Flying High

This is nearly a month late, but I've been swamped with school and work. For my birthday this year, Hailey outdid herself on my birthday present. Something I've been wanting to do for a while now is learn to fly. I've become fascinated with getting my pilots license after seeing Tim McGraw and Dierks Bentley flying their own planes. Granted, I'm not a multi-millionaire who can afford buying his own plane (yet), but I do know that getting my license is within my reach, and I can just rent a plane for the time being before actually buying one someday.

Anyway, back on topic.

The day of my birthday we ditched our only class on Friday, and headed south. Went to Six Flags for a few hours, and then headed south. I had no idea what was going on outside of Six Flags, so all of this was a complete surprise to me. We grabbed lunch and killed time somewhere in LA before I found out about the surprise, and once it was time for my appointment she had scheduled, Hailey was able to surprise me with going to Van Nuys Airport, and going to a full-blown flight simulator for 45 minutes to see just how good I could possibly be at flying. I had no idea until we got there, and all day she had a word puzzle that I was trying to figure out. It turns out that the puzzle spelled out Frank Sinatra's 'Come Fly With Me'. Fitting, right?

So we show up to this hangar, and we meet the instructors of U.S Aviators Flight School, and I think we're just doing the simulator. That alone would have been more than enough for me. I was stoked to learn more about all of this!

I sit down, and this system is the real deal. Pedals, throttle, the whole nine is in front of me and three screens wrapped around me. The instructor goes over all of the basics, and teaches me about the angle of attack, how propellers work cutting through the air, etc. Once we go through the simulator, apparently I impressed him, because even landing the plane I did well. He told me that no one else has done it so smoothly, so I guess I'm a natural!

Once we wrapped with that, he suggested we go out and check out some actual planes and see the difference between the simulator and the real deal, so we roll out to the tarmac, and pull up to a plane, and I'm climbing all over this single engine Piper, completely geeked out about it. Then, Hailey leans in close to me as I'm sitting in the cockpit, and she says, "now you get to really fly".

Jaw Dropped. Heart Stopped.

Me. I get to fly. For real. Like, really start the plane, taxi it, take it off, and fly for an hour. Me.

I was over the moon! This was insane. I couldn't believe that I was getting to fly for real, and only after 45 minutes of ground school. People either must be a bit nutty, or really trust me to do this...

Well, Hailey and the instructor climbed in, and we started the plane up, and I took off, leveled us out at around 4500 feet and we headed over to Camarillo to fly by their landing strip so I got an idea of how descents to land worked, pulled the plane back up to 4500 feet, and headed back. Maybe a 1/2 mile out, the instructor took over to land, but up until that point, it was all me. Which again, he told me that I picked it up really quick, and wasn't over correcting myself a lot, which people apparently tend to do.

The best part was when we landed. I found out that once I get my log book, I'm able to log the first hour and 45 minutes of ground school and flight time in my book. So now, I've got time under my belt as a pilot! I know it's not much, but it's something I get to work towards now!

This present was by far one of the best gifts I've ever gotten, and I can't thank my wife for putting it together, and my in-laws for pitching in on some of the cost. Now I just can't wait to get back to flying again. 

 Below is some footage Hailey shot as well from flying.

Bet My Life

Have you ever had a time in your life where a song clicks with you? Where the lyrics stand out stronger than others, and impact you because of how relatable it is? I'm sure it's happened a lot of times in life. I know with me it has. Recently I downloaded Imagine Dragons' new single 'Bet My Life'. The song could be perceived in a variety of ways, but to me, I see it as a struggle between family. Where a kid goes down a path that the parents didn't necessarily want for him, and how he gave them hell through all the years. But as the song progresses, you hear that the kid says 'theres you in everything I do', so that's why I 'bet my life for you'.

This song hits me. Not just because its driving drumbeats are great, but because of the lyrics. It's story time.

I've always been more of the independent child in my family. I see something, I want it, I go after it, and I get it. I have an insane drive that is fueled by my desire to never settle for second best, and always be the best with the best. Lately, I'm realizing that this song is true for me, because I've given my parents hell through all the years.

The last few years specifically haven't been the easiest. My parents didn't want me to get married so young. They thought I wasn't ready and couldn't handle it. But I pushed ahead anyway. I knew Hailey was the right one for me, and I knew that this was right. So through many months of tense conversations, sometimes yelling, and then not talking, and finally resolving our issues, it's worked out well for our family.

The other part of this is, is that I'm their child. I was raised by them with the values and moral standings to live by. As I grew, and grow up, I see things that I utilize from being raised by them, and others that I find out for myself what works. But, there's 'you in everything I do'.

The thing is, that I realize as I'm growing up, is that I'm my own man. I'm still their child, but I'm first a husband now. I'm the man of my own family. I'm in charge, and I need to lead it as I see fit. My parents raised me with wonderful, great morals and values to follow and utilize. I've done this, and added my own, and done things my own way, as inspired by how they've chosen to raise me. What I'm saying is that I'm thankful for my parents, and I'm thankful for what they've done for my life.

It's hard, because when you're this young, people tend to have a way of looking down on you. Thinking you won't make it, or the way you're doing things are unconventional and wrong. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I believe that no matter what I do, I'm going to make it out better than I was before. I'll be the first to admit that I really can't stand it when I'm questioned by those older than me and they tell me 'you're doing it wrong' (believe me, it's happened). What's wrong about how I'm living my life? Is it wrong that I'm doing things differently than you did? Or is it wrong that you think it's just not how it should be done? As long as the end result is the same, what does it matter if the path taken is different? A man can walk a million trails in the forest, and still come out the other side all the same.

Ultimately what I'm getting at is this: don't forget where you came from. You were put there for a reason, and you are who you are now because of it. Take what you want from what you've grown up with, and use it to your advantage, and make it your own. Be your own unique and beautiful person, and learn to better yourself every single day. It'll help you, and those around you if you do. Also, love your parents no matter what. Some may be terrible and you may not have been raised the best, but again I say, use it to your advantage. See what they did wrong, and change it for your kids. Thankfully my parents were great people, and I use a lot of what they've done with me in my life, but I've also tweaked some things to make it my own as well. Our lives here on earth are too short to dwell in anger and sadness, and not progress individually.

Not all things in life are free, but sometimes they are...

We just came for pizza....

Interesting day so far. Professor never showed up, so class was cancelled. Then Hailey and I ordered a pizza from Papa Murphy's. Nothing too odd yet..but e arrive to pick up said pie, only to our perplexity, the lights are on, with the only pizza on the rack being ours, and the door is locked. Literally no one was here. We waited for a bit, called again, waited, called, waited called..nothing. So hailey called corporate which got ahold of the owners, they show up, and apparently Robbie the employee decided to just abandon ship. No idea why, even the owners don't know why.

As you can see, pens on the counter, lights are on, there's nothing in the small cooler, but there's our pizza, right on the rack. Yet no one's here to be found...

We were comped a dessert pizza though which was nice. Oh, and while we were waiting, a friend saw us in the parking lot, slowed down to quickly say hi , and the black ladies behind him got mad. I quipped, "chill out, he's leaving right now!" As he left and they followed. What happened next, I wish I filmed. They stopped. Went in reverse, and starting to yell the following: "what the f***is your problem, white boy?! You got a f***ing problem with us? Mind your God**** business, motherf***er!" And promptly drove off. I didn't realize I was so important for two ladies I don't know, to come back and yell so vulgarly at me. But, I guess they're having a bad day. I didn't mean any harm by what I said. They had ample room to drive around my friend who slowed down, and who's kept rolling his car as he said a quick hello..but I guess some just like making a scene.

Anyway, I hope you all out here in cyberspace are having a good day, and was hopefully entertained by my little story. I'm off to go eat some pizza with my wife.

Honing In On Working Out

This post has been something I've wanted to write for a while now. It's something I don't like admitting, but who would?

Wedding life is amazing, first off. My wife is really wonderful. She's my best friend and we've already been through a lot in six short months. But prior to our wedding, we had a lot of stress. Wedding stress, family stress, work stress, you name it. Things are smoothed out now, but that came at a price. That price? 30 pounds heavier.

See, I've always tried to be relatively fit, and there's a reason for that. I've scared myself into being fit and healthy, (and I'm sorry family, but you're the example here..) I have family members who aren't. An uncle who's vastly overweight, and a granddad who ate himself into diabetes and being overweight, yet has done nothing to combat his now life-long sentence of a constant high-low sugar levels, insulin shots, and all the extra junk that comes with diabetes.

It's not fun to see family not care about their health, when you know they can be better and live life longer. But that doesn't mean I have to be like that. 30 pounds to some may seem like not a big deal. But when you're a kid who's lived about 80% of his teen life at 160 pounds, and under 15% body fat, gaining that much that quick is a wake up call.


But that brings us to today.


Hailey and I have been eating at home. We cook cleaner, eat less fatty, junky foods. I actually like salads now. Fruit is something I seemingly can't go without. Oh, and for those that know me well? Sodas are now severely limited to when I'm out with friends. Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, all those big boys are staying out of my home now. Also, getting back to working out has been the absolute best. I understand that people have a hard time doing any sort of exercise. Pain hurts, I get it. But the results are worth the short-lived strain you'll have on your muscles, because that means your muscles are doing their job! Stretching them out, make them bigger, stronger, and better. It's also a phenomenal way to get your mind off the work day by listening to some great music while you're working out, too.

Anyway, this morning I woke up after a late night at Fright Fest with Hailey, and decided to do some floor/ab work, and then weigh in. I'm down five pounds without clothes on, and that feels great. It's a small step, but I'm happy about it. I want to get back to my target weight of 160-170, and be fit. Lose the small gut I've gotten because I chose (yes people, I said chose) to stress-eat to cope with everything that went on. I'm in control of what I do, and I refuse to do what I did before. I don't want to be an overweight statistic on America's obesity problem. I want to be healthy, and I want to be better to live longer for myself, and for my family. It needs to happen, and it's going to happen. 

Easiest Loaded Potato Soup Ever

Comfort food like soups... yum. We all love them!
And now with it being officially Fall, it's time to start cooking and eating these delicious foods!

Most places when it's mid October its nice and chilly with temperatures in the low 80s or 70s. Well, not in Bakersfield. October, 13th and it was a high of 95.....

But hey! Who says I can't pretend right!? So I pretended by making one of my favorite comfort foods.... Crockpot Loaded Potato Soup. Yum!

Many of you have asked for this recipe, so I thought I would go ahead and share one of my easiest, yet delicious recipes!

You have a crock pot right!? No? GO GET ONE IMMEDIATELY!

I cannot begin to tell you how much I LOVE my crock pot. 

It has saved me countless hours over a hot stovetop. 

It has saved me many hours after work with not having to cook and already having dinner ready.

Crock pots are amazing and in case you haven't noticed, I highly recommend one.

So now that I got over that rant, here is the recipe!

Loaded Potato Soup

30oz bag of frozen hash browns ( I used shredded)

28oz chicken broth

10.75oz can cream of chicken soup

8oz cream cheese, softened

Minced Onion

Ground Black Pepper

Garlic Salt

Parsley

4-6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

Shredded Cheddar Cheese

The best part about this recipe is the fact that you use frozen hash browns instead of washing, peeling, and cutting potatoes. This skips the most time consuming step and tastes just as good!

Instructions

Get your Crock Pot on the low setting. 

Mix frozen hash browns (do not thaw), chicken broth (I had no chicken broth when I made this... can you believe that!? So instead, I did three cups of water and 3 tablespoons of butter and it worked out great!), Cream of Chicken Soup, Cream Cheese, Onion, Pepper, Garlic Salt, and Parsley all in the crock pot.

Now for the great part, just close the lid and let it sit for around 5 hours. Or you could put it on high and go for less hours, but I prefer a slow cook.

You can go ahead and give it a stir occasionally making sure all ingredients are combined.

When you are close to being finished get a hand held blender/mixer and give it a really good blend. This is what gives you that creamy consistency without any lumps.

And now it should be all ready! So dish some up in a bowl with shredded cheese on top with some crumbled bacon on top of that or any other toppings you would like. Serve with dinner rolls for a hearty, starchy, comfort filled yummy meal!

Try it! You won't regret it...

Enjoy!

-HW

Photo Friday: Under Pressure

Little trinkets and gadgets have always interested me. I love how mechanisms work, on the smallest level, to make bigger things work. So I always find myself gazing around the queue of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, seeing what used to make the old iron horses and steam machines work. After all, these were once real props. They're not just thrown together. Disney bought old machines that used to be apart of mining equipment to help with the theme of their attraction.

Photo Friday: The Back...or Frontside of Castle

Sleeping Beauty's Castle is probably one of the most iconic buildings in the world. A recent statistic showed that Disneyland is the most instagrammed place in the world. So it goes without saying that this building has seen its fair share of photos taken, especially from the front. 

However, what not a lot of people know is that back when Walt Disney was in the process of building Disneyland, he and his imagineers had originally planned on having this side of the castle be the front. But, as fate would have it, the top half of the castle model they were using got flipped around by accident, and they loved it so much, they kept it, and built it as such. So, this photo's dedicated to the original front of the castle, a side of it not often appreciated. 

Photo Friday: Closing Time

Club 33 is a place revered by Disney fans. Some have been lucky enough to know a member, and were able to venture beyond that green door. Now, the club's taken a beautiful new direction, and has a new entrance. But the door still stands, tribute to its long history of exclusivity within Disneyland. 

Date Day! Chocolate Chicken, Old World Grocery's and Smoggy Views

Sometimes in life, you just need to go. Get out of town, even for a few hours, and explore new places. Enjoying the world around you for all of its beautiful glory. I've always been impressed by the ads that inspire adventure. From trekking through mountains, to surfing coast lines, to just exploring cities. This world is too amazing not to take in, and even something so simple as this last weekend was thrilling to me.

I wanted to plan the day. Hailey didn't really know what we were doing, all she knew is that we had to leave at 9:00am, the only stop she knew of was, was going to Ikea to return a shelf part (we accidentally got the wrong one).

So, we took off at nine, and headed south. Los Angeles has far more to offer in regards of things to do, places to see, etc., so we find ourselves there a lot. This time around, I was taking her to a little bit of everything. Places she's been to, places I have been to but she hasn't, and places we both haven't been to.

IKEA's got this awesome sign that promotes unfortunately not actual size hot dogs. 

We hopped on over to IKEA, returned what we needed to, wandered around, got a frame for my degree to hang up, and started to head out to our first stop.

Galco's Old World Grocery in Northeast L.A. 

A friend of mine let me in on this place not too long ago, and we HAD to check it out. 

So get this, you can make your own flavored soda! 

First, choose your level of carbonation...

Then grab any variety of flavor you want. There's so many to pick from! 

Grab a bottle cap...

And press it onto the top of your glass bottle! 

Yes, Hailey's says 'Lavender'. You read that right. 

There's more than just this aisle, and there's SO many different flavors! 

You can pick up a 12-pack, and grab any flavors you want! We got some pretty unique flavors we've never heard of. In this case we acquired a blueberry soda, a rose petal soda, and even a mint julep soda! Others are some titles you might have heard of before, such as Kickapoo Joy Juice. 

This place really is awesome, and definitely a place we're going to come back to. The owner of the store is an amazing guy, with a severe love of soda, and small companies that just don't see the light of day to the public, because Coke and Pepsi run them out of town. How do we know this? He's got his letters from Pepsi and Coke's lawyers asking him to stop selling Mexican Coke or Pepsi, because it might cause 'confusion'. 

Personally, I think it's awesome he's got these hanging up right in the heart of the store. It's a tribute to his desire to give small business soda companies a chance to stand up to the big guys and let them know they're still here and not going to go anywhere. 

After we got our sodas, we headed back across the valley to a spot Hailey hasn't been to before. 

The Griffith Observatory! 

A selfie, Mr. Einstein. 

Pendulum! 

Beautiful ceiling work. 

Big places we've never been to. 

Einstein phone home...

Soon enough, we'll be traveling down there for dinner!

But first..

Big old zoomy space thing! See nerds, this is your payoff for using a magnifying glass to look at ants and stuff. You keep on zooming, all you science kids. 

While we're at it...

Look at how cute she is! 

Boo to all you locals who want this torn down. San Franciscans don't get all butthurt about the Trolly system cloggin' up their roadways, why should you get all butthurt about a sign?

Artsy? Artsy. Or just a random photo. You decide. 

Moving on. 

Okay, so Downtown LA's architecture is cool, first off. 

Second off, my mother in law found a list of 28 junk food and drool worthy places to eat at in L.A. So, Hailey and I now have donned the challenge to eat at ALL OF THEM. Someone's gotta do it, right? Might as well be a bunch of kids with clean arteries to clog. 

This is our second stop on the list (we already had been to Diddy Riese before we found out about the list. Yea, we're that hipster).

But Jake, I can't tell what that place is! It just looks all urban and cool, and quite like a place I would love to visit! What ever is the name of said restaurant? 

CHOCO. CHICKEN. 

You read that right. ChocoChicken. This place rocks. It's chocolate fried chicken, accompanied with glorious things like a bacon biscuit, or white chocolate mashed potatoes...or DUCK FAT FRIES. Goodness gracious, this place was delicious. 

I mean, LOOK AT IT. How good does that look?! 

Well, not very good if you're vegan. But if it makes you feel better, we learned that this chicken they use here is grain fed and organically grown on a farm that doesn't have giant warehouses with little cages and all those bad dirty things they teach you at PETA-School. 

But back to this place. We absolutely loved it. It's a great menu of food choices, for a little bit higher than normal price (my sandwich above was $14), but we promise you, you  get what you pay for. 

So after this, Hailey knew we were going to see a movie, and she thought we were going to go to a AMC in the North LA area. 

Just kidding! We drove down to Downtown Disney to see Guardians of The Galaxy, and end the night inside the parks to watch the fireworks together. For some reason, on some of our LA dates, we've ended up going as a spur of the moment thing, so I figured it'd be fun to keep up that tradition. 

All of those were shot on my canon, and without a tripod. Still trying to toy around with that 50, and what looks good. 

And, to end this blog post, here's the final stop of the night, which was also the third stop on the food list! 

Pellicola Pizza. Known for their Nutella pizza! 

This spot is yet again in downtown LA, and a few blocks from the Staples Center. Gotta say, that pizza didn't disappoint. It was slightly crunchier than I expected, but still incredibly delicious, and for $3 a slice, who can argue with that? 

This place is a throwback style to vintage film stuff. They've got old theater lamps around the place, and then..

Classic movies playing on the scrim on the window of the restaurant!

Places like this really are amazing gems, and far better than any chain restaurant could ever provide in regards to quality food and great style. After getting home at 1:00am, we were worn out. We both can't wait to get down here again to try out more places on the list, and explore even more places. If I could leave you readers...if anyone is actually reading this, with one thing, it's this: get out. Go explore, and see what's around you. I know, I know. Your comfortable wake up, go to work, go eat, go home, sleep, rinse repeat life is all comfy, but please. Your life is short, and your world is small. See what you can, and find things that aren't deemed popular. Maybe you can make it a popular place by sharing your findings with everyone else. You never know. But for now, I must bid adieu, and be off to search for more places that Hailey and I can explore.