Help Cal Poly Decorate the 2010 Rose Float

Slideshow: Building the 2010 Float
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Slideshow of Deco Week 2009

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SAN LUIS OBISPO - The Cal Poly Rose Float Club is looking for volunteers to help decorate the 2010 float for the Jan. 1 Rose Parade in Pasadena.

The club is in its last month of preparations for the 2010 Rose Parade. Teams from Cal Poly and its sister campus in Pomona have worked together to build a parade float every year since 1949. In addition to tradition, the Rose Float teams learn real-world engineering and manufacturing engineering while assembling the float.

Students ask parents, alumni and the community for help adding flowers and finishing touches every year during "Deco Week" in Pasadena.

This year, decorating will start with dry materials on Dec. 26 and will continue with fresh flowers until Dec. 31 in the Rose Bowl parking lot in Pasadena. Anyone interested can sign up at http://www.asi.calpoly.edu/decorate.

This year, volunteers are being asked to contribute $1 per day to pay for lunch and dinner. Volunteers should wear clothes that can get dirty, and closed-toed shoes.

Volunteer groups of more than eight people are asked to RSVP at http://www.asi.calpoly.edu/rsquest.

About the 2010 Rose Float

“Jungle Cuts” was chosen as this year's 2010 Cal Poly Rose Float theme from among 60 entries submitted. This year’s winning concept was designed by Andrea Swanson and Rick Stover of Thomas Baak and Associates, LLP.

“Jungle Cuts” takes a classic barbershop scene and sets it in the jungle. It plays off the 2010 Tournament of Roses parade theme, “A Cut Above the Rest,” by depicting monkeys cutting other animals’ hair. The float scene features a lion getting a perm, a giraffe getting a beehive, and a zebra styling it out with a slick mohawk. The animation incorporated into this float includes a toucan flying around a tree, monkeys dangling from trees, a giraffe climbing a tree, and an actual working water fall.

This year the Cal Poly Rose Float will use approximately 15,000 roses. They will Include red roses for the giraffe’s beehive. Pink, orange and green roses will be used extensively throughout the rest of the float. The design also calls for about 5,000 Gerber daisies to be used as a checkerboard barbershop floor beneath the zebra’s feet.

The team in charge of driving this year’s float will include Cal Poly students Mary Young, a fourth year Agriculture Systems and Management student at Cal Poly. She will be the driver. Taylor Hamil, a second year Environmental Management and Protection major, is in charge of monitoring the drive train.

The dimensions of the float are 55-feet by 17-feet wide. The maximum height will be 22.5 feet and the minimum height is 16.5 feet. There are two over-height mechanisms, the giraffe and the tall tree that will have to collapse below 16.5 feet.