By Brandon HENSLEY

To Dave Weaver, working on this year’s float for the Rose Parade was so enjoyable the time just flew by.

But that doesn’t mean the work didn’t take a toll on his
body. After the crew chief for the city of Glendale’s float helped put the finishing touches on their float, “Say Cheese,” Weaver didn’t go to the festivities on Colorado Boulevard on New Year’s Day.

“I’m pretty exhausted,” Weaver said, while noting his crew didn’t finish until 11 p.m. on Dec. 30. “It’s pretty tough. You have to get up at 4:30 or so in the morning to get to the parade. I wasn’t getting enough rest.”

As it turns out, Glendale didn’t receive any awards either from the parade. But to Weaver, that really didn’t matter.

“If we don’t [win] I feel more for the kids. Some of them put in 60, 70 hours [of work],” he said.

In all, over 500 volunteers flocked the Rose Palace in Pasadena, the place where many floats were being worked on in preparation for the parade, to help Weaver and his Glendale crew. Most of the volunteers were students.

“I got some great new students that really, really worked hard, I’m so proud of them,” said Weaver. “And I’ll probably have them the next four years.”

While “Say Cheese” was being shown off in front of the Alex Theatre in downtown Glendale this week, preparation for next year’s float will start soon enough. The design of the new float will be selected in March and construction will begin in April.

Weaver still wanted to thank the volunteers from this year.

“I’d like to thank all of them for their efforts, and I hope they enjoyed themselves,” he said. “I hope they’ll all be back next year.”

In La Cañada, that city’s float, “3-2-1, Dig!” also did not receive any awards.

“We go into the parade from the beginning … hoping that we can win an award, especially if we are going for a certain one, whether it be whimsical or animation,” said Sarah Marshall, who pre-scheduled the decorators for the float.

Like Weaver, though, Marshall thought more about the workers than for herself when talking about coming up empty.

“Not so much for myself but for all those construction people and the rest of the people, especially the decorators who worked hard, and long hours, and late hours until 2:30 in the morning,” she said.

“Of course we’re disappointed we didn’t get it, but there’s room for improvement.”

The La Cañada-Flintridge team will soon have its annual meeting on how to improve for next year. They may not need to improve on the number of volunteers though. Marshall said over 800 people came through their lot last month to help with the float, and in the end the payoff was enough for Marshall and the team.

“I’m proud of our community, and proud of what we do.,” she said. “This is our 33rd year of doing it … I’m very grateful to see it going down [Colorado Boulevard].”

  floats, La Canada Flintridge, Rose Parade