A Warm New Year's Wish

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a cold night in 2011

To those from other places currently gracing Pasadena with your visit, be it for the holidays, the Tournament of Roses Parade, the Rose Bowl Game or merely lunch, welcome. 

I hope the weather warms up for you. A frosty night is no big deal in many parts of the world, but in Pasadena on New Year's Eve, if you camp out on Colorado Blvd., air horns and silly string are not going to keep you warm. 

Does anyone recall a (relatively) recent Tournament of Roses Parade when it rained? 2006, maybe. I remember those poor majorettes in their skimpy costumes, their booties filling with water, gamely tossing their batons but unable to catch them because the rain kept getting in their eyes. Everyone was freezing, even the horses. 

It won't be that way this year. The forecast says things will warm up a couple of degrees for Thursday, parade day. It'll be sunny, if a bit crisp. That's OK. When you're marching 5 miles, you tend to heat up. At least, so I imagine.

Happy 2015 to us all. I mean it.

*****

The "grandaddy of them all"—all City Daily Photo blogs, that is—has posted its final photo after ten years. Today Eric Tenin is retiring his groundbreaking Paris Daily Photo, which serves as an archive of inspiration to me and other bloggers. Thank you, Eric. I already miss you. 

Me and John atop Notre Dame Cathedral in May of 2006. We fell in love with Paris. About a month later I found Paris Daily Photo and I've been a fan ever since.

Rarin' to Go

I went out to get a picture of snow on the mountains. I was too late for the best of the stuff, and I got rain instead. It was cold out, though, so maybe that rain will be snow tomorrow. Always look on the bright side!

Down here in the flatlands there'll be sun, a parade, and a football game to kick off the new year. From my house I'll be able to see the Goodyear blimp floating over the Rose Bowl Stadium. (We saw a low-flying plane pulling a banner ad above the Arroyo Seco yesterday--some folks start early.)

2012 was a good year, yet I'm ready for 2013. Rarin' to go, actually, with my big fat plans. What are yours?

Happy New Year

Here's wishing you a 2012 filled with good things: love, light and beauty--or whatever you think is good, maybe you don't like those things, maybe you want dissonance, piglets and toe shoes. I hope you get them. Maybe you want an arrogant boyfriend, a new haircut, guitar lessons, a trip to Australia.

I don't care what you want, I hope you get it in 2012, as long as it doesn't take advantage of anyone else, hurt anyone else or look down its nose at anyone else (which may preclude the arrogant boyfriend).

Thank you for your visits to Pasadena Daily Photo this year. And happy new year to you! Have fun (if that's what you want).

Happy New Year, the Pasadena Way

photo by John Sandel

Please do click on this panorama to enlarge it. John took it with his iPhone inside the Rosemont Pavilion last night, while volunteers and professionals worked feverishly to finish a dozen Tournament of Roses parade floats.

Actually, not feverishly. Fever implies heat and it was chilly in there. But they were working hard. It is estimated that 80,000 volunteer hours will go into this year's Tournament of Roses parade and festival.

Thanks to our friend Terry Griest, a white-suiter and sometime PDP guest photographer, we were treated to a VIP tour. We didn't have to wait in long lines and were were able to get down on the main floor of the pavilion to see the floats up close.

The panorama gives you an idea of the enormity of the place and the work going on there, but it's only an idea. The Rosemont Pavilion houses 12 floats; there will be 47 floats in Saturday's parade. Every surface of the floats is decorated with organic matter, from flowers to coffee beans to kidney beans to carrots. I was intrigued by a plant called "silver leaf," used to decorate the shining armor of a knight on the Bayer company's "Camelot" float.

Here's our tour guide David (thus the term, "white-suiter"). When you see this eagle in the parade it will be at the head of a float ridden by Native American singers and dancers of tribes from all over the United States. And it won't be wearing that plastic shower cap.

If you're camping out on Colorado Blvd. tonight, stay safe and warm, ya nuts!

Here's a photo of how things looked at about 2:00 this afternoon along Colorado Blvd. John was driving and I shot this out his window. Things were just beginning to get a little insane.

Happy New Year from Pasadena!

Resolve

Do you make new year's resolutions?

I do. My reason for making them is to keep them, so (here's my logic:) I make resolutions that are possible to keep.

2010's new year's resolution was to finish my novel. It's done done done.

Of course just because the book is written doesn't mean it's published. I have a lot of work yet to do. But in 2010 I spent an inordinate amount of time sitting at my desk, which brings me to 2011's resolution.

A book doesn't get written without one's butt in one's chair at one's writing desk, but admittedly, this is not the best thing for one's butt. In 2011 I resolve, among other things, to de-stress and to exercise. There's nothing like a good trail for killing those two goals with one mountain.

Did you make a 2010 resolution? Did you keep it? What do you resolve for 2011?

Pasadena's New Year's Eve

What's that I see across the dark Arroyo? Over there, on the other side of the freeway. Why, it's the Rose Bowl Stadium, all lit up on a cold night.

On this New Year's Eve, as on every other New Year's Eve in Pasadena for the past 118 years, Pasadena awaits the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl Football Game.

That doesn't mean we just sit around all evening. We have company! Folks are here from out of town! We have to entertain.

So the bars and restaurants are full. Colorado Blvd. is a [no tents allowed] campground all the way from Orange Grove Blvd. in the southwest to Sierra Madre Blvd. in the northeast. It's five miles of solid partay.

Not everyone is celebrating. Tournament officials are busy putting on the finishing touches. The Rose Queen and her Court are presumably getting their beauty sleep (if they're not too excited). I imagine there are some nervous college football players tossing and turning somewhere out there, too. Float decorators are still poking posies into chicken wire, or however they do it these days. Glue guns?

I hope you have a fun and safe New Year's Eve. Here in Pasadena everyone has something to do. The weather has warmed up and it looks like tomorrow's going to be a glorious day for football and roses.