You need to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over on ....

No not that platitude.  You need to get up pretty early in the morning to make it from the east coast to the west coast.  We were up at 3am but used our flying time to nap periodically.

After settling affairs at LAX (renting a car from Avis) we charge into Los Angeles for some Korean BBQ and then we drifted over to Pasadena to watch them put together the floats for the Rose Parade.


The parade organization sets up a warehouse across the street from the Rose Bowl stadium where some of the floats are put together.  There are float sponsors who prefer to prepare in secrecy, but the half dozen in this warehouse let you watch everything.


 Our friend Mary owned a floral business at one time.  She told us stories about how difficult it was to get flowers from wholesalers in the weeks around the Tournament of Roses festivities.  This collection of Roses is for one float.  It's for the Washington State Huskies. It is not all of the floral elements they will use.








 This crew is working on a feature about how the floats are made for one of the parade telecasts.
Chipotle is the sponsor of a float.  These are their roses.  They also were using onions, peppers and tomatoes.  One assumes they might be making salsa. 


 Cal-Poly is putting together a really clever float.  They also created an interesting way to share some of the expense.  On the way out they placed a large, empty water jug for visitors who wanted to help finance their endeavor.  If you put in some money they gave you one of these small, plastic vases that keep individual flowers healthy.  You get to write you name on it.  If you watch the parade telecast, when you see the Cal-Poly float, one of the flowers is mine.  Jan got one too.


There is a football game too.  Ohio State plays Washington State.  It is a beautiful setting for a football stadium but we guess that the neighbors do not always enjoy the two weeks of disruption.


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