The Weather Outside is Frightful

Let it snow my ass. The highly inaccurate weather folks around here predicted a little bit of snow for the weekend, but that never transpired. From what I understand, a lot of the surrounding areas got snow, but we were left high and dry. Well, not exactly high and dry, since we did receive a ton of rain. It was plenty cold on Saturday and I was excited about receiving our first snow of the year. The family and I were headed out to the North Mecklenburg Christmas Parade, and snow would have been a nice touch.



Well, we started our day at The Cycle Path, a local bike shop in Cornelius, NC. The owner, Mark said we could hang out in front of the shop to watch the parade since the parade route was along the same road. As a bonus, we got to do a little shopping before the parade started. We set up a tent out by the road so we wouldn’t get wet from the freezing rain. It was as cold as a polar bear’s butt crack out there too, so we were in for a long day it seemed. The parade was pretty typical for a Christmas parade, with a few distinct floats mixed in. We settled in to watch the festivities.


Everyone was bundled up, which is a far cry from how I watched parades in Florida as a kid.

I guess a short recap of the parade is in order, since I didn’t get to ride my bike at all. Bear with me.


There were fire trucks aplenty.

One treat for us (well, me) was the unicycle club, which is from one of the local schools. Mark from The Cycle Path provides these one-wheeled machines to these ambitious youngsters. I was happy to see so many people riding on one wheel, although they weren’t riding on a trail like I usually do.




This guy was rockin’ the giraffe.

There were plenty of neat things to see in this parade, including this little gem that we saw last year. The guy was driving both cars at the same time. Fun.



What parade would be complete without clowns? Well, as much as I don’t understand what clowns have to do with Christmas, here they were (sans unicycles of course.)


No clown wheels here.

What parade in the south would be complete without some tractors? There weretons of these things, complete with young men and women driving them. Wow, I mean, yeehaw!



During a break in the parade, I noticed these two youngsters on this cop car. At first we thought that they were just trying to keep their hands warm, but I wondered if there was more to it than that.



Using a boat as a parade float has always intrigued me. I wonder if The Cat in The Hat was fishing for catfish. Hmmm.



Again, remembering that we are in the south, we can’t forget about stock car racing. All we needed was a little moonshine to complete this parade float.



Of course, no Christmas parade would be complete without Santa Claus. This one was talking through a P.A. system, and it seemed to me that he had a bit much to drink. He even asked the local law enforcement officer if he could get a ride from him after the parade. I guess Santa neglected to arrange for a designated driver. I thought those sleighs drove themselves.



I guess that’s it. The weather prevented me from getting any post-parade riding, so all you get today is the parade report. Maybe I can come up with something a little more interesting tomorrow. I hope you’ll come back to find out. See ya.