Happy Fourth of July!!!

Me and my compadres waiting for the parade to start.

Well, it's the Fourth of July again and for the second year running, I spend a good part of the day marching in a Fourth of July parade that's held every year in Huntington Beach, California (aka "Surf City" for all you Beach Boys fans).

This is the second year that I've personally participated but our WWI group, the Great War Historical Society, has been participating in it for some years. Unlike last year, the day started off and overcast with a bit of humidity (to be expected since we're so close to the ocean). As usual, parking was a real pain to find but I succeeded to in wedging my van into a space not too far away from a high school (Huntington Beach is typical of most California beach communities in that the streets are rabbit warren of miniature-sized strets, parking is always in short supply (even on a good day), and the houses are all postage stamp-sized.

After meeting up with six of my compadres, we then proceeded to wait for almost an hour from the beginning of the parade before we actually stepped off (no joke!) and this was definately one of the slowest parades I've ever marched in. I was hoping that we'd be placed next to a marching band that had travelled all the way from Baja California (they were playing traditional marches) but as luck would have it, we were stuck behing some float blaring out Beach Boy music with some other stuff thrown in.

I guess it was better than last year when we were stuck in front of a marching band that played nothing but two Santana songs...boy did that get old fast.

Here's us and the Mexican marching band from Baja California

Because there are so few of us marching, we usually deploy in a loose "patrol" formation and sort of "mosey" our way down the parade route. Bascially we were in two loose "V" formations and I was somewhow made the point man (maybe it was because I was the only cavalryman sans horse).

Here we are on parade...

I did all I could to get as much distance from the music-blaring float in front of us until I started getting nasty looks from the parade marshalls. But I was somewhat successfull. At least we didn't get upstaged by a skateboard-riding Bull Dog like last year (no joke- some idiot decided he'd join the parade with his skateboarding dog until the Police escorted him away).

Marching for an hour down paved roads in period footwear definately began to make itself felt and by the time we finished, my feet were turning into burger meat. And then there was the hike back to the van to look forward too...

My Compadre Chris

Overall, it was a nice experience and the crowd was pretty good-natured about the whole thing. We then retired to my compadre Chris' place in Orange to hang out for awhile and have some drinks.

Later on, I left Orange and drove out to the stables. I managed to get in a good ride with Max (even though it was a bit more hot than Huntington Beach!) and then went to a barbeque that the stable owners put on and watched fireworks (the house is on a hill behind the stables so it was a convenient walk). Overall, it was a pretty busy day for me and by the time I was done, I was dead tired.

Hopefully, I'll have some pictures to post soon. Now off to bed I go...