For year's I've been wanting to go on a holiday lights bike ride around San Francisco, to see all the beautiful decorations. This year I got the gumption to organize a "Reindeer Ride" with some friends a couple of weeks ago. Here's how it went.
To prepare, I decorated my bicycle and helmet.
It was easy to put battery-powered Christmas lights on my helmet.
Lighting up my Brompton folding bike was a bit more effort. I purchased some el-wire from the wonderful Cliff's Variety store in the Castro. You can see details of how I put them on the bike on this post. I was pretty happy with the result!
Here's the finished product, including Christmas lights on the front pannier.
The first stop on our ride was the most lavishly decorated house in San Francisco, the Tom and Jerry house! It 's at the top of a tall hill in the Castro, so it seemed like a good place to begin. Here's our intrepid group of Reindeer Riders.
After the Tom and Jerry house, we headed to the light sculptures at Octavia and Hayes in Hayes Valley. Biking through the city is so much more fun with a group.
Drew did a great job as point for our ride, with his tall frame and bright helmet with turn signals!
The beautiful light sculptures at Octavia and Hayes.
After that stop, we were off to City Hall for the beautifully light up building and tall tree in the center of the plaza.
It was pretty cold (for San Francisco)! We had a little dance party in the civic center plaza to keep warm.
From there, we headed toward Market Street, wending our way toward Union Square. The holiday tree and skating rink were very crowded. But we managed to take a lovely picture in front of the tree.
To close out our ride, we headed to the Ferry Building and the waterfront. The view of the bay lights on the Bay Bridge was particularly beautiful on that night.
Some of us wrapped up our ride warming up in the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero.
Here's a Google Map of our route.