11/24/2004

 

Santa Claus is coming in a wet, falling-apart choochoo train...

Ah, Christmas parades. They are so much fun to dance in. Even when everything goes wrong...

So last Saturday was the Concord parade. One of the songs we were dancing to was Santa Claus is Coming in a Boogie-Woogie Choo Choo Train, so we had a train theme for our float. A couple of parents made a train engine and caboose out of cardboard, painted them and decorated them, etc. We had one little girl dressed up as the engineer riding in the engine, the rest of the little bitty ones were dressed as elves riding in the caboose, and the dancers were in the middle dancing. We had a fogger so that smoke was coming out of the train's smokestack and everything. Doesn't that sound awesome?

So, Saturday.

The train blew out of the back of the truck it was being transported in, so it ended up being put back together with lots of tape and some rolls of cardboard. The generator that ran the fogger for the smoke was loud enough that it was hard to hear the music. Which kept skipping anyway. (CD on the back of a moving truck=bad idea.) I got one of the boards we dance on dropped on my foot, which I ignored and danced on for 2 hours, which meant Saturday night I could hardly walk. In spite of how all this sounds, it went great. We are quite used to adversity, and we got the train looking perfectly good from a distance. We faked it well when the CD skipped, and everyone had a great time. And in spite of the weather forecasts, it didn't rain! It wasn't even cold (until afterwards, when the float was on its way back to the meetup point at highway speed and Ginger and I were sitting in the train hanging on for dear life so it didn't blow away.)

So, Wednesday.

Parade #2, Spencer/Salisbury. My foot was, somewhat miraculously, OK by then. The train had collapsed and had to be reinforced with 1x2's and staples. And more tape. The poor thing looked pretty pitiful. It was threatening rain so we nixed the generator and arranged a wire-and-netting thing to look like steam coming from the engine. There was a lot of rushing around getting the float ready, lots and lots of improvising, but we managed, and started moving towards the start point.

Then the rain started.

So for the Spencer portion of the parade, we wore plastic trash bags and stood under umbrellas waving at the crowd. That kept us pretty dry, if a bit chilly. Some of the kids were pretty disappointed that we weren't dancing, but..well... Then, just as we got to the start of the Salisbury part, the rain stopped. So we pulled off our trash bags, put down our umbrellas, and started the music. We headed into downtown Salisbury, dancing away.

Then the rain started.

Once you're already dancing in the rain, and everyone is cheering for you, you can't really stop. Even as the rain gets harder and harder. And you (and your cardboard train) get wetter and wetter. By the time we were done, we were soaked to the bone and the train was very near collapse. And we were noticing the wind. We rode the distance from the end of the parade to the meetup point in a huddled mass of cold, wet cloggers.

But you know what? In spite of it all, we had fun!

9:30 PM