28. grow mermaid hair, make mermaid suit, be a mermaid for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade

I don't know when the Coney Island Mermaid Parade came to my attention, but it was sometime this year and I had been promoting the hell out of it with no luck until about a month ago. There was a bike ride in Trenton, NJ and a bunch of people drove to New Jersey from NYC and DC and the Philly area to all go on this ride, which was my first social ride and I was super excited about meeting new cyclists. Well, turns out that the lady from NYC, Megan, was interested in joining me for the Mermaid Parade! Then a week later I was talking to a buddy of mine in the Small Wonderful, Jenna, and she said she was interested in going too! So after a couple months of no bites on this idea, I had two really awesome ladies willing to join me!

Although the task at hand was to grow my hair really long, it just wasn't growing fast enough so I had to go and buy extensions for my hair. I went to Christie at Cat's Eye in Newark and she glued on an extra 6" to my regular length. The package of hair was 18" long, so I was 67% of the real length to mermaid status!






My mermaid costume consisted of a vintage bathing suit and really cool nails. Really, I ran out of time to make a full-on suit, so that's as far as I got.

Jenna and I drove up Friday night. We were worried that Megan was going to be too ill to join us, she came down with some kind of rhinosomethingsomething the day before. Luckily though she perked up! Megan and I rode our bikes to Coney Island and met Jenna and her buddy Danny at the parade where there were SO many naked painted ladies. We had thought that we might be tempted to just lay out on the beach and maybe take a swim, but the people were just too fascinating. While part of me wanted to walk in the Mermaid Parade, another part of me was just as content to watch everyone else be mermaids and see everyone so happy. However, when Megan and I were riding down, we got lost a couple times and there was a guy in Brooklyn who yelled out after me, "Happy Mermaid Parade!" which meant that he KNEW I was a Mermaid, validation!