For the past six years, Brian Boland has gathered a group of friends at his Post Mills Airport to build floats for the Labor Day parade in Post Mills. This year's entry, a Chevrolet Astro van with 55-gallon drums attached for buoyancy, literally floats. The following is an edited interview with Boland.

The van's in good shape. It's almost a shame, but it's got some issues, as we say. We think Stephen King used to own it because it's sort of possessed. You hit the directional and the wipers go and they'll run for about a week before they take a little break. The door on the passenger side doesn't open or close. It's got all these little things wrong with it but it starts right up every time.

We've done this for years. Each project from start to finish has to be done in four days. You can dwell on it for quite a while, but from the minute you start doing something, it's four days.

Last year's project, Woody, was a 1996 Subaru Legacy station wagon. The whole idea was to make the paint disappear beneath all of these leftover pieces of wood. Somebody else needed the hatch, so we gave them that, then we took the top off to make it like the Popemobile. There was a sign saying if you sign the Woody you get seven years good luck and there were markers hanging on strings and everybody came to sign it. Even Mildred who is 101 years old put her name up there. Over there is Club Grub, which isn't self-propelled, but it was a four-day project as well. It's got a trailer built under it so we can move it and it sits in the lake as a floating restaurant. It's got little tables around the deck and the sides all open up.

We built a 42-foot Viking ship out of a previous maroon Astro van. There was a whole mob that showed up and we started at 10 o'clock Friday night with copious amounts of beer. When it was built, all the neighborhood kids helped me paint it. This one we're going to take all the doors off and make it look like a tank from about 1910. The cannon is actually going to shoot. It's going to have a huge barrel and the propulsion will be bungee cords. We've collected little stuffed animals that we're going to fire out of it as we go down the road. But that's next year.

My plan is to go into the lake nose first. When we hit the boat ramp for the first time we're going to have a support vehicle and a very long cable. Part of the reason the roof came off is that it will be easier to swim away. You can just dog paddle and let the vehicle disappear from underneath you.

We'll put it in the water Sunday and Monday, and if it works really well then we'll look into the legality of it. I was thinking a trip down the Connecticut river might be fun.

We chose the Astro because we had it sitting around. If you park your car too close, who knows?