The week after the Daffodil Parade, you will typically find me waxing poetic about how great Sumner’s community float is, how wonderful all our volunteers are and how lucky Sumner is to have so many great businesses who pitch in to help with a longtime Sumner tradition.

It’s all true and much appreciated, but this year I thought I’d write about what happens the day before the parade, just to change things up a little.

I started the day with an 8 a.m. knock on my office door by floatmeister Ben DeGoede to pick up my popcorn machine and cart as a prop for the float.

We loaded it into his Windmill Gardens lift truck and away he went to the “float barn” in Tacoma with an assortment of scaffolding, flowers, twine and float props. I told him I’d be driving in to take pictures of the work in progress around 2 p.m. and that if he needed anything to give me a call.

I only meant it as a rhetorical offer, but at about 1:45 the floatmeister called to say they “lost a few things” off the float when they were driving it in and asked if I could go to Sandi’s Signs to pick up the replacement pieces. It seems they lost some finials off the tops of the poles when they went over the railroad tracks and the carousel mechanism blew a rod (or something to that effect) that had to be welded when they got to the barn. So up state Route 410 I went to Sandi’s Signs, picked up the Styrofoam finials and then headed into Tacoma.

I delivered the finials to Ben, he attached them to the posts and then I watched April VanLierop and her floral design crew cutting, wiring and stuffing all kinds of flowers on the float and the mechanical guys working away on the carousel.

I chatted with float driver Jon Swanson, who laughingly told me he’d placed an order for hot dogs with one of the local high school students who is hosting a fundraiser on Main Street during the Sumner parade. It seems she’ll be personally delivering the hot dogs to him as he drives by in the float. You don’t hear about curbside float delivery too often, but in Sumner it doesn’t seem so unusual. Then it was back to my office to download photos, type up my notes for parade day and start working on my column.

But wait – there’s another knock at my door. Could it be? Yes, it’s the floatmeister again, only this time he’s delivering extra daffodils to be handed out at the parade the next day. When we got through unloading them it was 10:30 p.m.

All in all, there were about 40 volunteers helping with the float again this year. And the best part is they seem to have fun doing it. I hope everyone who reads my column understands that when I see all these folks so committed to a project that proudly represents the Sumner community year after year, I can’t help but keep writing about how great this city is.

And it’s these crazy and wonderful people here who make it so much fun to spend some time in Sumner.