Raining on the Rose Parade
December 31, 1999 – Pasadena, California, USA
The big screen TV and all the lights were on in the Page House common room. Page was one of the seven Caltech on-campus Houses and it was mostly abandoned because of the break between terms. A few students always stuck around, however, and three of them were sprawled out on the Page House couches, staring at the TV.
“If nothing’s happened by now on the East Coast, I guess Y2K is a total bust,” Derk said to Ali and Adil.
“I thought we’d at least see ATMs stop working. Maybe some flights get cancelled. This is nothing. I don’t even have to reset the time on my computer,” said Ali.
“It was supposed to be epic,” added Derk. “Like a zombie apocalypse or something.”
“Yeah, this is pretty much the same as every other year. And why are we watching this ball drop thing in New York City?” asked Adil. “It’s recorded. We know it already happened.”
“Yeah, this is lame. I probably won’t even remember this New Year’s Eve compared to all the others,” said Derk.
“What if we did something epic? There’s still time,” said Ali.
When Caltech students took a break from science and talked about something epic, it usually involved some kind of attention-getting prank. The most famous of such pranks was changing the Hollywood sign. It was pulled off in the late 1980s and organized by students in Page. They snuck up the Hollywood mountain at night and covered parts of the existing sign with massive black and white sheets. The next morning, Southern California’s most famous landmark read “Caltech” instead of “Hollywood.”
Pictures of the transformed sign hung all over campus. Administrators winked as they said they did not encourage that sort of thing. Students who had broken through fences, climbed the sign, and hung the sheets, got to brag for the rest of their lives about the race back to campus to avoid getting arrested.
Derk, Ali, and Adil obviously had the Hollywood sign prank in the back of their minds as they brainstormed over their own epic prank.
“It has to be something no one’s done before and gets lots of publicity,” said Derk. “Something people care about.”
“Then it should be something about New Years, if we’re going to do it now,” added Ali.
“What about the Rose Bowl? Isn’t that on New Year’s Day?” asked Derk.
“Somebody already hacked the Rose Bowl scoreboard,” interjected Adil. “We wouldn’t want to do it again, so that’s out.”
“Isn’t there a parade or something?” asked Ali. “Is that on New Year’s Day?”
The Rose Bowl Parade did in fact take place on New Year’s Day and was arguably the most famous parade in the world. The parade’s route included Colorado Boulevard, about three blocks from campus. But like most Caltech students, Derek, Ali, and Adil were barely aware of anything happening more than one block from campus and so they had never seen it with their own eyes. They used the internet to confirm the parade would be passing by them in approximately ten hours.
“What if we made something for the parade?” suggested Adil.
“Like a float? It says here that people spend months making their floats and they have to be covered in flowers,” said Ali, looking up from the computer screen showing the parade’s website.
“And where are we going to get a trailer or a car to pull it?” asked Derk.
“We could push it by hand,” said Adil.
“Yeah, but we’d still need something big with wheels,” replied Derk.
“I once saw a parade on TV with a bunch of balloons,” said Ali. “Giant balloons with people walking below and holding them down so they didn’t float away.”
“We could make a balloon, no problem,” said Adil. “All we need is some helium and a big bag to hold it.”
“That’s true. It would be way easier to make a balloon than a float,” agreed Derk.
“We could even use garbage bags and tape them together. If we had enough of them, it could be huge,” said Ali, obviously excited by the idea.
There is a point in every successful brainstorming session when a great idea stands on its own feet and takes off running. Then it builds momentum and carries the group along. The balloon idea had grabbed the Page House trio and they had no choice but to hang on. They no longer worried about whether a balloon could or should be built. It would be built and they quickly progressed to the next creative phase: wondering how famous it would make them.
“We’ll definitely get on TV. People love seeing this kind of stuff. It’ll be like we’re the underdogs fighting the system when we’re holding a balloon instead of riding on a float,” Adil said enthusiastically.
“And you know what we should make? The Star Trek Enterprise. The central disc could be as big as our courtyard,” added Ali.
Derek and Adil nodded enthusiastically and then the three of them walked out to the courtyard to assess just how big it was and whether they could use it as an assembly base. They estimated the area as 20 meters by 20 meters.
“It’ll take a lot of bags. Way more than we can steal from the trash cans,” said Derk. “And a bunch of tape.”
We could buy some. How much money have we got?” asked Adil.
“I’ll put in twenty bucks,” said Derk.
“Me too,” replied Ali and Adil together.
“And we might need some help,” added Ali.
“How about I go buy the stuff?” said Derk. “Ali, you go see if you can get people to help. Adil, you’ve got to find some helium.”
The threesome checked in on the New Year’s Eve TV broadcast to find out the time. They had about 9 1/2 hours until the parade passed by.
Ali began manpower recruitment at Lloyd House, which was adjacent to Page. He found two students watching TV in the common room and he called out, “We’ve got an epic prank going if you want in!”
“What is it?” asked one of the students, rising from the couch.
“We’re making a balloon for the Rose Parade,” replied Ali.
“With what?”
“Tape and garbage bags.”
“Can we make the Death Star?”
“We already decided on the Enterprise.”
“Yeah, that’s cool too.”
“How far along are you?”
“We just started, but we’ve got the rest of the night.”
“Okay, let’s do it.” The two Lloyd students stood up, ready to follow Ali.
“First, let’s go find more people,” urged Ali.
Ali and his recruits walked the halls of Lloyd House, banging on doors and shouting that they were building an epic Star Trek parade balloon. A fourth person had joined the group when they reached Ruddock House’s common room and Ali made another appeal. From Ruddock, a group of nine stormed the South Houses, stopping first in the common rooms and then marching and yelling in the hallways. A few potential recruits had new ideas about balloon shapes but they were shouted down, quickly falling in line with the Enterprise concept. After Ali finished his sweep of on-campus housing, he marched back to Page with a mob of nineteen.
“Where’s all the stuff? What are we building with?” someone in the mob asked Ali, when all they found was an empty courtyard.
“Derk and Adil went for supplies,” explained Ali.
“We can start with some calculations while we’re waiting,” shouted another voice in the mob.
Meanwhile, Derk was on his way back from the Ralph’s supermarket almost a mile away. He could have gone to a closer, smaller store, but Derk knew Ralph’s would be open all night and have a larger selection. As he hurried down the sidewalk on his way to Ralph’s, he debated how much to spend on garbage bags and how much on tape. He made a rough estimate of a single garbage bag’s surface area and the length of the seams to be sealed by the tape.
In the end, he spent all $60 of supply money on five boxes of garbage bags and five rolls of tape. He did not want to carry his purchase back to campus in plastic bags, so he simply pushed his shopping cart all the way back to the Page courtyard. He arrived in time to settle the question of how big the Enterprise balloon could be.
“That’s all the bags you’ve got?” asked someone in Ali’s volunteer mob, after looking in the shopping cart.
“I only had $60,” answered Derk.
“We’re gonna need to scale this way, way back,” replied the volunteer. “And where’s the helium?”
The helium was actually on its way from a physics laboratory. Adil had scoured different buildings on campus, looking for unlocked outer doors. When he found one, he went from room to room looking for gas tanks and anyone around who might grant him permission to take one.
He walked up and down a chemistry building with no luck. Then he spotted a physics graduate student working inside a room lined with gas tanks along the wall. Adil tapped on the glass window of the room’s door. The physics student stopped what he was doing to answer.
“Hey, you wanna be part of a prank? We need some helium.”
The student, with long, stringy hair and dressed in a tie-dyed T-shirt, seemed to be processing what Adil was asking.
“It’s New Year’s and we want to do something epic,” added Adil.
“It is? New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day?”
“By now, it’s probably New Year’s Day. Can we have some helium?”
The physics student looked around the room. “I guess so. But I should probably help you carry it.”
Adil and his helium supplier arrived in the Page courtyard pushing a cart specifically designed for a tall gas cylinder. Along with the gas, they had a regulator and plenty of tubing which could be connected to the planned balloon. They found Ali’s mob cutting garbage bags and laying them out on the courtyard’s concrete floor.
Ali and Derk hurried to great Adil. “I think we’ve got everything we need. And plenty of help,” said Derk.
The physics student looked skeptically at the garbage bag operation and said, “Duct tape? Maybe you should try it with a few bags to see if it will work.”
Ali organized a special task force to cut three garbage bags apart and then tape them back together. The test case was supposed to create a balloon the size of a small beanbag chair. They left a small hole for the helium tubing and covered the connection with gobs of tape.
“Okay, here we go,” said the physics student, turning the valve on the helium tank.
The garbage bag balloon immediately inflated and began to float. Then PSSHH. A taped seam gushed out helium and the bags flopped to the ground.
All of the workers recruited by Ali had stopped to watch the experiment. Rather than conclude it was a failure, Adil cried out, “See it’ll work. All we have to do is get the pressure right and close the leaks.”
The crowd nodded and collectively decided they should be using more tape. They went back to cutting. By 3 am, a collection was made to finance another trip to the supermarket for more bags, tape, and as many donuts as possible.
By 4 am, a new set of calculations were made regarding how big the Enterprise could be. The group argued about the numbers but eventually agreed the model would need to be scaled down again.
By 5 am, the central disc was taped together and a tube inserted to fill it with low-pressure helium. The disc inflated but with obvious leaks. Almost everyone went to work patching holes while Adil and the graduate student returned to the lab for more helium cylinders.
By 7 am, the Enterprise’s long engines were attached using cardboard tubes found in a trash dumpster. The whole thing basically floated, but new leaks constantly needed attention.
The final version of the Enterprise was a bit larger than an average car and colored black from the garbage bags and gray from the duct tape. Six strings hung from the sides to keep the model tilted at the correct angle. There was no danger of it floating away because it was connected by tubing to a 100-pound helium bottle constantly feeding gas into the ship. A handwritten sign was taped to the front of the disc which read, “NCC 1701”, the identification number for the actual Enterprise.
By 9 am, the TV in the Page common room showed that floats had filled a long stretch of Colorado Boulevard. Ready or not, it was time to crash the party.
The Enterprise procession started down Holliston, a street which intersected Colorado. Six students, including Derk and Ali, held the strings which steered the balloon. Adil and the physics student pushed the helium-bottle cart. The rest of the work mob followed close behind. They marched right down the middle of the street because Holliston was essentially abandoned. Everyone was either watching the parade or sleeping in.
Derk, Ali, and Adil were delirious from adrenaline and lack of sleep. They had to admit that the balloon was not pretty, but it was all their own. They had conceived it and then built it. And even if it looked a little rough, they were sure that parade watchers were going to love it. They would love the can-do, renegade spirit the balloon represented.
After three blocks, the balloon team reached the Holliston/Colorado intersection. A crowd of people, at least ten deep, were sitting or standing on the pavement, watching floats go by. If the balloon was going to join the parade, it needed a path through.
“Excuse us!” yelled Derk. “Can you let us through? We need to get onto Colorado!”
The people standing at the edge of the crowd turned around and looked at the balloon. One huge, bearded man yelled back, “I don’t think so!”
A woman yelled, “Is that some kind of joke? We’re not going to let you ruin the parade with that thing!”
A third man shouted, “How long you been working on that? An hour?”
“No, we’ve been up all night!” Ali yelled back.
The reactions by the parade watchers were a splash of icy water over the prank team. They looked at each other with confusion and a little embarrassment.
“Should we try pushing through at another street?” asked Ali.
“I don’t think so. Maybe people won’t like it after all,” Derk said miserably.
The entire procession turned around and trudged slowly back to campus. The physics graduate student turned off the helium, and after two blocks, the garbage bags went limp and dragged along the pavement.
And then, as they crossed over onto campus property, Adil looked back at the balloon remains and laughed. Then Derk and Ali laughed. After a few more steps, the ridiculousness of the project sank into the whole crew’s heads and everyone laughed.
“Maybe next year!” called one of the volunteers.
“The parade’s on TV. Shall we watch the rest of it?” asked Ali.
“I’ve seen a parade before. I’m going to sleep,” replied Derk.
Please remember to subscribe for weekly reminders about new stories. You can subscribe by clicking here: Subscribe. You can also follow new content on any Podcast platform or on YouTube.