No plane or planes showed up at 8 a.m. this morning. I thought I might have missed it by having it sneak in on a tight turn to get to Pasadena behind me. These kind of things are supposed to be very reliable. Did I just outright miss it? Was our national budget that tight to have to scratch that appearance this year?
Well, I gave up around 8:25, thinking that this parade is already started, so I will just check it on television, thinking I might just go and catch it in person at the end of it's route if it looked good to me.
I'm getting my stuff together and the t.v. is on. Very nice parade. Just then Bob Eubanks comes on to say "There's the B-2 bomber. We thought it wasn't going to make it this year." I take the cue and head outside to the street, looking back at the hills and sure enough, there's this huge plane in a banking turn, looking like a manta ray in the air gliding so smoothly above my roof. The bomber seemed absolutely huge as the entire underside was facing me while it banked, and at the same time, it was so quiet. It was just about then that I realized that I left every one of the three cameras I was planning to take to the parade just sitting on the table inside and that plane just sailed on to Pasadena and that was it. No photos this year.
But here are some shots of assorted things today. Mind you, these floats have to be a bit disassembled to go under the 210 Freeway at Sierra Madre and when they got to my spot it dawned on me that sections of many floats were in the "reclining" position. I guess they don't set them up again until they go on display after the parade. By that time, several floats needed to be towed, and a lot of the animation and steam effects had dwindled down. But they were still impressive.
I have to remember next time to get on the south side of the 210 so I can see the floats completely set up. My last trip there was on a cold rainy day that continued the entire parade until a few minutes after it ended. Today was like spring, or even summer. I guess we'll have a lot more people packing up to come to California and leave their snow and cold for this climate after watching the parade on t.v.
Alhambra Unified School District Marching Band made up of musicians from all three high schools.
Another view of Alhambra's big band
Benny Martinez, doing this for the whole parade-
USC's band and one majorette
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Ballou Marching Band from Washington, D.C.
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