A note about todays ride

Woke up early, absolutely nothing to do, Checked outside, COLD.

A.O.B. was set for 10:30am for a ride to watch Mister Sullivan jump in the ocean. It was now 9am and there was nothing to do, so I jumped on the bike and went for a ride, COLD.

I decided to rough it, see what the weather was really like, so I started the bike and headed out, all my heated gear was in the left saddlebag. STUPID.

Cruised down 184, onto 95, across the river, up rte 32 to DD. COLD, Fingers Fell off.

Arrived at Dunkin at 9:50am, had a coffee, more to hold than to drink, had a smoke, went inside to heat up, 10:30 was fast approaching and I was still alone. Finally I saw a bike coming up the road, Chris pulled in, he looked cold, got off his bike (clone) rather slowly, walked in....COLD.

Next up Tom arrived, Heated coat, gloves, pants, socks...WARM...Smart.

Next in was Margo followed by Hagar the horrible and brother, then Hoss. That was it for the riders. 10:30 had gone by, We were approaching 11am before we made a move towards the bikes. No road Captain, just two road Sergeants, I used the I'm gonna smoke so I need to be in the back of the line excuse, so Hagar lead the ride. Once again, I decided to run without the electrics, after all.. the temperature was up now, it was around 26 degrees F.   Stupid...COLD.

Hagar lead us down 32 into downtown New London then past Stashes and along the Thames to the beach.  He did pretty well on the ride until the end when he decided we should park the bikes in a snow bank. You know how every parking lot has one area in which they plow all the snow from the rest of the lot to, that was where he decided to go.  So after we watched Doug do a little Snow fighting motor cross parking his bike we walked down to the beach to watch the gaggle run to the sea.  It was different this time, instead of having all the runners go at once they broke it into groups and after one group had exited the water and was grabbing blankets and running for heat the next group ran for the water.

I have to say, Mister Sullivan looks a hell of a lot different with hair.

There were quite a few other members there that rode there in cages and one more bike joined us there, Mister Rubenstein.

I decided at this time to put on the electrics for the ride out, we rode from the beach to DD on Ocean avenue for coffee, I was warm, I was toasty, the ride lasted..oh...maybe 5 minutes.

The Road Captain was there with Jo and Harley, he said that this had been a test. An intelligence test. In order to determine if the Club was smart enough to look at the temperature and say no, or just jump on the bikes and ride because we were told to.  I guess a lot of us failed.


klay