There have been people from other cities coming to San Jose, doing bike party, and taking back word of how great it is to their home towns. San Franciscans must have been among them, because they invited us (San Jose Bike Party) to come up for their inaugural ride. I was one of the thirty or so SJBP Birds that took the trip. Never having been at an inaugural ride, I took my camera to document the experience!

I know there were at least two or three other SJBP birds besides these in the house, but I didn't want to interfere with getting ready to ride. It wasn't that far to the park, but people were doing a lot of organizing. Plus I wanted to hurry over there. Anyhow, this picture shows one thing about them I really like. I'm proud of how visible my friends are. The only one that didn't have reflective patches was wearing white. Everybody has lights. Way to go bike party!

We rode down to the baseball stadium where the party was starting. I wandered around pushing stickers and hanging with my friends. (Thanks to Neal Morris for this picture of the starting party.) All the time more people were showing up. Every now and then a bunch of people would show up together. It wasn't that long before we started biking. By that time I'd say there were at least a couple of hundred of us. It wasn't long after that I decided to start taking pictures of all the "birthday stuff" I could find.

     

  

Bike Party stops for red lights in San Francisco to!

One thing that I've long associated with critical mass in San Francisco is Bubble Lady. She was there on her awesomely pink bike. I don't remember seeing the pink goal posts the last time I rode with her. When she is there there are always a few bubbles floating around in the air. For some reason when I see one of them I feel like Tinker Bell is going to fly up and pop this dimension. Much later in the ride I talked to her. She said "this is much better than critical mass." I was so happy to hear that.

     

We stopped in front of the ferry building and danced and mingled for a while. The feel was "nice party"ish. For a while I played Frisbee with the guy that brought a huge bag of bells to critical mass one time. He had this Frisbee with a light that warbled through the colors of the rainbow as it was spinning through the air. That made it very easy to see, even in the dark. After that I worked the crowd for a while. Then we rode on.

     

     

        

        

     

Rob was birding at this one intersection. I just hopped off long enough to capture some of the photons bouncing off the guy.

        

That tricycle has an awesome sound system on the back. The speakers are those big black boxes that are taller than the diameter of the wheels. He was playing really fine music for the event to. He is another one of the people I've ridden with many times during critical mass rides.

        

     

      

I think it was about this time that the whole crowd sang "happy birthday" for San Francisco's bike party!

     

Going down Fulton towards City Hall is really fun the same way riding a roller coaster is fun. It's even more fun if you can just barrel through the stop lights and so forth. Doing that in the middle of a stream of riders adds a dimension. Rolling through an intersection you can look for traffic and yell "CLEAR" if there is none. Then you see the next intersection coming and you watch the people in front of you for a sign. I feel like I just floated through four intersections without even slowing down much. It was awesomely fun riding. A moment to remember.

This is the new statue in Civic Center Plaza. By the time I got there it was late. I had to rush off to get on the last train to Mountain View. I knew that, but I kept thinking of one more thing I wanted to do before leaving, like take this picture. I'd just enjoyed the ride that much.