Our thanks to BATW Ambassador and man-amongst-beans Michael Shibley for taking our beans back once again to the Tracy Best Fest!

Good afternoon bean fans (both dry and wet), and welcome once again to the coolest bean party of them all - the 2004 Tracy Dry Bean Festival! The beans were fortunate to return to this lovely city for the second year in a row to partake in their annual salute to all things bean-y. So to kick off the celebration, the beans met up with some of their legume cousins as they peruse this helpful brochure about the joys of California beans. Hey - no argument from us; our frijoles were grown right here in the Sunshine State. (It's easy to tell from their frequent usage of the words "dude" and "gnarly".)

So in order to get this party started, you've gotta have a map, right? I mean, you'd hate to go looking for the beans and end up on the wrong side of town. So first things first, our can stopped off to pick up a copy of the Tri-Valley Herald's special edition for the best fest. It's says right here on the front that we should "Celebrate America", and so that's exactly what the beans intend on doing - red, white, and black. Sound good?

Now, as we all know our beloved can of frijoles hate to toot their own horn (although they would if they could...), but they wanted to show off their starring role here in the Tri-Valley Herald. Imagine - an entire page of compliments and praise - all about our traveling beans! I can't guarantee how long this link to the article will work, but you can give it a shot anyway. The beans were thrilled to find themselves in the newspaper, and were twice as glad to know that it wasn't in the police blotter section.

Next up, the beans drop by to say hi to this lovely lady at the California Bean Shippers Association booth, whom we've been told was dying to smile for the frijoles. She supposedly already knew all about the fun we have here at BATW, so bonus points to her! The beans are always excited to meet those with "insider information" into the wonderful world of legumes, so they spent copious amounts of time chatting it up with the nice people at this booth. Alas - they didn't come home with as many complimentary bean gifts as we'd hoped, but it's okay - I mean, what would a can of beans do with another t-shirt or key chain?

In last year's writeup, I made a crack about rehydrating your dried frijoles in a bottle of chablis. Well, being the ignoramus I can sometimes be, I forgot that I was joking about vino in the middle of Wine Country U.S.A.. So oops - to make penance for my social faux pas, I asked our can of beans if they'd pose with a couple of official Tracy wine glasses. And so here they are, proudly begging for my forgiveness. And apparently there weren't any hard feelings about it, because the beans did come home with a bottle or two of a local vineyard's finest, which are now properly stored in their humidity and light controlled wine cellar. (Of course the beans have a wine cellar in the bottom of their can - doesn't every vegetable?)

Finally, here we have the beans meeting up with their dried black bean counterparts. While our beans were polite and cordial, I've got to tell you - they're burning up with jealousy at their see-through container... And so there you have it - another successful dry bean festival is in the books. Hopefully everyone had a great time this year, and will be back in 2005 for more fun. As for our traveling can, well I think that it goes without saying that they'll be back next summer -- who knows, maybe they'll even work their way into the parade. Hey, they promise to wave like royalty, and they'll only toss candy to the kiddies (they learned the hard lesson that children don't appreciate having beans thrown at them as much as they do Tootsie rolls...) Anyway, once again we thank BATW Ambassador Michael and the Tracy Chamber of Commerce for letting our humble can crash their party. See you in 2005!