It's the Rose Parade

Talking to my New York friends I'm surprised to find out that they don't know everything about the Rose Parade. Many of them all they know is that there is a Rose Parade, but what it is, or why it is special, they do not know. Fortunately, I know what the Rose Parade is and why it is special. As its route is just a walk away from Grandma's house, Mom grew up going to to and I went to it all while living in California and have caught many since then. 

Traditionally, our family would stake out a spot at Allen and Colorado, but those days have kind of passed. Fortunately we've become associated with associates of Grandma's and the spot they stake out. The way it goes is early in the morning the day before the parade you're allowed to put your chairs out and then someone from the crew keeps an eye on the spots throughout that day. I was happy to protect the chairs from 4:30 to 6:30 that night. There's a whole lot of pre-parade cruising up and down Colorado the night before the parade. It's a regular car show.

A note of family business: Cousin Scotty had a one-night layover on his way to Hawaii. Good to see you, Scotty! Or Scott now, probably.

Ok then on the morning of the parade (which is usually on the 1st unless the 1st is a Sunday, then it's on the 2nd, as was the case this year) you get to your spots nice and early because you don't want to miss all the pre-parade excitement along closed-down Colorado and you especially don't want to miss the B-2 stealth bomber fly over. So spooky and amazing, hard to believe these planes are from the 80's. Or 90's. 

Some of the street sights before the parade...

Lost of entrepreneurial undertakings along the route 

Business in the front?

Party in the rear?

What we have here is some kind of scooter/go-cart propelled by a hoverboard. Ingenious.

Street tacos?

Uh oh, Parade's about to start!

Wrap it up, evangelizers!

And here we are. The Parade.

This parade had a roller coaster zipping aroud on it the whole time

Some of these I hope you recognize from my last post

It's the Mexican Marching Band from Saturday!

Grand Marshall Greg Louganis

Grand Marshall Janet Evans

Rose Queen and Court

Dogs were riding surfboards on this float but no one on street level could see them. Strictly for TV surfdogs.

Little Sebastian?

Taking a break while something holds up the parade. This is just a thing that happens sometimes, the parade will pause for a minute.

Remember these jets?!

Ok, then there was a big break in the parade and everyone thought it was over and people started getting back out onto Colorado again

Oh but actually there was still parade left, there was just a gigantic cap in it.

And then the parade was done, for real.

The Parade is followed by a secondary parade of broken down floats being towed the rest of the way. This year there was only float being towed, this Tortoise and the Hare one. The message on the float? "Never give up." How fitting.

And that was it for the Rose Parade. We went home to Grandma's to party with relatives and eat Chinese chicken salad, for which I had the honor of deep-frying the rice noodles. A real coming of age experience.

Also: Did you know that the floats in the parade are 100% completely covered in flowers or other vegetable matter? That's the rule. It's one of the things that makes this a classier parade than most. Also: No musical performances besides bands. That helps, too.