POWER! Decorating the Rose Parade Floats

Although we live in Long Beach now, when we moved out to California in May 2016, we rented a small house in Glendora for a few months, so we could have a stable base of operations for getting used to the area and finding a more permanent residence.  Glendora was a really cute little town, and one of its benefits was being close to other cities along the mountains within the Angeles National Forest, like Pasadena.  We first visited Pasadena a few years back, when Florida State played Oregon in the Rose Bowl (the less said about that game, the better), and since we were already heading up that way, we also purchased tickets to view the Rose Parade.

I'm a parade kiddo, so I love almost all of them, and the Rose Parade itself is a really cool adventure.  The horrific parking, standing in lines over an hour to use the bathroom, and fighting people to see the floats, on the other hand?  Those are horrible, and those of us in attendance (Chris, myself, Dad, and Risa) decided that this was about it for our Rose Parade experience.  However, in late 2016, I ran across information on how normal folks could volunteer to decorate the Rose Parade floats for local companies, and Chris and I signed up to try it out, bringing my cousin Ryan and his wife Jenni along for the experience.

As it turned out, it was a blast - albeit a tiring, glue-covered one - but it really was fun, and when the volunteer information came out for late 2017, we signed up once again.  This time, we recruited Dad and Risa to go along with us, and they were game to try it out (apparently, a good year of hearing us praise the experience piqued their interest).  We picked the morning session on Saturday, 12/30 as our volunteer slot, so we all met at our house and started up toward Pasadena around 7am.  Upon arriving at the Rose Bowl (the floats are worked on all year, but in the last week of the year, they move them to the Bowl itself for final preparation, which is super cool to see), we found the check-in location for our group; we'd once again be helping out Paradiso Parade Floats, a local company that creates a few floats each year.

When you check in,

you get labeled with your name.

This way, the volunteer coordinators

have an easy way to get your attention,

should they need to do so.

Since we were early for our shift,

we took some time to drive through

downtown Pasadena,
where the parade stands were already set up.

See the commentating booths for

HGTV and Amazon Prime?

We waited near the check-in tent for a few minutes, and right at 8am, our volunteer coordinator hopped up on a nearby wall and gave us our intro speech.  After that, we followed her into the main building where Paradiso's floats for the year were set up and in various stage of undress.  Each year, companies who want to sponsor floats contact firms like Paradiso and contract with them to build them; last year, we worked on the float for Ragu, but this year, we found out we'd do even better - we'd be working on the float for Amazon itself, a new entry into the parade for 2018.

As we walked into the airplane hangar that housed the Amazon float (plus three others currently under construction), we discovered that not only would we be working on the Amazon float, but working on the "Amazon presents The Grand Tour!" float.  Chris and I had mini freakouts at this point, as The Grand Tour! (and its previous incarnation, Top Gear) is one of our favorite programs. 

Parts of the float,

currently under construction. 

With a man, for scale.

Peeking into the battery compartment.

Although this float would be mostly

person-powered, it did have battery backups.

When we entered the tent, we were in a group of 50 people, so it took some time for the volunteer coordinators inside to assign everyone to jobs.  As it turned out, the four of us got the glamour job of working on the main logo pieces of the float, which was really exciting.  Our coordinator told us to head to the supply area and get the proper glue and materials for our part of the float; specifically, we'd each need a tray of poppy seeds, as our section would be almost entirely black.

Looking out into the second main room

in the hangar - and at pieces of another float.

A few more shots of the other float - 

we found it on tv during the parade coverage:

Look at how gorgeous it turned out!

It's always really cool to know what the floats

look like just 48 hours before they roll down the road,

and how they end up looking when they're done.

It's an incredible transformation.

Armed with our supplies, we headed back to our float and started work.  Last year, we worked mainly on the house part of the Ragu float, on a set of brick-looking steps that led to a wide front porch area.  It involved gluing lots of seeds onto an area to look like bricks and mortar, and most of it was horizontal work.  While the technique this year was roughly the same, we absolutely escalated in terms of difficulty, as our work was now 100% vertical.

Yup, those are all poppy seeds.

Like 800 million of them.

The thing that always cracks me up

about working on the floats

is the sheer number of volunteers

who end up in one area at a time.

So, in this shot, we're working on the white area,

other volunteers (not shown) were gluing

leaves to cover the steering wheel "prongs,"

and even more volunteers (shown)

are gluing orange lentils to the inner wheel.

It is a very well coordinated operation.

Everyone is COVERED in seeds, lentils, and flowers

by the time the floats are done.

While Chris and I worked on this side, Dad and Risa were on the other side of this piece of the float, decorating tires:

Ooh, fancy!

Eventually, we finished poppy seed-ing (now a verb) one half of the steering wheel, so our volunteer coordinator rotated the entire piece of the float so we could handle the other side.

Time for a quick picture break.

I took a bathroom break at this point as well, and in heading outside to the port-o-loos (how much time do I spend in port-a-loos, truly?  I feel like I mention them in every blog I write), I wandered by other decorations for our float, including detailed portraits of the three presenters on The Grand Tour.  These things were crazy - portraits done entirely in seeds, rice, and the like - the folks working on them were blowing up detailed pictures of the gentlemen on their phones and choosing from a palette of colorful materials to make them lifelike.  Here's the three gents in real life:

From left, that's James May,

Jeremy Clarkson, and Richard Hammond.

And now, their floral doppelgangers:

Hammond, far above, and Clarkson,

above, under plastic wrap.

Here's a better shot of the Clarkson one in progress.  See the cell phone near the top with the detailed shot of his eyes:

Incredible!

I also grabbed some shots of another float in our hangar - this was one was being done by the team of students from Cal Poly:

Those are lemon halves on the side of the airplane

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Old Chobani cups make great glue holders.

The Cal Poly float, all finished and flying down Colorado Blvd.

Anyway, after potty and snack time, it was back to the salt mines.  Time for more poppy seeds!  Around this point, Dad and Risa joined us on our side of the float, to finish up some poppy seed-ing on the Golden Gate Bridge:

Look at that work!

Our volunteer shift ended at 1pm for the day, and Chris and I just kept plugging along at the main steering wheel logo, as our volunteer coordinator was hoping we'd finish this part before we headed out.  We figured we could, and we ended up closing out our day just in time.

Only between the letters left to go!

Ta daaaaa!  Fully poppy seed-ed.

As a reminder, here's what our wheel looked like before we started:

Yeah, that was all us.

We bid adieu to our volunteer coordinator and headed to lunch, tired but happy to have helped and spent our morning in such a cool way.

That's one pooped out volunteer.

As we were heading out,

afternoon shift volunteers were starting to add flowers.

Seeds, rice, and hard materials come first,

and then flowers.

We would have watched the Rose Parade anyway, but it's even more fun to view it when you know you've had a hand in making some of the creations.  Here's our float on the tv!

That's our wheel!

With the Hammond face!

As it turns out, our float even won an award!

That's for "most outstanding use of imagination,

innovation, and technology."

The float was entirely person-powered,

so that makes sense to me!

Just like last year, we had a great time decorating the floats, and barring any unforeseen disasters, we'll be back again in late 2018.  Who wants to come along?

Later!

Amy