We Get the Rock Star Treatment
Repairing damage to aft cabin roof
It's early in the morning and I can't sleep. My back is killing me from working onthe boat. So I decided it would be a good time to write another entry. This time about the Carnaval Parade.
Friday and Saturday, February 8th and 9th
Now I know what it feels like to be Justin Bieber. But hold on, we’ll get to that in a minute.
Friday was just another day at work. Dawn continued sanding and painting the black accent strip along the top of the hull and repainted the places where the boot stripe was damaged by the accident.
I mixed up a batch of epoxy and filled in the holes I made in the aft cabin coach roof. We now have several pools of dark brown on the cabin top. Don’t worry though, they’ll get covered over when we apply a new coat of non-skid.
We made a short day of it Saturday. The Carnaval parade started at 2 pm. Odin went down to the boat with us today so that he could see the parade. You know that a fun loving Great Dane wouldn’t miss the chance to see a parade.
We knocked off work at 2 and walked the block or so from the boatyard to the parade route. We found a place near the curb and were soon rewarded by the first float.
As parades go, it was OK. Not spectacular. The day was sunny but cold. The beautiful girls on the floats were all but covered up. There were many dance groups.
The reviewing stand was just south of us, so the parade stopped constantly as one dance troop or another performed their routines. There was a real home-town feel to the parade.
Some of the floats were quite elaborate, such as the Pancho Villa memorial float or the float that depicted Baja’s history, but they were all towed by pickup trucks. There were no self propelled floats like you see in the Rose Bowl Parade or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I was intrigued by the Pancho Villa float. The first thing you see as it moves down the route is a giant locomotive. In front of the locomotive were young men dressed as revolutionary soldiers and young women dressed as Adelitas. The aft end of the float was a giant bust of the great man himself. The incident that the float portrays is when Pancho Villa hijacked a Federale troop train and used it to get through the defenses of Torreon and capture the city. It was one of the defining battles of the revolution. I had forgotten how much Mexico still identifies with their revolutionary past.
There were a few commercial sponsored floats such as a large restaurant or Fresca or Tecate beer. These floats were all stylishly decorated and had lots of pretty young people dancing on them.
Many of the floats had people tossing junk into the crowd. We collected several bags of confetti, beads, candy and all sorts of brick-a-brack. We were frequent recipients because the average person down here is about five foot nothing. When something went flying overhead, I reached up and had no competition grabbing for it. Even Dawn, who is average height back in the US, is taller than most Mexicans and came away with arms full of loot.
Friday and Saturday, February 8th and 9th
Now I know what it feels like to be Justin Bieber. But hold on, we’ll get to that in a minute.
Friday was just another day at work. Dawn continued sanding and painting the black accent strip along the top of the hull and repainted the places where the boot stripe was damaged by the accident.
I mixed up a batch of epoxy and filled in the holes I made in the aft cabin coach roof. We now have several pools of dark brown on the cabin top. Don’t worry though, they’ll get covered over when we apply a new coat of non-skid.
We made a short day of it Saturday. The Carnaval parade started at 2 pm. Odin went down to the boat with us today so that he could see the parade. You know that a fun loving Great Dane wouldn’t miss the chance to see a parade.
We knocked off work at 2 and walked the block or so from the boatyard to the parade route. We found a place near the curb and were soon rewarded by the first float.
As parades go, it was OK. Not spectacular. The day was sunny but cold. The beautiful girls on the floats were all but covered up. There were many dance groups.
The reviewing stand was just south of us, so the parade stopped constantly as one dance troop or another performed their routines. There was a real home-town feel to the parade.
Some of the floats were quite elaborate, such as the Pancho Villa memorial float or the float that depicted Baja’s history, but they were all towed by pickup trucks. There were no self propelled floats like you see in the Rose Bowl Parade or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I was intrigued by the Pancho Villa float. The first thing you see as it moves down the route is a giant locomotive. In front of the locomotive were young men dressed as revolutionary soldiers and young women dressed as Adelitas. The aft end of the float was a giant bust of the great man himself. The incident that the float portrays is when Pancho Villa hijacked a Federale troop train and used it to get through the defenses of Torreon and capture the city. It was one of the defining battles of the revolution. I had forgotten how much Mexico still identifies with their revolutionary past.
There were a few commercial sponsored floats such as a large restaurant or Fresca or Tecate beer. These floats were all stylishly decorated and had lots of pretty young people dancing on them.
Many of the floats had people tossing junk into the crowd. We collected several bags of confetti, beads, candy and all sorts of brick-a-brack. We were frequent recipients because the average person down here is about five foot nothing. When something went flying overhead, I reached up and had no competition grabbing for it. Even Dawn, who is average height back in the US, is taller than most Mexicans and came away with arms full of loot.
Too much partying
I was intrigued by the Pancho Villa float. The first thing you see as it moves down the route is a giant locomotive. In front of the locomotive were young men dressed as revolutionary soldiers and young women dressed as Adelitas. The aft end of the float was a giant bust of the great man himself. The incident that the float portrays is when Pancho Villa hijacked a Federale troop train and used it to get through the defenses of Torreon and capture the city. It was one of the defining battles of the revolution. I had forgotten how much Mexico still identifies with their revolutionary past.
There were a few commercial sponsored floats such as a large restaurant or Fresca or Tecate beer. These floats were all stylishly decorated and had lots of pretty young people dancing on them.
Many of the floats had people tossing junk into the crowd. We collected several bags of confetti, beads, candy and all sorts of brick-a-brack. We were frequent recipients because the average person down here is about five foot nothing. When something went flying overhead, I reached up and had no competition grabbing for it. Even Dawn, who is average height back in the US, is taller than most Mexicans and came away with arms full of loot.
Then the parade ended. People flooded into the street to follow the last floats down the route. We started heading back to the boat.
This is where the rock star treatment comes in. Not for me, alas, but for Odin. Everywhere we went, the crowd opened up in front of us. We walked up behind people and when they turned to look at us, their eyes went wide and their jaws dropped open.
They are not used to seeing Great Danes. Mexicans love their dogs. There are dogs eveywhere you go, but Odin, being the size of a small horse, stands out in any crowd.
Everyone wanted to take a picture with him. Dawn has trained him to be a therapy dog, so he is very used to being petted by strange people. She use to take him to hospitals and nursing homes to bring a little joy to the patients.
I was amazed at his calmness in the middle of a crowd of thousands of people. I wanted to keep a close hold on his leash, but Dawn has absolute confidence in him. She lets little kids hold the leash while they're having their pictures taken.
I answered hundreds of questions about him. My best line of the day was when one man asked “Will he eat me?”
I replied “No, he doesn’t like Mexicans. He only eats Americans.” That got quite a laugh from the crowd.
We stopped to have a taco at a little stand on the way back. Odin had a crowd of hundreds of people swarm around him. Little kids and adults alike wanted to pet him. Everyone wanted to have their picture taken with him. If we charged a dollar a photo, we could have raised enough money to repair the boat.
Lesson learned: If I ever decide to embark upon a life of crime, I won’t take a Great Dane with me. He attracted so much attention that I’d get ID’d right away.
By the time we got home, we were all exhausted.
There were a few commercial sponsored floats such as a large restaurant or Fresca or Tecate beer. These floats were all stylishly decorated and had lots of pretty young people dancing on them.
Many of the floats had people tossing junk into the crowd. We collected several bags of confetti, beads, candy and all sorts of brick-a-brack. We were frequent recipients because the average person down here is about five foot nothing. When something went flying overhead, I reached up and had no competition grabbing for it. Even Dawn, who is average height back in the US, is taller than most Mexicans and came away with arms full of loot.
Then the parade ended. People flooded into the street to follow the last floats down the route. We started heading back to the boat.
This is where the rock star treatment comes in. Not for me, alas, but for Odin. Everywhere we went, the crowd opened up in front of us. We walked up behind people and when they turned to look at us, their eyes went wide and their jaws dropped open.
They are not used to seeing Great Danes. Mexicans love their dogs. There are dogs eveywhere you go, but Odin, being the size of a small horse, stands out in any crowd.
Everyone wanted to take a picture with him. Dawn has trained him to be a therapy dog, so he is very used to being petted by strange people. She use to take him to hospitals and nursing homes to bring a little joy to the patients.
I was amazed at his calmness in the middle of a crowd of thousands of people. I wanted to keep a close hold on his leash, but Dawn has absolute confidence in him. She lets little kids hold the leash while they're having their pictures taken.
I answered hundreds of questions about him. My best line of the day was when one man asked “Will he eat me?”
I replied “No, he doesn’t like Mexicans. He only eats Americans.” That got quite a laugh from the crowd.
We stopped to have a taco at a little stand on the way back. Odin had a crowd of hundreds of people swarm around him. Little kids and adults alike wanted to pet him. Everyone wanted to have their picture taken with him. If we charged a dollar a photo, we could have raised enough money to repair the boat.
Lesson learned: If I ever decide to embark upon a life of crime, I won’t take a Great Dane with me. He attracted so much attention that I’d get ID’d right away.
By the time we got home, we were all exhausted.