Bob posted on facebook that he would be showing up early to share the experience of looking at the sun safely through a telescope with us. I got there at the appointed hour and sure enough, there he was, all set up.

     

Bob explained that there was a heater to keep the telescope at a constant temperature, several filters to attenuate the light, and a few other customizations. When I looked through the lens I saw a clear and sharp image, with little trails that stuck up maybe a fifth the radius of the orange ball. Bob said they were solar flares, and they were sticking up higher than the diameter of the earth. I'm sorry I wasn't able to get a clear sharp image, but it wasn't easy and there were others that wanted to see what was going on.

     

About then John showed up on his new Surly Big Dummy. That's a bike that is designed as a carrying tool. The back is padded and has stirrups so that somebody else can comfortably ride with the pedaler. The saddle bags are huge and can probably each carry two or three bags of groceries. I rode it around the plaza a couple of times. The handling is tight, precise, and very well lubricated. You can tell it's a lot heavier than a normal bike, but that's the price of being able to carry huge loads. Another feature of the thing is that it has a handle right behind the seat between the tines of the rear fork. With one hand there and one hand on the handlebars, the thing is ballanced perfectly for carrying or guilding up a staircase. An amazing piece of well thought out modern engineering.

        

By the time we headed out there were almost thirty of us scattered around the plaza in little affinity groups.

  

After we pedaled for an hour or so we stopped at this public rest room by a turn in the road. It wasn't a long stop, just long enough to have some water and relieve bladder pressure. By this time everybody was enjoying the ride.

   



You can tell that this place in EPA has been closed for years because their advertised price for a gallon of unleaded was $1.009. Too bad the pumps are gone. Not long after that we stopped a Big Ants, a great Cajun food place. I reccomend the greens, but it's all good! Awesome food.



By this time our group was strung out over a large area. Probably I was at or near the back. When the rider ahead of me became a smallish speck my attention drifted from keeping up to taking pictures of the views that grabbed my attention.







By this time I was getting fairly good at seeing something, taking out the camera, taking the picture and putting away the camera without stopping the pedaling work that I needed to do to catch up with the rest of them.





Ooops! I dropped the camera that time. I guess I was getting too cocky about thinking it was easy to get the move right. I took this picture of the bike, just to make sure the camera still worked.



  

By this time we had seen the fast group (Mary, Martha, Jarek, Cosmo, Sue, etc.) for the last time long ago. Diane and I ended up as a pair near (at?) the back of the pack. She had the directions so I just made sure I kept up with her. I was glad to get off the bike for a few minutes when Diane and I got to this regroup.





Once we left the regroup we quickly got strung out again.



Probably the power for hundreds of thousands of homes goes through this power yard. I don't think mine is one of them, because it's on the other side of San Francisco Bay.



I think this is Ohlone High School or College in Newark. Nice of them to name the school after the indegenous people.



Then we pedaled down auto mall parkway. Lots of cars for sale there. Seemed like most of the new car dealers had Helium balloons for some reason. Seems to be a car selling tradion.



Back when that was the NUMI plant they made a car that I bought new and drove until I totaled it. Now it's the Tesla plant. Hopefully as gas goes up getting one of their electric cars starts making sense to more people. If the early adopters get a good deal out of their machines the company will be part of Fremont's landscape for a long time.

  



  

Solyndra was in the news for a while as the latest big new thing. Now it's just a campus of empty buildings. It took a while to ride past the whole thing. They must have spent a lot of money on rent and salleries!





By this time it was late and we were all getting tired. This picture was taken on a bike trail that followed along by 237. Except for the traffic whistling by not far past the edge of the picture, it was a very nice place to ride. I'm going to do that trail again some time!

  

It was a great day! I got home tired and happy to have seen many new places with awesome people.