Giant blossoms
About a month ago I volunteered to be a "balloon wrangler" at the National Cherry Blossom Parade. Today was the big day, and for the most part, the weather was beautiful. I was assigned to one of six giant blossoms. Here's someone else's picture from the parade:
From my point of view, our balloon looked like this:
Despite the beautiful blue sky in this picture, we were hit by some rain before the parade started. We heard it coming before we felt it--that is, we heard a high-pitched roar go up from the crowds of school children gathered on the Mall, which told us what was coming. Luckily, we were able to pull our balloon down close to the ground and huddle underneath it to stay dry.
The balloons don't look that big, and I had no idea how "heavy" they would be to pull. There were 14 ropes hanging from each of the cherry blossom balloons, and about 10 people per balloon. When our balloon was being inflated, I grabbed two ropes, thinking that someone else would show up and take one, but ended up holding onto both of them for the duration of the parade. This leads to my lessons learned:
Some of my fellow wranglers:
From my point of view, our balloon looked like this:
Despite the beautiful blue sky in this picture, we were hit by some rain before the parade started. We heard it coming before we felt it--that is, we heard a high-pitched roar go up from the crowds of school children gathered on the Mall, which told us what was coming. Luckily, we were able to pull our balloon down close to the ground and huddle underneath it to stay dry.
The balloons don't look that big, and I had no idea how "heavy" they would be to pull. There were 14 ropes hanging from each of the cherry blossom balloons, and about 10 people per balloon. When our balloon was being inflated, I grabbed two ropes, thinking that someone else would show up and take one, but ended up holding onto both of them for the duration of the parade. This leads to my lessons learned:
- Don't hold two ropes. Part of our job was to make the balloon "dance" by jerking the ropes up and down. This meant that at times, the ropes would be slack. If you only have one rope, you can use your spare hand to hold the rope out of the way. If you're holding two ropes, the wind has a tendency to try to wrap the slack ropes around your neck and decapitate you. The wind did not succeed in my case, although I got some minor rope burns on my face.
- Don't grab ropes (especially not two ropes, but preferably not even one rope) hanging of the front of the balloon. No other position around the balloon involves so much pulling. Also, since you're facing forward, you can't see what the balloon is doing. This makes it likely that you will be jerked backwards at unpredictable moments.
Some of my fellow wranglers:
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