JELLY BELLY!!!!

Who doesn't love jelly beans? I actually don't care for them, but I took a little detour from our jaunt between Vallejo and Sacramento to take the Jelly Belly factory tour. Walking into the Jelly Belly factory lobby is like walking into a tie-dye t-shirt. All the colors of the rainbow are on display with little jelly bean artwork covering every square inch of available space. When you walk into the lobby right there on the wall is a huge jelly bean portrait of the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan. You would have thought our fortieth president was the one who invented the damn jelly bean, the guy is all over the place. The portraits of him are hilarious too, they have presidential Ron, "Win One for the Gipper" Ron, senile Ron, they got 'em all. So after you pass all of the creepy pictures of president Reagan you are in the lobby/gift shop/sample area. This is where you can buy a Jelly Belly helicopter hat if you please. The tour guide corralled us in to take the free tour and we were off. The tour was 45 minutes and, not to be ungrateful, they could have done it in 10. The tour takes you around the catwalk above their manufacturing facility which is pretty neat, getting to see all of the automation as well as seeing 80 million jelly beans out on racks waiting to be packaged. If you are wondering how many jelly beans 80 million really is, think of a 3 car garage filled from top to bottom with jelly beans, or just think of a lot of jelly beans and double that thought.

After the Jelly Belly factory it was all pretty smooth sailing into Sacramento. I got to be a part of the ride again today so I rode my office through Northern California's farmland to our capitol. I must say that riding a bicycle is a much different way of seeing things. Every person on this ride seems to really want to experience everything which has been a great experience for me. We stop in nearly every town to get water or a snack and chat for a second with the locals. Nearly all of them have the same "don't you know you can drive or fly across country now?!?" reaction, but we all laugh, hop on our bikes and keep pedaling on. You can't hear the wind whip through the what fields in a car. This is a rare opportunity where I get to combine two things that I love; biking and traveling.

To all of you who plan on one day visiting the Jelly Belly factory, take a good look at all of the creepy looking jelly bean cartoon guys they have painted everywhere. They have these eyes that you can feel judging you and these smug smiles. They just think they're better than you...smug little jelly bastards...