Horse Expo Pomona 2015

We don't own a horse. We're not looking to buy a horse. However, during a slow weekend in January, we decided to buy our fifteen dollar advanced tickets online and drive to the Fairplex for the Horse Expo Pomona 2015.

We were hoping to see horses, lots of them. We ended up seeing a handful of horses and a few halls filled with horse gear, time share booths and John Deere tractors.

We walked on the race track to watch an English riding demonstration. I got excited to be on the track, because several summers ago, I saw Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert perform a concert here! I saw their perspective looking towards the audience in the grandstands.

Dan experimented with a slow motion video of the demonstration. I love how it turned out.

A slow motion video of a riding demonstration taken at the 2015 Horse Expo at the Fairplex in Pomona, CA.

On the way off of the track, we saw a woman exercise her horse while she rode in a golf cart. Apparently this is one of those "Only in America" things.

Also "Only in America" is the amazing fair food. We came close to chowing down on some tri-tip and blowing our diet, but we held our resolve. This exact booth will still be there come LA County Fair time at the end of the summer. Hopefully, we can splurge then.

Another permanent fair ground fixture is this miniature train set up. It's very impressive.

Not so impressive was the Horse Show Pomona 2015. To be fair, if you have a horse or are looking to acquire one, this is probably a big deal expo. There were plenty of horse related seminars and rows of fancy looking horse trailers.

I'll end with a picture of the cutest moment of the day. This picture is enough to make me want to get both a horse and a dog!

Las Vegas Christmas 2014 - Golden Nugget's Shark Tank Tour

Easily the most impressive feature of the Golden Nugget is the giant shark tank located in the pool complex. It was far too cold to swim when we visited, but we were able to take a guided behind the scenes tour to get a closer look at the sharks.

Here is a picture of the tank from the swimmer's perspective. A water slide goes through the tank and the tank can also be swum around, with the glass of the tank extending under the water in the pool. You can actually swim alongside a shark from the safety of the barrier.

The hour long tour was led by one of the marine biologists on staff and we purchased the tickets for $30.00 in advance. The tour group was small, only about ten people, which I think was probably at capacity, since the areas that we visited included small rooms. If you are interested, I highly recommend book in advance.

A bulk of the tour was spent on top of the aquarium, peering down into the water. In addition to a bunch of fish, which the sharks do not usually eat, the tank holds five species of sharks; Black-tipped Sharks, Tiger Sharks, Zebra Sharks, Nurse Sharks and Sandbar Sharks.

We learned that the biologists have to climb into the tank daily for cleaning and maintenance. When they're in the water, they wear a protective chainmail suit over their normal wetsuit. The sharks rarely attack, but it's a precautionary measure. They also have a second person as a lookout while they're working, who can intervene if there is a problem.

So what do the sharks eat? We went to the food prep room to see lots of refrigerated fish and this brown gunk. The brown junk is a fish "cookie", a nutritional mixture. We learned that the sharks can be very picky eaters, preferring certain species of fish and spitting out food that they don't like.

Most interesting is how they feed the sharks. The sharks are trained to come to targets in the water. Yup, you heard me, they train them. I wouldn't have believed this, if I hadn't heard it before from my friend who is a veterinarian. I'm still blown away by training sharks.

It isn't always easy. They have one shark who is aggressive at meal times and needs to be separated. It took them over a year to target train him to enter a smaller pool for his meals. The smaller pool can be sealed off and houses the lifts/cranes for emergency transportation out of the water. This is a place where divers can come in an emergency or where they can quarantine animals.

The last part of the tour took us to their offices, where we saw some specimens. This is a dried shark egg sack.

Me, holding a cast of a shark jaw. Yikes!

And a cast of a Megaladon tooth.

We were given a shark's tooth as a souvenir. The tooth was recovered from the bottom of the tank. No worries, their teeth grow back.

Overall, this was a good tour. It's definitely interesting to see the tank from a different perspective and our guide was very knowledgable. I'm not sure that it was good value for money at thirty a ticket, but I'm still glad that I did it. I think fifteen-twenty would have been a more reasonable price point. If you're an animal lover though, add this to your Las Vegas to-do list!

Las Vegas Christmas 2014 - Britney Spear's Piece of Me

I'm not a Britney Spears fan. I generally don't listen to pop music and I really only know a few of her bigger hits ( Baby One More Time, Oops! I did it Again), yet who can resist seeing a major star perform in Las Vegas? Her show isn't going to run forever, so we decided to use our Christmas trip to snag tickets to her Las Vegas residency show, Piece of Me, at Axis theatre in Planet Hollywood.

Not being big fans or super rich, we bought tickets in the cheap seats. This is a bit of a joke, as there is no such thing as cheap seats for this show. In the cheapest section, our seats were still over a hundred each. This said, unless you have seats on the extreme sides of the theatre, all of the seats offer a good view. Here is a picture that we took from the last row in the theatre ( our seats were more left, and slightly closer to the stage). If you really want to splurge, you can get tickets in the front row that include a meet-n-greet with Britney.

On to my "non-fan" review of the show. First, it's impossible to resist the energy of the crowd. Britney has fans and those fans are VERY pumped to see her. It starts immediately, with the long line that stretches out of Planet Hollywood and into the mall. The energy is palpable as we moved closer to the Axis Theatre entrance.

It's a very mixed crowd, that includes toddlers at presumably their first concert and people in their 80's. Although, a majority of the crowd were about five-ten years younger than us, those who were kids and teens during Britney's peak. There were the uber fans.

Once in the lobby, we saw displays of outfits that Britney wore in her music videos and concert tours. They even have her dress from her childhood appearance on Star Search.

There are several merch booths in the lobby and a Britney store outside of the theatre.

We made it to our seats and the excitement for the show was increased with a countdown clock.

I go to many concerts, but this was probably the highest production value show that I've ever seen. Even if you don't care for her music, I would recommend the show just to see the beautiful stage. The coolest thing was the enormous video screens that gave a 3-D like quality to the images. There was one song where they had a snow falling effect that was gorgeous and mesmerizing. Unfortunately, the photographs that we took couldn't even begin to convey how it really looked. She switched up the scenes and her costumes every few songs and it was spectacular. In addition to the projections, the show had pyrotechnics, arial acrobatics, bubbles, confetti and lots of dancing.

Here are our pictures. Again, these cannot begin to really show the spectacle and grandeur of the visual effects.

Prior to attending the concert, I read a lot of reviews of her show. The reviews were mixed. A lot of people complained that she lip-synched her songs. Yes, she does. However, she definitely sings a few of the slower songs. I'm a hundred percent certain that she was really singing, as although she has good voice, she was a bit out of breath from the dancing.

This is primarily a dance show set to her music. She even stated it after selecting an audience member to come on stage during one number. She directly thanked him for dancing with her. I'm totally cool with this being a dance show, rather than a concert. There is simply no way that anyone could sing those songs while doing those dance moves. Plus, how could you even sing those overproduced dance numbers during a concert? Nope. What Britney does is she is throwing a party and her fans are coming along to dance with her and have a good time. She does this well and it's a fun show.

I'm still not a fan of her most of her music, although Toxic has been stuck in my head. Speaking of Toxic, it was one of the best numbers in the show with an enormous tree in the middle of the stage. I did leave the show with a respect and like for her as an artist. Besides it being about Britney, it's a damn cool show esthetically. For sheer spectacle, it definitely rivals some of the Cirque Du Soleil shows in town.

Fan or not, make sure to catch Piece of Me before Britney's residency ends. It's worth your time and money.