Originally posted to My Mardi Gras Experience; follow the My Mardi Gras blog and Twitter @MyMardiGras for more stories from Mardi Gras by me and other featured bloggers.

I’ll try to explain what it feels like to ride in a Mardi Gras parade. Pictures can help show you what I saw, but my words can’t explain how it felt.

A couple days ago I mentioned I would be riding in a parade during my first Mardi Gras as a local.

Friends helped me prepare, helping me get the throws I needed for the ride, explaining what happened on the day, telling me what to expect and how to plan. And I had seen many parades as a spectator. I prepared for my ride with a bit of knowledge, but still not knowing exactly what to expect.

And now, a day after riding in Krewe of Druids, I know that the feeling, the meaning, the context, the experience, simply has to be lived to be understood.

Krewe of Druids, New Orleans, LA

Riding in a parade isn’t just about the parade. The brief public performance is just a small part of the experience, the final segment of a day of celebrating and bonding. Since a bit of what happens behind the day is secretive, I really can’t talk about it; but it’s a day spent among friends, a chance to catch up with people you may or may not have seen since your ride the previous year, a chance to simply enjoy being a part of the Mardi Gras experience, part of what Mardi Gras means to New Orleans.

Stepping on the float is the culmination of days, months or years of preparation, depending on your role, your krewe, and your level of involvement. As a rookie, my duties were minimal and all I had to do was step on the float, strap myself in and stay in line. I immediately felt this surge, like I just stepped onto a stage to get ready to perform. You start tearing open bags of beads, setting up throws and picking out the throws, plushes and specials to give to specific people along the route. You open up packs of special beads and hang them up on hooks behind you, to make it easier for you to find them in the mess of beads swirling around your feet, but also to kind of show off the beads you have, so that people will yell at you for specific throws.

Once the parade starts, the blur begins. You start listening, watching, interacting with the crowd, choosing what to throw and who to throw to. You strain to pick out people in the crowd, missing people even as they chant their name (it happens!). You start to live the role behind the mask, engaging with the crowd while fully, completely, feeling your own anonymity. People come up and ask for beads, pointing to the beads strung up behind you. Parents with kids on their shoulders come up to you, asking for plushes (stuffed throws) and for the special beads they know you have tucked away. At the same time, you look for people on the edges of the crowds, the guys in the back that don’t normally get beads thrown their way. You dig into your sacs to pull out the strings of simple beads, the packages of special beads, the frisbees, bouncy balls, staffs and rubber chickens that you bought specifically because you knew they would be fun to throw and to give.

And then you get this pure sense of enjoyment, the joy of being able to do one simple thing to hundreds of people along the route: to give.

If there is one thing I took away from the experience, it’s that it felt so good to give.

And it’s a feeling I’m looking forward to creating and experiencing again next year.

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Thanks to Austin, Tim, Gale, Matt, McKenzie, Sloane, Kirk, Meg, Barrett, Townsend, Tiffany, Chris and Courtney for supporting me on my ride.