A trip to Dewars in Bakersfield, Calfornia.

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Every few months or so we make a trip up to Bakersfield, California to visit Denise’s parents. We always have a good time with Denise’s parents, but the highlight for me is to visit one of Bakersfield’s many ice cream shops. A dying breed, the ice cream shop is still alive and well in Bakersfield. The oldest and arguably the best of these shops is Dewars.
Dewars started in 1909 when James Dewar moved his candy making business from Ventura to Bakersfield. James Dewar’s claim to fame is the peanut butter chew. Unlike normal taffy, these chews have actual peanut butter inside of them (no artificial stuff at this place). The chews cost about .25 cents apiece (less if you buy in bulk). In addition to peanut butter there is peppermint, caramel, almond, and chocolate almond (peanut butter is still my favorite). If you want to try to make them at home you can, the recipe is no secret. They even offer tours of how they do it:

Although I have to say I doubt yours will taste the same…
In addition to the famous chews there is the ice cream. The star of the show is the Dewars Black and White:

The Black and White will set you back about $5.75, expensive but it is really big and really good. In addition to the black and white they sell all the popular flavors, plus something called ice milk. Ice milk is basically ice cream, but without the cream (think low-fat milk). I wouldn’t call it healthy, but it is not as fattening as regular ice cream. Here is a small video of our experience with Dewar’s ice cream. As you can see in the video I went with the legendary Black and White:

Anyhow, if you happen to be in Bakersfield I would highly recommend you go to this California original. They have two locations in Bakersfield but you have to go to the original one across from the high school at 1120 Eye St. Yes, there is only one table and you will probably have to pry yourself out of your barstool when you are done; but you will leave with a smile.

Tiger Woods does not owe me an apology.

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I personally don’t think Tiger Woods owes the public an apology. His family, for sure. His sponsers maybe, but that is it. Tiger Woods doesn’t owe anyone else an apology and I am not sure what kind of society we believe in that thinks he does. People make mistakes and people do bad things. It happens and people should pay for it in one way or another, but I don’t feel he harmed the public with what he did. Well, there was that tree..Ok, Tiger Woods owes an apology also to the tree he ran into, but that’s it!
I am not saying I condone in any way or form what Tiger did, but I am just saying that what he did didn’t affect me, nor did it affect most people who watch him play. I don’t get why we have to call athletes role models. Tiger Woods is a pro golfer and that is it. If he does his job well he should get paid, and if he does it bad he shouldn’t get paid. It is just like any other job.
If I was Tiger Woods I would be personally offended that the Pro Golfers Association snubbed his press event. Yes, they were going to just be props, but in my opinion, they owe it to Tiger Woods big time. There have been a lot of golfers out there, but none have done what Tiger Woods has done for the sport of golf. If I were the Pro Golfers Association I would be begging Tiger Woods to come back instead of snubbing him, because every day he is gone they are losing money big time. As far as the sponsers go that left him, I say good riddences. They were probably doing bad economically anyways and were just using this as an excuse to get out of their contracts.
Overall I am really tired of hearing about this in the news, it is such a non-story. There are bigger and better stories out there and I wish the Press would report on those. Anyhow, that is my diatribe, I am done now. Thanks for reading and I will now go back to editing my other travel videos…

Vancouver 2010

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Before you continue to read this you have to know that we are Americans. We love our country and we hope it does well. The only problem is I know the USA will do well. I want to watch the Olympics and I want to cheer for a team, and I want to cheer for a team that still has a chance. So for this Olympics I am cheering for team Canada. On Sunday, February 14th, 2010 came Canada’s first Gold home country gold. This was achieved in the Men’s Downhill Mogul Run AJ was really excited:

Anyhow, regardless of who does well we are having fun watching the Olympics. My personal favorite winter sport to watch is the ski jump. Do you have a favorite winter sport? Be sure to leave a comment.

Bass Pro Shops Rancho Cucamonga, CA

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Thanks to my very good job I am on what is called a 9/80 schedule which means that I have every weekend off plus every other Monday. Having the extra Monday off is nice in that I can use to run extra errands when businesses are still open and there are not many crowds. Sometimes it just happens that I don’t have any errands to run and then we have an extra day to play. This last Monday the errands were light and so we set out to explore. Exploring on a Monday is quite different than exploring on a weekend in that a lot of attractions are closed. So, we had to find something that was open.
One of the things that we found open was a store called the Bass Pro Shops. The name denotes a fishing store, but that would be a wrong assumption. This store is a chain of about 9 stores; this particular one is located on the 15 freeway in between the 210 and 10. This store is made for any outdoor aficionado as it has sections dealing with any type of outdoor activity you can imagine. The store is huge and is decorated as a destination in and of itself. Inside they have fishing simulators (free), a shooting arcade (.50 cents), a large freshwater fish tank, hundreds of stuffed animals, a rock climbing wall ($3 for 3 climbs), and a seafood restaurant. Overall it is a fun place to visit, but being right next to Victoria Gardens the prices are not the best you can get for your outdoor gear. Although you will find stuff here you can’t find in other places.
Oh, and if you are wondering… I was not paid, endorsed, or in any way encouraged to make this post about Bass Pro Shops. We went there for our own entertainment and our thoughts are completely our own… but they can feel free to send me any sort of gift card they want…

fifty cents, the Pedroza Way

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That is what fifty cents looks like. Target is running a deal, buy 5 Quaker products, receive a $5 Target Gift Card. Someone in corprate (bless their hearts!) decided to include the Quaker Brown Sugar single serves in the deal. These are priced at $1.02 apiece this week. So, they work out to $.02 apiece. I stopped by the Target near John’s work. I found 3 on the shelf and went to inquire about more. The store emplyees were more than happy to work with me. They asked me how many I wanted. I sheepishly asked for 20. They came back with two cases of 12. With one of the ones from the shelf, that makes for 25. I always go to Target with a $5 gift card, for just such a time as this. The sweet clerk rang up 5 separate transactions, rolling the gift cards. I love it when a plan comes together. Below is a scan of all 5 receipts, as well as a close up of one.

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In a related note, AJ has added a new word to his ever growing vocabulary: hood. With all the rain, I’m always asking AJ to put up his hood before we go outside. Now, when I put up mine, he reaches for his and tell me, “hood, hood”. 🙂

Lessons Learned from a Theft in Colorado

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Today I wanted to say thank you to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department. Back in July of 2008 we were attending a family reunion in Colorado. We ran out of baby wipes for our baby son and went to a local supermarket. Unfortunately, my wife left her wallet in the shopping cart. We went back to the supermarket and were initially very pleased to find out that my wife’s wallet had been recovered. Until, we opened it up and found out that all of the money had been stolen. We were travelling from California and in trying to budget we had all of our trip money in cash (I had half and my wife had half). This was our second day in Colorado and unfortunately there was a lot of money in the wallet. Not knowing what to do we gave a call to the Sheriff’s Department thinking that they would just tell us to file a claim. To our surprise they sent out a deputy to our location. The deputy went to the store manager and found out that there was a video tape. In the video tape he saw that a lady had found our wallet and had given it to a store clerk. The video also showed that the store clerk took the envelope containing the money that was in the wallet. The deputy along with the store manager interviewed the suspect and got the suspect to confess. The matter still went to court, but thanks to the deputy’s documentation the suspect was found guilty. It took awhile, but today we just deposited a check for the complete amount in restitution. We just wanted to say that this would not have been possible had it not been for this deputy’s efforts.
Lessons learned…
First, we went to Rocky Mountain National Park and never blogged about it. What were we thinking?!? That is by far the most beautiful National Park we have visited so far.

Check out this wildlife picture I got while I was there.
< Second, don’t put so much money in one place. It was just our second day in Colorado, but that wasn’t an excuse to have so much money in one place. We really should have broken it up and hidden it in smaller amounts somewhere else. Third, if a calamity does befall you, make sure you report it. At first when this happened to us we thought that it was lost cause, but as it turned out there were a lot of things (video, witnesses, etc.) that we didn’t know about that were going in our favor. The only way the justice system works is if we all do our part. Letting it “slide” isn’t good for society. It should be noted that once we found out who did it we offered not to press charges and even offered the suspect a no interest payment plan, but the suspect refused it and in the end got prosecuted. Finally, if you do find a wallet with a lot of money in it, don’t give it to minimum wage employee. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of going to a local law enforcement agency at least give it to someone with a degree of responsibility. I think in this case if the wallet would have been given to a store manager, the money would of still have been there, having said that we are still very grateful to the lady who returned the wallet.

And the Rain Just Kept Coming Down…

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We had the snow and now we have the rain. It has been raining pretty hard for the last 24 hours. The result has been that our build-up area under the house and our bathroom have turned into a little river. I have two pumps right now pumping out the water as fast they can. I have also discovered a few more leaks in our roof. We really need to fix them, but there is no money for that right now. Such is life I suppose. I called the mortgage company to see if they could help me out with a construction loan, but they said I don’t make enough money. I asked them if I could have a home modification and then they told me I have too much money. It was at that point that I said “Thank You” and hung-up. If this house falls apart I might have to walk away from it, but the mortgage company can’t say I didn’t try.

Learning about Tripfilms.com

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Today I found out about this site called tripfilms.com. I haven’t gotten paid by them yet, but I hope to in the future. At this site you can post your travel videos and get rewards for it. At first you start out by getting things like amazon.com gift cards and american airline frequent flyer miles, but if your videos get really good or if they commission you for a video shoot you can earn free hotel nights and they will actually start paying you money for your videos. Anyhow, from now on my travel videos will be done through tripfilms.com and my other vlogs will still be posted through youtube.com, but I thought others might want to know about this cool site. Here is a sample of the first video I have put up through tripfilms.com:

Remembering Otaru, Japan

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I was watching a youtube video about Otaru, Japan:

and I was reminded of back in 1993 when I was a California Youth Ambassador and I had the opportunity to travel to Japan for a few months. Otaru was a very fun place to visit. I had very nice exchange hosts and they took me with them on their family vacation around the island of Hokkaido. I remember visiting the music box shop:

and the Glass Blowing Shop:

I often wonder if I will ever get the chance to go back.

Anyhow, what are you dreaming about? See what others are dreaming about at: http://www.motherofalltrips.com/

A Night at DCA and Downtown Disney

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Today I would like to talk about our night at DCA (Disney’s California Adventure) and Downtown Disney, but before I do that I have to tell everyone an AJ story. Denise was away on Saturday so it was just AJ and I at home for most of the day. AJ was doing what I call “scout mode,” which basically consists of him “scouting” up trouble. Anyhow, so he finds my lunchbox that I take to work and he immediately decides to dump everything out. It is a Saturday, and since I don’t go to work on the weekends I didn’t really think much of it. Except for the fact that I forgot that I on Friday I didn’t drink all of the Crystal Light I had in my water bottle. So as you can imagine AJ figures out how to open the water bottle and begins to squirt red cherry Crystal Light all over our light beige carpet. I see him do this and I tell him “no, bad boy,” he runs away and then comes back with a towel, gives it to me and then proceeds to say “papi, clean-up,” and then goes on playing again.
Anyhow, after I cleaned the Crystal Light disaster are and Denise got back we went to DCA (Disney’s California Adventure).

By the time we got there it was starting to get dark. Theme parks definately have a different atmosphere at night:

I really like looking at the neon lights:


We didn’t do much while we were there. We went to play Toy Story Midway Mania:

It is a game where you where you put on these 3D glasses and use the shooter device to play games while you ride the attraction. You play against the partner sitting next to you:

If you are wondering who won that would be me (if you see the bee come out shoot it).
We also went to the Michat 5 Year Anniversary Meet. Michat is one of several Disney fan clubs. Pretty much it was a chance to geek out on Disneyland trivia (Do you know that the official elevation of Disneyland is 138ft?)
After that we took a stroll down Downtown Disney:
The World of Disney store has almost every Disney related item you could ever want:

There are plenty of outdoor singers at Downtown Disney:

I thought these Minnie Mouse apples were kind of neat looking:

In all it was a very fun night.