Any Year That Starts on Your Bike, Is Gonna be a Good Year

January 1st. The missus and I rise at 8 am (went to bed at 2:30 am) and dress for our first (I hope it is a new tradition) “Hangover Ride”. The Midwest Motor Cycle Club has put this ride on for 26 years. Last year the weather was perfect, there was over 900 bikes riding around south Indianapolis for about 5 hours. This ride, the weather was… different. When we left the house is was 28° and sleeting (very lightly). Met up with another rider and headed down to the club house to register. When we got there it was raining and I was thinking we were going to be doing this alone. We had passed several other bikes on the way, but I was expecting 20-30. The parking area had 150 bikes in it when we arrived and many more came in behind us.

Since I was the only one in our group with a rider, I got to lead and the missus got to read the directions and relay them on to me. To make things easier for her, we/they taped (duct-taped - I looked like I had on a silver-gray tank top) the directions to my back. We headed off, raining 31-33°. Covered about 85 miles with 5 stops. When we got back to the club house I drew a pair of 5s, some rather lucky SOB had already had a straight, so we left.

Altogether there was a little over 300 bikes the MMC raised a little over $5,000.

All things considered, I hope this year gets better soon.