It’s No Bed of Roses for Float Drivers

Driving a Rose Parade float down Colorado Boulevard is something like driving a 30-ton big rig--except you do it slowly, blind and in your underwear.

Beneath all those fluttering roses, the drivers are wedged into dark caves of chicken wire and plywood, so hot while sitting next to one, maybe two massive V-8 engines that clothing becomes optional. They take directions over the radio from an observer who sits peering out the front through peepholes.

Sound precarious?

Then why do parents feel compelled to send their kids running up to the behemoth vehicles to pick a flower? They might not feel so inclined if they knew that under the soft-petal exterior beats the steel mechanical heart of a freight train--guided by a man in his tighty-whities.

“The word ‘float’ is so light-sounding, and they’re all covered with flowers,” said Larry Palmer, spokesman for the Phoenix Decorating Co., the largest float builder.

“People don’t know they weigh 40,000 pounds. They are like semitrucks. . . . They don’t just stop on a dime.”

On Thursday, Phoenix did its last road test of the year on Seco Street near the Rose Bowl. The vehicle in question was the Heinz “Ketch’n the Future” float, which features tomatoes going into a factory on a conveyor belt and coming out in rose-shaped dollops of catsup.

The test involved coordinating eight mammoth horses, a straight-6 Chevy engine, and a 28-foot animated catsup bottle that will need to get under a 17-foot bridge at the end of the parade route.

With the engine operator stuffed in one compartment, an animator manning the hydraulics in another, and a horse driver up front, the float completed its half-mile loop almost problem-free. The only mishap: A faux plate of hot dogs, which juts out from the float, rubbed along the faux wood siding of a Buick parked on the street.

“We need mirrors on this thing,” shouted horse driver John Dryer, who works for Heinz.

The Heinz float is one of 24 made by Phoenix, close to half of the 55 floats to be featured in the New Year’s Day procession. Each vehicle has its driving peculiarities and requirements, nuances well-known by the drivers, who usually work for the companies that built them.

One of the more difficult presentations this year will be by Honda, whose 15 mini-floats in the shape of marching band members must proceed down Colorado in unison. Inside each one will be a member of the Pasadena motorcycle club, riding an ATV as he peers through a screen camouflaged by seeds.

To drive a bigger float, it takes some training--and the desire to sit in the dark for two to four hours, basking in a brew of heat, engine exhaust and combustion noise.

Most floats have a small compartment up front, where observers sit and look through dollar-sized peepholes and relay directions to the driver through battery-powered headphones: Turn right. More right. More. More. More. Nooo!

Don’t try this at home.

“You’re basically blind,” said John Lane, a float mechanic who has driven in the parade numerous times. “You might be able to see the line beneath you. Sometimes not.”

The floats, which have solid steel chassis, are tested in the weeks before the parade to ensure they are maneuverable and responsive enough, and don’t tip over on the sloping sides of the road or in a Santa Ana wind. Each float has at least two sets of brakes, just in case one goes out.

So far, Palmer said, there have been no major problems with the floats careening into the crowd or crashing into the Foothill Freeway overpass at the end of the route.

There have been a couple of times drivers inadvertently weaved, and once a horse-towed float lost its brakes.

On occasion, the the driver of a larger float will notice mechanical problems and have to radio for tools, a mechanic or some oil or transmission fluid--all while the metal beast keeps plodding by the happy crowds.

Even on easy runs, drivers can’t sit back and sip their coffee. In fact, they shouldn’t drink at all. It may be five hours without a bathroom.

Palmer said the newer drivers usually emerge from the floats cross-legged before bolting for relief. There are suspicions that some veterans have a better way.

“There may be a coffee can somewhere in there,” he said.

But heat seems to be the biggest problem for the drivers. Lane, the mechanic, said one driver was sweating so profusely that he drank eight bottles of water. He, like others, had stripped down to his underwear but refused to open the hatch for fresh air, fearing it would spoil the image of the float.

“He was a loyalist for the parade,” said Lane. “We had to pull him out for heat exhaustion.”