Thai-rade

In about an hour, 25,000 Tigers, friends, and family will convene on the slopes of Elm Drive, waiting to march in the P-rade, show off their orange and black, and hold generationally inappropriate signs. In the coming days and weeks, the ridiculousness of the occasion will be showcased and commemorated countless times in innumerable forms - from the well-produced videos on the Annual Giving website to grandpa's impromptu "Gee, wasn't that swell!" speech over reheated mashed potatoes.

Slightly less famous, then, are the goings-on of all of the other Tigers who are suffering the grave misfortune of not being in Princeton today. And slightly less appreciated, then, is the fact that we all managed to do stuff that wasn't marching in the P-rade.

Some Tigers' absence from the P-rade can be explained by a lack of enthusiasm or desire. I'm not talking about those weirdos. I don't really care what they did today. Rather, I would like to champion all of the Tigers scattered across the globe who had to improvise on this Saturday and find other excuses for flagrant public day drinking.

My excuse was conveniently furnished by my boss, Josh Morris '99, who announced last week that today everybody at Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures would take the day off and go on a field trip. The destination? The mighty Mae Wang river, 90 minutes outside of Chiang Mai, in Northern Thailand. The activity? Bamboo rafting, also known as sitting-on-some-half-submerged-logs-with-a-beer-in-your-hand-and-drifting-slowly-down-a-muddy-river.

We had a pretty good group of about 25 Thais and expats on 6 different rafts, so it was just like a P-rade, only less color-coordinated. We even had a constant stream of spectators on either bank, who were mostly young Thai men who apparently needed no excuse to drink at noon. They were fittingly enthusiastic and supportive, and while they failed to give us a Locomotive, we weren't exactly rah-rah'ing either, so I can't blame them.

So as all of the more conventional P-raders are about to kick off their slow walk down Elm Drive and into day drunk bliss, I would like to wish all of my classmates, friends, and my Dad, George Conbeer '69, their best P-rade ever. My own Thai-rade was quite a lot of fun (and this one is, too! ha. ha.), but I'll be damned if I miss the real thing next year.

Until then,
'08! '08! '08!
-Ted Conbeer