Happy New Year

Our New Year's family tradition has always included the Rose Parade. As kids, we woke up early and planted ourselves in front of the T.V. to hear Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards describe the floats.

Last year, I even tried to make it part of Mark's childhood memories, although the results were nothing short of disastrous. I vowed never to step within 50 feet of a Rose Parade float again.

Until...my friend Vicki invited us to a Rose Parade party. And not just any party, she said. A party at Aunt Nosy's house.

Aunt Nosy is not actually Vic's aunt, but rather a friend's aunt. She lives right along the parade route, next door to the big white house where all the parade festivities begin. Vic promised us a parking pass, indoor plumbing, and gin fizzes, and suddenly, I was willing to give the Rose Parade a second chance. (Can't say the same for gin fizzes, though -- yuck!)

So we celebrated New Year's Eve at Vic's place, and then awoke at the crack of dawn. Actually, even before the crack of dawn -- at 4:30 a.m., to be precise. Luckily, Mark wakes up pretty easily when travelling or attending fun events like this.

Pretty soon, we were on our way to Pasadena. It was still pitch black outside, and the road was fairly empty, except for all the buses. They were heading in the same direction we were.

We followed the buses off the freeway and toward the parade route. Edra flashed the magic parking pass and voila! we were travelling behind the road blocks. Our only hiccup was when we reached the top of a steep hill and realized a bus was heading down directly at us with no room to pass.

Once the bus crisis was averted, we parked at Aunt Nosy's. I could tell we were close because the street was filled with T.V. vans and trailers.

It was now 6 a.m., and we were the first guests to arrive. Aunt Nosy greeted us warmly, and pointed us to the street. "Go walk the floats," she said, so we did exactly that.

It was incredible! We were literally steps away from the floats. There were people along the street, but most of them were T.V. or float crews. We stood mere inches from the floats. It was so cool!

Randi, Vic, Mark and Edra in front of the floats.
Three out of four of them were glad to be there!

It was still dark when we first got there -- the floats were lit up with floodlights.


We even got a sneak peak at the driver's seat -- there's a little T.V. screen in there to help them navigate the street.

About 30 minutes into the viewing, the sun started to rise. To our left, the sky was pink and blue, just beautiful. To our right, the full blue moon shined brightly over the white house. It was an awesome morning.

Blue moon.


Sunrise.

Mark and I stopped in front of the big white house. I was just staring at the house when the man next to me said to his son, "You know who that guy is? It's Captain Sully, the pilot who landed his plane in the river and saved all those people."

My head whipped around at that. Captain Sully was the parade's grand marshall and I was so excited to see a real live hero!

Turns out he was right in front of me. I pointed him out to Mark, who was completely uninterested. Instead, he fell to the ground in a heap and whined, "I'm going to sleep!"

I watched as a T.V. guy started interviewing Sully. I thought it was pretty cool, and even raised up my camera to take a picture. Unbeknownst to me, I was actually right in the shot, between Sully and the interviewer (see it here, around the 2:33 mark). My mom and cousin Kathleen both phoned me as soon as I got home to say they'd seen me! My mom also asked if the lump on the ground was Mark, and I confirmed that it was. "I knew it!" she said excitedly.

Captain Sully!

It was time for the parade to begin, so we returned to Aunt Nosy's. She's put out pastries and mimosas, and even bleachers for us to sit on in the front yard! We had the whole yard to ourselves, and a perfect view of the floats -- they were seriously 10 feet away from us!

Viva Mexico! The float of mi gente.

Very cool puffer fish/jelly fish/reef float.

One of my favorite floats had a huge bulldog on the front. It also had a small slope of snow, which we soon realized was for some real-life bulldogs, one of whom was wearing a tu-tu. The dogs were supposed to snow board down the slopes, but because they weren't quite at the starting line of the parade, the people on the float weren't doing anything. This did not sit well with Aunt Nosy's friends. The older ladies started shouting, "We want the dog! We want the dog!" They got the whole crowd to chant along with them, and next thing we knew, the dogs were snow boarding down the slope. It was hilarious! And even more so when the float passed us by and the dog trainers gave Aunt Nosy's friends a thumbs up signal to let them know they'd been heard.

We seriously had the best seats on the route. Not only were we on bleachers above the crowd, we were also at the point where the marching bands converged into the parade. They marched right up to the street across from us, playing loudly, and waited until the parade volunteers waved them in. The floats stopped, waited for their signal, and then moved up.

My favorite band was the Guatemalans. They were happy, dancing, playing and very glad to be there. They samba-ed and danced and then shouted, "Guatemala!" and danced on down the street.

One thing I couldn't believe was my son's reaction to the whole parade. He'd woken up okay, but went downhill shortly thereafter. He was grumpy and mad and wanted no part of the floats or the parade. I told him some day he was really going to appreciate all this, and he snarled back, "Not today!"

As soon as we got to the bleachers, he laid down and immediately fell asleep. Seriously! Not 30 feet from the marching bands playing as loudly as they could -- he slept through it all. (Later, when we watched it on T.V. at home, he said, "Wow, that's loud! I can't believe I slept through all that noise!")

Seriously? You can't hear that big marching band in the upper lefthand corner??

I woke him occasionally to see the really cool stuff (like the snow boarding dogs) but he immediately went back to sleep. He woke up just in time to see the last three floats pass by.

Even when he finally woke, he wasn't much interested in the parade. He was more interested in telling me how boring parades are.

Hey Mark, the floats are behind you!

By then, the parade had ended, and my own fatigue set in. Aunt Nosy set out quite a feast, but I was suddenly exhausted, and in no mood for my now well-rested, hyperactive son.

We stayed long enough to eat, and watch the crowd thin out. When both sides of the road were moving again, we packed up the car, thanked Aunt Nosy profusely and headed home, tired but very, very happy.

It was a pretty great way to ring in the new year.

And now we'll never have to do THAT again...

As a child, the best part of New Year's Day was always the Rose Parade. My brothers and I woke up early, pulled all the blankets off our beds, and spread out on the pulled-out sofa bed to watch. My parents let us lounge in our pajamas all morning until it was over.

As an adult, the Rose Parade still plays a big part of my New Year's Day tradition, though now it's more of the background than the main event. Now I don't watch it so much as turn it on and go about my morning, listening to Bob Eubanks and Stephanie What'shername discuss the floats. (You can tell they're aging because this year Bob kept talking about how he hasn't been on a horse in 2 1/2 years, since he had his hip replaced.) But it's still an integral part of New Year's Day--I remember the year we spent in New York City visiting Scott, and the parade didn't come on until noon because of the time delay. It really threw us all off--Scott, Smed and I were used to watching it when we first woke up, and it just seemed wrong to wait until lunch.

So the parade's always been part of my life, and this week, I decided it should be part of Mark's as well. We don't live all that far from Pasadena, and I thought it would be really cool to go see the floats I've seen crawling across my T.V screen my whole life up close.

Mark was not as enthusiastic. When I told him the plan, he shrugged and said, "I'd rather just relax at home."

To which I replied, "If I stay home today, I'll do laundry, which means you'll be sorting and putting away clothes." He said, "Then, no. Let's go see floats."

Man, I should have listened to him. I didn't really put that much thought into the whole day other than, "Ooooh, floats!" Which means I didn't plan for lunch, or snacks, or long lines, or even cold weather, which all turned out to be the realities confronting us.

I used both the L.A. Times and my GPS to find the floats on display. However, the floats were not where they were supposed to be, and after a couple extra miles, I got nervous. I was about to give up when I hit Pasadena City College, and a sign that said "Float viewing." Perfecto!

We parked in the lot, and headed toward the bus line. It didn't look that long, but some man pointed toward the other side of the parking lot, toward a sign that read "Tickets."

"Start there," he said, pointing toward a much longer line.

Mark took this opportunity to show off his dance moves. First he danced blindly across the asphalt, and right into the line of people waiting for the porta-potties. As you can imagine, that is not the group of people you want to tick off!

But that didn't slow him down. He kept on dancing, and this time almost got run over by a bus. I grabbed him, and pulled a maneuver from the Virginia Dinsdale School of Mothering. I dug my fingers into his arm and dragged him away from there. (I don't have any nails, or I'd have dug them in like dear Mom did!)

And that's how we entered the line, me cursing under my breath, and Mark wailing that I was hurting him. Did I mention it was a loooooong line? It took us about an hour to get to the front of it, during which time Mark alternately kicked the broken pavement, tried to knock down the temporary line dividers and cried some more while I dug my hand into him again as a consequence. At least we put on a good show for the other people waiting in line.

We finally got our tickets, and permission to join the bus line. By then, I'd calmed down, so Mark and I joked and played, wiling away another 30 minutes, during which time I fed Mark all of the snacks I had in my backpack. Besides being hungry, he was also cold--he insists that California means sunny all year long, so he had on shorts and a thin sweatshirt in the 55 degree weather.

Once on board, it was a 10 minute ride to the floats. It was kinda cool to see all the old Pasadena bungalows along the way.

I was so excited by the time we got to the floats! Mark, true to form, was more hungry than excited. We pushed our way through the throngs of people--there were a LOT of people there. I pointed out all the flowers on the first two floats and talked Mark into a few quick photos. The floats weren't as big as I expected, but the flowers were really colorful.





By the fifth float, Mark was losing it. He was hungry, with a capital HUN. Did I mention there were a lot of people there? Because those people weren't just waiting in the tickets and bus lines, or looking at floats--they were also crowding up at the street vendors to buy $6 pretzels. Which Mark refused to eat. Which meant we blew past the remaining floats on the street to find food for him.

We found a mini food park, and while in line (of course), Mark started crying, a sign of him having a low blood sugar. I tested him, and sure enough, he was 59 (anything under 70 is low). As I'm handing him a juice box, the man in our booth starts calling out, "We're out of soup, and corn, and potatoes. [All Mark's choices!] All we have left is fried food."

And that, my friends, is the point in which I removed my Rose (Parade) colored glasses and ended the fantasy. I was shivering, correcting my diabetic son's low blood sugar, waiting to feed him chicken tenders literally dripping oil, being slammed by people cutting through my line. It was at this exact moment I realized why people watch the Rose Parade on T.V. every year--because the real-life experience SUCKS!!!

"We are so out of here," I said, grabbing Mark's hand, and pulling him through the crowd. "Hold onto your food," I told him--his poor sugar-deprived body could not afford to lose even one bite of the (oily) fuel it needed.

And so we left the float display. We got caught in a crowd trying to exit, and I tried to suppress all the claustrophobic feelings rising up. "Take a good look at the floats," I told Mark, as we passed the same 10 floats we'd already seen.


"Why?" he asked. "Because they're so pretty?"

"No," I answered. "Because we are never ever coming back here again. EVER!"

Turns out we spent four times as long in lines as we did actually viewing the floats. But for my money, I didn't care. Some ideas, like watching the parade snuggled up on the couch, are very good ones. And some ideas, like fighting the crowds with a crying child to see the floats in person, are the very opposite of good.

Guess where we'll be watching the parade from next New Year's Day?