11/11/2025 Veteran’s Day Ride – 103 Miles today 213 miles to go for the 500 Mile Break-In.

Cold Ride today with starting temperature at 25°F a bit past 8am.

 Today’s temperature never exceeded 47°F during the ride (most of day was in the 30’s.  However, I was not cold but layered up like the Michelin man.  I was unable to test my Rev’It Sand H20 pants as they were too long and I returned them to Cycle Gear in Hiram, GA (part of today’s ride).

Read more about the gear I wore and the 3^rd Break-In Ride overall.

Today’s riding gear (which kept me nice and warm)

• FREEZE-OUT Balaklava
• Sedici Strada II Helmet – Size XL
  • This is the helmet I last used during my California Loop Trip in 2018 (And DeAndra’s original helmet that I started using after my August 2017 crash on Jolene and destroying my Shoei GT-Air helmet, not replaced until 2019).Because of the balaclava, my “new” Shoei GT-Air, size L would not fit.  So, last minute decision was to grab the Strada II helmet.
  • The Go-Pro mount on the Strada II helmet is on top of the helmet.  Without a lot of fiddling around, getting the correct angle for the Go-Pro (Hero 5 Black) is very difficult.  I checked and adjusted the angle a few times during today’s ride, and it does not appear that I have any usable video from today.  If I find something usable, I will post it here later. 😊
• Realtree thermal under layers – Top & Bottom
• Long Sleeve, old Army PT shirt (it’s veteran’s day)
• REV’IT! Sand 5 H2O Jacket – Size 3XL
  • Great day to test the warmth capability of jacket with  mid layers.
  • Thermal layer zipped-in
  • Less rain proof layer
• Rinding Pants – Iron Workers Mercury Jeans – Size 42
  • With Klim D30 LP2 Pro armor for hips & knees installed.
• FREEZE-OUT Warmer Glove Liners (Not Heated)
• Tour Master Polar-Tex Motorcycle Gloves
• Tested Bruce’s heated grips (stock on Bruce) a couple of times, they work 😊
• For socks I had the standard RevIT riding socks and some wool socks over the RevIt socks.  Feet were comfortable the whole day, no cold toes 😊

No Video Today

No usable video of today’s ride (much to the relief of some I am sure lol.  I went back to the old Sedici helmet for today’s ride with the GoPro mount on top of helmet.  After 3 adjustment attempts, I never got the angle right (unless we want video of the road lol).

Morning Ride

This morning, a little after 8:00am, I rode Bruce to Tristan’s school where they were putting on a Veteran’s Day program for student’s family veterans.  Temperature at time of departure was a balmy 25°F.  I was riding Bruce as the wife had the car at her job.  In May 2025, my wife DeAndra hydroplaned during heavy rain, totaling our 2014 Chevy Volt in a highway ditch.   Thankfully her injuries were minor.  We have decided to postpone the car’s replacement until June 2026 (I work from home in IT).  So, for the moment it is just our aging 2010 Volkswagen Tiguan (its name is “Grey Car” named for / by Tristan many years ago…. before that it was just known as “The Tiguan”) and Bruce.

I rode back home after Tristan’s school program a little before 10am and the temperature was in the low 30’s F.

Midday Ride

After taking Willow (our puppy) for some outside time I rolled off again for some exciting errands and good excuse to further test my riding gear and chip away at the remaining break-in miles.  I rode up to Wal-Mart in Douglasville and then proceeded to Cycle Gear in Hiram, GA to return the Revit Sand H20 Pants.  I purchased the 3XL Standard size. While the fit at the waist was excellent, I found that the knee armor was positioned at my shins.   The pockets are adjustable but there was just a crazy amount of pants.  I have ordered the 3X short version direct from Revit (Cycle Gear / Revzilla didn’t have that size in stock).  Hopefully these will work out, otherwise I will have to find another solution.  The temperature had warmed up to 39°F by the time I got to Hiram. 

From Cycle Gear in Hiram, GA I rolled to Lithia Springs, GA to Atlanta Harley-Davidson just to ask the shop guys a couple of questions about the aux power plug / connector under the bike (exploring switched power options for Garmin & Quadlock, either a splitter harness for aux circuit or I will use the gear dc plug and convert to SAE….more later on all of this).  By the time I was getting ready to roll out from Atlanta Harley-Davidson it had warmed up to about 48°F and felt warm lol.  I ditched the Balaklava and glove liners and rode home for 17 miles arriving around 1:30pm.

Late Afternoon / Evening Ride (it gets dark at about 5:30pm now)

I rolled off again from home around 4 PM to try and capture some stunning fall colors on the Go-Pro (and failed again, the whole camera thing). I basically rode a large 40-mile loop around my home and then rolled back home at 5:30 PM.  The temperature was 45°F when I departed but it was already down to about 40°F when I got home.  Still no inserts or Balaklava and I was comfortable with all the other gear.

Summary of today’s gear test

Today is the coldest time I have rode a motorcycle since I lived in Minnesota riding the late Joleen (2004 Honda VTX 1300C) from Delano, MN to Montrose, MN November 15^th, 2016 (Yes, that is the exact date as I recorded the frozen insanity on my Google Calendar) after being serviced in Delano.  I didn’t recall the actual temperature, but thought that it was no higher than 20°F.  However, I looked this up with Google Gemini for Delano, MN & Montrose, MN and it states the low was 35°F.  I remember feeling frozen, and that was only an 8-mile ride in apparently 35°F weather.  I now feel so ashamed of my former self lol.

  Now granted, Joleen was a cruiser with no fairings / wind blocks of any kind and this time I only rode 6 miles to the school from home when it was 25°F, and about 30°F on the way back home.  But that is still darn cold on a motorcycle, and I was 100% comfortable, not even a chill.  Bruce does offer some wind protection and that does help (Dexter had a TON of wind protection).

Riding gear makes a huge difference.  I think the Minnesota ride all I had on was some jeans, a heavy sweatshirt over a long sleeve T-shirt and whatever leather motorcycle jacket I was wearing at the time and of course motorcycle boots and gloves.  But I remember feeling like an ice cube on that ride.  The layering of clothing, better purpose gear I think made a big difference.  When and if we get another cold snap like that again this season here in Georgia (a normally rare occurrence) I will test all this gear again and see if I turn into an ice cube, you know for science.