Arrrrrr, avast ye mateys!

This was the weekend for Gasparilla, an annual event in Tampa that has a large boat flotilla, day parade with tons of beads and floats, and parties. As has happened for the past several years, the hashers were invited to Karen's (Finger in the Dyke) place since she lives a block from the parade route on Bayshore. Though I have only seen her a few times in the past year since she works in traveling sales, she has always tried to be around so the hasers could use her home. Candy, Just Shari, and Service met at my place around 10AM so we could carpool in. We were running a bit late since I had to get food and Candy had to get a new tap since the call came out that the normal one wasn't working. Since we had vital party gear, Finger saved us a spot in her garage instead of us parking up the road at Tiny Tap. For $10, we had a base of operations with clean bathrooms, a keg for the parade (plus one for after the parade), food (burgers, cookies, and snacks), and staked out spot on Bayshore for the parade. That was less than most people were paying for just parking anywhere that day!

The parade was fun with the normal debauchery by attendees in efforts to get some imported plastic beads. It was kind of sad to see people nearly fight over these things however. Most of the stuff I caught I threw to folks behind me or gave to the beadless when walking back after the festivities were complete. The floats were pretty elaborate with the individual costumes also being quite detailed and exquisite. It looked like everyone was having fun with even marching band members smiling the whole time; except for the tuba players that were not smart enough to on put cap covers since they just made themselves moving target receptacles for beads.

After the festivities were complete we had a trail to Tiny Tap and hung out for a few hours while the traffic cleared out. I eventually took the other hashers back home and considered going back out, however a call to Finger's found that most people had left and those remaining were dropping like flies. I stayed home and hung out with the roommates in the hot tub and crashed around midnight or so. Unfortunately, Finger is selling her house and moving to Houston in a few weeks, so home base will soon be gone. Hopefully we'll be able to have a 'Go away Finger' hash before she leaves (a tradition for any leaving hasher).