Mansions among Boulders & a New Take on Chicken Pot Pie

Lake Hoptacong CT Bears, from left: Token2, Mac, Anonymous Ed, Anonymous Anonymous, CT Blogger, John J., Captain. I had wife Cynthia sew this season's gold rocker on my vest and so had to wear it for the photo; 15 years riding Polar Bear for me so far.

Motorcycle Polar Bear Blog, Polar Bear Grand Tour, ride to Lake Hopatcong, NJ, January 29, 2017.

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

Approaching our Stratford, CT, Dunkin' Donuts launch pad I had the overwhelming feeling I'd forgotten something. As I turned into the parking lot I looked down at my handlebars and noticed the GPS mount was empty. Ah, ha!

Pulling up to our group I pointed to the blank mount and told Captain I couldn't lead this week. He made me no nevermind; alternative arrangements were already made. "I'm leading until we pick up Token2, John J. is sweeping, you're in the rocking chair," Captain dictated.

John J.'s appearance means just two things: 1) there's no football on TV and 2) there's no salt on the roads. As it turned out today, only the first condition held true. Sorry John. Hopefully those small town roads were only covered in sodium chloride, not magnesium.

(Monday Cynthia and I drove down to Newtown, Penn. for a family matter. On the way down, and back, we several times got stuck behind state trucks spraying that magnesium crap onto the roadway directly in front of us, all day long, in Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, all for a couple inches of snow predicted for Tuesday. I stayed back from the trucks as far as I could but yikes! At 10:00 that night I washed the car then soaked it in SaltAway.)

Sunday as we motorcycled south on I-95 we had another bike unexpectedly drop into line, a rider whose name cannot be publicly mentioned. Next, Token2 was on the shoulder of I-287 waiting for us. He roared, no, wait, that's a Harley metaphor. He zinged to the front of our line and took the lead.

Token2 is our champion of alongside the interstate. I don't know if he's ridden all these roads before or if he's just very adept with his GPS. He knows Harriman State Park like the back of his hand and leads us through that epic scenery on Polar Bear runs when the destination's right.

Sunday we followed Token2 as he exited I-287 early, diving into a gorgeous slice of New Jersey. We rode tight and twisty roads up and down hills. Surrounding us were huge rock outcrops and fields of boulders. Interspersed with the boulders and hanging off outcrops were mansion after mansion. I am not using that moniker recklessly. Some were California style modern architecture literally suspended out from the cliffs.

Token2 delivered some of his signature two lane twisties. Up and down hills, around tight corners and through some serious scenery, Token2 did not disappoint. But it being winter, we pressed back onto the four lane highways to get to lunch and Polar Bear sign-in in time to get home before sunset.

Our host Upstream Grille did a fabulous job. Other bears must have adopted our EDP because there was a real rush soon after 11:00. The Upstream Grille staff set up long tables family style to make maximum use of their space. In addition they had a special Polar Bear menu of a hearty half-dozen choices. This keeps the kitchen efficient and reduces wait time. They missed only on keeping the coffee urn full.

I mistakenly bought two lunches. They had an onion soup and gumbo listed, then chicken pot pie, a hamburger, pulled pork sliders and a couple others I don't remember. A couple of our guys ordered the onion soup; I figured on a cup of gumbo "soup" instead. But it wasn't a cup. I ended up with a big bowl of gumbo loaded with sausage and topped with crawfish. It was delicious. Then for my "entree" I, and several others, enjoyed a really cool chicken pot pie.

Upstream Chefs did a very interesting take on chicken pie. You got an individual cast iron skillet filled with a soupy chicken and veggies topped with a beautiful puff pastry. Especially fortunate for me, juggling two meals, the iron skillet kept the chicken hot longer. And as Mac discovered, once you cut the puff pastry into the soupy chicken and veggies, you had a chicken pot pie with an incredibly flaky and light crust. Well played, Upstream, well played.

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.

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.

Some rode this Sunday, probably coming up from down south.

Grumpy gets his red rocker. (Photo by PB Photog Dave Thompson.)

Chris' red rocker with PB Chairman Bob. (Photo by PB Photog Dave Thompson.)

Lunch and laughs (Captain always looks like that when cameras come out). (Photo by PB Photog Bernie Walsh.)

Pre group photo, photo. Chris was setting camera timer. (Photo by PB Photog Bernie Walsh.)

Token2 suits up for his -- lonely -- ride home. (Photo by PB Photog Bernie Walsh.)

Red rockers earned. Captain's really is read, he's showing us the reverse side, LOL.

Red rockers earned earlier received this Sunday.

Why, Oh Why?

Connecticut Bears in Freehold, NJ. We decided to take the group picture inside because it was raining outside.
From left: Captain, Grumpy and CT Blogger.

Motorcycle Polar Bear Blog, Polar Bear Grand Tour, ride to Freehold, NJ, December 18, 2016.

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

Rain was forecast, and came. The day before we had almost six inches of snow in Connecticut. Our two hour ride, one way, was 90 percent interstate highway. Even though the temperature would warm to 50 degrees or more, at 60 mph that's still cold enough to require winter riding layers. On top of my gear I still need to wear my rain suit to stay dry. I was Michelin Man and then some. And as I was putting all that crap on Sunday morning I had one thought. "Why?"

Well it was a chance to spend a day on my motorcycle with my friends.

Yeah, it's maybe better on a sunny and warm day on some winding back roads. But Sunday offered none of those opportunities. Sunday offered highway riding in the rain . . . with my friends . . . on my motorcycle.

Like the tee-shirt says, "If I Have to Explain It, You Wouldn't Understand."

When I first started handling marketing for a local motorcycle dealership, Bridgeport Harley-Davidson, I had a reporter visiting and he kept asking the same question of everyone in the dealership. He kept getting the same answer from everyone, me, the owner, the general manager, the sales director, but was not satisfied. His questions was, "What's so special about riding a motorcycle?" Our answer was, "You just have to ride to know."

There's the responsiveness. You feel much closer to your machine than in a car. There's the camaraderie. A connection with others found in most every sport. There's the heritage. Harley-Davidson takes that to legendary levels. It is a feeling. It gets inside you.

We got lucky on the ride down to The Cabin in Freehold, N.J. No rain! Not even drizzle. Roads were even dry here and there.

In Connecticut we started out in fog due to our snow cover and unseasonably warm air. It's a phenomenon called an advection ground fog.

My first experience with advection fog is a pretty funny story. Many years ago, I was part of a traveling road show for soybean farmers. Our NYC ad agency created informative seminars for the American Soybean Association. We assembled a panel of experts of interest to soybean farmers: a commodities trader, a business finance guy and Dr. James Newman, eminent professor of meteorology from Purdue University.

It was an intense couple of weeks, town-to-town-to-town, different hotel every night, handholding the presenters, working the audience, handling logistics. We had just finished. It was Friday night, in a little Midwestern airport, and we were all anxious to be heading home.

We decided to have a celebratory drink as we waited for our plane. There was a little bar where you sat overlooking the runway through an enormous plate glass window. My more cosmopolitan compatriots were especially eager to get out of the sticks. They were not as comfortable in farm country as I was.

Here's an example. As we sat down MaryAnne ordered a Stolichnaya. The bartender said, "Huh?" I said, "MaryAnne, ask for a vodka rocks and hope they have Gilbey's." I settled for a Gordon's gin instead of my usual Tanqueray.

We sipped our drinks. We watched the planes come and go.  It was winter. Soybean farmers are too busy for seminars in the summer. There was a lot of snow pack. The runways were clear and dry though. And it was a freakishly warm day.

As we debated ordering a second round, Dr. Jim Newman joined us. "Go ahead and order another," he said, "You're not going anywhere tonight."

That was devastating news to my metropolitan companions. "Wha?"

Now this was before the internet and readily available forecasts on smart phones. We looked blankly at Dr. Jim and, being a professor, he was all too happy to explain, "You see, what we have here is an advective ground fog. As soon as the sun goes a little lower the snow will super cool the warm moist air above it and when it reaches dew point, a dense fog will start to form, hugging the ground."

I swear I saw fog forming as he spoke. It got thicker and thicker. It grew up from the ground. Our airport terminal bar was second story high and you could easily see over this rapidly forming fog blanket. I think you could have cleared the fog layer standing on a stepladder. From our second floor perch you could see for miles. But the runway itself was totally obscured.

No sooner did our second round of drinks arrive than the announcement came over the intercom, "All airport operations are suspended." The city girls' eyes bored into Professor Jim like it was his fault. He blithely babbled on about supersaturation.

Next thing we know an airline pilot joins us at the bar. "Why can't you take off?" MaryAnn scolded, "Heck the cockpit of the jet is sticking up above the fog. Once you're off the ground you have unrestricted visibility." The pilot explained a plane cannot take off unless it is able to turn around and land at the very same airport it just departed should anything go wrong. "You can't land if you can't see the runway," he said. Just then a FedEx plane landed, whump, right down into the fog, right in front of us. We all glared at the pilot. He read our minds. "Different rules for freight versus passenger planes," he said, "The freight pilot is allowed to risk his own life."

We spent yet another night eating hotel food and the next morning the sun's rays dissipated the fog in plenty of time for our Saturday morning flight to New York.

Last Sunday, our fog was thick on local roads but pretty thin up on the interstate. As the day went on, it disappeared completely. New Jersey did not have the snowpack Connecticut enjoyed.

Just three of us rode this Sunday. I took the lead, Captain was in the rocking chair and Grumpy swept. I teased Captain about me taking lead to ensure our speeds remained reasonable. Then at lunch Grumpy informed me I was just as guilty of "heading back to the barn" speed syndrome as anyone else. Well it is easier to criticize others in this blog than to face the man in the mirror. Fortunately I have my riding pals to keep me grounded. Cognitive dissonance being what it is, I was sure he was exaggerating all the same.

As we exited the restaurant our luck had run out. It was raining, not real hard, but steady. How's the saying go? "There's no bad weather, only poorly dressed adventurers." We were well-dressed for rain and rode in and out of it the rest of the way home. We never faced a downpour. So what is there really to complain about?

Well there were those times wet tar snakes tried to pull our bikes. It's a disconcerting feeling when the bike unexpectedly takes a quick skitter to one side or the other. One long snake tried to edge trap my front tire. The New Jersey Oranges were worst for rain and traffic.

I kept Grumpy's admonition in mind and kept a weather eye on my speedometer on our ride back up the Garden State Parkway. By golly, he's right. Here I am complaining about others when they have the lead, yet I could see that darn speed needle creeping up all on its own. Human nature is a powerful thing.

Starting out in the fog.

Arrival in Freehold, still mostly dry.

This was the toy run Sunday before Christmas to benefit a local New Jersey children's hospital.

Fortunately lots of bears came in cars despite the rain and there was plenty for the kiddies.

Uncharacteristically empty.

Festive Flight A.

Bob photo of the week.

Captain peruses the bill of fare . . .

. . . so does Chris.

Our friendly waitress.

Wet departure.

Join us after New Year's; it's fun!