Imagine, if you will, a parade of leg-powered vehicles galavanting around the glamorous and often grungy neon-spackled streets of Downtown Las Vegas…throw in a hearty dosage of Burning Man-infused imagery, antics and outfits and you get the gist of Las Vegas's own Blinking Man. Facebook event page.
This year marked the 9th annual Blinking Man…it was my first time in attendance, though. I have to admit, I had my reservations; bicycling and drinking do not go hand in hand, and the event is a pub crawl…drivers downtown can be scary enough in a car…not to mention the fact that my most tenacious bike ride in the past few months had been less than a mile or two…add to that the fact that we had an appointment to catch, I had my doubts. In the end, I am SO glad we went!
It wasn't easy.
When it came to getting to the event, we had two choices; (a) bike all the way there OR (b) catch a bus at some point. We ventured from our home on bikes, keeping to the bike lanes. We discussed catching a bus it never came into fruition; we cycled the entire way to our appointment. Luck happened to be on our side and as we were wrapping up our appointment the cavalcade of cyclists began descending upon our location! They had originally been charted to ride on to another location but it had been changed at the last minute, unbeknownst to us at the time.
video taken by my dear Antho Jay~
This guy!
We happily joined the masses for the tail end of the ride, cruising down Las Vegas blvd. The weather was perfect, the crowds of brightly lit riders provided a feeling of safety and were surely one seriously goofy sight to see rolling down the boulevard; there were people on furry bikes, dressed appropriately for a Beatles' album cover, in their own homemade yellow submarine, etc. Bypassers were frequently found sporting large grins of their own to match the riders'.
After the final stop for the evening we rolled out, making our way back home and stopping for burritos on the way. We never took the bus; most of our trip to "downtown" was actually uphill, so the ride home was a nice respite after a very colorful evening.
We're definitely looking forward to next year's!
This year caught us by surprise as we'd never heard of the event before, but next year we'll be decking our bikes out. So much fun!
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