By Eliza PARTIKA

As the big day approaches, volunteers are working feverishly to get the La Cañada entry parade-ready.

The La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association and over 500 local volunteers are putting the finishing touches on this year’s float, a reimagining of “Flower Power” in line with this year’s parade theme, “Celebrating World Music.”

The float, a giant replica of a ’60s Volkswagen bus, will feature a band of flowers – a sunflower, snapdragon and daisy – playing 1960s classics like “California Dreamin” by the Mamas and Papas, “San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie and “Drive Your Car” by the Beatles. The 32-minute-to-one-hour set is a first for the parade, which normally allows only 30-second loops.

The “Flower Power” bus will feature many ambitious firsts for the Association, including its recyclability. The foam board materials, steel and wood used to build the bus will all be taken down and reused in other floats or as additions to trailers and other essentials. It’s also the biggest of the floats they’ve captained with enough space for three operators and beds in the top of the cabin for those who will watch the float the night before the parade.

President Ernest Koeppen said he is always trying to think outside the box – and even push it over – when he is coming up with ideas for floats.

“It becomes a collaborative effort,” Koeppen said of the creative process. He said the committee fell into the idea for the ’60s as they brainstormed.

“Music and flowers were the cemented ideas. Then we wondered, ‘What if the flowers were playing like Mick Jagger with big lips,’ and suddenly that locked us into the ’60s because the big lips on the snapdragon are supposed to be representative of the Mick Jagger period. Then it was okay – now we’re in the ’60s. That was a pretty good time for music. And then it kept growing. That’s when we’re like, ‘You know what? Let’s do this piece of Americana,” he said.

It takes 13 months of work, from conceptualization to a fully built float, to bring each year’s dream to reality. After a theme is decided on, a designer comes in to draw sketches of the final designs, which are then put to a vote. When the winning design is finalized, months are spent brainstorming what exactly the float will look like, what materials will be needed and how the float will be assembled. In March, after the mechanics of the design are ironed out, hundreds of volunteers from Disney, local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, and local businesses and schools come to put together frames and paint the body to ensure it looks as the designers intended. When the float has been painted (with places for flower vials marked out) the decorating begins. Between 20 and 30 people work decorating around the clock between Dec. 26 and 31. This year, 132 total volunteers worked on different pieces of the float. Al Brooks Rose Bowl Tours sends buses of volunteers to assist, along with donations for next year’s float. Just before New Year’s Eve, Road Scholars volunteers will come to where the float rests under the 210 overpass to secure over 51,000 flowers to the VW bus – 35,000 of them roses.

Pat Wiedenbeck, who has been with the Association for 18 years, said she is delighted to see the float in its final stages.

“When you’re able to put on the final details, that’s when the float comes alive. Right now you know it’s a bus,” she said adding that after adding the floral details, “When you put ‘school bus’ across the top and the lights, and all the bits and pieces, that’s when it comes alive. That’s when you see the soul of the designer.”

The team has won awards for its floats 15 years in a row. It’s Wiedenbeck’s hope that the La Cañada team will take home a banner for one of the categories for this year’s elaborate design for which it is newly eligible: Queen of the Roses, Isabella Coleman for Integration of Engineering, Float Building Techniques and Decoration, Golden State (for the California music themes) and lastly, the Leschmann Award, the top award for non-commercial floats.

For Wiedenbeck the importance lies in flexing her planning skills and working with so many community members.

“It’s a community effort. It’s an out-of-community effort,” she said of local and outside of area volunteers.“Finding a way to make it all work – that’s the challenge. ”

For Koeppen, it’s about recruiting kids from the La Cañada community who no longer have access to shop classes or community spaces in which to learn and grow. Building floats teaches kids and adults welding, construction and design skills they can use. He calls this philosophy of pushing the boundaries with engineering and skilled trades DREAM: Design-Research-Engineering-Art-Maker.

“The community floats represent creativity and adventure and pushing the boundaries. The floats to me are the dreams of the community coming together,” he said.

The La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association is accepting on its website GoFundMe donations for next year’s float. Donors can also visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/wd478-build-a-dream.

Design ideas for the 2025 float can be submitted on the website until Jan. 8, 2024.