About the time I got there I realized that participation in the theme was going to be a bit light this time. I decided to just capture everything interesting I could find. Stuff like that awesomely strong double legged kick stand holding up that huge pair of speakers on that bike.

  

The guys giving out hot chocolate were new faces to me. They introduced themselves as a local bike club near the start. Wish I'd found out more, but I kept getting distracted by fascinating pictures to take.

        

I know her real name isn't Betty Pain, but that's what I see on facebook. This was the first time I'd seen her at bike party in three or four years. She'd kept current on the same people as me on facebook, so news like "John went to Chico" was no news to her. I was glad to see her again. She brought her guy with her. He was a new face to me.

Nat claimed that his shirt was on theme "because the Packers are still alive in the playoffs!" I had to go with it.

Jakie told me her "new year baby's" name is Jennifer.

     

We rolled along for a while. I was surprised to see our fearless leader, Frederick, birding a turn. As every group of people rolled by he'd explain "Right on Santa Clara, then right on Market, then right on Woz." Turned out that was all the directions we needed to get to the regroup. There had been a change of plan because of some official something. Anyhow, thanks to his tireless efforts it worked out great.

     

        

The dance floor was hot. Lots of people enjoying the scene there.

        

        

     

There was a very soft ending on that regroup. I looked up and saw that there were a stream of bikes riding away, but not that many. I enjoyed myself for a little longer and looked up again. Again people were trickling away. It got to the point where the crowd got thin and then I joined the river of riders.

  

  

  

     

  

  

Frederick looks happy because he's been hearing good things about how the ride is going from lots of us. As our fearless leader he wanted to hear about any problems. They were few and far between.

Enrique's friends are doing a food stand as a fundraiser for their child that has been in and out of the hospital a lot over the past year. If you want to do a good deed, get a bacon wrapped hot dog from them the next time you see them someplace. It won't cost you much, the condiments are better than a lot of such vendors offer, and they need the money.

     

Not far from the end I saw Frederick birding another turn. I'm in favor of filling in as needed, but we gotta do more to keep our fearless leader from doing too much grunt work. They burn out if we overwork them. Next time I see Frederick birding a turn I'm going to pull over and volunteer to do it for him, even if that means my next picture set won't be that great. Good fearless leaders are hard to find! Please help keep this one from burning out.

  

I was dithering around near the end of the route and Gary told me that there was somebody back down Dry Creek Road about a quarter mile that needed an alan wrench to fix his bike. I went looking for whomever it was, but couldn't find them. After that I headed for home.

It wasn't long after that when Lloyd caught up with me. He'd found and helped the guy that needed his handlebars tightened down, that's why I couldn't find him. He also had good things to say about how the ride had gone overall. After a few minutes I realized that I had to stop and install my good headlight from Barry Beams.

About a block after I did that we came upon this wreak. Lloyd was surprised that I hadn't heard it happen while I was installing my headlight. We hung around for a few minutes waving people around the crash site. Then the cops showed up and I started wanting to move on. We rode on together until he went straight and I went right on Lawrence. Somewhere in there he said "If you hadn't needed to install your headlight we probably would have been in the path of destruction." My funny luck came through again!

        

Somewhere in Sunnyvale I got hungry and pulled over to see what there was to eat in my bag. Turns out there was a crushed fortune cookie Frederick had given me somewhere in the evening.  I think the fortune was "A pleasant surprise is in store for you soon." Hope so. It would be nice. :-)

To make a long story short, I got home at 3 AM after having pedaled about 45 miles, including all the getting there and getting home from the 18 mile bike party. It was a very nice evening. So happy I went!