After lunch we went to the Tournament of Roses headquarters, a beautiful old home replete with a walnut-paneled library and once owned - along with five other homes - by William Wrigley Jr., of chewing gum fame. Story is that Mrs. Wrigley loved watching the Rose Parade so much that she bequeathed the house and its four acres in the heart of Pasadena to the Tournament of Roses in 1958. On the grounds are the Wrigley Flower Gardens, as good a place to inhale rose perfume as you could imagine.

The old Wrigley house is where we met Austin "Wes" Weston, a 40-year volunteer for the Tournament of Roses. He's one of nearly a thousand members of the Tournament of Roses Association who dedicate about 80,000 hours each year to organizing the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game. And here's where Wes gets interesting to Wisconsin fans: His dad graduated from UW in the mid-1910s and told Wes how he went iceboating as a student on Madison's Lake Mendota. Iceboating in Madison and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena - how's that for a pair of wildly contrasting sporting events?

Driving through a residential neighborhood near the Wrigley house we came upon a startling sign in a driveway: "Security protected, Armed response." The last two words conjure up an image of Uzi fire raking some poor lost tourist wandering up to the house for directions.

(From top to bottom: Photo collage of past Rose Bowl queens; Rose and palm trees at Wrigley Gardens; dining room in the Tournament of the Roses headquarters; and Rose Bowl candy.)

More postcards:
Dec. 28: Westard ho!
Dec. 28: Thawing out
Dec. 28: LA scene
Dec. 29: Old Pasadena
Dec. 29: Roses HQ
Dec. 29: Petal pushers
Dec. 30: 90210
Dec. 30: 90210, cont'd
Dec. 30: A sea of red
Dec. 31: Venice Beach
Jan. 1: Rose Parade
Jan. 1: The Game
Jan. 1: The Game, cont'd
Jan. 2: P.S.

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Photos by Jeff Miller, text by Jeff Iseminger.