Barriers block
off most of the streets downtown and thousands of people line the street for a
nearly 3-hour long parade. Hundreds of
people wearing matching shirts scramble here and there all over the region. Speakers constantly blare the broadcast of
the local radio station for nearly 48 hours straight. Local stores sell out their entire inventory
of popsicle sticks and thumbtacks. And
the city is still awake and busy throughout the night. It’s Gincana time again!!
After
hearing about it for so many years (at least 7, since we were married anyway), I was very excited to
experience this unfamiliar phenomenon myself first-hand this past weekend. The simplest way I can describe it to you is
that it is a 2-day, city-wide scavenger hunt.
But that description really doesn’t do it justice. So here come the details!
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| "Santa's House" Float |
First,
there are 5 teams that have participated in each Gincana for the past 20+ years
(or one of them may have joined more recently than that, but I don’t
remember). Each team has a minimum of 600
team members, and some have up to 2500. The
event is put on by the radio station in town and sponsored by many local
businesses. It currently takes place
every other year. Most of our family
have been participants with the team Fantasma since the tradition began, and
therefore so are we. One thing I didn’t
fully appreciate before is that while the actual scheduled event is only one
weekend, these teams begin working and preparing many months, even years ahead
of time! Meetings were held at Fantasma
headquarters early this year, discussing a theme for our team’s portion of the
parade, including t-shirt design and team anthem for the year. I knew there would be a parade, but what I
did not know was the level of detail
and how much intensely hard work went into the preparations! Our team’s chosen theme was “Christmas”, and
hundreds of hours of work went into building and decorating floats with
flawless detail, sewing costumes and props, and creating various toys and
rolling carts for “jack-in-the-boxes” to pop in and out. I’d like to say I had a hand in creating some
of the colorful parade items, and we did help with some small parts here and
there. But after a painful incident with
a hot glue gun, and having to chase a toddler around the majority of the time,
our contributions were not as great as those of many others. So, hats off to the many other team members
who worked their tails off and made the Fantasma parade awesome this year!!
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| Not just Christmas Trees, DANCING Christmas trees! |
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| I felt sorry for the poor Gingerbread Men, wearing such thick layers in 80-90 degree weather! |
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| Jack-in-the-Boxes! (The one on the far left with orange and black stripes is the project that I helped with, and resulted in my blistered thumb.) |
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| The occupants of these snowmen probably really did melt a little during the parade! |
