Parade Route

Plumed hats in hand, drum majors Melanie Ruston and Joshua Wilson stood at the entrance of Dulaney High School on Monday, awaiting their international guests. With them were band director Barry Chesky and the school's principal, Patrick S. McCusker - all anticipating the arrival of the former lord mayor of England's city of Westminster, as well as several other visitors from across the pond. The British came to Dulaney in Timonium to issue an official invitation to the Lion's Roar, the school marching band, to participate in the 2011 London New Year's Day Parade.

With cascades of shrieks and the pounding of oh-so-many teenage feet, they heralded his coming. At the center of the herd, rolling down York Road, was a National Guard Humvee with a lanky young man waving from its open roof. And they cheered again last night as the Olympic champion strolled onto the stage at historic Fort McHenry, celebrating as they watched each of his wins. Michael Phelps played it cool in the eye of this pubescent maelstrom, staring at the throngs of young women along the parade route through sunglasses, grinning far more casually than he had after his narrowest wins at the Beijing Olympics.

Florist? Check. Photographer? Check. Police traffic coordinator? Double check. Several Towson-area brides-to-be will share their big day Saturday with Michael Phelps, star of a parade that will shut down the town's main thoroughfare for hours. To something borrowed, something blue, add something stuck in traffic: an entire wedding party. Enough to morph the sweetest vision in white into Bridezilla. "We freaked out a little bit at first," said Elizabeth Rowley, who is to be married at St. Pius X Church, situated on the parade route formerly known as York Road.

It's beginning to sound like a military operation, complete with maps, complex logistics, moving machinery and marchers in uniform. With plans for the Oct. 4 parade to honor Michael Phelps and other Maryland Olympians rapidly taking shape, what became clear yesterday during a tour of the route is that the event will pretty much bring Towson to a standstill. That, apparently, is the point. A Baltimore County spokeswoman who led the tour for reporters and photographers said there would be 53 "pieces" in the parade - including firetrucks, police cars, amphibious "duck" buses, convertibles, floats, marching bands, cheerleader squads, elected officials (lots of those)

The bocce tournament was in full swing by the time the float carrying the mariachi band came snaking through Little Italy's skinny streets. A cultural fusion was on display yesterday at the city's 117th Columbus Day parade, complete with a float representing the city's Hispanic Business Association, plenty of local high school marching bands and the standard, and always popular, Frank Sinatra impersonators. "Columbus opened the door for immigrants to come to the United States," said Angelo Solera, a Hispanic community advocate who helped coordinate the participation of Hispanic businesses.

Annapolis residents should be ready for street closures, parking restrictions and a 19-gun salute tomorrow during the inauguration festivities for Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley. Bladen Street will be closed to southbound traffic from Rowe Boulevard starting at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. College Avenue will be closed eastbound from Church Circle except for official traffic starting at 9:30 a.m. State Circle, School Street and Francis Street will be closed from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. More streets will be closed for the inaugural parade, which is expected to begin at 1:30 p.m. The parade route runs from the main gate of the Naval Academy to East Street to State Circle to North Street.

MEISSNER PARADE Welcome home Olympic figure skater Kimmie Meissner at a grand parade in her honor tomorrow in Bel Air. The parade, which kicks off at 4 p.m. from the corner of Churchville and Main streets and travels north on Main Street, honors the 16-year-old skater, who finished in sixth place at this year's Olympic Games in Turin. In addition to Meissner and her family, others participating in the parade will include members of the Bel Air police department and Bel Air fire department, the Fallston High School Band, Bel Air town commissioners, Harford County Sheriff R. Thomas Golding, Harford County state delegates, representatives from Meissner's training site, Ice World, and a Bel Air public works department employee steering a snow plow along the parade route.

Minutes before President Bush's parade motorcade passed Fourth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, Celeste Zappala held up a photo of her dead son and urged hundreds of protesters not to give up pleading for peace in Iraq. "My son died looking for weapons of mass destruction, but instead of finding a weapon, the weapon found him," said Zappala, a 57-year-old Philadelphia resident, wiping away tears. Her son, Sherwood Baker, a National Guardsman, died last April in Baghdad when he was struck by debris from an explosion.

WASHINGTON - Helicopters buzzed the skies. Law enforcement officers stood on the roofs of federal buildings, including the White House, watching the crowds through binoculars. Police officers brought in from as far away as Chicago stood shoulder to shoulder along the parade route. The wait at security checkpoints was up to 90 minutes long. Welcome to the 55th inauguration. Please remove your shoes at the door. It seemed a small miracle that anyone attended the swearing-in or parade at all. Anyone trying to get within eyesight of the parade route was subject to a pat-down and metal detector test.

Peace protesters and would-be warriors, a Democratic mayor and a Republican governor, gay activists and gospel singers found common ground yesterday as they braved a bone-chilling wind to parade in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. On a day that was as festive as it was frigid, parents and grandparents bundled up the kids, broke out their parkas and lined the boulevard named for the late civil rights leader to hear some of Baltimore's best marching bands and to admire the endurance of the thinly clad dancers.