The bike party started at Dicks, a big shopping center parking long not far from the Bascom light rail station. The theme this month was to come dressed like a clown, so I decided to take pictures of every clown that would let me.

        

After a while the guy in the green jacket announced the route, and reminded us to be cool. He said there would be a hill with a 12% grade, and that doing it was optional. Then we set out for the ride.



The first stop was this tennis court, where the better balanced among us showed off trick riding skills. Click the above to see the best of my pictures of that.

        

The woman in the black tutu had a rainbow on her left cheek that's hard to see in the picture.  The guy in the pork hat was really enjoying the fact he was surrounded by clowns.

     

The guy with the blue and red glowing frame said his company is bikeglowlight.com.

  

We cruised along in the right lane for a long time on a variety of roads. Every now and then somebody would start enthusiastically honking for us. That Honda truck driver was one of those.



There were quite a few Christmas lights, but most of them were on streets where stopping to take pictures didn't seem like the thing to do. I had to wait for the light at this intersection, so it was easy to get this display.

        

By the time the ride got to Helzer and MacIntyre we were very strung out. The road got quite steep. It was like they had managed to put tall steep hill in the middle of south San Jose without telling me about it. I should have remembered it from the speech at the beginning, but I'd forgotten about that.

 

By the time I got to the top of the ridge I was by myself. I pulled over to take pictures of the view. This is a composite. I had to put the camera in its most light sensitive mode, and without a tripod the shaking of my hands was magnified. Each of those squiggles is a light. If I'd been able to hold still San Jose would have looked like an information grid out of Neuromancer or TRON or something like that.

     

When I finally found a light rail station the last train to Mountain View had already left. Fortunately there was one Alum Rock train left. I took that one to Tasman, and then pedaled the rest of the way. By the time I got home I was ready to get off my bike and park it.

   

Now I'm looking forward to the next ride! Fortunately, I've got a built in mustache...