Polar Bear Run

New Year's day 2018 was dry, but cold.  Orv had asked me if I wanted to do the Polar Bear Run with him, and we decided to give it a go.  The Polar Bear Run is an event put on by the Christian Motorcycle Association every year on New Year's day regardless of the weather.  Usually it would be raining, but this was one of the rare dry January days.

Although it was dry, the roads were still damp in shady spots, and could be frosty.  I took a test drive at 9 am in the car on some of the roads near our house that I would have to ride to get to my meeting with Orv, and the car thermometer showed 29 degrees in some spots.......and there were some frosty looking areas.  We decided to postpone our meeting until 11 am to allow for a little more warm-up.

One of the essentials for me to ride in really cold weather is to wear a balaclava under my helmet.  There is enough air leakage into the helmet to get cold air above my heated vest collar and that soon hurts.

So, with the addition of long underwear top and bottoms, rain pants over my leather pants, heated vest over a long sleeve henley, and my leather jacket with the liner in, I was ready to go.
On the way to Orv's house I had my heated grips on the highest setting and my palms were toasty, but my finger tips were cold.  Otherwise, I was comfy.

The ride started from the Portland Cycle Gear store and by the time I got there I had already ridden about 40 miles.  There were a lot of bikes, even though we got there late and many had probably already started on the route.

The CMA were well organized.  This was their sign-up spot for people who had pre-registered.  I don't see any reason to do that.  You can save $5 off the $15 entry fee, but not knowing what the weather will be in advance, you could end up losing $10 if it was too nasty to ride.

This was the interesting looking guy at our sign up.

After downing a free bowl of chili (it was lunch time), Orv and I were off on the ride.  The club provided a route sheet with mileage to turns and road names.  We chose to do the longest route, which was about 90 miles.  Much of it was city streets or fairly straight country roads (I think the CMA is made of mostly cruiser riders), but we did find one nice curvy section that we had never ridden before.  It's pretty hard for us to find new curvy roads in the area, so this alone was worth the $15 entry fee.  I have already figured out how to incorporate it into one of our standard summer rides over to the coast.

By afternoon, the temps had got up to the mid 40's I guess, and it was quite comfortable.  It was a real treat to get in a ride at this time of the year, so we both enjoyed it, and maybe our entry fee did some good for the community.

You know those pins that the cruiser guys have all over their jackets (like the guy in the pic above)?  Well, this is how they get them, and I have one now too (not going on my jacket, though).