Parade Time

My company decided to have a float in the parade to celebrate our 70th year in business and to promote our different office locations throughout the state. We decided to handout candy and beach balls. The parade theme was World of Happiness and Harmony, so we got beach balls with our logo and globe beach balls. We had a large globe on the back of the float and one of the accountants rode on the front of the float with an old-time calculator, laptop, and phone.

Kurt and I spent approximately 12 hours blowing up the beach balls here at home in the evenings a few weeks ago. I checked them yesterday morning and most were still inflated. I pumped the ones up that had leaked off air, so all were ready for this morning. We packed the Jeep full last night and drove down to catch the float this morning. We just had to stop and talk with 3 police officers to get close to our float with the streets already blocked off by 7:00am.

Once we got moving in the parade, the balls were a big hit with both kids and adults. We had to be very careful as children were coming right up to the moving truck to get a ball. We had a system in place that we would only give balls to the company staff that were walking the parade route. They would only give the balls to people standing on the sidewalk. Still people were rushing the truck, over just getting a beach ball. It was a bit of a mob scene the whole way through.

When Kurt and I got home, we watched the video of the parade. Our float never appeared on TV and never got mentioned by the TV announcers. All that work and we never got mentioned. I wrote the TV station an email expressing my disappointment. At least we got a good plug for those listening in on the radio broadcast.