In the belly of the beast

No one will see them, and few will know they’re there. But the crew that sits in the belly of the beast, the three brave men who’ll drive the fire-breathing, 70-foot, 20-ton dragon down Colorado Boulevard in tomorrow’s Rose Parade, have something in common with astronauts. Just a brief chat with each, and you whiff their sense of adventure, their dedication, their camaraderie -- the swash and buckle that comes with volunteering to serve in a great, if difficult, cause. Who are these guys giving up family time on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day to propel a mythical creature down a Pasadena street at 2.5 miles per hour? You’d never guess.

There’s Jeff Anderson, 48, who’ll be sitting backward in the animator’s seat, in a dark and noisy cabin at the dragon’s rear. Anderson’s a mechanical engineer from Valencia whose full-time specialty is building anti-terrorist barricades. When contacted by cellphone just two days before the big parade, he was working at Boston’s Logan Airport, to help fortify the place.

Anderson has been volunteering at the Rose Parade for 12 years, working mostly with Phoenix Decorating Co. “They come to me when they have challenging demands for float motion,” he says, which this year meant demands for computerized programming to make the big beast move in a non-life-threatening way. The float, sponsored by Farmers Insurance, is among this year’s most animated, and it took Anderson and his compadres about two weeks to program all the dragon’s movements into a special computer that plays back these “motion profiles,” synchronized to a soundtrack. “For example, the roar of the dragon is synchronized with the opening of the dragon’s jaw. I sit in the float and stop and start the program and monitor it for any problems. I can manually override any incorrect motion and correct it.”

Is this fun? It’s not just fun, but “a thrill,” a challenge, an adventure he looks forward to every year, Anderson says. He’s the one who designs the movements, programs them and makes them work -- and who “several times” has seen his work rewarded with top prizes for animation. “The greatest thrill of all is having the opportunity to ride in the float. Sometimes I have a viewing window where I can see outside. This year I have none. It’s amazing to look out and see a million people cheering for you.”

Charles Bragg, 44, of El Camino Village is the dragon driver, who will sit in a small, dark niche from which he can see nothing. “Imagine driving your car with the windshield blackened,” Bragg says. Could be catastrophic if it weren’t for the spotter, sitting in the nose, facing forward -- and the headsets and microphones by which all three men communicate with one another. “We talk constantly while operating the float,” he says. “The spotter up front tells me to steer a touch left or a touch right, and keeps it up till I get it right. You wanna keep in mind that we have to drive the float from the factory on New Year’s Eve to the lineup ... drive it all though town, where there are trees, cars, streetlamps we could hit ... and many turns to negotiate until we get to our lineup position. There’s only one turn during the parade, but there are many turns to get to the lineup. We may even have to reverse and try again if our turn wasn’t tight enough.” Who knew?

Bragg is an electric service planner for the L.A. Department of Water and Power. This is his seventh year working on floats, he says, always with Anderson, his friend since grade school. “There’s tons of electric wiring and hydraulics in this dragon, for example,” Bragg says. And, of course, safety precautions that go with them. Nothing as complicated as NASA’s, but the dragon’s bowels are filled with fire extinguishers and preplanned escape routes, just in case.

The third dragonaut, the spotter, is Dr. Robert Bragg, a podiatrist from Rancho Palos Verdes -- and Charles’ brother. “I got into this about three years ago because of my brother; it sounded like fun,” he says. “You go out there the night before and sleep in any nook or cranny you can find in the float -- or else outside it. It’s always very cold. But we have to protect it from passersby.” This year he’ll sit in the dragon’s nose, looking out through a slit covered with screening. He won’t be able to see much more than immediate obstacles, if any. “There’s a sign at the end of the route that we must be careful to avoid, and an overpass we need to make sure we don’t hit. And when it’s all done, there’s a definite sense of accomplishment,” he says. “We’re one big team.”