| Polar Bear
Motorcycles by: Chris Loynd If you've stumbled onto this page out of curiosity, you're welcome to stay and read the saga of riding motorcycles in the winter. Several of us from Connecticut, participate in the Polar Bear Grand Tour, a winter-long set of destination rides sanctioned by the American Motorcycle Association (AMA): www.PolarBearGrandTour.com. Last year I figured my Polar Bear (PB) missives would be a good excuse to try this blogging thing. I enjoy writing and the antics of my fellow Polar Bears often provide good fodder. There were some pretty good stories over the past years. But they were written in transient e-mails now lost. I never expected this blog to reach out much beyond my Connecticut compatriots. But as the weeks went on and the stories grew, so did the blog's popularity. |
Me, Chris Loynd, on my |
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| Our fellow PB riders throughout the tri-state
area have e-mailed me or said hello at the Sunday meets to say how they
enjoy reading about our adventures. This blog allows me to preserve some great memories and to share them with my fellow Polar Bear motorcycle riders, you, and anyone else in the world. Enjoy! So despite my first editor's warning about committing to a weekly column, here it us, usually posted by the Wednesday after our Sunday ride. If you're interested in riding with us from Connecticut, it is very
informal. Each rider is responsible for his or her own safety. We meet
at the Stratford (Conn.) Dunkin' Donuts, I-95, Exit 30, at the corner of
Lordship Blvd., and Honeyspot Rd. Departure times for the coming week
are posted at the bottom of the past week's blog entry. |
 Polar Bear Riders from 2004. Full face helmets, plenty of layers and electric clothing keep us toasty. |
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Please keep in mind I sometimes exaggerate here in
an attempt at humor. I make no promises for the veracity of any
statements. No warranty is expressed or implied. Your mileage may vary.
Void where prohibited. Read this blog with a very big grain of salt. (And discount anything Russ Curtis tells you by at least 30 percent!) |
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Rides:
Use your REFRESH button to see the latest entries. |
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Pattenburg, NJ; February 10, 2024
Week 16 Bear: John
K. was the only one to brave the weather forecast last Sunday. |
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| John K. was the only one to brave a scary forecast. Here's
his account: I departed Milford heading South at 8:30 A.M. by car after receiving warnings about the "Weather man's reports" for the region. At best I could expect to slide off the road, or not. The problem is to much information these days. Well! At first blush all the information was right on, but by the time I got to I-287 off I-95 things were looking up then the rain came and I felt better and when the hail started I was convinced that the "Weather man" ain't such a bad person. After about five (5) minutes the weather passed and the clouds parted leaving blue sky and sun Oh! so much sun. I spent the rest of the trip down squinting, even after I put my sunglasses on. |
John's scary weather on the way down. |
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| It's possible that the "Weather man" has now
developed a credibility gap with me and who knows what could happen
should that person walk up to me and say Hi I'm the "Weather man". Anyway the trip was uneventful the "BobShot" and the Group shot are attached along with some of the riding adventure shots. Sunday's ride is to South Wayne, HOOTERS. It's one of our closest destinations, about 75 miles and 1 1/2 hours one way. That means we should set a leisurely departure time of 10:00 a.m. Now for the weather forecast: 30% chance of snow during the day; 50% chance of rain in the evening. Guess we'll just have to see. Meet us at the Dunkin' in Stratford. |
Rich and Bob pose for their weekly
blog shot. |
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Decent turnout from
closer bears. |
John K.'s weather for the ride home. |
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| Fingerless Gloves Saturday night. 11:00 p.m. It's 21 degrees outside. I'm thinking about tomorrow. I missed riding last week with the crappy weather. I had to work anyway, so it wasn't so bad. All the same, I am so ready to ride tomorrow. Warmer temperatures are forecast. So is rain. Thank heavens for the Polar Bears. Otherwise I probably wouldn't get out at all, all winter. All the same, I must prepare for riding in winter rain. That means I will be packing three, no four, pairs of gloves. |
Warmer riding in the Dakotas. |
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| So I'm sitting here on the couch, my laptop at
the ready. And I am thinking about tomorrow morning. Hooters! It's a
fun, and for us Connecticut Bears, a relatively close, destination. I've been sending out "friends" requests all day for The Maritime Aquarium's "My Space" page. Go check it out and if you're a My Space person, send me, us, a friend request. As the day began to end I got to thinking about tomorrow. Let's see . . . I will try the new electric glove liners first. If you've been reading my blog, Johnny B., Grumpy, turned me on to these a few weeks ago. Tucked inside hippo hands the light electric liners are warm enough. It feels great to ride with the least possible amount of gloves. But if it rains, I'm not so sure the liners will be enough. I doubt they have any water fastness. So I will pack my big, heavy, leather Gerbing electric gloves too. They are warm. They are supposed to resist rain. But riding in them feels like wearing baseball gloves. My mittens are better, believe it or not. They're supposed to be water resistant too. Yet we all know how wet you get on a motorcycle. So as a final backup, I will have my neoprene kayak paddling gloves tucked in the saddlebags. They're supposed to keep you warm even when soaked. I have Harley rain gloves. But they're summer weight. Sitting here on the couch, Cynthia and I are watching an "80s Movie Weekend" special on cable TV. Me, I came more from the Seventies. Yeah, I know. Anyway, one of the movies was, "Flash Dance." There's this one dance scene where a very hot looking chick is prancing around, her glistening body coated with glitter, wearing a minimal tough looking techno type outfit accented by fingerless leather gloves. And I thought, WOW! I miss my fingerless gloves. Like I said, It feels great to ride with the absolute minimum amount of glove, summer or winter. Fingerless gloves feel better, look cooler, than no gloves at all. Yeah, I know they�re no good if I go down. They do provide a bit of protection for my palms. Gel padding isolates me from the vibration of my V-twin. Holes across the fingers and cutouts over the backs let my hands breathe in the warm summer sun. When I first started riding I had a late summer doctor�s appointment, a routine physical exam. He checked me out, inside and out, and when he came in for that final consultation as I was getting re-dressed, he said, �Now the dark marks on the backs of your hands, have you always had those?� I said, �Heck no doc, I earned those.� He smiled. Thinking a moment, his physician�s analytical mind racing, he offered, �Golf?� I answered, �Close. Motorcycle.� This summer I will once again proudly display those dark patches on the back of my hands, and the raccoon face where my half helmet and goggles and hours of sun stain my face in strange patterns. Don�t misunderstand. I love the Polar Bears. But tomorrow when I�m ensconced in my layers, even with my lightest possible electric glove liners stuck in hippo hands cocoons, I still will not be as comfortable as when humming along in tee shirt, jeans and fingerless gloves. June seems far away still. See you tomorrow, Chris. |
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South Wayne,
NJ; February 17
Week 17 Bears:
Kneeling in front are Johnny B., the photographer, and Chris, your
blogger. |
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| morning 32۫
afternoon 44۫ sun only to Stamford in the morning, then bleak and grey
clouds made it feel colder than expected. The rain did hold off until
long after our bikes were put away. If you snuck onto the blog early, please be sure to stop back on Wednesday. By late Wednesday night I will have finished the concepts and polished the prose. I am getting started too late on Monday and there is no chance of finishing it tonight. Tomorrow is not looking too good either. I get home after work, write and edit and Photoshop. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many "Law and Order" reruns to watch. Plus I have been putting in hours asking hundreds of MySpace people to be "friends" of The Maritime Aquarium. If you are into MySpace, consider yourself officially invited: Back to blogging, our objective last Sunday was Hooters. By all appearances from his photo dump, it is one of Johnny B.'s favorite places. We turned out a good sized crew. It may have been the bright sunny morning and the weatherman's promise of a relatively warm day. Or it may have been the shorter distance. Hooters in South Wayne, NJ is 84 miles from Stratford, Conn. on Interstates 95 and 287 to the Garden State Parkway to Interstate 80 and a very short bit more. It is as easy a ride as Polar Bearing offers us CT bears. Not to mention a fun destination. |
Johnny B. photographically freezes |
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| A motorcycle ride to eat fried food served by large breasted women,
that's good man fun! With the Daytona 500 NASCAR race waiting on television
back home at the end of the ride, it was a day to give testosterone full
reign. If this offends our lady blog readers, well, get over it! This is motorcycling after all. Most of us are on Harleys for chrissakes! We're allowed. And it's not like Hooters is a strip bar or anything. Heeeey! Now there's an idea for a new destination! Maybe we can have a strip bar PB destination! Me, I would have it in March for those of us that can't make it down to Daytona. It wouldn't need to be a Daytona quality strip club. New Jersey must have a club or two. Then again, you do not see many Goldwings, let alone Burgmans, outside of strip clubs. Hooters is probably as wild as Polar Bears will ever get. And when you get right down to it, you can see a lot more "T" and "A" in any shopping mall these days, let alone your local beach or nightclub. |
Bob negotiates our return invitation
for next year. |
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| Our group was too large to occupy a single table. We took
two rounds on the floor. Fate, with its ever-present sense of humor,
gave half our group a sharp, efficient, comely waitress. My half got a
junior high school trainee. She had neither "T" nor "A" nor any idea how to waitress. Our other group finished their meals, Mark was on his third cigar out in the parking lot, before our food even arrived. As our food sat cooling on the pickup counter, we spotted our Hooters girl waaay back in the back of the restaurant taking orders from another table. When she finally, confusedly, delivered our food, under vociferous protest from Grumpy, she exchanged our cold French fries for undercooked ones. |
Chris takes a picture of Hawk with
super waitress. |
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| Dang! Those Hooters curly fries are one of my favorites. A
pleasure to be savored. I am a slow eater. As I have achieved maturity I have stopped apologizing for this and started enjoying my meals, peer pressure be damned. Still, it was hard not to notice that everyone else had finished their meal, paid the check, and started putting on their Polar Bear motorcycle layers, just as I started on the second half of my now cold buffalo chicken sandwich. Fortunately for me I ride with tolerant friends. They offered encouragements and apologies and I steeled myself to enjoy the second half of my lunch alone. If they left right after finishing their meal, the other half of our group could have been home before I was done eating. So no matter how you figure it, I rushed my meal, then prepared to ride home. |
By the time our food arrived we had
lost the good vibe. |
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| Even now I feel my mood darkening at the mere memory. Fortunately a good motorcycle ride with interesting friends trumps bad service and a disappointing meal. Matthew lit up the room, literally, in his new day glow Darien jacket. We teased him about not allowing his jacket to share a stool with our other gear piled high. We were afraid that yellow-green might somehow rub off on our all black regalia. We invited Matt to ride with us to the GSP rest stop for a coffee, only about 20 miles away. But apparently that exceeds his quota for the day. Being a New Jerseyite, he is used to riding like 10 or 15 miles to a PB destination. Definitely not a short distance Polar Bear, Randy rode from New Hampshire, not with us. |
Randy from New Hampshire arrives. |
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| It rarely works out for Randy to time his ride to ours. I
think he has ridden down with us maybe once and back with us perhaps
twice. Still being a fellow New Englander, we enjoy his company. Once again Randy was aboard his KTM dirt bike. I think it was his second ride of the year? He probably earned his patch on this one. Mark and Selina made their second ride with us. Mark got razzed for needing a gas stop at Hooters. The rest of us likely could have stretched our one tank the full round trip. "A rather unique experience for you guys," quipped our Honda ST rider John H. But I guess Mark had not filled up since the last Polar Bear run with us. He assumed, wrongly, that we would fill up at our destination because we did the last time he was with us. |
John H. meets Selina and Mark. |
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| Grumpy got on him ― a bit too much by
my reckoning ― about being a BMW rider and what Grumpy thinks of BMW
drivers and Acura drivers and . . . wait a minute! There ain't no Acura motorcycle. Mark (and the rest of us) quickly realized Grumpy was going off on automobile drivers. Mark reminded Grumpy that BMW Corporation was making motorcycles before they built cars. He also assured Grumpy that BMW motorcycle riders are not necessarily the same kind of people as BMW car drivers. I don't know if that's true or not. But you should be careful what you wish for. Through the cosmic law of attraction, I think Grumpy conjured up a cardigan clad idiot in a BMW to hassle us on the Merritt Parkway at the end of our ride. This guy must have thought he was on the Autobahn. |
See Grumpy really isn't so scary. He
and John K. share a fun moment while spirits were still high at Hooters. |
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| Fortunately he finally got around us and sped off north
toward what we can only hope is a destiny with either a speed trap, a
horrific crash or at the very least a blazing set of hemorrhoids. Meanwhile we will do battle once again on the expressways of Connecticut and New Jersey this Sunday. Our destination is the excellent Bahr's Landing restaurant. I think this is the one with the twin lighthouses and the excellent buffet. I am sure about the excellent buffet. Mapquest says 2 hours 20 minutes. So I guess that necessitates a 9:00 a.m. departure. Looks like our best route will be the snaking parkways through da Bronx to the foot of the George Washington Bridge. From there it's pretty much a straight shot down the Garden State Parkway. |
There's no missing Matthew. |
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| I will lead the ride . . . down to the intersection of
Interstate 287 and the Merritt Parkway. At that point I intend to hand
the lead over to John H. and his new Tom Tom. We will see if he and his
satellites can react fast enough for that tricky bridge turnoff. We might even have a surprise visitor. If the weather forecast holds, Sunday should be fine for riding. All the snow and sleet crap should be over by Saturday evening. It looks to be cold but manageably so, twenties at night and forty or so for a high. If you're a newbie, we meet at the Dunkin' Donuts in Stratford, Connecticut. Take Interstate 95 to Exit 30. Mapquest the corner of Lordship Boulevard and Honeyspot Road. See you Sunday! |
New Victory caught Grumpy's eye. |
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Highlands,
NJ; February 24
Week 18 Bears: From
left are Matt, Captain, Grumpy, CT Blogger and John H.
This second
group photo actually came first. Matt in that big yellow jacket is an
important part |
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| morning 32۫
afternoon 38۫ brilliant sun all day long. What a beautifully perfect day for Polar Bearing! Temperatures were no warmer, even a bit cooler, than last week. Brilliant all-day sun made it feel twenty degrees warmer. Our attendance was limited to the hardcore few: Johns K., B., H. and me. Attendance was down for the Polar Bears overall. Maybe it was fear of ice. We found very little. Roads were clear if salty. Maybe it was the snow a couple days earlier. By Sunday the snow was reduced to mere decoration. Not to discount its beauty. Snow did not impede our travel. Indeed it made it wholly more enjoyable. This is winter motorcycling at its zenith. The parkways were absolutely beautiful. Friday's was a sticky snow. Each deciduous tree bare and brown was drawn with white highlighter across the top of every horizontal surface. Stark trees were outlined in bold stripes of starker white. Conifers were frosted in finer strokes. |
Captain K. was checking out the dock
space. |
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| We all ride for different reasons, and maybe some of the
same ones. Certainly the Polar Bear riders are some of the more fanatic
riders. Matthew from New Jersey figured it was a good day for a ride. He got up extra early and rode a few extra miles today, just for the pure joy of it. Matt rode up from his home in New Jersey to Connecticut, just so he could lengthen his ride. Earlier in the week he sent me an e-mail to find out the departure time. But I did not tell the other guys. So it was a big surprise when the big guy in the very bright jacket showed up at our departure Dunkin' Donuts in Stratford. You would have to ask Matt why he did it. The smile on his face made it clear he was glad that he did. We ride in all weather, over distances long and short, for the pure pleasure of traveling on two wheels. Me, I get every part of it except one. My fellow riders would gladly confirm that I am not one of those "up early" guys. Oh, I will ride the wheels of any bike next to anybody, just so long as we can leave after 10 a.m. So here is to you, Matt. Glad you enjoyed the ride. You are welcome anytime, just so long as it isn't too early. |
Matt signs in after doubling his ride
with a Connecticut detour. (He did NOT take the extra miles) |
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Our leader Bob. Where
DOES he get all those bear-themed shirts? |
Flight A leader Ed. |
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A beautiful water view. |
The famous twin lighthouses. |
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Thanks for the welcome,
and the delicious buffet! |
A bit of salt on my chrome when I got
home. |
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Photo of Chris taking
photo of Grumpy. |
We made Matt take the jacket off to eat
breakfast. |
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Grumpy self portrait. |
Grumpy made gold this week. |
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What was I thinking? |
Grumpy's bear of the week. |
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| Sorry Polar Bear blog fans, but the muse and time have
both run from me. March 16, 2024 Special Notice . . . Someday I will look back at this entry and, hopefully, smile. I have fallen a few weeks behind in writing the blog. You probably do not realize how many hours go into its creation. Nor should you care. But most weeks I put in six to 10 hours over a couple evenings. It is a labor of love and a lot of fun. I am glad you enjoy reading it too. Since starting a new job and then following up with other things, and running a full time ad agency down to part time, well, it has been a challenge. I am "decommissioning" an 800 square foot office (anybody looking to rent?) and adjusting to life in a 10-foot cubicle. I went from a two block walk around the corner from home to a 60 + minute train commute. The Aquarium is a great job and wonderful place to work. There are lots of things happening there, new exhibits, new IMAX Hollywood movies (we get the Rolling Stones movie "Shine A Light" April 4th), a new monthly social (attendance went from 137 in February to 250 in March), the big yearly fundraiser coming up in April. Remember those old Western movies where the train came through town, steam engine churning at full speed? They hung the mailbag on a special pole. The train went flying through the station with a special hook to grab the mail, never slowing. That's how I feel joining the Aquarium. Pow! Up to full speed with nary a "fare thee well." I am not making excuses. I am merely letting you know that the Polar Bear blog has had to take a back seat to bigger priorities. Fortunately, I was able to make every ride. Thanks for your indulgence and patience. Here's Grumpy's take on it, "Hi Chris! I'm back from Florida. So what's happened to the Blog? I see nothing for the last two weeks. You miss me so bad you can't write? LOL. See you Sunday." So now I start up where I left off. I will dig into the best of my recollection from February 24th and over the week, and maybe a bit of Easter weekend if need be, I will catch up to today's ride to Chatterbox. As always, I write this "live" online. So you should check back and use your browser's "refresh" button if you are "tuning-in" during the week. At the end of each entry, when I am finished editing it, I will post a date and time. That way if you looked at it before that date and time, you will know you did not see the final work. Then if you care to you can "refresh" to re-read. Enjoy! |
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Rahway, NJ; March 2
Week 19 Bears at The
Firehouse Eatery, from left: John H., Ken displaying his PB patch earned
this run, |
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| Since I am writing this entry, and the following ones for
the rest of the 2008 Polar Bear rides, in May, you will have to forgive
me for being fuzzy on most of the ride-by-ride details. Last year Johnny B. and his bride Margaret, stopped on this run with his bike on a trailer on their way to Daytona. This year Grumpy decided to forego the perfect attendance pin and enjoy a fuller Daytona week by departing Friday. So the pictures are by me, but was too lazy to bring a tripod like Johnny B. So I recruited Matt, who was sitting with his buddies at the table next to ours, to take the group photo. I snapped a few others, and honestly do not remember anything remarkable about the ride. So enjoy the pictures. |
On arrival at the Firehouse. |
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Matt also earned his
PB patch this run. |
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Long Valley, NJ; March 9
Week 20 Bears, from
left: John J., Chris, Captain K. and John H. |
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| Whoa! This ain't New Jersey. Below are some of Johnny B.'s Florida Fotos. | |||||||||||||||||
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Johnny B. and his Florida rig. Daytona or bust! |
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Back to top. Or on to more Polar Bear Blog . . . |
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