Polar Bear Motorcycles: 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.