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So I guess it’s time to write up the parade. We were supposed to be at the AVAM between 10 and 11. I have the worst sense of direction of anyone I know, but after making this drive two months ago and then again on Friday evening, I’m starting to get familiar with the route. So the drive was much less stressful for me than driving in a city of this size usually is (of course it also helped that there isn’t much traffic on weekends) and we got there around 10:45.

We started unpacking the trunk as soon as we got there, and here I have to interject that packing for this trip was easier than it’s been in ages. Because I carry pretty much all my car decorating supplies in the trunk; it’s practically a mobile craft store in there. So there’s normally no room to put anything else in the trunk and we have to load everything into the back seat. Which makes the car feel rather cramped, especially when we have additional passengers besides Georg and myself.

But last weekend Georg and I spent some time cleaning out the trunk. We managed to get all the art car supplies in there and still have a fair amount of room for packing. We managed to get the bag of computer equipment, two coolers, three camp chairs and a card table in there. Probably could have fit the laptop bag in there too, but the equipment bag contained (among other things) the web cams, each of which is mounted on a powerful magnet. I didn’t want those magnets anywhere near my computer so we put it in the back seat. But everything else fit in the trunk. The car felt so much more spacious and I didn’t have to feel bad about Pru sharing the back seat with all our junk.

So anyway, it took us about 10-15 minutes to set up the bubble machine and the web cams. I put Pru in charge of the computer and I have to say, she was terrific. I ran through it with her once; after that she took care of the cams without needing any assistance from me. I was worried that we’d forget to restart the software before swapping out the cams, but she remembered every time.

The bubble machine was a big hit; as soon as we turned it on people came over to check it out. Including photographers from USA Today and the Baltimore Sun. I must say, even if my photo doesn’t make it into either paper (we don’t know yet about USA Today), it was really fun to be photographed. They both had me lean against the car and then waited until the wind blew in my direction, so there were bubbles all around me. Good thing I dressed up! I had worn my Doris Day outfit: my mod green dress with the standing bias collar, and these kooky old white sunglasses. I wanted to ask them for a copy of the photo, but I thought that would be an imposition. After all their livelihood is taking photos of people, they don’t have time to send copies to every single person. The USA Today guy asked me a bunch of questions, into a mic no less! The Baltimore Sun guy only took my picture.

After the reporters I walked around taking photos of the cars. Saw Tim Klein and met his girlfriend and mother. His girlfriend Jill was wearing a really cool outfit with striped socks. I wish I’d gotten a photo of it. I did get a photo of Tim taking their photo. Kind of silly but there you go. I also chatted with Pixel about my bubble machine. He very kindly gave me a couple of nice strong magnets and gave me some suggestions on how to better mount the bubble machine on the roof. Pixel’s car, The Cat, is really looking terrific. It’s still covered with quotes all over, but he’s added flames to the hood and front fenders.

I also saw four entries from the Kinetic Sculpture Race: Fifi the poodle, Bumpo the elephant, the frog and the rat. We were wondering beforehand if one of them was going to ride in the parade again, like last year, but they were all lined up by the AVAM building instead. Still it was nice to see them. The rat looked a bit odd because they had removed the fabric cover from the body. So the wire frame was exposed. I guess maybe the fabric had gotten mucked up during the kinetic sculpture race.

I wish I’d had time to talk with more people, but what with setting up the cams, talking to the newspaper guys, and all, it was time to start the caravan before we knew it. Right around that time I realized that although we had set up the net connection and everything seemed to be fine with the cams, I had forgotten to open up a web browser and make sure the images were actually getting to the web page. While we were driving I told Pru how to do this, and to my horror we discovered that the cams were not online! I talked her through a bit of troubleshooting, but we quickly got to the point where I’d need to see the computer myself. That wasn’t possible while I was driving of course, so it had to wait until we got to the parade staging area.

It’s too bad that we weren’t webcasting during the caravan, because it was really fun. We drove all over the city, it seemed, with two policemen on motorcycles as our escort. They did an amazing job, just the two of them holding together a line of twenty five cars. I wanted to thank them but they disappeared when we got to the staging area.

As soon as we got there and parked the car, I jumped into the back seat to try and figure out what was wrong with the web cams. It looks like my web hosting service had exceeded its capacity of FTP logins. It wasn’t allowing Imagecaster to log in and upload the photos! I spent a few minutes trying to switch the image upload over to another server, but of course that would mean recoding the web page to look for the images in another location. Which would mean logging into the server. Which it would not let me do.

However, while I was working on it the problem mysteriously vanished. Maybe the other 300 people who were working on the server that day decided to pack it in or something. Whatever the reason, we were suddenly able to log in, and the webcasting suddenly started to work around 12:30. I must say, I’m much less upset about the late webcasting start than I thought I would be. I guess because there really was nothing I could have done. In a way I’m glad I forgot to check the web page. If I had known, I would have spent the previous hour stressing about it, rather than enjoying myself.

After we got the cams working, Georg said that the parade wasn’t for another hour and headed off to find a bathroom. Pru and I hung out by the car, having fun. I had forgotten to clean off the windows (travel dirt from the front window and soap bubble residue from the back) so I got the windex out of the trunk and went at it. Pru switched the cams on me and got a pretty good shot of me cleaning the rear window.

Just a couple of minutes after I finished cleaning the windows, we heard the “get in your cars” whistle, and the marching band that was going to lead the parade started up. I told Pru that it couldn’t possibly be time yet, as the parade wasn’t supposed to start until one. Pru pointed out that it was, in fact, after one already! I guess Georg must have read his watch wrong or something. We looked around for him but he was nowhere in sight. I felt terrible about leaving him behind, but we had to go!

All we could do was hope that when Georg got back and discovered that the parade had left, he’d be able to find our destination. About halfway through the parade he ran up beside us and jumped in the car. He had been walking along and had suddenly seen the parade heading by. It was lucky that he managed to get to us before we passed by! Although we were driving pretty slow.

The parade itself was shorter than last year. Less than fifteen minutes I think. However, they had us parking in a much better location, and we didn’t have to deal with that fiasco of waiting for half an hour or more in the heat while the cars ahead of us parked.

There were shade trees not too far from our cars, so we set up our picnic under the nearest tree. Pru had put together a terrific lunch for us. Sliced cheese rolled up with turkey and pastrami, chicken salad, fresh asparagus, cucumbers and sugar snaps, fruit salad, and Atkins Endulge ice cream cups. She put the ice cream in a separate cooler so it would stay cold, and had brought sport cups half-full of ice, so we’d have cold water all day. We had camp chairs and a card table, and Pru even brought an old lace tablecloth! We had an elegant spread. I tell you, I want a mother of two to plan all my outings from now on. That felt like the nicest lunch I had ever had.

Off on our own, we didn’t do as much mingling with other drivers as we maybe should have. But I did get the chance to chat with Greg Phelps, driver of That Car. Greg is putting together a great-sounding art car event in Columbus in early Sept. Georg and I already planned a trip to Asheville the weekend before, so unfortunately we can’t attend, but Greg’s festival sounded so great. I definitely want to go next year.

We also spent some time with Marilyn, who drives the cloud car. Marilyn had a camp chair too, so she joined our picnic for a while. At some point I went back to the car to adjust the webcams, and a reporter from the Baltimore Sun came up and interviewed me! Now I know why the photos often seem to have little connection to the text in those human interest stories – the reporter and the photographer were working totally independantly. We talked for about ten minutes, but all that ended up in the paper was that one quote about “shopkeepers gawking.” I knew that was the part that would end up in the paper. Because the rest of the interview seemed to flow naturally, like a conversation, then he suddenly threw in “Did you see anything interesting in the drive over from the museum?” So I knew he was specifically looking for my reaction to driving through the city or something.

The question actually kind of threw me. Because the truth was, we were busily trying to revive the webcams throughout the caravan, so I wasn’t really paying that much attention to the surroundings. Besides saying that people came out of their stores to watch us, I also talked about how great our police escort had been. And then I babbled something about noticing the “formstone,” this fake stone made of concrete that faces most of the townhouses in several neighborhoods we drove through. Pru had told us that yuppies used to move into the rowhouses and knock down the formstone, but now it’s become a retro thing. So people now restore the formstone instead. And the reporter said the same thing.

I was kind of hoping that, if I got a quote, it would be the one about the police escort. Because they really were terrific, and I hadn’t had an opportunity to thank them in person. But I also feared that it would be the silly babbling about formstone. So all things considered, I think I got off easy in the Sun. It would have been nice to have a photo, but they only have limited space for photos and the ones they chose really were impressive.

We stayed at Artscape until about 4:30, and then headed out to visit with Pru’s Aunt Florence. Aunt Florence is known as “Aunt Florence. From Baltimore.” Because that’s how she always identified herself on Pru’s answering machine. I guess to distinguish herself from all of Pru’s other Aunt Florences. Aunt Florence lives in a nursing home in Ellicott City now, not Baltimore, but I guess the name stuck. She’s 94 years old, and apparently misses urban life quite a bit. She said several times that she used to go to Artscape every year. Aunt Florence also seems pretty open-minded: she knew that Georg lived in North Carolina, and asked me if I did too. As I hemmed and hawed, looking for a properly discreet reply, Pru blurted out “They’re shacked up!” Aunt Florence’s only response was “Good way to save money.”

We took Aunt Florence for a drive in Undersea Mah Jongg, which was a hoot. I didn’t get to talk much with her, because she was sitting right behind me and couldn’t hear a word I said. Although I did make her laugh once: Pru was talking about her daughters going to 4H to learn rabbit raising, and how they were going to take a 4H class in shooting as soon as they were old enough. So I said, “They’ll be able to raise the rabbits, and then shoot them!” Which cracked up everyone, including Aunt Florence. From Baltimore.