Homecoming 2009

Some of you may remember past Homecoming accomplishments, but if not, they can be found here and here. This year's theme was "Renegade Pride", which was a little cryptic to say the least. The Geology Club decided to build something geological that represented the establishment of Kern County (oil industry, naturally) and the Engineers Club decided to build a reproduction of a vintage 1950's (aka "rosette style") float that had been done in the early years of the college.

As the weeks went by, the Geology Club students built and built, and slowly but surely, a cross section from Sierra Nevada to Coast Ranges through the San Joaquin Valley was built, complete with the "Bakersfield Arch", oil derrick, and anticline full of oil. Meanwhile, barely a soul showed up to work on the Engineers Club float, and in the end it was scrapped.

the boys painting the "Renegade Pride" slogan on the arch - we went with:

"Reaching New Heights..." "While Hitting Rock Bottom"

(had to sneak a geology pun in there of course)

The end of the float located at the trailer - as we see strewn across mountain ranges far and wide, it's only appropriate to have some white rocks spelling out our group and year...

The "front" (facing north in schematic geological representation) of the completed float - there's adits in the mountain of course.

The back (facing south in our representation), ultimately there was going to be a rear end in that hole, you know, "rock bottom", for the tour around the track a student just sat there facing in, still a butt, but a more appropriate clothed one.

Making good use of the adit! The headlamps worked really well in there come dark and the actual parade of floats.

No trailer is complete without a license plate, note the message is mirroring the message on the mountain on the other side. Aren't we clever?

Finally, since there was only room on the float for 2 miners and a butt, we had to have petroleum engineers walking alongside to monitor their derrick.

It was pretty funny when a woman from the audience yelled out "I love a man in uniform!"