The Twitter feed reminded me of something I had been considering a while ago. Would the fursuiters in our group be interested in walking in one or more parades this winter? It would be a great opportunity to perform in public without security chasing everyone off.

I was specifically thinking of the Winter Carnival parades, January 29th for the daylight parade and February 5th for the torchlight. I'm somewhat familiar with the operation of those parades and could handle making all of the arrangements with the organizers. I'll even pay the fees for one of the parades, though if the group wants to participate in both we'll need to pool money for the second one.

Besides the fursuiters, we'll also need non-suiters to help. One for each fur in suit, one or two who can be discrete about taking pictures of the group, and maybe a few more if we get a banner or pass out candy.

Since I kinda forgot about this, we have a bit of a time crunch here. We have barely two weeks to turn in the application and fees. I figure we can take a week to discuss this, wrapping everything up at the meet, and then we have about a week to decide who is going to participate. (Part of what they consider when reviewing the application is the number of people in our group.)

They are looking for people to entertain the crowd, so think of some things you can do for an eight block walk. We have to sell ourselves as entertainers on the app.

Wow, you know it's bad when you have to get a 404 page to find anything on a site. (The winter carnival site is pretty bad.)

Assuming nothing has changed from previous years, the times for the parades are 1-3 on the 29th and 6-8 on the 5th. Of course being in the parade means we have to be there earlier, say about an hour. Also, the exact amount of time it takes depends on where we are in the lineup. I'm going to see if it is possible to get changing space in the indoor staging area, but after the parade we are on our own.

I should also point out that this is a televised event. We would make a brief appearance on TV, and they might want a short show of some kind at the media stage. I'm still looking into the details on that last thing, but I think it's optional. Being in the parade would also make us eligible for an award, most likely the novelty category.

A few more things I should point out right now. The 5th is a meet night, and I misspoke earlier about the parade being 8 blocks. That is the short route if it's really cold. The parade could be about 16 blocks. (Something I forgot from my marching days.)

As long as there are 5 definite yeses from fursuiters, we will be able to accommodate a number of maybes. I'll just have everyone who isn't sure fill out the waivers along with everyone else. We can have people drop out after signing up, we just can't add people.

I just realized I should have given a little info for the waiver form. On the line that asks for the unit or organization name, put MNFurs.

alen fox said:

whats it take to join, its not to late is it?

Since the link changed recently, the waiver can now be found at http://www.winter-carnival.com…..Waiver.pdf. Unit name is MNFurs and you can send it to my gmail address, which is cybergarou.

Is that 9 suiters, or just 9 participants, then?

It was a little earlier than I expected, but it appears our unit has been accepted into the parade. We'll probably get official confirmation on the 7th, but them cashing the check means they won't be saying no.

If anyone is interested in watching us in the parade, you may always go out there yourself. Or if you prefer to stay warm, I believe the parade is broadcast on channel 45.

I'm going to make a suggestion to all of the fursuiters. Go walk outside in suit right now and see how it handles the cold. You can expect to be outside for at least an hour, so if you feel the cold after 5 or 10 minutes you might want to add some layers. Polypropylene is a great bottom layer, and you should avoid cotton. I'll provide hand warmers for everyone so we won't have to hold back from waving to warm our fingers up.

I know that your check was cashed and all, but any "official" updates now that the 7th has come and long gone? Also any more info on this event in general would be great since we're coming up on the two week mark for it.