The cow is almost ready to launch.
For the past several weeks, members of Cal Poly’s Rose Float team have been making regular treks to Pomona, where students from both Cal Poly campuses have been working on this year’s entry to the Tournament of Roses Parade.https://www.rosefloat.org/
This year’s Cal Poly Universities float, Stargrazers, brings to life a scene from the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle, Diddle,” including a cow jumping over a moon.
“I really like the design this year,” said Regina Chapuis, a computer engineering student and president of the Cal Poly float team. “The moon is looking really good. It’s larger than life.”
This year’s design incorporated elements from last year’s float, which wasn’t built due to the pandemic. After several months of design and manufacturing, students from Cal Poly took their portion of the float to Cal Poly Pomona in October. They have been traveling to Southern California every weekend since.
After Christmas, students from both campuses will work diligently the entire week, finishing the float and adding the thousands of flower pedals that are the trademark of the event.
On New Year’s Day, the team will wake up at 5 a.m. After judging, most of them will be in the audience with the other spectators as their float travels down Colorado Avenue before millions of viewer worldwide.
“We have to spend a whole week there and getting very little sleep,” Chapuis said. “So when it comes to parade day, we cheer very loudly when the Cal Poly’s float comes by, and then maybe half the people are asleep on the stands the rest of the day.”
The photos here, from Pomona, were provided by Tom Zasadzinski, university photographer at Cal Poly Pomona, who captured the two teams working as one.
