the futon. I have always locked every door in every home or office, even during the day. But Jon and Arielle chastised me repeatedly for locking them out everytime they went to the pool.

On the way back, we surfed the marina pier at Santa Barbara, one of those “are you freaking kidding me” breaks Jon so loves. The main peak was literally on a jetty wall 90 degree corner. Danny and I surfed a little further into the channel where the waves were smaller, but current inland was very strong. It reminded me of the “Suckhole” in my young adult novel. My surfboard leash string broke after only two waves, making the board unusable. No spare string was available. But I then had an excuse not to surf the channel of death, and instead find Ryan, Arielle, and the twins. I only had to look for a double-decker baby stroller.

Danny, Noriko and I visited the Santa Monica pier a few days later. You can’t surf there… there’s no waves anyway.

We also ran into Sam, an old Surf Club friend, at the local pub, one of the many Florida-to-California pilgrims.

But my favorite event was my last night in Cali with Danny and Noriki, three sleuths on duty. See my next article, “Three Houdinis.”