What day is it Pixlbit?

Oh Pixlbit it feels like it has almost been a week since we last sat together. I typed up a blog that would most likely make an English Professor run out of red ink, and you good people sat through it anyways. For this latest entry I thought it would be a big combo of Quick Hits meets my regular gaming stuff, because I haven’t played a lot of stuff because I was busy checking out the sights between Orange County and San Francisco. Last weekend I went on a road trip to The City (c’mon Bay Area people that makes me hella dope right?). It was going to be fun because I get to escape the crazy triple digit heat of Sunny SoCal for the breezy and chilly weather of San Francisco, look for spots that were seen in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and GTA V, and I thought I’d share some of my random pictures with you good people.

To have this latest blog installment have some connection to games I left my 3DS XL on to not only track my steps so I can earn some gold coins, but also add some folks to my Mii Plaza. I’m taking this dang thing with me everywhere I go now because of this. Anyways let us begin our trip of “California’s Gold”

I’m not going to lie, this is one of my favorite shows on PBS. Go ahead and play this while reading.

Day 1 Orange County

The pre-start of the trip started in the afternoon when we spent some time roaming around Orange County and ended up at the uber mall known as South Coast Plaza. There was a sighting of Jermaine Jackson. I made the comment that someone should have yelled “Tito” just to see if he would turn around. While at one of the big anchor stores I spot this on the Clearance Rack

Considering the Southern California area does love a good bandwagon, and the Kings had two parades last week, I would think at least one person would have picked this up to show their “lifelong fandom” of the LA Kings. Normally I would think about buying a player jersey, especially for $80 but I pasted out of loyalty to the Anaheim Ducks. You’re welcome Wild Wing!

After running around this mall and other stores it was time to eat and this was the first time I had Cuban food. Holy cow that is some heavy food, but delicious. I went with the special of Ox Tail, and some brown rice and black beans (I should have went with the white rice).

Day 2 The Trip Begins

The 7 hour trip to the Bay Area beings! On the trusty iPods I had tons of stuff to listen to. On iPod Smallz I had a bunch of new CDs on there (some of the stuff from that big box from last week), as well as a new one

I wanted the Target version until I realized that it just had one extra song…for $3 more. Not happening Target.

On the iPod Touch it was full of my updated podcasts, as well my copy of Adam Carolla’s President Me. When the trip began, I went to my Podcast playlist to listen to CheapAssGamer and my iPod didn’t sync my new playlist. The only podcasts on my iPod where the already listen to episodes from last week, and the handful that I haven’t listened to yet. When I tried to download the latest edition of CAG I quickly remembered that Apple forces you to use the Podcast App, which I don’t like, and the audio file is over 100 mb which means I can’t download it unless I’m near WiFi. C’mon now. I have unlimited* data, if I want to download a couple of Blu-ray’s while streaming ESPN, I should be able to

*This is usually where the small text from phone companies tell you I’m crazy

Oh well I decided to continue to listen to President Me. I have to say this is my least favorite book of the three he has released.

The first stop was outside of Los Angeles in a town named Gorman. There really isn’t anything out here except a lake, a gold colored hills. We stopped for breakfast, figured out our plan of attack, and people watched. After this stop it was time to continue and hopefully take our next stop somewhere around Central California

An hour or two later we where around the town of Avenal where there is a Truck Stop, which means bathroom/stretch/gas break.

More farmland. While stretching I spotted a sign that read State Prison and an arrow pointing to a road that goes up a hill. Since I’m an avid watcher of Lockup on MSNBC, I quickly Google’d if this prison was ever on that series. It wasn’t, and it was time to get going.

This break was fun but it was time to continue on the journey listening to Adam Carolla, a couple of naps, and the final big stretch until we hit The City (I’m I hella dope yet?)

A couple of hours go by seeing farmland, random cities on the way, and then finally we get to Oakland. Oakland greeted us by having a ton of goats on the side of a hill eating the grass, surrounding a billboard for the Zoo. We made our way through there and Berkley and then spotted this while trying to get on the Bay Bridge

I see you San Francisco!

The entrance to the bridge bottlenecks because of the tollbooths, and people either trying to use their Fastpass or folks like us, using something few people use. It’s called “Cash”. We finally got through and it was time to check out the new portion of the Bay Bridge

There are trees!

This is the old section. Last time we were on that section my mom asked “was this the bridge that collapsed during the earthquake”…while we were on it. Yeah these types of questions you don’t want to hear while using the bridge.

The self anchored suspension span tower (in college my favorite class was The History Of Architecture and I wrote numerous papers about either the Hoover Dam or Bridges)

Off in the distance is Alcatraz (I thought I took a better picture but the other one is blurry)

The older section of the bridge from the island to San Francisco.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing, and then going out for dinner at a Shabu spot outside of San Francisco. If you're in the area check it out. 

Day 2

Day 2 was made Chris goes Tourist mode. Last time I was there I went to Lombard St. but forgot which house was the Real World House. This time was goal was to visit another TV landmark, or at least one that was scene in opening credits of a certain TV Show.

The morning started off with a small eatery around Union Square where there was a pretty good breakfast buffet. They had kick ass fried chicken, beer batter waffles (not a favorite), and I think I stumbled upon my new favorite of Cheddar Cheese Grits with greasy bacon chunks thrown in. I was running out of space and needed a place for my bacon.

This was my Hipster pic from my Instagram, because the spot was really Hipster-ish. After this, it was walk around Union Square, check out Niketown where one of the employees saw my SDSU shirt and asked “are you a fan of Kawhi Leonard?” In Kawhi fashion I said “Yeah” and the employee said he’s a hell of a player. After stops there and other swanky stores it was time to go back into full on tourist mode. After a couple of minutes of going up some crazy hills and questionable parts of town, we stopped at Alamo Square Park and then it was time

Hello Painted Ladies! #DannyTannerApproved

I wore my I Believe That We Will Win shirt because it was also the USA vs. Portugal game (you know what they say about ties). While some folks there was just sitting on the hill enjoying the view, I was taking pictures including this one that was around the same angle as the view from the opening credits of Full House. Some of the ladies were getting a face lift and the one on the corner had an estate sale going on. There was some talk of going in just to check out the interior of one of the houses, but we passed.

I spotted one of my favorites in the San Francisco skyline the Transamerica Building (remember the Architecture Class I liked). In this empty lot I think someone was going to build a big ass house.

The next stop was outside of the city to go shopping. There was a huge GameStop that still sold PSP games, with cases, but many of them where generic cases, and I wasn’t about to spend $15-20 on some RPGs I wouldn’t play, just to keep in the library. After that my brother mentioned that there was a restaurant he saw on the Food Network in San Jose that we should check out. Just as long as it wasn’t on Kitchen Nightmares I was down and we paid a little visit to

This place is an old school Italian Restaurant where the wait staff is all male, wearing suits, popcorn ceiling, dim as heck, and portions that could feed small nations. Yes all it was missing was a guy drinking scotch and smoking a cigar. I dug it!

The menu was awesome, and with your entrée you had a choice between ravioli, spaghetti, loaded baked potato, or steak fries. How do you say no to ravioli (I laughed at some cooking show where Gordon Ramsay said some random restaurant had terrible ravioli so it was still on the brain) with my regular portion prime rib

This was the regular size. Thank goodness I didn’t go for the large cut, because I ate half of this and boxed the rest.

San Jose is a ghost town on Sundays.

Some artwork I saw on the way to the car.

Total ghost town. You could almost race four police cars down the street (Go watch Fast 5)

To end the night we hit up an ice cream spot in San Mateo that was a lot like Diddy Reece by UCLA.

This was the line, at 10:00 pm. There was a lot of hip-hop being played (this seemed to be a theme, because at the Shabu spot it was a lot of it being played there too.) Anyways the food rule is if there is a line, it must be good.

The place is called C.R.E.A.M. or Cookies Rule Everything Around Me. CREAM! Get the money, dolla dolla bills y’all. The last part I borrowed from Wu Tang.

I got a double chocolate chip cookies with salted caramel.

Day 3

It was time to go home, another crazy ass car ride back to Southern California. My cold was in full force and this time threw in a headache. Blah. There was going to be more sleeping in the car…right after I finish the final chapter of President Me. C’mon now priorities.

The view from the airport parking lot next to the airport. Two airplanes about to kiss.

Another shot of the airport. In San Andreas I would fly here a lot, just so I could ride a motorcycle around the city.

Here are some various spots I saw when I was trying to block the sun with my eyelids, and trying to figure out if Google Maps was trolling us or not.

You take a side road to connect to the 5 and apparently it detours to Texas.

To me this signifies we are done with Central California when we hit this part of the freeway, hello Tejon Pass.

After a couple of hours I was home, I updated my Borderlands 2 game with the new codes for more gold keys, unpacked all the stuff I bought, and of course check my laptop so my phone could upload all pics to iPhoto.

For some gaming stuff I did leave my 3DS on and walked around with it. I collected another 12 folks for my Mii Plaza

I now want this crazy crown

Mii Chris is currently wearing the Link suit.

I met someone from Japan!

Since this is a kind of a Quick Hits Blog why not add the stuff I came back with and picked up since.

Games

I added this to the 3DS XL either before I left for my trip or when I got back. I watched some of the videos, liked it, and saw it was on sale. It’s a type of match 3 with Pokemon. You can’t go wrong.

Some Target stuff I was waiting to drop to $6 each

Judge away at me picking up Nintendogs + Cats. My Mii is going to be rocking some Link gear with a pet!

The 75% off games are still going on at Toys R Us. The one I visited in the Bay had nothing, but the local spot had some stuff still. I finally added Jeopardy! to the library. I’m back to having Jeopardy on every console and tablet. I don’t think it was ever made for PSP or Vita. Apparently when checking Backloggery at home instead of in store I already own Infamous, both physical and digital so this is going back.

Music

While walking around the big mall in Union Square this song was playing in a store and got stuck in my head. I Shazam’d it, and proceeded to buy it on iTunes (oh I do love you technology).

I dig the song more for Megan Washington’s voice. After some internet detective work both her and this band is from Australia. I’m going to check out more of her stuff on YouTube to see if I would dig any more of her music.

Another go ahead and judge me moment

Apparently Marshall’s in the Bay sells records.

I think I redeemed myself with Kings of Leon

Going back to Kesha, one thing that bothered me when I opened up the album

C’mon quality control.

I picked this up because another random store was playing Fancy and it stuck in my head

Why couldn’t this happen last week when the CD was $9 or I should have waited to check Google Play because it is $4 for the album. Oh well.

Oh I am so happy to be sleeping in on a Saturday. In back to back weekends I went from Phoenix to San Francisco. Props to people who do these types of drives all the time. I shall end my blog here because it looks like I picked up a couple of new people for my Mii Plaza while I was out getting lunch.

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris