Cylinder or cigar-shaped light in the sky

I went outside on my morning break. I walked out to the lagoon to stand in the sun. The sky was clear blue and the air crisp. Visibility was very good.

When I first noticed the object I thought it might be a small cloud. But the more I observed it didn't appear to be. It slowly moved southbound along the Hwy 101 corridor.

As it moved further away it started to disappear. When it totally vanished it immediately reappeared at a lower elevation and further away. When I finally lost sight of it, I estimate it traveled from Redwood City to Mountain View.

i was in my friends car, driving from the Bronx River Pkwy into Tuckahoe through Crestwood. We were had barely drove down Columbus Ave when we saw a big light hit the trees. My first thought was that she had turned her headlights on brighter, but then i saw what kind of light it was. My friend immediately said "I wonder who they're looking for", because we realized it was a search light. We slowed the car significantly and were going about 5mph as we were the only people on the road, to look up through the windshield expecting to see a Police Helicopter.
Instead what we saw was about 6 stories in the air, and looked like a thin wingless led zeppelin blimp, except completely vertical. It was low enough for me to notice that the metal wasn't smooth, but slightly evenly grooved, almost like an old juicer [something like this

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~cema/courses/CSE5910/lectureFiles/images/lect6b/juicer.jpg

both the bottom and top were rounded, and the shape did not vary, almost like a cigar.
on the bottom of the object, there was a ring of steady blue light, and at the top a red blinking light. we both heard the noise it made, and it sounded almost like an air conditioner. a low constant drone, instead of the propellor sounds a hellicopter makes.

as i was noticing what the object looked like, my friend (thinking it was a missile or bomb) was more concerned in the way it was flying. it came from over the houses on our left, and after hovering near us for a few seconds, started to come a bit lower to the ground, and then back up higher. she says it was flying someone erratic or haphazardly, and the object continued south in the same direction of the train tracks we were parallel to. we tried to follow the object by driving alongside the train tracks on Columbus Ave, down to Main Street in Tuckahoe. however by the time we reached Main St. (about 1.2 miles) we lost sight of the lights. The object was heading south.

While driving from Crestwood to Tuckahoe, we were freaking out a bit after seeing it, and when we got to Tuckahoe there were a few people on the street, and we had rolled down our windows to yell "DID ANYONE ELSE SEE THAT?" however no one seemed to have known what we were talking about. What really freaked us out about the object was that it was completely vertical the entire time, and we just knew that we had definitely never seen anything like it before.

I looked up from my back patio enjoying the weather and I saw from north to south what looked Like a straight line of lights with no spaces in between about 2 inches in horizon length fly straight across the sky with complete controlled speed and altitude. It left a minor blur of lights in its wake which faded quickly. I have seen many planes, meteors, and meteorites in my life and this looked like nothing I have ever encountered. I had time to call over a guy sitting on his back patio to look as well and he agreed it was def not a plane. The whole thing lasted what seemed like maybe 1-1 1/2 minutes.