Peninsula Bike Party Tours Peninsula Night Lights

Peninsula Bike Party (PBP) visited the most extensively decorated homes in San Carlos, Redwood City, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto during a chilly Saturday night bike ride.

Bike Parties are monthly night-time urban social bike rides that feature costumes and elaborately decorated bikes - some complete with their own mobile sound systems. Previous Bike Party rides this year included a , and a from Mountain View to Menlo Park to Stanford.

The most spectacular Christmas lights seen on Saturday's ride were along Eucalytpus Ave in San Carlos. The block was transformed into a pedestrian plaza for the evening by closing it on both ends to motor vehicles, and was packed with visitors. Millions of individual lights adorned almost every wall and roof in sight, carolers passed through the crowd singing familiar Christmas songs, and both Santa Claus and The Grinch were available for photo-ops.

Decorations included a 100-ft tall Christmas tree packed with oversize ornaments that included a disco ball, and a children's sledding hill was even constructed in front of one home using shaved ice.

A poster board with Frequently Asked Questions was placed in front of the most ostentatiously decorated home, 1957 Eucalyptus Ave, informing visitors of important details regarding the home's lighting system, such as:

1. Exactly 719,323 lights were used for the decorations.
2. The PG&E bill to run the lights is $0.00 because it's solar-powered.
3. It took 4 hrs, 27 min to install the lights (by elves?).
4. The lights are stored at the North Pole when not in use.
5. Snow will accompany the display if it rains while the temperature is less than 2 degrees Celsius.

After Eucalyptus Ave, the ride continued south along Alameda de Las Pulgas to 1726 Vera Ave in Redwood City, an extensively decorated home complete with an LED candy cane promenade and Santa Claus and reindeer on the roof. Candy Cane Lane in Redwood City (Dewey St between Roosevelt Ave and Carson St) was next followed by more Alameda de Las Pulgas to Santa Cruz Ave and through downtown Menlo Park to the Skate Park in Burgess Park, a favorite party stop on Peninsula Bike Party rides.

The ride then cruised down Menlo Park's Alma St and Palo Alto's Bryant St to Christmas Tree Lane (Fulton St between Embarcadero Rd and Seale Ave), a tradition since 1940 that includes decorated Christmas trees in front of each house. The decorations on this block are certainly more subtle than Eucalypus Ave in San Carlos, impressive due to their great attention to detail.

Peninsula Bike Party rides are organized using a Facebook group, whose membership has been growing steadily since the first ride six months ago and broke 100 just before November's "Buy Nothing Day" ride. The ride's organizers are planning a more extensive outreach effort to attract several hundred riders for next month's ride, currently scheduled for Friday, Jan 27, 2012.

Peninsula Bike Party rides are free, slow-paced, and open to everyone.

Stay tuned for details on the next ride. Bike Party!