There's Mischief And Mayhem And Songs To Be Sung

As we sit a mere two days away from Christmas, I am feeling a bit melancholy. I know there are the Grinches of the world who cannot stand anything joyful or triumphant and if they happen to be both, well they lose their damn minds. I happen to love Christmas and the Christmas/New Year season and I'm not ready to say goodbye to it just quite yet. One of my favorite things to do is to explore the holiday lights and the bicycle seems like the perfect conveyance to do that. I kicked off the holiday lights ride season a couple of weeks ago when temps were still hovering around the 60° range, first up was a ride down Larimore street right over here in my hood. But since the night was so nice at that time, a few of us did a lap or so on the single track first.



After the single track we met up with a few other folks at the building formerly known as Bike Masters to head over to Larimore Ave and the lights displays.







I love the Larimore Ave lights display, it didn't seem as done up this year as it has been in years past but I suppose in this whacky year that is to be expected. There are lot of reasons for people to not be as jolly as they might normally be during the holidays. Between the four rides I literally have hundreds of photos so there is no way I'd be able to show them all or even half of them without this blog post turning into a novella, so what you're seeing is a small sampling of what we saw.



After our fill of lights we also scooted over to Standing Bear lake and scurried across the new floating bridge, it's dark out there at night. Not sure what they plan to do with the bridge during winter, I suspect they will just leave it in the lake but the walking surface seemed to be some kind of plastic and it was already getting slick with just a little bit of lake condensation on it. Add some snow and ice and it's likely going to be slicker than walrus poo on an iceberg.










Up next was a little 11 mile loop our of Aksarben Village put on by the Limestoners group. Mostly through the Happy Hollow area of Omaha where fences make good neighbors and the smell of old money... and old... and money lingers in the air but the lights were pretty impressive.





We did end at Liv Lounge complete with fire pit, a beautiful tree and a Covid compliant zebra. Not the worst way to end a chilly lights ride.



Saturday was the annual Holiday Lights Ride for Cycle Works. Channel 8 showed up so I thought we might make the news but since I haven't seen it come out yet, I guess we are laying on the cutting room floor somewhere.







As of Thursday the DHMs in place in Lincoln had closed down, or made them do take out only, most of the places we normally would stop at so we didn't have anything planned as far as stops went. Then the Hub Cafe reached out to us and let us know that they had just opened a large outdoor area with heaters. We of course jumped at the opportunity to not only have a place to stop for a quick bite or refreshment but it was also a way to support a great local business. As it turned out most of the real restrictive DHMs were lifted Friday afternoon but with the ride being the next day there wasn't much we could do to reroute things for other stops so it was nice to have the Hub.

















With no indoor stops planned, we grabbed the interactive map from Phillip's Lincoln Lights and plotted out a much longer route than we have done traditionally. Might have to figure out how to make this extended ride an option going forward, it was a ton of fun.






While not lights at all, this was probably my favorite display. Just a bunch of mannequins having a friendly snowball fight. The real question is what do they do with them when it's not Christmas time, are they like just randomly placed throughout the house, do they have a vacation storage shed? I feel like I need the back story.



This display was something else too, complete with Jesus in a fish tank. Aqua-Jesus!








The final ride was the Bike De'Lights which was a short 5 mile loop but it had some really spectacular light displays. Might still sneak in a few lights here and there but I fear that the holiday lights rides have ceased for the season. There's always next year and it's gotta be a better year than 2020 has been, right?

Merry Christmas everyone!