2024 christmas on
the USS heimdal
The crew of the Heimdal participated in the 2024 Town of Amherst, Virginia, Christmas Parade on December 6th. The Heimdal float won the Grand Champion Prize for Best Use of the Parade Theme!
AMHERST CHRISTMAS PARADE
By Linda
The Amherst Christmas Parade was December 6 and once again, thanks to Carl, the Heimdal had a float in the parade. Carl, Bonnie and Kelly joined us in 1991, and we’ve had a float in the parade every year since then except one that was almost rained out. That year Carl and Bonnie road in the parade in Carl’s Galileo so we were represented.
We’ve been through some pretty amazing and some pretty unusual parade themes. This year the theme was “Christmas at the ZOO,” which fell under the heading of UNUSUAL. We rose to the occasion, Carl, with some help from Bonnie, Jonathan and Willy, built a cage and I made some signs for that cage that said GALACTIC ZOO and we were on our way. Carl drafted Willy to dig out his Yeti costume and be our animal in our Galactic Zoo cage. Bonnie and I were Zookeepers.
We were allowed to stop for a little under a minute in front of the Judges where Bonnie introduced them to our Yeti, Duane, and his amazing talent of singing Jingle Bells. With that introduction Yeti Willy proceeded to GRUNT out Jingle Bells to the delight of those watching.
To say it was cold was an understatement and Weston, who walked ahead of the float will attest to that. So will the 3 of us on the float. We’ve been colder on the float, but this was right up there with the coldest. Willy, dancing in his yeti suit, said only his feel got a little cold so apparently yeti fur is the best bet for cold weather extremes.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough Heimdal members available to help us so we had to affix the Heimdal banner to the back of the float and we didn’t even have one extra person to help Weston carry the Starfleet banner, so it stayed in the bag in the van. As we were riding down the parade route, freezing but laughing, Bonnie said even with the cold it was still fun and it was a shame more of us couldn’t have been a part of it all. She said, “They don’t realize how much they would have enjoyed it.”
The floats were excellent this year; some very big and elaborate and there were animals and even a float with some REAL LIVE animals. BUT … the Heimdal remains unique in the universe being the ONLY float in the parade to have a REAL, LIVE DANCING AND Jingle Bells GRUNTING YETI on our float … the ONLY float just like it ANYWHERE in the cosmos on a cold night in December. We were so proud.
You may watch the parade on YouTube.
