It's only been 38 years since I graduated from Cal Poly, but I finally fulfilled a long-time wish to help decorate the Cal Poly Float at the Rose Parade. As most of you probably know, this float is built by students from both Cal Poly's (SLO and Pomona), and while in school I just didn't have time to join the Rose Float Club. When Rick surprised me with tickets for my birthday to go see the Rose Parade, I contacted the Cal Poly student who organizes volunteers and learned the process for sign-ups. We made it onto the list and went a day early so we could help decorate. This blog will tell you what I learned during this fascinating process! Look at my happy face (ignore all the gray hair)...
Since I am so new to this, I'm sure there are a lot of things I don't know yet. What I did (at the suggestion of the student) was "follow" their group on Facebook. Through that I was able to track the progress as the students built the bases for the float, transported the back half from SLO to join the front half at Cal Poly Pomona, and began the process of decorating it. The float is the only one that is designed and built by students, and has been an entry since 1949. Now that I am blogging about it, I'm doing more research (per usual), and found this basic website that tells more about the history of this particular float. It has Amazon wish lists for decor items, which makes sense. I don't know how the financials work, but I imagine everything that went into this float was either donated or retained from prior years. It was clear after spending the day there that experience counts! I imagine there are adults who have participated in this for years, as well as students who are in the club for multiple years.
On Facebook they posted a couple of times asking for donations of particular plants. One of the posts was literally the night before we left, so I didn't have time to track down vines, bougainvillea, grasses, and the other things they asked for, but I had cut some things from my garden based on what I heard about earlier. Once I got there I realized that most of what I donated wouldn't be useful (e.g. I cut the roses I had blooming, which was about a dozen assorted colors (which I thought was pretty good for December!), but when I got there and saw the hundreds and hundreds of roses, all in the same color, I realized they wouldn't be useful at all!). When we arrived the evening of the 29th, after driving all day, I was hoping to start helping but they said it was too late for volunteers (translation: they didn't have time for amateurs), so I dropped off the plants with the students and we came back the next day.
Early the next morning we reported for duty. I heard later that they have people working all night during the last week, since they cannot place any of the "live" plant material until then. Every square inch of the float must be covered in a natural material, either seeds or plants or food items. Obviously, they do as much as they can in the weeks leading up to Christmas, but that last week it's "all hands on deck".
Clearly, though, they are used to having volunteers with varying levels of experience and abilities. When we arrived, they had us sign a liability waiver, then gave us a paper wristband and slapped a piece of tape with our name on it on our back and we were ready to go! They started us off with a student-led tour, which I appreciated.
Rick was parking the car when I signed in, so I got started with a different group than he did. After the tour, they assigned us our first job, putting blue iris in vials. Apparently, this is not one of the most desirable jobs, but I loved it! We were taught how to strip all the surrounding material off the stem, then cut the stem to the right length to fit in the vial filled with water and flower food, and after placing it in the vial we inserted it in a styrofoam panel. This was my first look at the sheer volume of flowers they needed.
Once we finished that, we were given the job of trimming statice flowers off the little metal inserts. Since statice is one of those plants that looks just as good dried as it does when fresh, I think the little metal pieces were what they used to put it on the float, and these were leftover statice. After we trimmed it, it was sorted by color. We thought we were sorting into "blue" vs. "purple", but we later learned we were supposed to sort by 7 colors of blue/purple! I think that after we did that, it was sent inside where volunteers were trimming the flowers off the stems and saving just the colored petals. This was the job Rick was doing, and he was told it was going to be fully dried and saved for next year.
It definitely makes me want to source more colors of statice for my garden. They are great in bouquets and with Katelyn's wedding coming up next year I want to beef up the flower varieties I have that will last well after picking.
They had lots of people helping with the statice job, including the family I was sitting with. The Mom worked at Cal Poly Pomona, the dad was there (reluctantly) helping, and their son who was a junior in high school was there doing community service hours. I also noticed large groups of people with kids in them, so I expect there were many families. I am guessing this is a job they leave near the end for "extra volunteers" since it requires little skill and they have a LOT of it to do. Rick was working inside with probably 40-50 people spread out across tables. Rookie mistake, we didn't bring our glasses which would have definitely made the job easier to see!
It seemed they had plenty of people helping with the statice job, and since I didn't trust myself to differentiate into 7 different colors, I started wandering around making observations and taking pictures. It is clear the years of experience pay off. Here are a few examples:
Around the back of the tent they had porta-potties and generators and this huge stash of buckets. When you think about it, they need LOTS of buckets to store all the flowers in. I also noticed that students are very resourceful and would often be seen sitting on these as a temporary stool.
They also had four trailers they brought from one or both Cal Poly's with essential material. They briefly described them during the tour but I didn't catch all the details. But they definitely made use of them throughout the day. There was a floral tent that had all the flowers stashed in it. They would pull plants out as they planned to use them.
One of the things I'd read about on the Facebook group was the "swag" they had available. I wandered over to the tent to see what they had. I rarely buy new clothes, but decided to splurge on a long sleeved t-shirt. It turned out to be a light-weight sweatshirt, which came in handy the next day at the parade since we got there in the very early morning hours. Someone noticed it at the hotel in the elevator afterwards and I was proud to say that I helped decorate the float. I think the Cal Poly Rose Float logo is very classy. I don't have a picture of my shirt but here's the logo. They also had tote bags, baseball-style caps, beanies, and t-shirts. My other favorite purchase was postcards that you could pre-address. They would have them on the float as it went down the parade route, and then they mailed them for you afterwards. What a great souvenir!
Other things I noticed wandering around was their use of unusual "live material" to decorate with. In addition to the beautiful flowers and seeds/nuts, they had white onions and purple cabbage. I even noticed eggplant in one of the arrangements. After this experience I have a whole new appreciation for floral artists.
The whole day was just a hive of activity. I took a video so you can get a feel for the energy in the place. I noticed they only let students and professionals climb the scaffolding and up on the float. I guess it's a liability thing, plus us amateurs really don't know what we're doing. I appreciated that they had jobs for everyone, and had a lot of patience for everyone involved.
The big tent we were in housed our float as well as the flower-decorated cars that would hold dignitaries, the two football teams' floats, and the one that held performers like Debbie Gibson. The other floats were mostly completed, so ours was the only one with a lot of activity. Mid-morning I noticed hoards of people coming down the middle aisle of the tent. When I researched Rose Parade tickets in the past, I noticed they offered tours you could take that allowed you to see floats in process. When Rick and I took a break outside, I noticed lines of buses, so that must have been where all those people came from. There were students posted at the edge of the float space that would engage with the tour takers, so I heard snippets of conversations and questions/answers as I wandered past. I feel like our "internal tour" was a much better experience (and free!), but I could see why people might want to take such a tour. Personally, I feel like our decorating+parade+float fest the next day provided the best combination of experiences.
Other things I noticed - how do you keep 60 students hydrated when you don't want a bunch of water bottles lying around? Answer: you cluster them all on one table, near the large water refill container. Also, how do you keep belongings safe and contained? I noticed other volunteers had fanny packs or similar "wearable" purses. Students carry everything in backpacks, so they had a spot they could stash them. And I thought the note in tape on one of the containers was very "student like".
Around this time I met a student who was making "flower crowns" out of leftover flowers. She had made one to go on the dog on the float, and was making another to use for a wedding of one of the students the next day. She very kindly offered me tips when I said I might need to make one for my daughter's wedding. Turns out Katelyn is not a fan of flower crowns but it was interesting anyway!
The float needed to be finished by the end of the day because they had "pre-judging", so toward the middle of the afternoon they started cleaning up and moving or dismantling the scaffolding. Rick and I hung around, because I was keeping an eye on my ferns. About this time, I noticed they had "come out" of the flower tent and were clustered near the float. Roger, the head floral arranger guy, and some students who were helping him were installing vines around the back of the float, and making arrangements near where the vines were attached. It was fascinating to see these finishing touches, and I anticipated that's where they might use my ferns. He looks grumpy, but smiled after he saw me taking pictures. If I do this again I might be brave enough to introduce myself and see what types of flowers they might need that I could help provide.
I was also intrigued by the different varieties of Cal Poly signs. On one, they used different colored seeds to make it look like wood grain, while another used reeds. The Nettie sign which was eventually installed on front of the float was made out of pepper berries. So much attention to detail!
Fun fact, a senior member of the board of Habit Burgers has a son that goes to Cal Poly. I overheard a woman who served on the board saying this. He and his wife were there and were being introduced around. I guess they're bigwigs! They brought their food truck and handed out free burgers, fries and drinks. This came in very handy since we had started early in the morning and were starving! Rick and I hustled out and were near first in line.
While we were eating the students were lining up, and I was impressed by this one girl who was doing a crossword puzzle from the newspaper, on the back of a box, while waiting in line. I forget how much fun it is to be around students! Part of the enjoyment, for sure.
Well, I could go on for days, but I'll wrap up by showing this gallery of photos of the process and near-finished float.
Next up, our experience at the parade and the "float fest" the following day.
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