Bike Party

Hey, what the heck is that?!?<br />n<br />nFriday night, I head out on my bike just after dark to check out a local park’s lighting situation, for a request that the <a href=”http://www.sjaa.net/” title=”san jose astronomical association”>San Jose Astronomical Association</a> received from the city of SJ.<br />n<br />nI passed the local plaza, the one with a huge parking lot, on my way out and there was nothing going on, as expected.<br />n<br />nOn my way back, maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, there are a couple hundred people on bikes congregating in the parking lot. As it says at the beginning of this post, What the heck is that?!?<br />n<br />nI hung around to see if I could get a clue as to what’s going on, and all I could see were <strong>swarms</strong> of more bikes flooding into the area. It was a sight to see! Thought it was a <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass” title=”critical mass”>Critical Mass</a> happening, like they have occasionally up in SF. Since I was on my bike, and thinking there are too many people to notice me, a possible interloper, I got into the bike traffic and head into the mass.<br />n<br />nThere was a van selling Bike Party t-shirts for ten bucks. And people on bikes just hanging out, chillin. Lots of people were in their early twenties, and some were hitting the liquor store across the street, and enjoying <a href=”http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tall%20Boy” title=”tall boys”>tall boys</a> in brown paper bags. Some of them were shouting Bike Party! So, it must have been a bike party!<br />n<br />nHere’s the best picture of it that I was able to take, given the lighting and other considerations:<br />n<br />n<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaworskihouse/3739813561/” title=”San Jose Bike Party by Rob Jaworski”><img src=”http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2452/3739813561_448dba2f16_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”160″ alt=”San Jose Bike Party” /></a><br />n<br />nThey started taking off down the road, so I decided to join for a little while. It was amazingly cool to be riding on the heavily car centric streets of San Jose in the midst of so many bikes. On a fairly major street, with three lanes dedicated to one direction, the bikes were occupying the two right lanes, and cars were forced to slowly pass the mass in the one remaining lane. Cool!<br />n<br />nThis morning, I did a search for a bike party in San Jose and came up with the <a href=”http://www.sjbikeparty.org/” title=”san jose bike party website”>SJBikeParty.org</a> website. Sounds cool! They do this every third Friday of the month.<br />n<br />nNow I just need to get me head and tail lights for my bike, and I’ll try my hardest to be out there next month!