Name: Paul R. Jones
Temperature: 13°F
Distance: 17.5 miles
City/State: Richmond VA
Date: 1/11/10
Time: 0645
Scooter: 2009 SYM 300i
Your CWC story: Daily commuter, no heated clothing
Photos: **optional, (use tinyurl if possible)**
Map: **optional, (use tinyurl if possible*

sorry, i copy and pasted from my blog, http://www.indomitablescooterists.com pic and map r there

saturday morning i did a ride worthy to enter on the cold weather challenge on 2strokebuzz.com. i went to visit porn hair at his job and the plan was to install heated grips on my scooter and get the rust of the pipe on the vino and repaint it (more on that later). i left at 10:55 am from my apartment. the temperature according to weatherbug was 22 degrees. i usually take queens blvd down to the 59 st bridge or go down metropolitan to the williamsburg bridge. i decided on queens blvd because there wasnt gonna be much traffic. i had forgotten that the lights on queens blvd are set up for the people coming from manhattan and not going in. so i had to stop at every light because they were all red. this wasnt a problem when riding my elite 150. it has more power and i can make the lights but on the vino 125 that for some reason wont go faster than 30 mph when its cold until i ride for more than 30 minutes, then it will go 40 mph. the lights were really pissing me off so i decided to get to metropolitan and go the back way into the city. i did double the miles to get there but i probably did it faster than if i would of stayed on queens blvd. when i arrived at 23rd st and 6th ave yahoo weather said it was 21 degrees. i wasnt that cold, i have the hjc snowmobile helmet, and the teknic gloves i reviewed for the blog. and i also had a gaitor that im testing (works pretty good) and a powertrip waterproof jacket with quilted liner. i took the pic to show how cold it was. its a canal that goes under metropolitan av. oh, i forgot, its nyc

I prepped the Ruckus by putting no.6 x 3/4″ self-tapping screws into the tread blocks of both front and rear tires. I wore thermal “long john” underwear, Dickies work pants under nylon snow pants, cotton socks under fleece socks, cotton t-shirt under a button-down Dickies work shirt under a Carhartt jacket, an Arctic Cat snowmobile helmet with balaclava, insulated steel-toe work boots, and some winter work gloves under leather chopper mittens (which made turn signal operation difficult.)

To avoid traffic, I had originally planned to ride on the Lake Wobegon Trail (snowmobile trail) with my home-brewed front ski (made by shortening an early 70s Arctic Cat ski and triangulating a bracket off the top.) Illnoise couldn’t give me a definitive answer as to the eligibility of using a one-wheel, one-ski scooter in the Cold Weather Challenge, so I reinstalled the front wheel and took some back roads. I only encountered one other vehicle on my ride.