Viva Calle, San Jose!

“Have you seen the house with the creatures?” one of our riders asked. While the rest of the group assembled at our rendezvous point, she led us down a side street to behold an amazing sight.

Perched on the rooftop (and, well, all over the house) were fantastical ceramic figures.

Whimsical, one-of-a-kind little masterpieces of a creative mind.

The popularity of Viva Calle has led the city of San Jose to schedule the event more frequently. Not volunteering for this one, I was ready to go exploring. Better yet, with a small group of folks from the club.

To get there, we started off on the Los Gatos Creek Trail. Maybe it wouldn't be too busy on a Sunday morning? [Wrong.] But the first near-catastrophe came early, when a less-experienced rider wobbled in front of me and almost toppled off the edge of the trail as I descended behind him.

I gave him more space after that, but finding that he flagged going up each little rise on the trail, I decided to slip past him.

Then he repeatedly took to cruising on the left side of the trail, over the line. Even after I gently reminded him to stay to the right. [And I thought the biggest challenges today would present themselves in the free-flowing crowds on the event route.]

Arriving before things got busy, we piled into a photo booth for a group shot. The green screen technology took some liberties with our attire(!) to promote the event. There was music, there were artists painting live, there were booths promoting health and the outdoors, there were food trucks.

It was fun to see so many people wheeling around—mostly on bikes, but there were some colorful and talented folks twirling around on inline skates, too. You did need to keep your wits about you (as you were mixing it up with lots of unpredictable people in motion), but I didn't witness any crashes. [Which seemed somewhat miraculous.]

Our group splintered and came together again before riders branched off to head more directly home. With only three of us returning to our starting point, our leader agreed to forego retracing our route on the trail. [Whew.] In all, 28 flat miles (500-ish feet of climbing).