Cal Poly Universities parade entry takes shape

PASADENA - In his time as a student at Cal Poly Pomona, Bob Corley was never involved with the Cal Poly Universities Tournament of Roses parade entry.

On Tuesday morning, Corley, his wife, Susan, and his son, Colton, 12, now residents of Georgia, helped out.

They sat at a table with three other people and shredded tree bark into thin pieces to be used to cover four monkeys that are part of "Jungle Cuts," Cal Poly Pomona's  and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo's 62nd consecutive entry in Friday's Rose Parade.

"There are a lot of monkeys and a lot of this," said Corley, as he created small piles of the material.

The monkeys are barbers doing the hair of an assortment of animals in a float that uses the Cal Poly trademarks - humor and animation.

Numerous elements will be animated and there will be a working waterfall, said Johnathan Jianu of Glendale, a third-year mechanical engineering student at Cal Poly Pomona.

Putting together a float is never easy, but with as many moving parts as there are this year, the students had a few surprises to overcome, Jianu said.

Among the challenges: The float's battery-operated system wasn't capable of supporting the power load of all of the animation.

The problem was resolved by adding a generator that students borrowed from the Tournament of Roses, Jianu said.

"We have a lot of those `uh oh' moments," he said.

However, technology isn't everything.

Numerous natural and dry flower materials have been used to decorate the float, which includes hundreds of exotic flowers such as orchids.

"We will have over a thousand orchids on the float. I'm excited," said La Verne resident Mary Weaver, Cal Poly Pomona's decorations chairwoman.

Orchids will be used in the trees that serve as the barber monkeys' work areas as well as around the waterfall and the base of the float.

The orchids were purchased with the help of donors, Weaver said.

The float has involved a year's worth of work "just for 30 seconds on TV," she said.

But the efforts are worthwhile, Weaver said, especially when she sees the float on Colorado Boulevard with the rest of the Cal Poly students and volunteers who always sit in front of the Norton Simon Museum.

"There are no walls, but I'll be bouncing off something," she said.

Float decorating is not something new for Weaver. This is the 11th float she has worked on, and the second as a Cal Poly student.

Weaver said she was 6 years old when she decorated her first float. Her mother took Weaver and her brother to decorate a float so they could have a chance to do something she had also done herself.

Other members of Weaver's family take part in the float decorating. Her cousin, Leilah Kelsey of Victorville, is in charge of decorating West Covina's float.

Brandon Schmiedeberg, a senior landscape architecture student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and design chairman for his campus, worked Tuesday on the details of a large snake sporting a flat-top haircut.

The snake was covered in dried, ground marigolds grown on the San Luis Obispo campus along with dried orange halves, red beans, lime peels and pineapple rinds.

"The main effect we're looking for is the scaly effect," he said.

Last year, the Cal Poly float made history. It won the inaugural Tournament of Roses Viewers' Choice Award.

Television viewers will again be able to cast a vote for their favorite float between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Friday by going to the KTLA (Channel 5) Web site.

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