Polar Bear Motorcycles: January 2017

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Riding Among Liberals

CT Polar Bears in Shamong, from left: Token2, Mac, Anonymous Ed (hands only) Grumpy, CT Blogger, Captain.

Motorcycle Polar Bear Blog, Polar Bear Grand Tour, ride to Shamong, NJ, January 22, 2017

By: Chris Loynd, a.k.a. CT Blogger

Riding home Sunday northerly, up the New Jersey Turnpike then the Garden State Parkway, we found ourselves surrounded by liberals. New Hampshire and Vermont licensed Priuses swarmed around us in numbers never before seen. Coexist and Hug a Tree and No Nukes bumper stickers adorned them. And in many ways it was a good thing.

For the most part these drivers were kind and considerate. Traffic flowed more smoothly than usual. People signaled their lane changes, did not tailgate and moved over or slowed to let us merge.

There must have been some milk of human kindness, camaraderie and belief in the better angels of our nature, as the liberals headed home from their Saturday Washington D.C. protests.

Oh there was that one d**k in a Mercedes who cut into our line of bikes, then back out again, then cut off the leader, all to get a few cars ahead. But there is always some jerk in a BMW or Mercedes or Audi on the New Jersey freeways, often sporting Connecticut plates. Not to pick entirely on the Germans, we also encountered a less than polite Maserati. (By the way I love how a pedantic detail like a car having four doors turns into the car's exotic name when spelled in Italian: Maserati Quattroporte, 0-60 in 4.8 seconds, $103 - 145,000, depending upon options.)

Not all the liberals were kind. One of my favorite bumper stickers looked to be made by hand from electrical tape. It said, "Eat the Rich." I'm not even sure what that means, but it certainly seems a less than friendly sentiment.

Connecticut Polar Bears lean both left and right. Talking politics for us is as unavoidable as it is for everyone else in the nation. Fortunately our shared motorcycle experience trumps, um, uh, overrides, any political differences we may have. Your lane discipline, following distance and speed control are much more likely to be criticized than your proclivity for republicans, democrats or tea.

Nevertheless Sunday's pastoral and happy ride dissolved at our home state border. Slogging up the Merritt Parkway we once again were confronted with cars too fast and too slow and too aggressive and half asleep and there were more of them in our short home state run than in all of New Jersey.

Our ride down to the Pic-a-lilli in Shamong (I am NOT making up those names) was pleasantly uneventful. Grumpy led, Mac swept, Anonymous Ed, Captain and I were in the middle, joined by Token2 at the bus stop. I invoked EDP (Early Departure Protocol) for this ride because rain was forecast for later in the day. It worked really well, so well in fact, we were quite nearly the first to arrive at our destination.

Unfortunately rain caught us early all the same. After lunch as we mounted up for the ride home morning fog turned into actual rain drops. Since my riding gear is old, I need to put a rainsuit on top to stay dry. I got the jacket on as my fellow bears not so patiently waited. Token2 assured me the rain was forecast to stop soon and it was only raining in this local town. Feeling the glare of a dozen eyeballs I took a chance and skipped the ordeal of threading rain pants over my already bulky outfit.

Token2 was bang-on. Two miles out of town the rain stopped and never returned until my Honda ST1100 was safe in the garage and I'd peeled all those polar bear layers.

Very nearly first to arrive. There were two New Jersey bikes ahead of us.

If you look to the left of Anonymous Ed you'll see I did not make up, nor misspell, the name of our host restaurant.

Bob photo of the week.

Gold rocker earned.

Gold Rocker earned.

So Token2 sends Pogy a text message Sunday with a picture of Captain holding his gold rocker and this sentiment: "XOXO Nah, hah, boo, boo."

Pogy responds with the photo above and the text: "My Grandson has a 1200GS. Something I can handle."

Token2 replies: "ATGATT dude, ATGATT."

Sorry you're missing the fun Pogy. Hope to get you back soon!

BONUS:

Movie of our still reasonable ride. Token2, on whose helmet the camera was affixed, dropped out in New York.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Car Camaraderie all the Same

Sloatsburg, um, riders, from left: Token2, Captain, Grumpy, Chris and Pogy in his familiar squat down front.

Motorcycle Polar Bear Blog, Polar Bear Grand Tour, ride . . . er, um, drive . . . to Sloatsburg, NY, January 15, 2017.

By: Chris Loynd, a.k.a. CT Blogger

If you look at the date of this post's ride and the one previous, you'll see it has been a month, a whole month, since we rode. I am experiencing motorcycle withdrawal symptoms. I dream of riding, really. It was unexpectedly prescient of me to put Stabil in the gas tank after our December ride. Oh, and all the same I did not ride this past Sunday. I rode in a car, in the back.

Sloatsburg riders, Captain in the lead, Grumpy on his wing, Pogy next, Chris as sweep.

Blame the calendar for two missing Sundays in a month of missed Sundays. Christmas and New Year's holidays both fell on the week's first day, so no Polar Bear rides were scheduled. The third, breakout, Sunday was nixed by a pretty significant Saturday snow. A few brave souls made it to the Tilted Kilt, but Connecticut got more snow than New Jersey. Our road conditions were horrible. For example, Interstate 91 hosted a 25 vehicle pileup, including four tractor trailers and a tanker truck. Spinouts dotted I-95, our preferred route south. Here's a hint if you drive a SUV: 4-wheel drive does not equal 4-wheel stop. Just saying. I had a Jeep. I know. We sat this one out.

Photo borrowed from Hartford Courant website.

For various other scheduling conflicts in past years, I've not yet made it to the Tilted Kilt since this was added as a Polar Bear destination. Has it been two or three years I've missed? As you can see in the photo, I have vicarious reasons to feel regret.

Polar Bear Grand Pooh Bah Bob with two of the reasons to visit Tilted Kilt.
Oh 'come on! There's another waitress in the background.

One tough rider made it on a bike. Dude, you need to know about Salt Away, trust me. This kinda riding killed my Harley.

Okay, so that gets us to the fourth Sunday since our last ride in December. As the day approached I sent out the ride time email. Our always optimistic Cablevision weather lady was calling for a dusting, maybe an inch, of snow Saturday afternoon.

What a great profession, huh? I shoulda been a weatherman. Instead I work in marketing, which has great abilities to boost sales for every business. Only it's usually hard to prove. The direct line between seeing a billboard or TV commercial to buying a product is pretty obtuse. Clients clamor for proof, "What's the R.O.I. (return on investment)?" My feet get held to the fire all the time.

Years ago I met Jeff Fox, at the time Connecticut's premier local weather prognosticator. "You deliver conjecture with conviction better than any other TV meteorologist I've ever seen," I complimented. (From his expression, I'm not sure he took it as a complement.)

Well for this particular Sunday's ride, Saturday's predicted afternoon flurries turned into like three inches of snow. It was very cold. Snow was light and fluffy. I was out late Saturday night successfully clearing my driveway. But the road looked pretty bad. I think the extra snow caught our town by surprise.

Sunday morning side roads were still quite questionable. Grumpy cleared his ski slope driveway, but the road below was still snow covered. Captain and I discussed several possibilities, including moving the departure time back an hour to see if melting could occur. In the end we decided to drive . . . in a car. As Captain said, "I'm getting a little more cautious as I age." Me too, Cap, me too.

So why do we ride, um, er, drive?

Well one compelling reason this Sunday was the Polar Bear Grand Tour chairman offered amnesty for last Sunday's Tilted Kilt ride. If you did not show, it did not count against your perfect attendance. So showing up at Rhodes North Tavern in nearby, for us, Sloatsburg, N.Y. kept us in the running. We each got only one point for coming in a car. But our attendance was noted and registered in the Flight B book.

Probably a better reason was a chance to get together for some laughs once again. We actually enjoyed bonus laughs because we could talk to each other during the travel time, being together in a car instead of separate on our bikes, our heads inside full face helmets. (Some of the guys also suggested their wives were happy to see them out of the house after three weeks.)

Token2, our certified adventure rider, did make the trip on his bike. Uncharacteristically, he had less snow in his more northern Connecticut locale than we did down on the coast. We met him for lunch at the destination and somewhat falsely all stood in front of his bike for our weekly group photo.

We all got our red rockers this week, well except for Pogy. Most of us earned them earlier, but the Polar Bear officials had not yet received this season's coveted patches. Pogy made our first ride of the season and has not been able to ride since for personal reasons. Talk about motorcycle withdrawal! He planned to drive to this destination in any case because it is the closest for us Connecticut riders and Kathy really wanted him out of the house. So we picked him up along the way.

Conversation ranged far and wide. Some of it was motorcycle, some political, some magazine sizes, a lot was old guy talk: dwindling retirement accounts, declining health, worries about the future. I guess it's inevitable. You gotta laugh, or cry. Laughing is easier.