Which is ironic, as that is a line from a famous Queen song, and we danced to another song by Queen on our award-winning float this year. Our rockin' medieval castle featured a medley of "We Will Rock You," "Dancing Queen," and "Jump Around." And of course, some favorite Sandbar dancing tunes.

Here it is:

(photo courtesy of David Bunker, father of Friday bartender Heather)

Last summer, while a group of random Sandbar staff and friends were playing volleyball in Dave's newly installed above-ground pool, Caroline suddenly said "We should build a castle float!" Yes, this is how far in advance we think about St. Patrick's Day. None of us could believe we'd never thought of a castle before, and we immediately came up with "Dancing Queen" as the theme song.

We got a late start building the float this year due to the uncooperative weather, but our construction crew rallied and took days off work and busted their butts to get this thing built. And it might be our biggest, most elaborate structure yet.

The dragon on the front was created by Art Director Brother Pants. Of course it didn't just sit there with its head poking out of the turrets- this creature moved and grooved to the music. Neighbor boy Pierce operated the dragon with a complex bicycle handle set-up, and we even rigged smoke to blow out its nose.

The parade took some detours in North Lawrence this year because of the construction near Johnny's. Of course our float was tall- and in the picture above, we hadn't yet attached the flags in the middle of each turret. They were easily unscrewed once we hit North Lawrence so we could avoid low hanging branches and power lines. The red rectangular boxes that sat on the turrets also had to come down after the parade so we could clear the bridge by Johnny's when we returned downtown.

We're very excited and honored that the Parade judges chose our float to win the Grand Prize  traveling trophy. Kudos go to our favorite friendly float rivals, the crew from Kennedy Glass/Combs/Slow Ride Roadhouse for their awesome Jayhawk & leprechaun sliding down Campanile Hill. They even invited us over for burgers and beer on Tuesday night so we could check out each others' floats and meet the crews.

Also, our neighbors to the north on New Hampshire Street, the Barrel House, won third place in the commercial division. This is the first year they've entered, since they just opened their doors last April, and we hope they continue to participate in the parade with us.

If you have pictures to share, please email them to us (sandbar{at}thesandbar{dot}com) or upload them to our Facebook fan page or Flickr group. 

Also, check out the great article in the Lawrence Journal-World about the parade- accompanied by a fantastic photo of our float. 

Here's one last photo of our float in action, pulled from Twitter and courtesy of @rikkikite.