 Good morning guys. So it's the morning of the Pride Parade. It's about an hour before kickoff and this is the first year that we are live broadcasting. KABC local news is gonna be live broadcasting. You guys have probably seen Carl before we did an interview on my vlogs and he's gonna be reporting live as well. So I think I'm gonna see him here in a minute but yeah so I'm just I just got some sharpies. I'm gonna draw some stuff on my chest and my back for the float and I'm gonna head over to AHF and get ready. Hello. Look who it is. In the shadows we're gonna interview you when your float comes down because you were on television last night. I was. You were. You were in our Pride Preview Special. That's all new to me. I don't know what to do. Get up there and get on your float and come down and talk to it. Wait so when it's here I'm gonna get Carl? Yeah we'll find you and grab you. What's up man? Hey. It's Pride. We're here before the parade. We're getting ready. This is Carl as you obviously know. Very serious ABC7 reporter. This is the first time we're live broadcasting huh? In 49 years yes. I have to go though because they're about to talk in my ear. I'll see you in a minute. Alright the first time I ever went to a parade was actually Long Beach and I was actually on a float for that too. It was for an organization called Empower OC and it was it was geared towards 18 to I think 24 year old males and it was about like STI awareness and HIV AIDS prevention ironically and I volunteered with them so it's interesting that this many years later as I'm on a float again this time I'm coming from the perspective of someone who is living with HIV and sharing that. So we're just about entering the start of the parade and now I can see all the floats and things that are lined up and ready to go. Check that out. I'm so tired. I haven't eaten anything yet or drank so I'm gonna go home since I live nearby and just pee right away. So I was going through the footage for Pride and I was editing and I realized that I never really summed up the day so I wanted to at least reflect on that. Because AHS float was so far back in the lineup for the parade we didn't get to the broadcasting area for KABC until like three four hours later and by then the broadcast had finished and we never got to interview with Carl so that was unfortunate. Carl and I were both bummed about that so that wasn't able to happen but I'm sure there's gonna be plenty more opportunities in the future and I got such good response from you guys on Instagram regarding my post from that day I shared kind of my experience being on the AHS bus and seeing reactions from people in the parade and which were by and large like 90-95% really positive responses. People were thankful. People were shocked. People were just showing love. It was just really like a really cool moving experience and I'm excited to do it again for World Pride in New York. At the end of June AHS is gonna be flying me out there so I'm gonna be a part of that so definitely looking forward to that and of course I'm gonna cover that as well and hopefully get a lot of cool content just from I mean it's New York. I've only been there once I think when I was 20 or 21 just to go see a Broadway show and that was it. I never really get to experience much else outside of that so I'm super excited about that. Oh yeah and I clearly didn't wear sunscreen on that day. I know that's so basic but I knew I wanted to write on my chest and my back and I was concerned that maybe if I had sunscreen on it wouldn't hold or it would smudge or like rub off so and I didn't think we were gonna be out there for as long as we were. I thought maybe maybe a couple hours but it ended up being that I was on the float for five hours and I knew halfway through I was like I'm gonna burn so this next time I'm definitely gonna write on my chest and my back but I'm gonna bring sunscreen like probably the spray on kind to put that on after so I'll have my bases covered. You can see I'm starting to peel I was I was so burnt and then the areas where I had writing you can see it didn't tan so I just have like the writing still on my body anyway. I hope you guys enjoyed this and staying a little bit of my experience for LA Pride. If you like this video please hit the like button, subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you guys soon. Peace.