Saturday, February 25, 2017

Walked in the St. Louis Mardi Gras Parade

Two month's ago I got an email blast from Randall's, a well known local liquor store chain, asking for volunteers to walk with their float in the St. Louis Mardi Gras Parade. Yes please! I signed us both up.


I imagined it would go something like this.


Per the website: "The Bud Light Grand Parade is the Midwest’s largest and most spectacular pre-Lenten celebration. The parade begins just south of Busch Stadium and winds through the streets of Downtown South and Soulard to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. Krewes from over 100 floats will toss over 10,000,000 strands of beads and other sought-after goodies to celebratory masses gathered along the route." 

I've heard that our Mardi Gras is second in the country only to New Orleans, which I sort of believe since we're so Frenchy but who knows.

The assembly point was in a big parking lot by Busch Stadium. Not only did we have a fun free thing to do but we could walk there from our apartment. How exciting.


As soon as we showed up they made us sign waivers. You know you're about to have fun when there's waivers.










We got there a bit early so we had plenty of time to scope out the other floats.






Hurricanes were provided by our float so we pre-gamed a little.




Inside the train's caboose.


The people in charge of the float weren't super welcoming and we were a little iffy about whether we should stay but once the parade got started it was best thing ever. One of the other float workers described it as being famous for an hour.












The police were very professional and would not accept my bead bribes.


I don't know who this is.


After the excitement was over we retired to Duke's for some relaxation.




We saw our pals Wing and Joel in the crowd and whipped some beads at them.




Someone erred and let me within arm's distance of free fedoras at some point.


We walked like 10 miles today.






A Merry Mardi Gras to us all and God bless us every one.

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Beardy Boy

Am I going to write a blog post about my beard? Damn straight I am.

So due to some last minute flight issues we left on our trip for Spain in a hurry and I didn't have time to shave. No problem, I'll just pack my electric razor and then give it a buzz in a Spanish hotel room, right?

Well unfortunately while I did have an outlet converter I did not bring any sort of voltage converter and razors, unlike computers or phones, are not at all forgiving to changes in voltage. Bummer.

My next plan was to just visit a European barber somewhere but we always seemed to not be near one or just not have the time. I resigned myself to being a beardy boy until I got home.


Turns out beards are more work to maintain than they are to grow. I pretty much needed a shower after eating a bowl of soup. I felt kind of gross.


I took my beard for one last walk downtown before it got the chop. It was my most misunderstood souvenir from Europe.


You know how when you see someone who's just shave a beard or mustache that you've grown accustomed to and they look weird? Well that thing was so big that I was feeling that about myself. My chin felt and looked tiny all of the sudden. It was a very odd feeling of not recognizing myself.