I started this ride by taking pictures of the people doing work to make a good time possible for the rest of us. First I got most of the Ravens. Their work keeps bike party's mess footprint down, which is key to keeping them from closing us down.

     

     

     

Ronnie had more to do with the route than anybody else. He also led the prerides and kept us moving forward together. Thank you Ronnie!

Then I switched my focus to finding "Science Ride" themed pictures. Stuff like Katie as a Star Trek Science Officer.

     

This was an oddly interesting setup. A bike with a sidecar carrying a bike with a tailpipe and a speaker that emitted real "put put put" sounds that ramped up in frequency as you twist the handle. Science!

     

        

The Tripple Crown shirt explained that he had ridden three 200 mile certified bike races in one year to earn that shirt. For sure he's a stronger rider than most of us.

John explained that he got the lab coat back when he was a rocket scientist. He'd been unable to dig up the big gloves and glasses that went with the lab coat.

        

I rarely see one of those buses with the driver windshield that opens up. I remember talking to a guy in 1992 that had one of them. He said he enjoyed sitting in the drivers seat and vending through the front window. That was a feature they stopped building into the things many years ago.

I'm loving the couple that added elements of truth to their names for the theme.

     

Ed is now up to 60 consecutive bike parties!

     

     

Boone was counting us as we went by. When I took this picture he said the count was 1200ish. Never did hear the final count. My guess is that there were 2000ish of us.

     

That naturalist was riding a beast with antlers. What a concept!

     

That woman with the moon in her hair was something else. I took another picture with flash, but it didn't capture the moon well at all. In bright lights her hair is bright green.

This was the scene rolling into the first regroup.

     

I was happy to find a cookie vendor that sold me a peanut butter cookie for one dollar. Yumm!

  

She goes by Aim DeKill. I know her as a SVRG and a bike party regular. Always a pleasure to run into her again.

  

That kid was doing stunt riding tricks in the parking lot. Just didn't work at it enough to get a good action shot.

Thank you sound bike for the music you gave us!

      

It helps the ravens a lot if you just put your empty containers in their bucket.

     

Not that far past the 49er stadium I found these guys who had a blow out that had somehow ripped out the side of their tire. They were looking for something to patch it with. I volunteered a sticker. I knew it would work because it had for me on a previous ride.

     

The dance floor was really happening at the second regroup! I put my camera away and joined them for a while.

     

        

The ride back to the start seemed uneventful. The official route was complicated, but somehow a huge percentage of us just went straight down this one wide straight street. Not sure what happened. I just followed the people in front of me. I didn't even realize there was a problem until Ed pointed it out to me.

At the end of the ride I was too keyed up to go home right away. I hung around the parking lot looking for interesting pictures for a while. Thinks like this pickup that is likely older than most of the people riding.

  

     

The guys that had the tire with the blowout in the side were glad to tell me that the sticker had held for the rest of the ride. They were happy to remember that I had stopped to help.

Isaul gave that young couple a lot of help getting through the ride. They had some technical difficulty. I think it was a broken chain, but there might have been more to it.

     

Thank you food trucks and friends for being there!