Zumi's flower parade bloggings 2017

[Zumi]

Some people may remember that I made a similar post last year, but never kept up fully because lol stress and a lot of shit happened last year which ended in a huge disappointment (a.k.a. the harsh winds being stupid and causing us to choose to not participate for safety reasons -- which i completely understand! but still, it was honestly really sad).

 

But for those unaware what this is about; There's a flower parade in my town, and I actively help out every year with building one of the floats! Twenty workgroups build a float each year for the parade, and since it's a competition as well, they try to make it the best to their abilities so they will stop in front of the town hall during the second passing of the floats past it -- meaning they win first place! 

The parade is organized and built entirely by volunteers. You could call it an out of control hobby! There are hundreds of volunteers involved with building one float, and in total there's thousands of people who willingly spend their time working on something amazing. It's integrated into the town's culture as the parade is one of Europe's oldest -- It's been around for over 80 years! To get an impression of what it's evolved into over the course of those years, you should click this link and see it for yourself what it's like :]

 

So! Enough with the basic introductions, let's get to the point; This year's flower parade. Once again there's 20 entries this year, and as the flower parade never has a set theme (except for certain years that involve a certain anniversary related to Van Gogh, as my town is the birthplace of the famous painter), the ideas and themes vary wildly again. In the spoiler is a video of this year's designs, together with timestamps for each different design, the workgroup who will build said design, and the name of the float.

 

Spoiler

 

0:00 - Cutting cold - 't Stuk

0:04 - Chased away - Laarheide

0:08 - Thieving ants - Achtmaal

0:12 - "Boerenbont" - Poteind

0:17 - Zunderts blue - De Lent

0:21 - Fleeting - De Berk

0:25 - Dust lung - Raamberg

0:29 - The world keeps spinning - Klein Zundert

0:36 - Screen printing - 't Kapelleke

0:40 - Haunted house - Klein Zundertse Heikant (The workgroup I'm part of!)

0:43 - Subcutaneous - Tiggelaar

0:45 - Wrapped up - Laer-Akkermolen

0:48 - Troop - Veldstraat

0:51 - Threatened - Wernhout

0:54 - Struck - Helpt Elkander

0:57 - "Bizonder" - Markt

0:59 - Senza! - Rijsbergen

1:03 - Tissue - Stuivezand

1:06 - Groceries - Molenstraat

1:09 - Carried on hands - Schijf

 

 

I'd like to apologize as I had to translate these myself as the official English titles have not been revealed yet, but they should be good enough to get an impression as of what the floats are about! Now, the purpose of this topic is for me to tell you guys about the building process of a float like this, and I will -- once I'm finally able to actually help out at the workplace -- post weekly updates on what's been going on.

 

Also, let me know what you guys think! Which design do you think is cool? Or which do you not like as much? I like hearing people's input on this, so post it below!

 

I hope you'll enjoy reading the blog :]

[Anime]

The ones i liked the most are the Haunted house and the thieving ants tbh

Edited June 12, 2017 by Another Retired Shipper

[Hycrox]

Nice

 

My favourites were Chased away, Fleeting and Haunted House

[Zumi]

HENLO I'M TWO DAYS LATE BUT HERE I AM WITH THE FIRST EDITION OF THE FLOWER PARADE BLOGGINGS!!

 

So last week was a lot of setting up and trying things out. I've pretty much been put in charge of the styrofoam platform, where all of the styrofoam cutting happens, which will be a LOT this year, by the way! Even moreso than in 2015, when I had to create more or less 35 to 40 plugs that would be used to connect tubes together on the float out of styrofoam. The guys at the workplace spent time putting together a styrofoam cutting tool, with an iron wire that heats up to 350 degrees celsius. That worked all fine and dandy, but then there were 3 issues we encountered:

1. You couldn't adjust the height settings properly so you can get the exact measurements we wanted

2. The measurements were being switched around all the time

3. Getting 30cm wide blocks cut in half through the length is a real pain in the ass if you want to do so with the styrofoam cutter

 

So there were some fixes to the machine, and then all things were fine and dandy again!

 

Eventually we settled on the measurements of 15x25cm roof tiles, with one corner being 8cm high, two corners at 4cm and one corner ar 0.5 to 0 cm, effectively creating a slope with them to make them look like roof tiles.

 

Since the float design is a haunted house, you can imagine we'll need a lot of the roof tiles, and, well, you're right! There need to be about 2000 pieces of 'em made. It may sound like a lot of work, but after having worked for a week on them or so, it's actually not all that bad! In about 2 or 3 days of work, we cut out roughly 550 ~ 570 pieces of them, which is a pretty decent amount. Once we hit 1000 pieces, we're gonna see how much can be covered with what we have, and then we'll see if we still need more for the roof; It may be entirely possible that we need more or less than 2000. It'd be nice for both me and the people who have to cover up the roof tiles with paper mache in order to strengthen them a bit, LOL

 

Next to that they delivered a load of styrofoam plates yesterday, many of which being 4.5 cm thick. which is ideal, as we'll need a lot more styrofoam next to the stuff for the roof tiles; there's a LOT of tiny stones that will be put on the float to get a brick texture going. The thickness of the plates are perfect for those, as a flower is about 5cm wide on average, so they cover up the sides nicely of the plates/stones.

 

And another thing I may add, although not entirely relevant to the building season; There was a pitchfork darts tournament last Sunday, which is held every year, and this year there were about 108 teams of 3 people participating, many being part of specific workgroups. It's taken about 10 years, but people from our workgroup -- specifically my older brothers and one of their friends -- finally managed to secure first place after having gotten second and third place many times! It was fun to watch, and someone told me I should participate next year as well, but... I'm not so sure about that LOL, I got chicken shit for strength in my arms. Perhaps I should start working out more to get SWOLE and actually be able to lift things more easily without dying when trying to pick up something one of my brothers could pick up with ease.

But we all know that I'm not gonna be able to get swole because I'm a lazy fucker :^)

That about wraps it up! To finish things off, here's a few photos of the progress on the float. I took the photos on Saturday so they're not entirely accurate anymore (and you probably can't see shit from it because it's just concrete iron, scaffolding and cardboard), but here ya go regardless:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Thank you for reading and please do tune in again for the next one!

[Alphagar]

Wow. I have never seen the inside of one of these before. O.O

[Zumi]

8 hours ago, Alphagar said:

Wow. I have never seen the inside of one of these before. O.O

 

Right now it's only the bare minimum, things should be a bit more clear in a few weeks and you'll start to see more of the shape of the float!

[Alphagar]

4 hours ago, Zumi said:

 

Right now it's only the bare minimum, things should be a bit more clear in a few weeks and you'll start to see more of the shape of the float!

Cool!! I look forward to it.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Alphagar