Continuing the countdown to the Raleigh St. Patrick’s Day parade brings us to our 2007 entry. We co-opted the musical group Daniel Harris Live (starring Daniel Harris and Eric Doyle) to play on the float and covered it with hot-glued green balloons. A miracle of modern engineering it wasn’t but it does qualify as the most talented float we’ve ever entered into the parade. This float was also the first to have a fully functioning sound system on it. It was a huge step forward from the previous year and is still extremely unique in our floating history.
The design of this float was largely accidental. The concept was to hot-glue close to 1000 balloons to the trailer to leave the illusion of a green cloud. Conceptually hot-glued balloons seems like a great plan. Logistically it was a nightmare. It is easy enough to do but the balloons require the right amount of air and you can’t touch them with the hot glue gun – the tip will make them pop.
A critical piece is making sure they are adequately fastened to the trailer. As we learned on Tryon Road leaving the house – they will fly off the back of the trailer if you haven’t done this correctly. Fortunately we we able to get everything back together and make it work. We lost a few balloons along the way but overall the plan worked.
This was the last float to fly under the ARTMUSIClife.com banner and represented the last time we operated without a real theme. It is one of the most memorable floats for the build team because of the increased level of difficulty caused by the balloons.
Oh DHL! Fun times! Great float!